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Political Leadership as a Causative Phenomenon: Some Recent Analyses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Chong-do Hah  and
Frederick. C. Bartol
Chong-do Hah
Affiliation:
Professor of Government at Lawrence University (Wisconsin)
Frederick. C. Bartol
Affiliation:
Professor of Government at Lawrence University (Wisconsin)
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Abstract

The study of political leadership has undergone a shift of focus in recent years. Since the late 1960s, political scientists have been increasingly interested in the question of exactly how the persons identified as leaders influence the political process. Two recent studies are critically examined: Paige's, based on a systems or macrolevel approach, concerns itself mainly with leadership as a phenomenon within the context of a political system which acts upon it and upon which it impinges; Burns's, based on a sociopsychological or microlevel approach, emphasizes the interaction between leaders and followers as an engagement of persons with diverse predispositions and motivations. The authors focus on different aspects of the same general set of phenomena, but they share a common goal. Both seek a vehicle on which to move toward a general theory that explains how leadership acts as a causative phenomenon in a polity. The clarification of their differences and complimentariness offers new opportunities for further research, theoretical or descriptive.

Type
Review Articles
Information
World Politics , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , October 1983 , pp. 100 - 120
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1983

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References

1 See, for example, Barber, James D., The Lawmakers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965)Google Scholar; Carlyle, Thomas, On Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History (London: Oxford University Press, 1946)Google Scholar; Hargrove, Erwin C., Presidential Leadership (New York: Macmillan, 1966)Google Scholar; Hook, Sidney, The Hero in History (New York: John Day, 1943)Google Scholar; Jennings, Eugene E., An Anatomy of Leadership (New York: Harper, 1960)Google Scholar; Lasswell, Harold, Power and Personality (New York: Norton, 1948)Google Scholar; Merriam, Charles E., Four American Party Leaders (New York: Macmillan, 1926)Google Scholar; and Singer, Marshall R., The Emerging Elite: A Study of Political Leadership in Ceylon (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1964).Google Scholar

2 Edinger, Lewis J., “The Comparative Analysis of Political Leadership,” Comparative Politics 17 (January 1975), 256.Google Scholar

3 Ibid., 258.

4 Ibid., 268.

5 See in particular Barber, James D., The Presidental Character (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972)Google Scholar; Erikson, Erik H., Young Man Luther (New York: Norton, 1958)Google Scholar, and Erikson, , Gandhi's Truth (New York: Norton, 1969)Google Scholar; and George, Alexander L. and George, Juliette L., Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House (New York: Dover, 1956).Google Scholar

6 Some twenty years earlier, Philip Selznick offered a similar typology of leadership in his Leadership in Administration (New York: Harper & Row, 1957).

7 Cecil A. Gibb advances the same argument in distinguishing “leadership” from “headship” in his “Leadership,” in Lindzey, Gardner and Aronson, Elliot, eds., The Handbook of Social Psychology, 2d ed., Vol. II (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1969), 213.Google Scholar In the present context, see also Pigors, Paul, Leadership or Domination (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1935).Google Scholar

8 Tucker, Robert C., Politics as Leadership (Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 1981), 13.Google Scholar

9 See Tsurutani, Taketsugu, The Politics of National Development: Political Leadership in Transitional Societies (San Francisco: Chandler, 1973), 10.Google Scholar

10 Tucker (fn. 8), 61–62.

11 Janda, , “Toward the Explication of the Concept of Leadership in Terms of the Concept of Power,” Human Relations 13 (No. 4, 1960), 358.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 See Willner, Ann Ruth, Charismatic Political Leadership: A Theory, Center of International Studies, Princeton University, Research Monograph No. 32 (Princeton, 1968)Google Scholar; Tucker, Robert C., “The Theory of Charismatic Leadership,” in Rustow, Dankwart A., ed., Philosophers and Kings: Studies in Leadership (New York: George Braziller, 1970)Google Scholar, a re-issue of Daedalus 97 (Summer 1968); and Katz, Daniel, “Patterns of Leadership,” in Knutson, Jeane M., Handbook of Political Psychology (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1973), 203–33.Google Scholar

13 See Willner (fn. 12). In the present context it should be noted that Tucker gives special attention to the importance of leadership in settings of sociopolitical movements and in the altered global political environment facing the crisis of human survival. He identifies two main types of sociopolitical movements: movements for revolution and movements for peace. Emphasis on these movements leads him to distinguish “nonconstituted” leaders from “constituted” ones—performers from without a system or from within. Tucker asserts that the former may emerge as leaders of influential sociopolitical movements, which frequently become the habitat within which charismatic leadership flourishes. See Tucker (fn. 8), esp. 77–157.

