Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 25th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview I. Local Government Author(s) Jan Outly Metropolitan University Prague Hradec Kralove Czech Republic Saradin Pavel, Title Politics Half-time. Disengaged Mayors in the Czech Republic File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Jan Outly Abstract The Czech Republic is talking about possible reforms of the electoral system for municipal elections, as well as the introduction of direct election of mayors. It is also envisaged that the law would increase the powers of mayors. Many consider these powers weak in communities where council is established (municipalities with at least 15 assembly mandates). On the contrary, in smaller villages without council, almost all executive powers belong to the mayor as a single person. Moreover, in small villages the mayor himself performs agenda of civil service, which in larger municipalities is held by employees - clerks. At the same time, informal status of mayors is quite high, especially in smaller municipalities. In the Czech Republic, mayor need not exercise his/her profession as a main occupation, but he or she may be a “disengaged” (from his previous occupation) holder of the office. In such case, mayors dedicate their spare time to the community affairs, yet they have the same obligations under the law and equal responsibility as “full-time” (engaged) mayors. There are about 2.5 thousand disengaged mayors in the Czech Republic, which is approximately 40 percent of all Czech mayors. Despite this number, however, they remain in the shadow of scholarly interest. In our paper we aim to analyse several variables relating to the status and activities of disengaged mayors. We will focus on the change of the number of disengaged mayors since 1990, specify the municipalities in which such mayors are in office, what their political affiliation is and what their sociodemographic characteristics are. In addition, we will focus on the quality of the functioning of municipalities with a full-time, respectively disengaged mayors. We will analyse whether municipalities with disengaged mayors show more shortcomings in their steps than in the municipalities where the mayor performs his work "full time".
