The Study of Political Leadership

1950 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 904-915 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lester G. Seligman

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.

1989 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 363-381
Author(s):  
Arthur R. Liebscher

To the dismay of today's social progressives, the Argentine Catholic church addresses the moral situation of its people but also shies away from specific political positions or other hint of secular involvement. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the church set out to secure its place in national leadership by strengthening religious institutions and withdrawing clergy from politics. The church struggled to overcome a heritage of organizational weakness in order to promote evangelization, that is, to extend its spiritual influence within Argentina. The bishop of the central city of Córdoba, Franciscan Friar Zenón Bustos y Ferreyra (1905-1925), reinforced pastoral care, catechesis, and education. After 1912, as politics became more heated, Bustos insisted that priests abstain from partisan activities and dedicate themselves to ministry. The church casts itself in the role of national guardian, not of the government, but of the faith and morals of the people.


Author(s):  
Eva Sørensen

Representative democracy is in transition in theory as well as in practice, and this transition affects the way we think about political leadership and democratic representation. New theories of democracy challenge traditional understandings of what it entails to represent the people, and a mushrooming of new forms of political participation destabilizes traditional views of the role of citizens in democratic decision-making. Chapter 4 shows how these theoretical and empirical developments, which are partially triggered by inherent tensions in democratic thought, promote a turn towards interactive forms of political leadership. Interactive political leadership can potentially alleviate the tensions in democratic thought and strengthen the input legitimacy of representative democracy in times of declining trust in politicians. A turn to interactive political leadership is no panacea. It triggers new dilemmas and challenges for elected politicians.


2015 ◽  
pp. 129-137
Author(s):  
Stavros Amanatidis ◽  
Olga Eirini Palla

This chapter presents and analyzes the use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in public participation and more specificly in e-referenda as an aspect of direct democratic participation. It aims to explain the correlation between ICT and e-referenda. Referendum, used as an instrument to accept or deny a proposed political decision, has a strong function of controlling political power and securing the openness of political power structures. It serves as an instrument of division of powers and opens roads to opposition outside parliament. In general, it provides the people with veto positions (Schiller, 2003, p. 12). By presenting the evolvement of the ICT and the technological developments that resulted an impact on the way democracy is being exercised in the modern societies, there is an attempt to provide ideas and solutions on the use of e-referenda in modern democracies. The dangers, the advantages, and the disadvantages of the use of ICT in democracy are presented and analysed as well. All these issues are being discussed, as this chapter tries to give a clear and objective perspective regarding the role of e-democracy and the problems that come along with its implementation.


2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 61-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Calderón-Zaks

Abstract In this article I briefly examine the perceived role of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—also known as the BRICS—as an alternative to the West in the Global South. Their patterns of development must be placed in the context of the West’s development prior to and during the twentieth century. In fact, the burden of “development” remains on the shoulders of the people on the peripheries of the Americas and Africa.


Author(s):  
Eleni Andriakaina

How can we understand and interpret the popular narrative of the 1821 revolution that speaks for the suffering body of the fighter while it reproaches the "Frenchified heterochthons" and conveys a kind of anti intellectualism (defined broadly and loosely by Merle Curti as "a suspicion of, opposition to, or derogation of intellectuals")? The popular view of 1821 has its origins in the memoirs of the "freedom fighters" written after the War of Independence. Its main motifs travelled from the early nineteenth to the late twentieth century and lent themselves to multiple readings and various ideological uses. Although it has a socio political content, it cannot be explained in terms of a grand narrative of class war, as some Marxist historians of the twentieth century argue; neither can it be understood in terms of the grand narrative of Greek modernisation, that is, as a survival from a previous stage of historical development, a relic from the past, even though it draws its motives from traditional sources and idealises the role of chieftains in the War of Independence. I suggest that we approach the anti-intellectualism of the early nineteenth century from an anti-essentialist perspective of Greek history that highlights the Janus-face of modernisation and the ambivalent nature of modern ideologies (especially of popular nationalism) with regard to the relation between the intellectual and the people or the nation.


Author(s):  
András Sajó ◽  
Renáta Uitz

This chapter examines the self-perpetuation of the executive branch. Since constitutions usually concentrate on the position and powers of the chief executive, they feed the mistaken impression that the executive branch is synonymous with the will of a single president or prime minister. In reality, executive power in a modern regulatory state is not a one-man show. The chapter provides an overview of where the executive branch comes from before discussing the origins and scope of presidential power. It then considers the role of cabinets, councils, and prime ministers in parliamentary systems, along with the confidence mechanism that serves as the lifeline between the legislature and the executive (cabinet). It also explores the responsibility and accountability of the executive branch, and considers measures aimed at limiting the powers of the executive within the constitutional framework.


Pneuma ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-217
Author(s):  
Josef Sorett

AbstractIn an effort to address lacunae in the literature on hip hop, as well as to explore the role of new music and media in Pentecostal traditions, this essay examines rap music within the narratives of American religious history. Specifically, through an engagement with the life, ministry, and music of Stephen Wiley — who recorded the first commercially-released Christian rap song in 1985 — this essay offers an account of hip hop as a window into the intersections of religion, race, and media near the end of the twentieth century. It shows that the cultural and theological traditions of Pentecostalism were central to Wiley’s understanding of the significance of racial ideology and technology in his rap ministry. Additionally, Wiley’s story helps to identify a theological, cultural, and technological terrain that is shared, if contested, by mainline Protestant, neo-Pentecostal, and Word of Faith Christians during a historical moment that has been described as post-denominational.


2021 ◽  
pp. 147488512110020
Author(s):  
Gianna Englert

In The Political Philosophy of Fénelon, Ryan Hanley argues that Fénelon was a realist who aimed to elevate and educate self-love—rather than resist it—in order to avoid tyranny. This roundtable article examines two of Fenelon’s arguments for how self-love, well-directed, could circumvent a king’s absolutist and tyrannical inclinations: 1) the king’s need to be loved and to love in turn, and 2) the relationship between faith and politics / church and state. Contrasting Fénelon with Machiavelli, I question whether the ruler’s “need-love” for his people leaves him susceptible to forms of domination or at least, as Machiavelli warned, renders them politically weak. Given Hanley’s interest to recover Fénelon for the present day, I conclude by arguing that the thinker’s insights about the limiting role of well-directed self-love are inescapably tied to his critiques of absolutism. The same need-love of the people, I argue, cannot similarly check executive power under democracy. Nonetheless, Fénelon’s perspective remains valuable, as does Hanley’s project of recovery, since democracies continue to reckon with particular problems raised by self-love.


2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (08) ◽  
pp. 849-859
Author(s):  
Tran Mai Uoc ◽  
◽  
Vu Thi Thu Huyen ◽  
Tran Thi Hoa ◽  
◽  
...  

Phan Chau Trinh (1872 – 1926) was a leader of the Duy Tan Movement. With his conception of the position and role of the people, he left a bold mark on the nation’s development history from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century. From analyzing and clarifying the main contents and limitations of Phan Chau Trinh’s conception of the position and role of the people, the article has also raised its meaning for promoting the role of the people in the present period.


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