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...

This book provides a comparative analysis of the processes and impacts of austerity measures introduced in the field of Local Public Services (LPS) across Mediterranean Europe.

This book examines the issue of free access to information as part of the openness and transparency principles. Whilst the existing literature focusses on the legal provisions, this book offers practical insights through 13 national profiles and the EU level, on how effective the legal provisions of FOIAs really prove to be.

It claims that, beyond politics, institutions and public administration, there are other factors which make a country successful. While confronted with the same challenges as other countries, Switzerland offers different solutions, some of which work astonishingly well.

This book considers the ways in which public administration (PA) has been studied in Europe over the last forty years, and examines in particular the contribution of EGPA, the European Group for Public Administration, both to the growth of a truly pan-European PA, and to the future of PA in Europe.

This book considers local autonomy, measured as a multidimensional concept, from a cross-country comparative perspective, and examines how variations can be explained and what their consequences are.