Political parties and mayors in the representative democracy - Comparing communal proportional and competitive democracy

Analogous to Lehrribruchs model, two ideal types of representative democracy may also be distinguished in respect of local politics. Proportional democracy is characterised by a low degree of party politisation of both parish councils and mayors. This holds for the nomination period, on the hustings, for the election and during government, and induces the dominance of the mayor in all periods. Local competitive democracy, however, may be described in terms of a less influential mayor in all phases and a high degree of party politisation. There is empirical evidence that patterns of proportional democracy prevail in Baden-Wuerttemberg, whereas North Rhine-Westphalian communities are dominated by actors' constellations similar to the competitive democracy model. These differences can be explained by diverging communal laws, a lower degree of party organisation in Baden-Wuerttemberg, and a lower average population size in the southern communities. Legal conditions, the degree of party organisation and population size as independent variables can be subsumed into an index of proportional democracy, which may be helpful for a preliminary indexing of communities in other German Laender states.