Elected Mayors in England: Leaders or Managers?

Since ancient times philosophers and political thinkers have grappled with the questions of what constitutes political leadership, how political leaders achieve their greatness or otherwise, and which attributes political leaders may require. The aim of this paper is to explore this issue through a study of directly elected mayors in England. Its focus is twofold: first, to assess critically the concept of leadership through the lens of key texts from the philosophical and business literature and, secondly, to use original empirical evidence to evaluate the role of elected mayors as leaders or managers.