Samenvatting

Credibility is an essential quality for executive politicians but cannot be taken for granted. The literature on political leadership suggests that credible politicians are competent, trustworthy, and caring. Existing studies, however, often do not take into account differences between various offices and tend to ignore the distinction between disparate layers of government. In this article, we analyze as yet unutilized data from local and provincial councilors’ and executives’ evaluations on the qualities they ascribe to their fellow executive politicians. The data were collected for the 2015 Best Dutch Executive election and covers almost all executives who were in office at the time. In contrast to what the existing literature often presumes, our secondary quantitative analysis of this data on 1,776 executives shows that there are significant differences in the qualities that are used to evaluate the most appreciated local and provincial chairpersons on the one hand, and the most appreciated executives on the other hand. Whereas municipal mayors and provincial King’s Commissioners are championed for being particularly caring and showing decisiveness, municipal aldermen and provincial executives are valued in particular for their expertise. This finding indicates that a politician’s credibility for his peers depends on his office as each position requires a particular set of qualities.