Local democracy and political leadership: Mayors' political leadership traits in Turkey

Discussions on the concepts of local democracy and local political leadership are of an important place in the dynamics of change in today's management and politics. For strong democratic structures at the local level, participatory citizens and strong local political leaders are needed. In this study, the concepts of local democracy and local political leadership were examined and the transformations of the local government structure of Western societies and Turkey in the historical process and local political leadership models and typologies were revealed. The aim of the study is to compare the leadership characteristics of provincial and district mayors in Turkey with the European Mayor study, which was held in two rounds with an interval of ten years. In this context, the hypothesis that there is a similarity between the political leadership characteristics of mayors who are local political leaders in European countries and Turkey has been examined. The findings obtained from the analysis of the survey data applied to the mayors were evaluated in the light of the information in the literature and their local political leadership characteristics were tried to be revealed comparatively.