Political Leaders and Changing Local Democracy
Political Leaders and Changing Local Democracy

Author: Hubert Heinelt

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-12-19

Total Pages: 499

ISBN-13: 3319674102

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This book studies political leadership at the local level, based on data from a survey of the mayors of cities of more than 10,000 inhabitants in 29 European countries carried out between 2014 and 2016. The book compares these results with those of a similar survey conducted ten years ago. From this comparative perspective, the book examines how to become a mayor in Europe today, the attitudes of these politicians towards administrative and territorial reforms, their notions of democracy, their political priorities, whether or not party politicization plays a role at the municipal level, and how mayors interact with other actors in the local political arena. This study addresses students, academics and practitioners concerned at different levels with the functioning and reforms of the municipal level of local government.

The European Mayor
The European Mayor

Author: Henry Bäck

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2007-10-05

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 3531900056

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With this book we aim at describing and analysing the selection, daily life, networks and values of local top political leaders in seventeen European countries. The empirical nourishment to the investigation into town halls across Europe is a survey conducted in 2003 with mayors and corresponding top local political leaders. The data covering responses from 2700 leaders is a unique and rich material allowing descriptions and analyses pursuing a number of lines of inquiry.

If Mayors Ruled the World
If Mayors Ruled the World

Author: Benjamin R. Barber

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2013-11-05

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 030016467X

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"In the face of the most perilous challenges of our time--climate change, terrorism, poverty, and trafficking of drugs, guns, and people--the nations of the world seem paralyzed. The problems are too big for governments to deal with. Benjamin Barber contends that cities, and the mayors who run them, can do and are doing a better job than nations. He cites the unique qualities cities worldwide share: pragmatism, civic trust, participation, indifference to borders and sovereignty, and a democratic penchant for networking, creativity, innovation, and cooperation. He demonstrates how city mayors, singly and jointly, are responding to transnational problems more effectively than nation-states mired in ideological infighting and sovereign rivalries. The book features profiles of a dozen mayors around the world, making a persuasive case that the city is democracy's best hope in a globalizing world, and that great mayors are already proving that this is so"--

The European Mayor
The European Mayor

Author: Henry Bäck

Publisher: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften

Published: 2006-05-15

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 9783531145747

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With this book we aim at describing and analysing the selection, daily life, networks and values of local top political leaders in seventeen European countries. The empirical nourishment to the investigation into town halls across Europe is a survey conducted in 2003 with mayors and corresponding top local political leaders. The data covering responses from 2700 leaders is a unique and rich material allowing descriptions and analyses pursuing a number of lines of inquiry.

To be Mayor of New York
To be Mayor of New York

Author: Chris McNickle

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 9780231076364

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From Tammany Hall to the election of David Dinkins, To Be Mayor of New York offers insights into the effect of ethnic competition on the demise of urban political machines. Beginning with a colorful assessment of New York City's Tammany Hall as it existed in the late nineteenth century, McNickle traces the effect of the arrival of large numbers of Jewish and Italian immigrants -and later black and Puerto Rican migrants- on the Irish-dominated political machine. He focuses on the political passage of Jewish immigrants through the various small parties unique to New York -socialist, American Labor, and Liberal. Later he describes their attraction to various factions of the traditional Democratic and Republican parties. He spotlights the willingness of large numbers of Jewish voters to cast ballots for third-party candidates on the basis of their shared philosophical commitments and political priorities. McNickle then examines mayoral campaigns between 1945, the end of the LaGuardia era, and 1989, during which the Irish receded and Jews and later African-Americans emerged as the most important ethnic groups in local politics. To Be Mayor of New York offers the most complete study of the development of Jewish political participation in New York. Placing a rise of the New York City Reform Movement in historical perspective, the author explains the election of New York's first Jewish mayor, Abe Beame, and the first African-American mayor, David Dinkins, as part of the political evolution of both these groups.

Gnarr
Gnarr

Author: Jon Gnarr

Publisher: Melville House

Published: 2014-06-24

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 1612194141

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In the epicenter of the world financial crisis, a comedian launched a joke campaign that didn’t seem so funny to the country’s leading politicians . . . It all started when Jón Gnarr founded the Best Party in 2009 to satirize his country’s political system. The financial collapse in Iceland had, after all, precipitated the world-wide meltdown, and fomented widespread protest over the country’s leadership. Entering the race for mayor of Reykjavík, Iceland’s capital, Gnarr promised to get the dinosaurs from Jurassic Park into downtown parks, free towels at public swimming pools, a “drug-free Parliament by 2020” . . . and he swore he’d break all his campaign promises. But then something strange started happening: his campaign began to succeed. And in the party’s electoral debut, the Best Party emerged as the biggest winner. Gnarr promptly proposed a coalition government, although he ruled out partners who had not seen all five seasons of The Wire. And just like that, a man whose previous foreign-relations experience consisted of a radio show (in which he regularly crank-called the White House and police stations in the Bronx to see if they had found his lost wallet) was soon meeting international leaders and being taken seriously as the mayor of a European capital. Here, Gnarr recounts how it all happened and, with admirable candor, describes his vision of a more enlightened politics for the future. The point, he writes, is not to be afraid to get involved—or to take on the system.

