Abstract

This chapter discusses the introduction of the role of an elected Mayor in the English City of Leicester in 2011. The City’s new Mayor has been able to create a strong leadership role using the new position and has been successfully re-elected twice on electoral turnouts that have at times been more than double the national average for these roles. The Mayor has also had success in building networks with the local business community as the local economy recovered from the financial crisis of 2008. The chapter uses literature from place leadership studies and social contract theory to assess what lessons can be drawn from the successful introduction of a new leadership position into an already busy governance structure. In doing so it proposes a social contract for business engagement at the local tier and a model for establishing leadership capacity.