Transcript WHY STUDY POLITICAL LEADERS? The big questions: • What is a leader? • What do we mean when we say that leaders matter for.

WHY STUDY POLITICAL LEADERS?
The big questions:
• What is a leader?
• What do we mean when we say that leaders matter
for outcomes?
• Why might the attributes of particular leaders (vs.
political roles) be less important than we think?
Why do social scientists not think too much of
leaders?
• Under what conditions are specific leaders most
likely to important to specific outcomes?
WHAT EXACTLY IS A POLITICAL LEADER?
• To what extent should we be looking at official titles to
determine who the key political leaders in a society are?
• What functions do leaders perform that separate them
from other types of important political actors (say, most
members of the national legislature or a nation’s
supreme judicial body)?
• What makes a leader a political leader vs. being an
activist? Is a popular band leader who supports a cause
a political leader? Is Sarah Palin or Martin Luther King?
• Do political leaders have to work within government?
Do they have to be associated with a group?
Let’s try to nail things down a bit more precisely:
What exactly is a political leader?
• The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines a ‘leader’ as ‘the
person who leads or commands a group, organization, or country’.
‘To lead’ means to ‘cause (a person or animal) to go with one by
drawing them along; or to show (someone) the way to a
destination by preceding or accompanying them’.
• Leaders are ‘identity entrepreneurs’ who are engaged in providing
myths/visions to create, reshape or enhance national and other
political cultures
• Leaders attempt to shape political life beyond the specific issues of
the moment.
What they aim for:
Their relationship
with followers:
POL LEADERS
vs
Seek top decision making roles in
society
Get others to do what they wouldn’t Don’t have followers who
do otherwise . Leaders dominate by they control (they coordinate
using a combination of authority
at most)
(rank), influence (persuasion), or
power (capacity to compel)
Their policy agenda: Very broad; even if they have a
specific set of issues that are
attracting their attention at the
moment, they seek to guide society
into the future and beyond the
specific issues of today
Their relationship
with the
government:
ACTIVISTS
Seek to influence decisions
made by top leaders
Narrow; seek specific policy
outcomes
They may be in or out of government They seek to influence or
at the moment, but if it’s the latter, other social and govt actors,
they are seeking control the
not to head government
government
HOW DO WE KNOW HOW IMPORTANT LEADERS ARE?
What is the difference between a specific leader being a sufficient cause of
an outcome, versus being a necessary cause versus just having an
influence on the outcome?
(Example: The choice of George W. Bush to launch an invasion of Iraq…
Was he influential, essential, or the main cause all by himself in the
decision to invade Iraq for the second time in 2003?)
Is it worth distinguishing between “eventful” (historically important
contributors to outcomes) leaders and “event making” leaders who
move history in an entirely different direction?
(Example: Madison vs. Washington; Obama vs. Reagan)
The bottom line: How much political leaders matters will very according
to:
(1) In how much their specific presence matters to specific decisions
(2) How important their decision in the trajectory of their socieites
DO LEADERS REALLY MATTER AS MUCH AS
WE TEND TO THINK THEY DO?
Why might our common sense explanations of important historical
outcomes give too much credit to specific leaders?
• Is this a case of our human tendency towards “reductionism” In
other words, why do we seem to like easy answers?
• Is there a biological disposition to accept strong leadership and
to hold that leadership accountable for outcomes?
• Why do leaders themselves overstate the role and capacity of
leaders… especially in democracies like ours? Think about all
those crazy presidential candidate promises
• Are Americans especially susceptible to the belief that certain
individuals determine outcomes (vs. fate)? Think about Founder
worship and the Constitution for a minute
• But then, isn’t the belief in “hero leaders”—especially political
elites--un-American in some ways (because it would justify
strong government)? Maybe this explains why our leaders seem
so eager to talk about being aggressive towards other places
DO LEADERS MATTER AS MUCH AS WE TEND
TO THINK THEY DO?
Why have social scientists long been too skeptical of how much
leaders matter? Or at least that we can study the topic well?
• This is the next slide, but let’s just say it now: Leaders often
don’t matter very much, and they can be safely ignored for
sometimes… Is 2012 in the US such a case?
• Why is it so challenging to study why leaders do what they do?
• What is the alternative to studying leaders, and why have
most social scientists largely ignored what they see as the
“idiosyncratic” qualities of leaders and concentrated on
“structural” explanations of important historical events?
– Social scientists like to predict rather than just explain past
behavior… We look for trends, not specifics….
– Thus, social science tend to look at widespread, recurring,
and measurable phenomena rather than the unique
qualities of individual leaders to explain things
WHEN/WHICH LEADERS TEND TO MATTER
MOST?: FOUR FACTORS
What times and types of situations increase the influence of individual
leaders?
(Example: What political times lead some presidents to be considered
“great”?)
How does the institutional“location” of an leader in the political order impact
her importance to outcomes? (Example: Why is it easier to be a more
consequential prime minister in British politics than is the case with American
presidents?)
Why do variations among leaders’ personal strengths and limitations impact
their influence on outcomes?
Example: How do you think Pres. Obama’s background and personality
traits impact his leadership and decisionmaking?
Example: Does the US primary system pick the best leadership qualities?
And from Halam et al.: How do cultures of followership impact when leaders
matter? This article mostly explains what effective leadership is (in
democracies), but their argument raises the question of how societies and
times differ in their openness to being shaped by leaders.