This article opens with some general observations on outstanding features of the current literature on political leadership, especially in the United States. It then deals briefly with conceptual problems, level of analysis issues, and counter-factual questions. This is followed by a consideration of major modes of analysis for the comparative study of political leadership. The concluding section points up the principal ways to making comparative generalization about the sources and nature of leadership in politics.

Recent literature on Heidegger concentrates heavily on his (temporary) involvement in or collusion with Nazi ideology and policies. Without belittling the gravity of the issue, this article shifts the focus somewhat by invoking a distinction which recently has emerged (or reemerged) in political thought: namely, the distinction between “politics” and “the political” or between politics viewed as partisan ideology or policy making, on the one hand, and politics seen as regime or paradigmatic framework, on the other. The main thesis of the article is that Heidegger's promising contributions to political theory are located on the level of ontology or paradigmatic framework rather than that of ideological partisanship. While not neglecting the dismal intrusions of the latter plane, the article probes Heideggerian cues for a “rethinking of the political” by placing the accent on four topical areas: first, the status of the subject or individual as political agent; second, the character of the political community, that is, of the polity or (in modern terms) the “state”; thirdly, the issue of cultural and political development or modernization; and finally, the problem of an emerging cosmopolis or world order beyond the confines of Western culture. In discussing these topics, an effort is made to disentangle Heidegger from possible misinterpretations and to indicate how, in each area, his thought pointed in the direction of an “overcoming” of Western political metaphysics.

This article presents an interpretation of Francis Bacon's History of Henry the Seventh. Recently Bacon's History has been described in terms of its role in transmitting paradigms of republican thought to Harrington, whose “classical republicanism” so importantly influenced later English and American political thought. Thus Bacon, who was of course not himself a republican, is now described as having contributed to the classical republican doctrine of civic virtue. I argue that the History in no way fits such republican paradigms, or that it can only insofar as Bacon's essential teaching in that work is misunderstood. Rather than unwittingly pointing to some conception of civic virtue, Bacon's History self-consciously describes modern politics as grounded on the inescapable necessity of material acquisition. I argue that Bacon's politics are modern because they look to the conquest of nature and are critical of all specific political attachments, including republicanism.

Following World War II, survey researchers taught a generation of Americans that ordinary people were not to be trusted on fundamental rights because their attitudes were reactionary, intolerant, and generally bad. The article examines this research and its influence on constitutional politics. It proposes that this attitude perspective fostered elite domination in matters of fundamental right and an orientation away from economic rights. The article also suggests that by turning from public opinion to public knowledge we may reclaim a democratic constitutional practice.