City Managers' Policy Leadership in Council-Manager Cities

City managers’ policy leadership has drawn great attention from scholars of public administration. However, what factors explain variation in managers’ policy-making roles has not been systematically explored. This study investigates the mechanisms leading elected officials to defer to the manager in policy making. Survey data from Florida council-manager cities indicate that noninstitutional factors—such as mayors’ political experience, managers’ professionalism, and concordance of manager and council preferences—influence the likelihood that a council will allow a manager to exercise policy influence. The data reveal that city managers earn policy-making leadership at the expense of their administrative authority. Thus, managers must reconcile inherent tensions between responsibility and compliance.