Mayors, governance coalitions, and strategic capacity - Drawing lessons from Germany for theories of urban governance

Abstract

A comparison of two German cities responding in the 1980s to deindustrialization directs our attention toward factors that explain how leaders build governance and strategic capacities: a "crisis" situation, higher level government aid, party ties and low party competition, solidarity, friendship, and momentum. Factors that do not explain variation in these cases include the formal resources of strong-mayor city charters and the existence of a governance coalition. Mayors are in a unique position to increase governance capacity through informal means, and if they do, they often also increase strategic capacity. This effect is, however, short term at best.