Leadership and Politics: New Perspectives in Political Science

Few aspects of public life are scrutinized and debated as intensely as leadership. It is crucial to the welfare of nations, the survival of political parties, and the functioning of interest groups and public corporations. And, as this volume demonstrates, political leadership is both a complex and elusive quality.

In twelve provocative, state-of-the-art essays, leading scholars in political science explore the meaning of political leadership from the shifting, kaleidoscopic perspectives of the leaders, institutions, goals, procedures, problems, and traditions involved. The approaches, as varied as the subject itself, coalesce around the central question of how leaders interact with, transform, or are controlled by the organizations they lead.

Whether it’s Erwin Hargrove writing on leadership in the TVA, Aaron Wildavsky on the relation between leadership and regime type, Clarence Stone on urban leadership, Morris Fiorina and Kenneth Shepsle on leadership and public choice theory, Robert Harmel on oligarchy in West Germany’s Green Party, or George Edwards on presidential leadership in Congress, the authors provide perceptive analyses and suggest new directions for the discipline. For anyone concerned with the problems and potential of leadership in public life in the U.S. and Europe, these essays are certain to spark further debate on the question of political leadership.

Bryan D. Jones is head of the political science department at Texas A & M University. His books include Governing Buildings and Building Governments and The Sustaining Hand: Community Leadership and Corporate Power.