ABSTRACT
This chapter explores mayoralty's historical development from colonial times through the reform movement, which gave the impetus for structural change. It describes the structural characteristics of American local government at the start of the twenty-first century, including different forms of mayoral power. Municipal governments can be classified as cities, towns, townships, villages, boroughs, districts and plantations. The International City/County Management Association (ICMA) surveys municipal governments quinquennially to examine and identify trends in the structural characteristics of American municipal governments. Leach and Norris examined data from the 1996 ICMA Survey to determine whether American municipalities had strong mayors. Their principal finding was that very few American municipalities had strong mayors of any kind and fewer still had very strong mayors. Regardless of the debate over mayoral leadership, a perennial and important question about local government structural reform is whether it has produced the impacts the Progressive reformers desired.
