Mayor

This article refers to Mayor as it relates to Nationstates. For more general information, please see the Wikipedia article on the subject.

A Mayor is the title of the chief executive of a municipality, responsible for certain judicial, administrative, and/or ceremonial functions. The importance of the mayor varies from nation to nation and from city to city. In some countries which do not have strong provincial governments, such as Knootoss, mayors are natural candidates for national executive office.

History

The word mayor derives from the Latin word maior which means major or greater. However, it was never an official title in Roman cities which were instead governed by magistrates. However, after the fall of the Roman Empire, the term (and sometimes its feminine equivalent maiorissa} was used to refer to the chief servants in a large household. When governance still oriented around royal and princely households, it was frequent that these mayors became de facto heads of local government and even established their positions of semi-hereditary. It was from this increasing importance of the chief servants of powerful princes that the term came to refer directly to the elected or appointed leaders of municipal governments.