This book helps to understand in which ways local governing elites are important for the success or failure of national democratic development. Although we know a great deal about the general importance of civil society and social capital for the development of sustainable democracy, we still know little about what specific local governing qualities or political capital that interact with democratic development. The collected data covers time series of surveys from between 15 to 30 political and administrative leaders in over a hundred middle-sized European and Eurasian cities. The study takes us across the 1980s and 1990s, going from cities in Sweden and the Netherlands - through the Baltic cities - to the cities of Belarus and Russia. The findings show the importance of local political capital based on commitments to core democratic values, informal governance networks, and the significance of initially connecting the community to global, non-economic relationships.

Vorwort
Governing leaders in seven European countries

Autorentext
Stefan Szücs, PhD. is a political scientist in the Department of Political Science and the Center for Public Sector Research (CEFOS), Göteborg University, Sweden.
Lars Strömberg is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the Department of Political Science and the Center for Public Sector Research (CEFOS), Göteborg University, Sweden.

Zusammenfassung
Local Elites, Political Capital and Democratic Development is another solid step forward in a significant, decentralized research program, Democracy and Local Governance (DLG), which was initiated in the summer of 1991 -- just th after one of the final great political transformations of the 20 Century. Other research reports (B. Jacob, et al. , Democracy and Local Governance: Nine - pirical Studies, Institute of Political Science, University of Bern, 1999) have extended the scope of the Democracy and Local Governance Research program to other countries. This book is a point of departure not only from those research reports but also from almost all other research on local democracy in that it is based on observations at three points in time and introduces the concept of - litical capital as an explanatory variable. It also demonstrates the power of g- eral theoretical frameworks in advancing knowledge by focusing additional empirical research in theoretically productive ways. The structure of the research design in this report is quintessentially c- parative: it is cross-system (seven countries); cross-time (at least three points in time for five countries); and cross-levels, i. e. local-national it is, in fact, global. This not only enables the isolation of differences among countries but also the identification of sequential dynamics of change.

Inhalt
Introduction: Studying Local Elites and Democratic Development.- Introduction: Studying Local Elites and Democratic Development.- Western Democracies.- The Untouchables: Stability among the Swedish Local Elite.- From Despair to Complacency: The Development of the Dutch Local Elite.- The New Baltic Democracies.- Toward Democratic Governance: The Lithuanian Local Elite.- Estonian Local Elites a Decade after the Transition to Democracy.- The Development of Democracy and Local Governance in Latvia.- The Commonwealth of Independent States.- Local Governance in Belarus during the Regime of Authoritarian Democracy.- The Formation of Democracy and Local Governance in Russia.- Comparative Analysis Across Countries and Cities.- Universal Change and the Conditions for Democratic Development.- Political Capital and How it Grows.- Conclusion: Democracy Needs Local Political Capital.