Leadership Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Leadership refers to a social relation in which one actor influences numerous supporters in a lasting and systematic way. Definitions of leadership highlight actors’ abilities (e.g., talent, virtues), personality features (will, determination), relational characteristics (trust, charisma), functions (directing, transforming), and social status (aristocratic background) as bases for holding lasting influence over followers. Political leadership is typically discussed in the context of power structure and political leadership skills. The former focuses on hierarchies of positions infused with power; the latter includes a broad range of abilities attributed to incumbents of these positions.

Some scholars restrict the notion of leadership to voluntary following and see it, as Dwight Eisenhower put it, as “the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.” “True” or “authentic” leaders are expected to generate loyalty and voluntary subordination. Such leaders also are credited with strengthening group integration, cohesion, and identity. However, most observers also agree that authentic leaders are rare. They are expected to have popular appeal, as well as persuasive skills, vision and determination, and realism and passion.

In micro level organizational literature, leadership is contrasted with management and analyzed in its formal and informal aspects. Thus, according to Warren Bennis, leaders innovate, inspire, show new directions, and develop new strategies, while managers administer, follow routines, maintain order, and control systems. In the micropolitics of organizations formal leaders, the incumbents of authority positions, are contrasted with informal leaders, whose influence reflects social status and informal networks.

Macrosocial and political perspectives focus on national political leaders: presidents, prime ministers, and leaders of national movements. Social and political historians like Thomas Carlyle locate such leaders in a broad historical context. Political psychologists and sociologists like Vilfredo Pareto typically focus on personality features of leaders and elites. In political sociology, leadership is seen embedded in complex power relations that link leaders with wider groups: elites, ruling classes, and state-governmental organizations. These differences in disciplinary perspectives reflect divergent explanations of leadership: in terms of distinctive and unique personality traits, superior motivation and drive, superior social status, conducive historical circumstances, response to collective demands, and reflection of group or organizational functional needs.

Types Of Political Leaders

Popular typologies of political leaders follow these discipline specific accounts of leadership. Perhaps the best known are Max Weber’s typology of leadership and authority, Kurt Lewin’s typology of leadership climate, and social-psychological typologies derived from Niccolò Machiavelli’s and Pareto’s personality types. Weber distinguished three bases of authority: traditional, legal-rational, and charismatic. They correspond to three types of leaders. Traditional leaders—kings, chieftains, and pater familiae—are followed out of respect for sacred traditions. In contrast, modern bureaucratic leaders— presidents, prime ministers, cabinet members, party bosses, and top government officials—rely on respect for laws and

formal (mostly constitutional) rules. Charisma, or the “gift of grace,” rests on the followers’ devotion to “the exceptional sanctity, heroism or exemplary character of an individual person, and of the normative patterns or order revealed or ordained” by the leader (Weber 1978, 134). While both traditional and modern forms of leadership are institutionalized and stable, charismatic leadership is “revolutionary” and transient. Charismatic “heroes” are capable of overcoming both sacred traditionalism and bureaucratic inertia. Napoleon, Adolf Hitler, Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela are examples of such transformational charismatic leaders. But charisma is personal and fragile. It evaporates after failures, and it cannot be transmitted through office; therefore charismatic leaders are succeeded by bureaucratic officials and statesmen.

Lewin’s typology of dictator, autocrat, and participatory and laissez-faire leaders combines psychological and social characteristics. Each type creates a distinctive leadership climate, culture, and style. As mentioned earlier, some scholars exclude dictators and autocrats from the ranks of “leadership proper” because such figures rely on involuntary following. They are said to rule and govern, rather than lead. Others extend the notion of leadership to all cases of mass compliance. One such broad typology follows the classic distinction between “lionlike” and “foxlike” leaders and elites popularized by Machiavelli and elaborated by Pareto. According to Pareto, great political leaders are endowed with dispositions that are either “leonine”—showing determination, bravery, faith, and loyalty—or “vulpine”—showing intelligence, flexibility, negotiating skills, and cunning. This typology has been embraced by contemporary political leadership literature informed by studies of authoritarian personality, by Erich Fromm, and revolutionary elites, by Harold Lasswell and his collaborators. They focus on leadership styles and personality types (e.g., authoritarian-liberal, cautious-risk taking, conventional-innovative), as summarized in James Burns’s 1978 book Leadership.

Historical Evolution Of Leadership

Most students of social and political leadership stress the historical evolution of its form from premodern, typically based on traditions and status conventions, to modern, meritocratic, formalized, differentiated, and based on rules. Modern leaders are typically incumbents of leadership positions that combine clearly defined social roles and rules of operation. They are progressively differentiated: political-parliamentary leaders are distinct from state-administrative, corporate, religious, and cultural leaders. While all modern leaders are selected on merit, this does not eliminate privilege, but rather changes the way privilege is transmitted. Similarly, formal rules and democratic conventions do not prevent arbitrary exercise of power. Strong democratic leaders are capable of bending and changing rules to fit their power needs. It is widely recognized that leaders shape institutional rules as much as rules shape leadership styles.

One of the major contemporary debates is on the relationship between political leadership and democracy. Some political analysts see strong leadership as inimical to participatory democracy, and they point to charismatic authoritarian leaders such as Napoleon, Joseph Stalin, and Hitler, who undermined democratic processes. Others stress that democratic representation relies on strong and legitimate leadership, and point to the importance of charismatic leaders such as King Juan Carlos in Spain, Lech Walesa in Poland, Václav Havel in Czechoslovakia, and Nelson Mandela in South Africa as key agents in recent transitions from dictatorships to democracy. Leadership, it seems, can be democratic and autocratic, depending on the orientations of the leaders.

Bibliography:

Bennis,Warren G. On Becoming a Leader. New York: Addison Wesley, 1989.
Burns, James M. Leadership. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1978.
Carlyle,Thomas. On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1841.
Fromm, Erich. Escape from Freedom. New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1941.
Lasswell, Harold D., and Daniel Learner. World Revolutionary Elites: Studies in Coercive Ideological Movements. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1965.
Lewin Kurt, Ronald Lippitt, and Ralph White. “Patterns of Aggressive Behavior in Experimentally Created Social Climates.” Journal of Social Psychology 10 (1939): 271–301.
Pareto,Vilfredo. The Mind and Society: A Treatise on General Sociology. New York: Dover, 1935.
Weber, Max. Economy and Society. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.

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