The Oxford Handbook of Political Leadership

Political leadership has made a comeback. It was studied intensively not only by political scientists but also by political sociologists and psychologists, Sovietologists, political anthropologists, and by scholars in comparative and development studies from the 1940s to the 1970s. Thereafter, the field lost its way with the rise of structuralism, neo-institutionalism, and rational choice approaches to the study of politics, government, and governance. Recently, however, students of politics have returned to studying the role of individual leaders and the exercise of leadership to explain political outcomes. The list of topics is nigh endless: elections, conflict management, public policy, government popularity, development, governance networks, and regional integration. In the media age, leaders are presented and stage-managed-spun-as the solution to almost every social problem. Through the mass media and the Internet, citizens and professional observers follow the rise, impact, and fall of senior political officeholders at closer quarters than ever before. This Handbook encapsulates the resurgence by asking, where are we today? It orders the multidisciplinary field by identifying the distinct and distinctive contributions of the disciplines. It meets the urgent need to take stock. It brings together scholars from around the world, encouraging a comparative perspective, to provide a comprehensive coverage of all the major disciplines, methods, and regions. It showcases both the normative and empirical traditions in political leadership studies, and juxtaposes behavioural, institutional, and interpretive approaches. It covers formal, office-based as well as informal, emergent political leadership, and in both democratic and undemocratic polities.1. Puzzles of political leadership ; PART I. THINKING ABOUT POLITICAL LEADERSHIP: TRADITIONS AND DISCIPLINES ; 2. Leadership in Western political thought ; 3. Theory of democratic leadership in action ; 4. Confucianism and political leadership ; 5. Feminism ; 6. Political science ; 7. Administrative leadership ; 8. Political psychology and the study of political leadership ; 9. Psychoanalytic perspectives on political leaders and leadership ; 10. The social psychological study of leadership ; 11. Whimpers from a dog that doesn't bark: rational choice approaches to leadership ; 12. Anthropology and political leadership ; PART II. STUDYING POLITICAL LEADERSHIP: ANALYTICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ; 13. Institutional analysis ; 14. Contextual analysis ; 15. Political leadership and decision analysis ; 16. Leaders as story-tellers: social constructionist approaches to political leadership ; 17. Rhetorical and performative analysis ; 18. Experimental analysis ; 19. Observational analysis ; 20. At-a-distance analysis ; 21. Biographical analysis ; 22. Political personality profiling ; PART III. POLITICAL LEADERSHIP AT WORK ; 23. Civic leadership ; 24. Party and electoral leadership ; 25. Populism and political leadership ; 26. It's the singer, not the song: understanding leadership as performance ; 27. Political leadership in networks ; 28. Political leadership in times of crisis ; PART IV. EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP IN THE WEST ; PRESIDENTIAL LEADERSHIP: THE UNITED STATES AND BEYOND ; 29. Leadership and the American presidency ; 30. Presidential communication from Hustings to Twitter ; 31. Executive leadership in semi-presidential systems ; PRIME MINISTERIAL LEADERSHIP: WESTMINSTER AND BEYOND ; 32. The variability of prime ministers ; 33. The contingencies of prime ministerial power in the UK ; 34. The mortal temples of the king: prime ministers and their advisers in parliamentary democracies ; 35. Cabinet ministers: leaders, team players, followers? ; PART V. POLITICAL LEADERSHIP BELOW AND BEYOND THE NATIONAL LEVEL ; 36. Local political leaders ; 37. Regional political leadership ; 38. Leadership and international cooperation ; 39. Leadership of international organizations ; PART VI. POLITICAL LEADERSHIP BEYOND THE WEST ; 40. Political leadership in China ; 41. Latin American leadership ; 42. Post-communist leadership ; 43. A leadership renaissance, revolution or reversion? Probing the emerging study and scholarship on African political leadership ; PART VII. DEBATING POLITICAL LEADERSHIP ; 44. Training and development for political leadership ; 45. Does gender matter? ; 46. What have we learned?