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Political Representation in Leader Democracy1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

András Körösényi
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Abstract

The essay focuses on the neglected problem of democratic politics, i.e. on the role of leadership. Although in democracies public office holders are controlled to a certain extent, leaders still have wide room for political manoeuvre and decide without any ‘instruction’ of the citizens. Re-working Weber's and Schumpeter's theory, the author aims to build the model of leader democracy. He highlights the major traits of it in a comparison with the deliberative and the aggregative–utilitarian concepts of democratic theory. The theory of leader democracy is applied to the problem of representation, which, in contrast to mechanical mirroring, gains a new, dynamic and qualitative meaning.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 40 , Issue 3 , 2005 , pp. 358 - 378
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2005.

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Footnotes

1

An earlier version of this article was presented at the ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops, University of Edinburgh, 28 March–2 April 2003. I am grateful to the OTKA for supporting my research.

References

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33 Charismatic leadership, in its pure form, is an answer to extraordinary challenges.Google Scholar

34 See n.16 above.Google Scholar

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