The Distinctiveness of Democratic Political Leadership

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P O L I T I C A L S T U D I E S R E V I E W: 2 0 1 5 VO L 1 3 , 2 2 – 3 6
doi: 10.1111/1478-9302.12029
The Distinctiveness of Democratic
Political Leadership
Filipe Teles
University of Aveiro
One recognises that political leadership still makes a difference. However, scholarship seems incapable of offering the
proper tools to provide further and relevant understanding on the theme, particularly when we consider liberal
democracy’s current trends, namely its egalitarian ethos and the personalisation of politics. One of its key features,
even in strongly controlled democracies, with tight systems of checks and balances, is the ascendancy of assertive
leaders, to whom voters look when deciding on which party to vote for. Therefore, a dispassionate assessment of
political leadership is needed in order to adjust our analysis: from the qualities of particular individuals, their
intentions, perspectives and preferences, to the way leaders perform their role. This article intends to identify what
is the specific nature and distinctiveness of contemporary political leadership, arguing that the nature of the task sets
new problems in the political science literature and asks for new approaches.
Keywords: political leadership; democracy; authority; legitimacy; followership
Political leadership is a complex concept and, every so often, becomes an abstraction: it
is a concept whose meaning is socially constructed and, therefore, contested. Political
scientists usually define leadership according to their own perceptions of the issue and
depending on the aspects in which they are most interested. As a result, political science
has hardly progressed to a point where it could be identified as a consensual
conceptualisation and treatment of leadership. The fact that it is also related to other
concepts, such as ‘influence’, ‘power’ and ‘authority’, likewise contributes to the large array
of competing meanings.
The complexity of the definition is aggravated by the multi-arena context of actions in
which leaders perform. The exercise of political leadership occurs in different and often
simultaneous settings. As Thomas Hockin argued: ‘even if one definition of leadership
were chosen ... the operational meaning of the definition would change depending on the
context in which leadership would be exercised’ (Hockin, 1977, p. ix). Additionally,
scholarship tends to offer examples of political leadership conceptualisation that derive
excessively from individual cases rather than from generalised ones, making it highly
dependent on the manner in which politicians exercise leadership.
Normative attempts to define leadership, although impossible to avoid, bear the weight
of producing diverse and paradoxical results: from the great potential of Richard
Neustadt’s (1976) ‘power of persuasion’ in democratic governance to its perversion in
tyranny and authoritarianism.The study of political leadership must, therefore, be made ‘in
a way which is susceptible to both historical and comparative analysis’ (Cerny, 1988,
p. 132). Despite the fact that it is one of the most intuitively understood phenomena in
politics – common sense easily identifies leaders and leadership roles – it is often addressed
as a complex multidimensional experience constrained by several external social struc-
tures. Therefore, the concept of political leadership is particularly difficult to define, since
© 2013 The Author. Political Studies Review © 2013 Political Studies Association

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D E M O C R AT I C P O L I T I C A L L E A D E R S H I P
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it is often presented as dependent on institutional, historical and cultural contexts
(Blondel, 1987; Wildavsky, 1989).
Contemporary research faces new challenges. Leader-centred democracies, such as the
ones the Western world has been developing (Helms, 2005; Poguntke and Webb, 2005),
imply, first of all, that political theory and research must concentrate on leaders, offering
a better portrait of contemporary politics. On the other hand, leadership studies must be
released from their disproportionate focus on ‘great men’ and from a certain kind of
‘leader cult’. This will allow a better understanding of the ‘normal’ political realm
of contemporary democracies, since it must deliver answers to the new challenges of
governance; in particular by identifying the role of ‘normal’ political leaders in these
complex political contexts (Teles, 2013), where several other agents are called into action,
and multi-level and multi-territorialised public and private organisations take part in the
public policy process. Finally, political science must offer unbiased approaches to the role
of political leaders in democracies, in particular a framework that will allow understanding
of their strategies, their power to influence, their motivations and their constraints.
This article intends to identify what are the specific nature and distinctiveness of
contemporary democratic leadership, arguing that the nature of the task sets new prob-
lems for political science and asks for new approaches. Several distinct features that
differentiate contemporary political leadership are enumerated and described, and these
are expected to shed some light upon the whole of this complex issue.
Personalisation of Politics
Exercising leadership is a fundamental form of political agency even in contemporary
democracies. Political leaders have an important role in creating alternatives and dis-
playing opportunities to choose between rival strategies for the public realm, particularly
if one considers how limited is collective action based on citizens’ preferences (as shown
by Arrow’s voter’s paradox and Downs’ focus on collective ignorance). This shift from
looking at democracy as presenting the opportunity to aggregate citizens’ preferences to
understand it as a mechanism of selecting leaders represents a major change in the
analysis of the role of political leadership. This means that not only are leaders responsive
to situations and individuals, they are also responsible; political representation compre-
hends the exercise of top-down guidance and influence, rather than simple mirroring of
preferences and interests; the political process rests both on persuasion and bargaining;
political motivation and action derive from will, rather than just collective negotiation
and consensus.
The ever-growing complexity of contemporary governance, menaced by incomplete
information for decision making, and reinforced by multi-level and multi-organisational
agents competing in the public arena, restores an important role to be played by political
leaders. Accordingly, a prominent feature of contemporary politics has been the ‘person-
alisation of politics’ (Karvonen, 2010) – the role of politicians as individuals is strength-
ened as a way of determining how people view and express their preferences: ‘people vote
differently from one election to another, depending on the particular persons competing
for their vote ... [and] this phenomenon marks a departure from what was considered
normal voting behaviour under representative democracy’ (Manin, 1997, p. 219).
© 2013 The Author. Political Studies Review © 2013 Political Studies Association
Political Studies Review: 2015, 13(1)

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F I L I P E T E L E S
While parties were seen as expressions of preferences and choices, as a function of
citizens’ affiliation to such groups (Mair, 2006, p. 371), with the weakening of these
structures, collective loyalties and identities were undermined. The subsequent ‘personali-
sation’ of politics is a consequence of a process of individualisation of social life, techno-
logical modernisation, changes in social structures, and media becoming the central
channel of political information (Karvonen, 2010, p. 4).
Following Gideon Rahat and Tamir Sheafer’s (2007) and Max Kaase’s (1994) research,
Lauri Karvonen presents a set of changes that result from this process: (1) institutions stress
individual politicians rather than collectivities; (2) electoral campaigns and propaganda are
increasingly centred on individual candidates; (3) politics is perceived as a competition
between leaders, more than organised collective interests; (4) political preferences and
choices are formed mainly on the basis of their evaluation of individual political actors;
(5) these choices may decide the outcome of elections; and ultimately (6) ‘power
relationships in politics and society may come to be decided on the basis of the individual
characteristics of politicians’ (Karvonen, 2010, p. 5).
The thesis of the personalisation of politics holds that this trend has an impact on the
major institutions and actors around which collective political organisation takes place.
Describing the empowerment of party leaders, Jean Blondel and Jean-Louis Thiebault
(2010) talk of the emergence of personalised leaders in European democracies and
beyond, while Ian McAllister (2007) presents a number of specific causes of such
increasing personalisation.
As John Horton (2009, pp. 20–7) suggested, neglecting the theme has some important
consequences. The first is the indifference towards the exercise of political power. Power,
as seen before, is also an integral part of the exercise of leadership and must, therefore, be
taken into account, as it is a particularly sensitive theme under democratic regimes.
Second, it leads to a devaluation of politicians, which seems to conflict with the
perspective of democracy requiring good leadership if it is to function effectively. This
...