Relational leadership in local governance: the engagement of mayors with citizens, public managers and politicians

This paper studies how mayors engage with citizens, public managers and politicians across the policy cycle and specifically in four local governance processes: agenda setting, decision-making, public services design and delivery. Drawing from a survey of 1,067 Italian mayors, we identify four clusters of engagement: Centralized Leadership, Semi-Inclusive Leadership, Conventional Leadership and Multi-Actor Leadership. We find that some mayors prefer to engage with politicians for issues related to public service design and delivery, rather than with public managers, and that if mayors engage citizens in local governance, this is generally done across all the stages of the policy cycle.