scholarly journals Leadership legitimacy and the mobilization of capital(s): Disrupting politics and reproducing heteronormativity

Leadership ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 174271502110183
Author(s):  
Valerie Stead ◽  
Carole Elliott ◽  
Rita A Gardiner

The rise of populist leaders in the political sphere mounts a challenge to normative understandings of leadership. To better understand this challenge, we examine how political leaders mobilize different forms of social capital in pursuit of leadership legitimacy, providing insight into the dynamics of how leadership norms are maintained. While research has tended to focus on specific forms of capital, this article considers capital as multidimensional and strategically mobilized. The article applies a multimodal analysis to examine interactions between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton during peak ‘Twitter Moments’ of the three 2016 presidential election debates. We theorize the paradoxical dynamics of the mobilization of multiple capitals and their intersection as a simultaneously disruptive and reproductive resource. While the mobilization of multiple capitals operates to disrupt traditional notions of who can claim legitimacy as a leader in the political field, their disruptive mobilization serves to reproduce implicit heteronormative leadership values. Hence, our theorization illuminates the resilience of implicit leadership values, and their intimate connection with heteronormativity, calling for the need to interrogate leadership legitimacy claims that promise ‘new’ approaches.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Grzymala-Moszczynska ◽  
Katarzyna Jasko ◽  
Marta Maj ◽  
Marta Szastok ◽  
Arie W. Kruglanski

In three studies conducted over the course of 2016 US presidential campaign we examined the relationship between radicalism of a political candidate and willingness to engage in actions for that candidate. Drawing on significance quest theory (Kruglanski et al., 2018), we predicted that people would be more willing to make large sacrifices for radical (vs. moderate) candidates because the cause of radical candidates would be more personally important and engagement on behalf it would be more psychologically rewarding. We tested these predictions among supporters of Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Bernie Sanders. Our findings were in line with these predictions, as the more followers perceived their candidates as radical, the more they viewed leaders’ ideas as personally important, gained more personal significance from those ideas, and intended to sacrifice more for the leader.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Jasko ◽  
Joanna Grzymala-Moszczynska ◽  
Marta Maj ◽  
Marta Szastok ◽  
Arie W. Kruglanski

Reactions of losers and winners of political elections have important consequences for the political system during the times of power transition. In four studies conducted immediately before and after the 2016 US presidential elections we investigated how personal significance induced by success or failure of one’s candidate is related to hostile vs. benevolent intentions toward political adversaries. We found that the less significant supporters of Hillary Clinton and supporters of Donald Trump felt after an imagined (Study 1A) or actual (Study 2) electoral failure the more they were willing to engage in peaceful actions against the elected president and the less they were willing to accept the results of the elections. However, while significance gain due to an imagined or actual electoral success was related to more benevolent intentions among Clinton supporters (Study 1B), it was related to more hostile intentions among Trump supporters (Studies 1B, 2, and 3).


2003 ◽  
Vol 80 (3) ◽  
pp. 513-527 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Reichert ◽  
James E. Mueller ◽  
Michael Nitz

This study examines content and tone of political information in five leading general interest and lifestyle magazines from December 1999 through November 2000. The analysis revealed a low level of political information in the selected magazines. With the exception of Rolling Stone and Glamour, the nature of coverage was strategy oriented and superficial, while the tone was mostly cynical in men's magazines, yet favorable toward Gore. The results provide a glimpse of the political information available for typical young adults and insight into the apathetic attitudes of young adults toward the American political system.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-77
Author(s):  
Kamau Wango

Artistic commemoration of leaders and other iconic personalities has been in existence for centuries. Statues in particular have been used as a fitting avenue for the commemoration of political leaders and other luminaries in many fields. The premise upon which statues are made is that the subjects featured initiated and attained, in their lifetimes, concrete achievements that significantly impacted upon the lives of their fellow human beings. Other criteria for commemoration include proven integrity, dedication and selflessness in the service of the country and citizens. Statues as an integral part of public art have often generated substantial controversy on various fronts in many countries. Some of these gravitate around issues such as disputed likeness, queries about the fundamental achievements cited of the subject, at times open protests on the actions, character and integrity of the subject as well as the location of the statues. Other areas of contention include the implication of the presence of statues upon the political psyche of the country and their long-time impact on history, the youth and posterity. This paper examines the extent to which African countries have embraced this mode of artistic rendition to commemorate African political leaders in a way that is commensurate to their achievements. It is outside the scope of this paper to delve into the intricate web of back-and-forth arguments about the ‘concreteness’ of the legacies of the featured leaders who are mainly founding political figures of the respective countries. The paper, however, analyses the artistic essence of the selected statues in terms of their visual impact and whether they are indeed useful in articulating the legacies of the subjects and further, whether they ultimately bear ‘enduring visual value’ that spurs conversation and insight into these legacies. Statues must, at the very least, spur debate and conversation into the legacy of the featured subject. It becomes a form of constant interrogation as history itself takes its course; controversy is not necessarily a negative occurrence since it forms part of this discourse. The concept of immortalization, which is what initiators of statues often hope for is much harder to achieve and difficult to define. The paper examines 20 statues of African political leaders in different African Countries.


