Hubert Heinelt, Nikos Hlepas, Sabine Kuhlmann, Pawel Swianiewicz

• This chapter looks for main differences among local government systems as well as similarities among them. This has been done by the authors with the aim to grasp the institutional setting in which mayors have to act. The authors did it by updating and extending existing typologies and indices of local government systems. Nevertheless, an extension was first of all necessary with respect to vertical power relations because previous typologies considering them took neither the local government systems in Eastern and Central Europe nor the changes in the Western part of the continent into account. Furthermore, reflections about typologies are extended to the present one on public administration at the municipal level. All this have been underpinned by statistical data, the recent work on a ‘Local Autonomy Index’ (LAI; see Ladner et al. Measuring Autonomy in 39 Countries (1990–2014), Regional and Federal Studies, 26, 321–357, 2016) and information collected by the partners involved in the survey.