Mayor–council government

The mayor–council government system is a system of organization of local government that has an executive mayor who is elected by the voters, and a separately elected legislative city council. It is one of the two most common forms of local government in the United States, and is also used in Canada, Italy, and Turkey. It is the one most frequently adopted in large cities, although the other form, council–manager government, is the local government form of more municipalities.

The variant may be broken down into two main variations depending on the relationship between the legislative and executive branches, becoming a weak-mayor government or a strong-mayor government variation based upon the powers of the office. These forms are used principally in modern representative municipal governments in the United States, but also are used in some other countries.

Weak-mayor government form

In a weak-mayor system, the mayor has no formal authority outside the council; the mayor cannot directly appoint or remove officials, and lacks veto power over council votes. As such, the mayor's influence is solely based on personality in order to accomplish desired goals.

The weak-mayor form of government may be found in the United States, mostly in small towns that do not use the more popular council–manager form used in most municipalities that are not considered large or major cities, and is frequently seen in small municipalities with few or no full-time municipal employees. By contrast, in Canada the weak-mayor system is popular even in large cities.