Author(s):  
Andrew Sanders

After Clinton’s second term in office ended, President George W Bush moved the Special Envoy to Northern Ireland to the State Department, but his Envoys, led by Richard Haass and Mitchell Reiss, were no less engaged in Northern Irish affairs as the political figures there sought to create a functional government at Stormont Parliament Buildings. A series of significant obstacles emerged, but the Northern Ireland Assembly finally formed in 2007 before Bush left office. He was succeeded by President Barack Obama who had little interest in Northern Ireland but Obama’s initial Secretary of State, former Senator Hillary Clinton, was well-versed in Northern Irish issues. This chapter also examines the role of Northern Ireland in the 2008 Democratic Primary contest and, to a lesser extent, the 2008 Presidential Election.


2019 ◽  
pp. 441-450
Author(s):  
Scott MacDonald

Russian-American filmmaker Maxim Pozdorovkin has made a series of films documenting Russia in the age of Putin, including the well-known Pussy Riot (2013), about the radical feminist performance group. This interview focuses specifically on Our New President (2017), which traces the Hillary Clinton/Donald Trump presidential race and the Trump election as depicted in Russian propaganda. Pozdorovkin’s film is a significant contribution to the recent history of recycled cinema. The political weaponizing of media to produce “fake news” is the focus of Our New President. Pozdorovkin demonstrates that in the 2010s propaganda is not so much misinformation carefully embedded in an otherwise informative context, but an attempt to overwhelm by creating total media confusion. He makes clear that in Russia the government controls all major news outlets and hacking into the online networks of other nations is considered patriotism.


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 144-160
Author(s):  
Jan Zilinsky ◽  
Cristian Vaccari ◽  
Jonathan Nagler ◽  
Joshua A. Tucker

Michael Jordan supposedly justified his decision to stay out of politics by noting that Republicans buy sneakers too. In the social media era, the name of the game for celebrities is engagement with fans. So why then do celebrities risk talking about politics on social media, which is likely to antagonize a portion of their fan base? With this question in mind, we analyze approximately 220,000 tweets from 83 celebrities who chose to endorse a presidential candidate in the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign to assess whether there is a cost—defined in terms of engagement on Twitter—for celebrities who discuss presidential candidates. We also examine whether celebrities behave similarly to other campaign surrogates in being more likely to take on the “attack dog” role by going negative more often than going positive. More specifically, we document how often celebrities of distinct political preferences tweet about Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton, and we show that followers of opinionated celebrities do not withhold engagement when entertainers become politically mobilized and do indeed often go negative. Interestingly, in some cases political content from celebrities actually turns out to be more popular than typical lifestyle tweets.


Author(s):  
Kate Manne

This final chapter applies the analysis of misogyny to the 2016 presidential election, in which Hillary Clinton was defeated by Donald Trump, despite the latter being vastly underqualified and temperamentally and morally unsuited to the position. There was also a great deal of misogyny directed toward Clinton not only by Trump and others on the right but also from left-wing sources. It is argued that much of this misogyny and even the outcome were to some extent predictable, on the basis of evidence of misogynistic biases against women who compete for male-dominated leadership positions. Research in social psychology shows that, when a woman cannot be judged less competent than her male counterpart in such contexts, many people will hold that, although they are equally competent, she is less likable than he is. Women are just as likely as men to reject high-achieving women in this manner, due to ego-protective mechanisms.


2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-84
Author(s):  
Glen Smith

This study examines whether broadcast news reduces negativity toward political leaders by exposing partisans to opposing viewpoints. For analysis, both exposure to broadcast news and variation in media content are used to predict changes in feelings toward the candidates during the 2008 presidential election. The results suggest that increased exposure to broadcast news increased partisans’ favorability toward the out-party candidate. In addition, increased coverage of the candidates was followed by increased favorability among members of the opposing party. These results demonstrate the benefits of exposure to two-sided communications flows for the reduction of animosity between the political parties. Moreover, these results suggest that public negativity toward political leaders might be even worse if not for the large amount of overlap between the audiences for partisan and mainstream news outlets.


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