Political careers emerge when individuals develop patterns of mobility between offices in the political realm. These patterns provide useful clues about the expected activity of an individual leader. Patterns of political tenure can be revealing because individuals who aspire to long-term service seem more committed to the autonomy of their institutions, as well as more active and effective within them. The mayoral career is created in a continuous process of mayoral position implementation where a unique combination of ambition and opportunity intertwine. A political career is therefore necessarily associated with time and defined by two key points: the starting point and the termination point of mayoral function. Between them, the mayoral career takes place. The article focuses on the career development and mayoral incumbency in post-communist countries such as Lithuania and Slovenia. Authors particularly focus on the direct mayoral elections conducted in Lithuania for the first time in 2015 and introduced in Slovenia already in 1994.
COBISS.SI-ID: 35526493
Municipal councillors are a key element of local representative democracy, as they connect (ordinary) citizens with local decision makers. The transfer of the power of citizens through representatives is the basic requirement of representative democracy, where a series of transfers of power from the electorate takes place until (in the first step) of the parliament and in the second step towards the government. The same transfer takes place at the local level - from the local electorate through councillors sitting in the local legislative body (municipal council) to local political executors (mayors). Municipal councillors are in the position of a formal authority and therefore exercise (their) political preferences. Municipal councillors are in many respects the pinnacle of local representative democracy, so it is unimaginable that local democracy would function without these elected representatives. Municipal councillors are tools that the inhabitants of a particular geographical area express their wishes, policies and interests. The scientific monograph entitled "Local political leadership: the voice of saints" focuses on elected local representatives - to their role and position in the Slovenian system of local self-government. In addition, the scientific monograph presents the results of the first empirical research carried out among municipal councillors of Slovenian municipalities; it also deals with a (often) often overlooked aspect of the responsibility of these directly elected representatives.
COBISS.SI-ID: 298391040