14 Katz (fn. 12), 217. Katz's analysis, however, suffers from distortion of its own, for it allows him to identify Eugene McCarthy and Adlai Stevenson as “charismatic” leaders, indicating, it would seem, a very broad definition of the term.

15 Tucker (fn. 12), 89. On the other hand, we need not accept unreservedly Paige's suggestion that political leadership means “not only those who rule by moral persuasion and reasoned argument but those who gain compliance by fear and force” (p. 2). If nothing else, the idea of “gaining compliance” falls far short of the mobilization process many analysts suggest as a crucial characteristic of the leadership phenomenon. Wiatr, for instance, provides the example of individuals who gain compliance by fear and force, and do not qualify as leaders. Distinguishing between legitimized and unlegitimized coercion, he suggests that the officials of an occupying power may “rule” a conquered territory, but cannot be said to be “leading” its inhabitants. See Wiatr, Jerzy J., “Political Elites and Political Leadership: Conceptual Problems and Selected Hypotheses for Empirical Research,” Indian Journal of Politics 17 (December 1973), 137–49.Google Scholar Alvin J. Gouldner also provides a useful distinction. The gunman who herds a group of store employees into a back room certainly stimulates action on the part of that group, but he could hardly be considered a leader. See Gouldner, , ed., Studies in Leadership: Leadership and Democratic Action (New York: Harper, 1950), 20.Google Scholar Gouldner's and Wiatr's views, need not be accepted without reservation, however. See Ward's, Robert E. perceptive work, “Reflections on the Allied Occupation and Planned Political Change in Japan,” in Ward, , ed., Political Development in Modern Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 477–535.Google Scholar

16 See Tucker (fn. 12), 91; Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. Wright, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 245–52Google Scholar; and especially Weber, Max, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York: Free Press, 1964), 358–92.Google Scholar

17 Willner (fn. 12), 10–11.

18 Studies consulted in addition to those already cited include, in alphabetical order: Barber, James D., ed., Political Leadership in Amercian Government (Boston: Little, Brown, 1964)Google Scholar; Byars, Robert S., “Small Group Theory and Shifting Styles of Political Leadership,” Comparative Political Studies 5 (January 1973), 443–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dettman, Paul R., “Leaders and Structures in Third World Politics,” Comparative Politics 6 (January 1974), 245–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dion, Leon, “The Concept of Political Leadership: An Analysis,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 1 (March 1968), 1–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Downton, James V. Jr, Rebel Leadership: Commitment and Charisma in the Revolutionary Process (New York: Free Press, 1973)Google Scholar; Edinger, Lewis J., ed., Political Leadership in Industrial Societies (New York: John Wiley, 1967)Google Scholar; Friedrich, Carl J., Man and His Government (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963)Google Scholar; Hermann, Margaret G., ed., A Psychological Examination of Political Leaders (New York: Free Press, 1977)Google Scholar; McFarland, Andrew S., Power and Leadership in Pluralist Systems (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969)Google Scholar; Searing, Donald S., “Models and Images of Man and Society in Leadership Theory,” Journal of Politics 31 (February 1969), 3–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Seligman, Lester G., “The Study of Political Leadership,” American Political Science Review 44 (December 1950), 904–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stogdill, Ralph M., Handbook of Leadership: A Survey of Theory and Research (New York: Free Press, 1974)Google Scholar, which provides a comprehensive overview of studies of leadership in diverse academic disciplines; and Wriggins, W. Howard, The Ruler's Imperative (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969).Google Scholar

19 The concept of the authoritative allocation of values is the main distinguishing feature of political leadership. These values need not be restricted to material benefits, rewards, and obligations; indeed, Burns identifies political leadership with “end-values such as security and order, liberty and equality, freedom and justice” (pp. 430, 435). Similarly, we interpret values broadly enough to include less tangible elements such as esthetic, moral, and philosophical values, as well as material resources. For the concept of the authoritative allocation of values, we are indebted to Easton, David, A Framework for Political Analysis (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965), 50.Google Scholar

10 See Tucker (fn. 8), 3.