Coercive Leadership

We develop a model of leadership in which an informed leader has some degree of coercive influence over her followers (agents). Agents benefit from coordination but face two distinct challenges: dispersed information and heterogeneous preferences. The leader's coercive power facilitates coordination by weakening the effect presented by both of these challenges through “binding” agents to a strategically chosen policy. The leader's policy choice becomes more informative to the agents about the leader's privately held information as her coercive capacity increases. By adjusting her policy choice in response to available private and public information, the coercive leader achieves her preferred average of agents' actions, and in so doing, neutralizes the possibly deleterious coordinating influence of public information. We develop implications of our analysis for understanding autocratic leadership in different political and organizational contexts.     

Leader's spiritual intelligence and religiousness: Skills,factors affecting,and their effects on performance (a qualitative study by grounded theory)

Spiritual intelligence has received increasing quantitative research interest, while there is still no attention regarding to investigate spiritual intelligence with applying qualitative methods, especially grounded theory design. This study aimed to detect the skills, affecting factors, and the effects of spiritual intelligence and religiousness on performance. The qualitative analysis of the data collected through the in‐depth interview of the participants after encoding and classification, and the continuous comparison of the data by encoding and data by axes, resulted in these data can be coded in three axes: leader's spiritual intelligence skills, factors that affect leader's spiritual intelligence, and the effects of leader's spiritual intelligence on performance. The results revealed that there are five skills of leader's spiritual intelligence: work‐life balance skill, consists of (5) sub‐skills, leadership transcendence skill includes (6) sub‐skills, leadership meaning and purpose production skill includes (4) sub‐skills, leadership mindfulness skill consists of (9) sub‐skills, and the fifth skill is leadership virtue behavior includes (8) sub‐skills. And also, the results indicated that there are many factors that impact the leader's spiritual intelligence, were classified into three objects: personal (three factors), social and family (two factors), and work factors (4 factors). All participants were agreed unanimously that the leader's spiritual intelligence and religiousness are determined and affect the performance of the leader and his subordinates, these were classified into two objects: The first object is a leader's work‐performance, consisting of (16) indicators, and the second object is a workers performance includes (12) indicators. In light of these results, the study recommended the necessity of developing leaders' awareness of the importance of passion of spiritual intelligence skill and their impacts on performance. Thus, these findings shed new light on the importance of developing leaders' spiritual intelligence skills to resolve leadership problems, and increasing productivity, creativity, and well‐being among leaders and workers in Arab World.     

Tell Me Who Is Your Leader,and I Will Tell You Who You Are: Foreign Leaders’ Perceived Personality and Public Attitudes toward Their Countries and Citizenry

The increasing visibility of prominent political leaders in news media is well documented in political science literature. The main concern that has been raised in this connection is that the complexity of political processes is being reduced to achievements and standpoints of individual politicians, and the importance of rational opinion building is discounted. The results of the current study provide the first empirical evidence to account for the misgivings about emotional effects of personalized political information on media audiences. Using data from an online experiment, this study shows that news coverage regarding behaviors and personal characteristics of a foreign leader influences (a) evaluations of personal characteristics typical of his or her nation's citizens and (b) emotional perceptions of that leader's country (sentiment and respect). This effect is shown to reflect a psychological phenomenon whereby people project their emotions and perceptions regarding a leader's personal characteristics onto his or her country and people.     

Comparing Public and Private Managers' Leadership Styles: Understanding the Role of Job Context

ABSTRACT

Comparing public and private managers is a major subject in the public management literature, but there have been only a few empirical studies of the differences in their respective leadership styles. Traditionally, leadership style is explained by the characteristics of the manager, the employees, and their job. This study explains leadership by the manager's job context: the degree of job complexity, role clarity, and job autonomy. We argue that differences in job context explain the use of different leadership styles in the public and private sector. To clearly specify the importance of sector, the study investigates direct, mediating, and moderating effects. Based on a survey of Danish public and private managers with 949 respondents, this article shows that job context variables vary significantly between public and private sector managers. The article provides some explanations for why public managers use more participative leadership, while private ones use more directive leadership.     

A Contextual Effect in Political Perception and Self-Placement on an Ideology Scale: Comparative Analyses of Sweden and the U.S.1

Data on self-placement and political perception on an ideology scale from surveys of adults in Sweden and the U.S. were analyzed and compared. Consensus in political perception, the correlation between perception of the party's and its leader's position, distinctiveness and polarization, subjective agreement, and a rational democratic coefficient were all substantially higher in Sweden. In spite of these differences, evidence of assimilation and contrast effects in perception was observed within both countries.     

