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.

POL LEADERS vs ACTIVISTSWhat they aim for: Seek top decision making roles in

societySeek to influence decisions made by top leaders

Their relationship with followers:

Get others to do what they wouldn’t do otherwise . Leaders dominate by using a combination of authority (rank), influence (persuasion), or power (capacity to compel)

Don’t have followers who they control (they coordinate at most)

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

Narrow; seek specific policy outcomes

Their relationship with the government:

They may be in or out of government at the moment, but if it’s the latter, they are seeking control the government

They seek to influence or other social and govt actors, not to head 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.