This article is based on a definition of political and civil servant leadership as a behavioral steering style towards the realization of organizational goals. By means of a grounded theory methodology we get some insights in the characteristics and the interaction between both leadership styles in Flemish cities. This two-faced leadership is depicted by means of a tandem metaphor. First, we identify the relevant dimensions to describe the leadership tandem. It becomes apparent that political leadership styles differ greatly both in time and in scope. Civil servant leadership is generally characterized by a weak but presumably growing impact. This combination results in considerable leadership tensions, which is reinforced by several contingency factors: i.e. the influence of the dominant alderman model, the financial situation, the number of staff, the tendency to professionalize, the dominant political and civil servant culture and the structure of central government (e.g. on a Flemish, Belgian and European level).

The relationship in political terms between the Brussels Capital Region and the Brussels communes is characterized by the cumulation of mandates. On average 68% of the members of the Brussels Regional Parliament simultaneously held an office in one of the 19 communes. At the regional elections of 2004 even twelve of the 19 mayors were directly elected into the Brussels Parliament. This feature of intertwining mandates was mainly valid for the French liberal party, the FDF and the Frenchspeaking Christian-Democrates. In this manner not only did the Brussels communes have access to the Parliament but to the Brussels Regional Executive as well. The cumulation of mandates is though but one example of the intertwining of the Brussels Capital Region and its communes.

At least four criterions/methods to measure mechanical effects of electoral systems can be distinguished: measuring disproportionality, the reduction in number of parties, the party advantages and the threshold percentages. In this manuscript we focus on the thresholds. We first concentrate on a description of legal, theoretical, and empirical thresholds as measures of mechanical effects. Further, we analyse the relationship between (the natural logarithm) of district magnitude and the empirical threshold and between the empirical threshold and the effective number of parties. As starting point we take districts in Spain, Portugal and Hungary as the level of analysis. We clearly show that there is a negative causal connection between district magnitude and the threshold percentage and between threshold percentage and the number of parties.