Local party systems in Western democracies are characterized by the presence of so-entitled independent local lists, giving a distinct place-bound flavour to local politics. Moreover, the presence of these local lists is often perceived as an indication for the incompleteness of the party politicisation process, counterbalancing the entry of national parties into municipal elections. However, political reality suggests that not all local lists are as independent or as local as their label suggests and instead are related to national parties. This article aims to contribute to a more detailed and refined understanding of the differentiated meaning of non-national lists by analyzing the occurrence and motivations of non-national lists in Flanders. To do so, we first developed an innovative and contingent classification model based on the vertical and horizontal autonomy of local lists. Consequently this classification model is applied to all non-national lists in Flanders in two electoral periods (2006 and 2012). This quantitative analysis allowed to establish the occurrence of the different types of local lists in Flanders. Subsequently, a qualitative comparative analysis of a selection of local lists allowed to reveal the rationale for the different types of local lists. The results of this qualitative analysis enabled us to elaborate an theoretical explanatory model, disentangling the local mechanisms that influence local list’s strategic choices in a multi-level political context concerning their decisional autonomy