The Nation City
The Nation City

Author: Rahm Emanuel

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2021-01-05

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0525566627

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At a time of anxiety about the effectiveness of our national government, Rahm Emanuel provides a clear vision, for both progressives and centrists, of how to get things done in America today--a bracing, optimistic vision of America's future from one of our most experienced and original political minds. In The Nation City, Rahm Emanuel, former two-term mayor of Chicago and White House Chief of Staff for President Barack Obama, offers a firsthand account of how cities, rather than the federal government, stand at the center of innovation and effective governance. Drawing on his own experiences in Chicago, and on his relationships with other mayors around America, Emanuel provides dozens of examples to show how cities are improving education, infrastructure, job conditions, and environmental policy at a local level. Emanuel argues that cities are the most ancient political institutions, dating back thousands of years and have reemerged as the nation-states of our time. He makes clear how mayors are accountable to their voters to a greater degree than any other elected officials and illuminates how progressives and centrists alike can best accomplish their goals by focusing their energies on local politics. The Nation City maps out a new, energizing, and hopeful way forward.

The Many Lives of Michael Bloomberg
The Many Lives of Michael Bloomberg

Author: Eleanor Randolph

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Published: 2021-03-16

Total Pages: 496

ISBN-13: 1476772215

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This authoritative and anecdote-filled biography of Michael Bloomberg—2020 presidential candidate and one of the richest and famously private/public figures in the country—is a “masterful work…[and] an absolutely first-rate study of leadership in business, politics, and philanthropy” (Doris Kearns Goodwin, Pulitzer Prize­–winning author) from a veteran New York Times reporter. Michael Bloomberg’s life sounds like an exaggerated version of The American Story, except his adventures are real. From modest Jewish middle class (and Eagle Scout) to Harvard MBA to Salomon Brothers hot shot (where he gets “sent upstairs” and later fired) to creator of the Bloomberg terminal, a machine that would change Wall Street and the financial universe and make him a billionaire, to presidential candidate in 2020, Randolph’s account of Bloomberg’s life reads almost like a novel. “A vivid, timely study of Bloomberg’s brand of plutocracy” (Publishers Weekly), this engaging and insightful biography recounts Mayor Bloomberg’s vigorous approach to New York City’s care—including his attempts at education reform, anti-smoking and anti-obesity campaigns, climate control, and new developments across the city. After he engineered a surprising third term as Mayor, Bloomberg returned to his business and philanthropies that focused increasingly on cities. The chapter that describes this is one of the most revealing of his temperament and energy and vision as well as how he spends his “private” time that was virtually off-limits even when he was mayor. Bloomberg promised to give away his money before he died, and his giving has focused on education, gun control, and a fighting climate change. He joined the 2020 presidential campaign as a moderate liberal and spent his millions focused on ousting President Donald Trump.

Ed Koch and the Rebuilding of New York City
Ed Koch and the Rebuilding of New York City

Author: Jonathan Soffer

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2012-01-31

Total Pages: 526

ISBN-13: 0231150334

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In 1978, Ed Koch assumed control of a city plagued by filth, crime, bankruptcy, and racial tensions. By the end of his mayoral run in 1989 and despite the Wall Street crash of 1987, his administration had begun rebuilding neighborhoods and infrastructure. Unlike many American cities, Koch's New York was growing, not shrinking. Gentrification brought new businesses to neglected corners and converted low-end rental housing to coops and condos. Nevertheless, not all the changes were positive--AIDS, crime, homelessness, and violent racial conflict increased, marking a time of great, if somewhat uneven, transition. For better or worse, Koch's efforts convinced many New Yorkers to embrace a new political order subsidizing business, particularly finance, insurance, and real estate, and privatizing public space. Each phase of the city's recovery required a difficult choice between moneyed interests and social services, forcing Koch to be both a moderate and a pragmatist as he tried to mitigate growing economic inequality. Throughout, Koch's rough rhetoric (attacking his opponents as "crazy," "wackos," and "radicals") prompted charges of being racially divisive. The first book to recast Koch's legacy through personal and mayoral papers, authorized interviews, and oral histories, this volume plots a history of New York City through two rarely studied yet crucial decades: the bankruptcy of the 1970s and the recovery and crash of the 1980s.