Composition of Municipal Executive Councils and Yardstick Competition

Abstract

In Portugal the composition of municipal executive councils has a special feature that is not common in other countries. The municipal executive councils integrate representatives of different parties/candidacies in proportion to their electoral results. Therefore, opposition representatives have more information and more influence on municipal decisions then if they were only represented in the Municipal Assembly. According to the empirical evidence in the literature, yardstick competition is associated with smaller majorities and the need to compete in the political market. The evidence gathered in this paper for the Portuguese case shows that, in a situation where municipal executive councils integrate opposition representatives, mayors with majorities have more capacity to engage in competition in the political market.