Government
Mar del Plata is the head of the department (Partido) of General Pueyrredón. The current Mayor of the city and department is Gustavo Pulti, of the local party Acción Marplatense.
The Honorable Concejo Deliberante (the town council) has some legislative powers. The term of office for both the Mayor and council members is four years.
In 1919, Mar del Plata became the first town in South America to have a Socialist Mayor, a son of Italian Immigrants, Teodoro Bronzini. The Socialist Party would dominate the city political landscape for most of the 20th century.
The Government official page has a comprehensive listing of all Mayors and Commissioners of Mar del Plata from 1881 to the present.
There is an extensive but interesting work by the American sociologist Susan Stokes about the democratic process in Mar del Plata since 1983 in comparison to other regions of Argentina. One of the main thesis of her articles is that the social and economic development of Mar del Plata was quite atypical, with a strong prevalence of middle-class values that discouraged the policy of clientelism that is the common background in other urban environments of Argentina.
Read more about this topic: Mar Del Plata
Famous quotes containing the word government:
“Give me a country where it is the most natural thing in the world for a government that does not understand you to let you alone.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“And having looked to government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them. To avoid that evil, government will redouble the causes of it; and then it will become inveterate and incurable.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)
“I am against government by crony.”
—Harold L. Ickes (1874–1952)