Samenvatting

There is a lot of criticism on the profile descriptions in which Dutch municipalities express the requirements which they put on a new mayor to be appointed. They would look too much like each other and contain few real choices. This article describes the requirements Dutch municipalities put on candidate mayors and analyses the discriminatory power of profile descriptions. A content analysis of 231 profile descriptions and talks with five focus groups show that municipal councils especially ask for integer networkers and linkers, who are above all effective, empathic and communicative. The differences between municipalities in this respect are small and the municipal size hardly makes any difference. Municipal councils do not fully utilize the opportunities in profile descriptions for local customization and barely translate the local conditions into specific requirements. The explanation for this is partly located in isomorphic processes, that lead to uniformity: municipal councils follow the guide of the national government for the appointment process and copy texts from each other. At the same time the office of the mayor in the Netherlands asks for a specific content, that is translated into the profile descriptions. It is therefore the question if the criticism on profile descriptions is fully justified. They do have discriminatory power, although municipal councils could make much sharper choices in what they expect from a mayor, appropriate to the challenges the municipality faces.