Official Leadership in the City

Download or read book Official Leadership in the City written by James H. Svara and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1990-03-29 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The burden of addressing the problems of urban society fall increasingly on cities as the federal government cuts back domestic spending. This book examines the roles of mayors, councils, and administrators in governing and managing their cities. Positing that the internal dynamics of city governments are largely shaped by their structures, the author shows how council-manager governmental structures often foster more cooperation than do mayor-council structures. Svara provides contrasting models of interaction among officials in the two forms and shows how conflict and cooperation affect the performance of officials in the two structures; he contends that proper understanding of the roles and behavior appropriate to each will lead to equal effectiveness between the two.