Political leadership is a concept central to understanding political processes and outcomes, yet its definition is elusive. Many disciplines have contributed to the study of leadership, including political theory, history, psychology and management studies. Political Leadership reviews the contributions of these disciplines along with a discussion of the work of classic authors such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber and Robert Michels.
Intro -- Contents -- List of Figures -- Anchor 3 -- List of Tables -- 1: INTRODUCTION AND KEY CONCEPTS -- The paradox of leadership -- Why study political leadership? -- Defining leadership -- Leadership versus power-wielding -- Leadership versus management -- Defining 'political' leadership -- What makes political leadership unique? -- Defining 'good' political leadership -- 2: POWER, AUTHORITY, FOLLOWERS AND ELITES -- Power -- Coercion -- Inducement -- Persuasion -- Manipulation -- Authority -- Sources of authority -- Legal-rational authority -- Traditional authority -- Competent authority -- Ideational-moral authority -- Charismatic authority -- Followers -- Credibility -- Legitimacy -- Conformity -- Elites -- 3: PHILOSOPHY, LEGITIMACY AND MORALITY -- The legitimacy of leaders -- Utilitarianism: Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill -- Consent: John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau -- Public reason: John Rawls -- The role of leaders -- Plato -- Ibn Khaldūn and Thomas Aquinas -- Thomas Hobbes -- Montesquieu and James Madison -- Friedrich Nietzsche -- Rejecting leadership? -- The morality of leadership -- Character: Confucius -- Ends: Niccolò Machiavelli -- Means: Immanuel Kant -- Problem of dirty hands: Michael Walzer -- Problem of many hands: Dennis Thompson -- Moral disengagement: Albert Bandura -- 4: DEMOCRATS AND DICTATORS -- Comparing systems -- Autocratic systems -- Democratic systems -- Leader dominance -- Within autocracies -- The challenges of autocratic rule -- Maintaining power -- Fragile regimes and weak governance -- The challenges of democratic rule -- Broad coalition politics and gridlock -- Democratic legitimacy -- 5: BIOLOGY, CULTURE AND GENDER -- Biology and evolution -- Leadership in non-humans -- Evolved leadership behaviours -- Genetics in leadership -- Anthropology and culture -- Examining systems -- Examining processes.
Written by a team of distinguished leadership scholars, this volume explores all the major fields of political leadership, from executive, legislative and party leadership to leadership in social movements and international organizations. The special value and appeal of this volume is the comparative focus which characterizes all chapters
We live in the twenty-first century, which witnessed by far the most intensive marketing of politics, and traditional approaches (The Great Man Theory, situational, relational) to the process of emergence of political leader-ship are simply not enough. Cooperation between leaders and their followers is determined by cultural and social context, specific political situation of the time, patterns of social behavior. Development of new information technolo-gies and dissemination of the means of mass communication have introduced another factor to the analyzed process, forced by civilisational changes. These changes initiated the processes shaping the emergence of a fourth approach to political leadership, which we may call reactive. Reactivity is an active process of management of the changing image of the leader, responding to the evolving social preferences, and subsequently disseminated through the media.
Intro -- Contents -- Introduction -- Part I: Traditional Perspectives -- 1. Political Leadership in the Yi Dynasty - James B. Palais -- Part II: Institutional Context of Leadership -- 2. Legislative Leadership and Democratic Development - Chong Lim Kim and Byung-Kyu Woo -- 3. Party Bureaucrats and Party Development - Bae-Ho Hahn and Ha-Ryong Kim -- Part III: Bureaucratic Elite and Popular Perceptions -- 4. Bureaucratic Elite and Development Orientations - Dong-Suh Bark and Chae-Jin Lee -- 5. Popular Perceptions of Political Leadership - Sung-Chick Hong and Young Ho Lee -- Part IV: Political Leadership in the Communist System -- 6. Communist Party Leadership - Dae-Sook Suh -- 7. The 1972 Constitution and Top Communist Leaders - Chong-Sik Lee -- Part V: Concluding Observations -- 8. Toward a Theory of Korean Political Leadership Behavior - Glenn D. Paige -- Appendix: Toward a Political Leadership Profile for a Changing Society -- Index.
The recent publication of Jones and Norton's Political Leadership in Local Government is an opportunity to assess the state of local leadership studies in the UK. A critical review of this volume is offered and some possible reasons for the dearth of systematic studies of leadership resources and behaviour discussed. Contrasts are drawn with the work of American scholars in this field and some aspects of the more analytical approach found in the US work are examined.
To develop a general theory of leadership we must locate the function of political leadership in a theory of historical causation. One may begin by identifying sources of leadership in the wants and needs, aspirations and expectations, of humankind. In helping to gratify these "motive-bases," leaders move followers "up" the hierarchy of needs and other motivations and thus create new social configurations in which leaders act. As persons–especially children-move "up" through stages of morality, they also create structures of values that both empower and constrain would-be leaders. Leadership over human beings is exercised when would-be leaders, possessing certain motives of their own, mobilize their own psychological, institutional, pohtical, and other resources relevant to potential followers' motive bases in such a way as to satisfy the motives of both leaders and followers. The test of leadership is the achievement of goals of both leaders and followers in a context of open conflict over ends and means, with leaders and followers mutually and freely defining their values and purposes.
It is a lesser question for the partisans of democracy to find means of governing the people than to get the people to choose the men most capable of governing.Alexis de Tocqueville, in a letter to John Stuart Mill.Politics by leadership is one of the distinguishing features of the twentieth century. If the eighteenth century enunciated popular sovereignty and direct democracy as a major theme in democratic thought and the nineteenth century was concerned with the challenge of stratification and group conflict, then twentieth century trends have made us sensitive to the role of leadership. The search for the values of security and equality have led to changes in the character of politics. If one were to delineate this newer pattern of a politics by leadership, it would include the following: (1) the shift in the center of conflict resolution and initiative from parliamentary bodies and economic institutions to executive leadership; (2) the proliferation of the immediate office of the chief executive from its cabinet-restricted status to a collectivity of co-adjuting instrumentalities; (3) the tendency toward increased centralization of political parties, with the subordination of the victorious parties as instruments for the chief executive; (4) the calculated manipulation of irrationalities by political leadership through the vast power-potential of mass communications; (5) the displacement of the amateur by the professional politician and civil servant; (6) the growth of bureaucracy as a source and technique of executive power but also as a fulcrum which all contestants for power attempt to employ; (7) the growth of interest groups in size, number and influence, with the tendency toward bureaucratization of their internal structure; (8) the changing role of the public that finds its effective voice in a direct and an interactive relation with the chief executive.
This chapter surveys how the field has addressed the central puzzles of political leadership by discussing several key dichotomies that have been the focal point of scholarly inquiry and debate past and present: leaders and leadership; democrats and dictators; causes and consequences; actors and context; personal qualities and luck; success and failure; and art and science. The authors conclude that the study of leadership is a somewhat bewildering enterprise because there is no unified theory of leadership. There are too many definitions, and too many theories in too many disciplines. They do not agree on the meaning of leadership, on how to study it, or even why we study it. The subject is not just beset by dichotomies; it is also multifaceted, and essentially contested. Finally, the authors provide a brief conspectus of the Handbook.