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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
2 0 October 2016
n any discussion about Mayoral governance’ in
Dublin there are assumptions: firstly, that it is a
good thing, that it will solve lots of problems in the
city; and second, that the mayor should be directly
elected.
We usually hear the paraphrased quote - ‘who do I ring
if I want to talk to Dublin?’. We want to be able to identify
who runs the place. We want someone to be running the
place. Directly-elected mayors give us that.
The ‘direct’ in direct election, a bit like in direct democ-
racy, is a ‘Yay’-word. It is seen as an unarguable good.
Who could not be in favour of giving people a direct say
in, a direct link to, who runs the city?
These assumptions ignore the relationship between
central government and city government and what com
-
petencies are appropriate for the mayor, what
geographical area the mayor might rule over, and the
central issue of funding.
They also ignore the fact that we can and do have
strong political leaders who are not directly elected.
There are broadly three models for city governance.
One is the Council-Manager system we currently have –
where the mayor has no executive powers. There’s an
assumption that it is a bad thing. It certainly isn’t very
democratic: it is not responsive to voters’ wishes and
there are no clear links between the vote in local elec-
tions and local government policy. It’s also not very
transparent – though that might be due to the absence
of real media reporting of city government. It in turn
might be a function of the lack of clarity in
decision-making.
The second model is the directly-elected mayor or
Mayor-Council system. It is used in London, some other
European cities, such as Rome, and about half the big
US cities, including New York and Chicago. Probably
because our nearest neighbour and biggest influencers
adopted and use it, we naturally assume it is the one
for us.
But within this system, things aren't uniform. They can
be strongly mayoral or weakly mayoral – so the Council’s
control of the legislative and financial functions can vary
considerably.
There is a third model. It is a Council system.
The elected councillors appoint a mayor, who has
executive functions. As with the directly-elected mayor,
depending on rules, the mayor’s power can vary quite
significantly. The system is quite common, used in many
northern European cities, such as Amsterdam, Berlin,
Stockholm and Paris.
So which works best? Well I’m not an expert in local
government, but even the literature doesn’t have a clear
conclusion. So the short answer is, we don’t know.
But I am interested in the functioning of central gov
-
ernment, and we can think of the two models, the directly
and indirectly-elected executive mayors as functional
equivalents to the presidential and parliamentary sys-
tems at the national level.
And there is a long debate in political science about
the relative success of the two systems at delivering
We can achieve a strong, identifiable
executive mayor without holding direct
elections that unnecessarily increase conflict
There are 3 models: the Irish
Council-Manager system
where the Mayor has no
executive powers; London’s
directly-elected Mayor or
Council-Mayor system and the
Council system where elected
councillors appoint a Mayor
with executive functions
October 2016 2 1
democratic stability, human development, and
a range of other indicators of a country's
success.
So which should we choose if we are to be
guided by the relative performance of presiden-
tial or parliamentary systems?
The presidential system, which
is the system analogous to
directly-elected mayor, has
some advantages. Candi-
dates are required to
present a vision to the
public. It puts power in
the hands of one
person, on the basis of
popular election. That
means the presidential
system is clearer and
appears fairer. We all know
who we vote for; and the
person who gets most votes
becomes mayor.
Unlike in parliamentary systems, there is no
messing about with coalition-building based on
backroom deals that aren't transparent and over
which the voters have little control.
Much of the debate in parliamentary elections
is about who will coalesce with whom, a debate
that could be avoided in presidential-style sys
-
tems. Instead the rival candidates for mayor
could debate the issues facing Dubliners.
The presidential system also weakens the
power of parties. Many people dislike parties,
and regard them as gatekeepers of political
ambition. With a presidential system new lead-
ers can emerge without having to be sanctioned
by a party. This is much less likely in a parlia-
mentary system.
And at a time when people complain that gov
-
ernment is unresponsive to their needs, and
lacks leadership, the mayor could have clear
lines of power to deal with the big problems.
A suitably empowered mayor might be able to
deal with the housing crisis in a way that the
local authorities, minister and agencies can't.
The parliamentary system, that is
the indirectly-elected mayor,
however, has some advan
-
tages of its own.
One might seem a
weak one, but it might
be important. We are
used to parliamentari-
anism - it's in our
political culture. Politi-
cal culture governs
how we behave and are
expected to behave. It
changes slowly and
doesn't always respond to
institutional changes- perhaps
not at all, or perhaps not in predict-
able ways. This is important because picking
systems that we are used to means we are less
likely to get nasty surprises.
A stronger argument in favour of parliamen-
tarianism is the way it divides power.
Politics is meant to do at least two things. It
should solve collective action problems: those
that make us collectively better off if we are
guided to behave in certain ways than if we were
left to act individually. The classic example is
fishing. Individually we have an incentive to
extract as many fish as we possibly can from the
seas. We would overfish, making us collectively
worse off when fish stocks are depleted. So we
are made better off being forced to restrict our
fishing.
Politics is therefore also a mechanism for the
resolution of conflicts, such as the fishing one.
In parliamentary systems the mechanism for the
resolution of conflict is negotiation, and parties
representing different interests compromise,
strike deals and build consensus, embracing a
wide range of views in the decision. This mani
-
fests itself in coalitions, with a formal opposition
offering alternative policies.
In presidential systems conflict is resolved by
the winner, who takes all. There is less incentive
for compromise. You can build systems that
restrict the power of the personal executive, and
the separation of powers in the US means that
we should not be as panicked about the prospect
of a Trump presidency as we are. US presidents
are severely restricted in their capacity for
action.
But that separation of powers that restricts
the power of a president or a directly-elected
mayor can also mean that it is far less decisive
than we envisaged. This can prompt deadlock,
as we see in the US, and a certain systemic tor
-
pidity, which manifests itself in regime
instability, where the only way to relieve the
stasis is a coup, as we have frequently seen in
Latin America.
So, unusually for political science, there is
something of a consensus. Most agree that pres-
idential systems work better, and in large-scale
studies of the relative performance of presiden
-
tial systems and parliamentary systems
countries with parliamentary systems perform
better on a range of measures. This is even the
case when we control for the fact that most of
Western Europe uses parliamentary systems.
So when we are thinking of the decision to
introduce an executive mayor in Dublin, or any
other Irish city, we should remember that we can
achieve a strong, identifiable executive mayor
without the direct election that tends to increase
conflict.
The separation of powers
that restricts the power of
a President or a directly-
elected Mayor can
prompt deadlock
