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