Prefigurative leadership: The building of leadership roles in a municipal campaign

Abstract

Most research on mayoral leadership focuses on how leaders view and exercise power when in office. In contrast, we study ‘prefigurative leadership’ during a municipal campaign, i.e. the way in which putative leaders construct, stage and consolidate a leadership style that foreshadows the way they will exercise power if they get elected. We rely the study of the 2020 French municipal election in Bordeaux, characterized by political alternation, succession to a strong leader, and electoral uncertainty. Candidates endorse a great variety of prefigurative leadership styles and juggle with a series of dilemmas inherent with the complexity of mayoral roles.