Roles and Styles of Local Political Leaders on the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia: Between Authoritarian Local Political Top Bosses and Citizen-Oriented Local Managers

New countries on the territory of the former Yugoslavia can be divided into three groups, with regard to direct election of local mayors: forerunners (Slovenia, Macedonia), lead-legs runners (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro), and hesitators or latecomers (Serbia, Croatia). A research of local leaders' roles and styles perceptions was conducted in the winter of 2008, when all those countries except Croatia had directly elected local mayors. Mayors in Croatia were elected by the local representative bodies. Conceptual framework distinguishes four local leaders' roles or leadership dimensions: political (politician), administrative and managerial (manager), internally oriented (populist or domestic worker), and externally oriented leadership (network builder or foreign minister). Six styles' characteristics were also researched (participative vs. authoritarian style; personal autonomy vs. political party dependence; authority-orientation vs. service-orientation; proactive vs. reactive style; external vs. internal orientation; business-like vs. specific local political style). From the research results, an optimist can conclude that direct election of mayors on the territory of the former Yugoslavia produces mainly expected results, but a bit more slowly than expected. He/she can stress that the observed differences are in line with the expectations. A pessimist can conclude that the way of electing mayors is not decisive for their real political behaviour, at least in the current stage of the development of local political systems.