Political leadership in times of crisis: the Commission presidency of Jean-Claude Juncker

Abstract

This article explores the leadership of Jean-Claude Juncker as Commission president, addressing two questions: to what extent did Juncker exercise political leadership and in what ways did his leadership qualify as explicitly political? Drawing on leadership theory and recent insights into political leadership in the EU, the article first conceptualises the Commission president’s potential for acting as a leader – particularly a political leader. The empirical section analyses Juncker’s provision of agenda-setting and mediative-institutional leadership in two phases: the first marked by an extraordinary activism and an assertive attitude in agenda-setting, but with limited successes in achieving binding decisions; the second characterised by launching proposals for deliberation and debate, embedded in longer-term visions. The article concludes that around the mid-term of his incumbency, Juncker adapted to the constraining institutional and situational context by engaging in mediative-institutional leadership and carving out a new, more political role for the Commission president.     

State Visits and Leader Survival

Why do political leaders travel abroad? In this article, we propose an informational mechanism linking in‐person diplomacy to leader survival. A foreign power visits an incumbent in order to reap a future policy concession; the visit is only worth the effort if the incumbent remains in power long enough to deliver on the deal. A diplomatic visit thus provides a visible and credible signal of the visitor's high confidence in the incumbent's stability in office. Domestic opponents, facing incomplete information as to the incumbent's strength, observe the signal and are deterred from mounting a challenge. Using data on U.S. diplomatic visits from 1960 to 2013, we find strong empirical support for our predictions: A visit with the U.S. president substantially reduces the risk of a leader's removal from office.     

The end of a strategic opening? The BNP's window of opportunity in the 2000s and its closure in the 2010s

ABSTRACT

Notwithstanding the endemic failure of extreme-right parties in Britain, the British National Party (BNP) observed a period of electoral growth in the 2000s. After the election of several city councillors nationwide, the BNP experienced an electoral breakthrough in the national ballot of the 2009 European Parliament elections. Yet the BNP's electoral accomplishments dissipated in the early 2010s, fuelling predictions of the party's terminal decline. Within this context, Carvalho seeks to explain the fluctuations observed in the BNP's electoral base in the twentieth-first century by exploring the structure of political opportunities alongside the strategy of the BNP's leadership. Drawing on the convergence thesis and the decline of voting along class lines, he argues that the BNP benefitted from a favourable set of political opportunities in the 2000s, reflecting the decrease in political polarization among mainstream parties, the rise in levels of public distrust, and the intense politicization of the issue of immigration. Despite a general shift to cultural xenophobia, the BNP's leadership remained attached to the ideological traits of neo-fascist parties, including the search for a ‘palingenetic rebirth’ and a national corporatist economic programme. These ideological formulae had important implications for the scope of the BNP's electoral coalition, as Carvalho demonstrates in a review of the secondary literature on the roots of the BNP's electoral support. Consequently, the BNP's electoral growth in the 2000s was the outcome of an interplay between a favourable window of opportunity in British politics and the party's electoral appeal. Carvalho goes on to link the BNP's electoral collapse in the early 2010s with the closing of the aforementioned window after the onset of the financial crisis, a temporary lack of political interest in the issue of immigration, and the formation of the coalition government in 2010.     

The domestic politics of international development in South Korea: stakeholders and competing policy discourses

Abstract

The paper examines the domestic politics surrounding South Korea's foreign aid policy. It delineates the institutional characteristics and strategic interests of key government and non-government stakeholders, and suggests an analytical framework to comprehend the country's aid policy regime. It suggests that two competing policy discourses exist – one emphasising ‘intellectual leadership’ and the other ‘ethical leadership’ as the key principle of aid policy. In practice, the country's political leadership promulgates a complex amalgam of these discourses in alignment with their own political imperatives and interests. The paper discusses ‘Global Saemaul Undong’ as such an example under the incumbent Park Geun-Hye administration.     

The Cadillac,the mother-in-law,and the ballot: Individual and contextual roots of ambivalence in Swiss direct democracy

Citizens may experience irreconcilable and conflictive values or feelings about a political issue. They may, for instance, both believe in a woman's right to autonomy over her body (pro choice) and that human life begins before birth (pro life). This conflictive situation – referred to as ambivalence in relevant literature – has detrimental effects on political choices. For instance, ambivalence may enhance instability in candidates' evaluations, delay the formation of vote intentions, and finally weaken predictions on vote choices.This being, literature has less looked at what may induce ambivalence, and especially on how informational context may affect it. Our paper aims to compensate for this lack, by assessing under which individual and contextual conditions ambivalence has more chances to be felt by citizens. Through a series of hierarchical estimations based on post-electoral data on Swiss direct democracy and original data retracing content of political campaigns, we will demonstrate that individual determinants (political sophistication, exposure to political campaigns, and heuristics) as well as political campaigning (intensity and negativism) strongly determine the existence of ambivalence.     

The Roles of Local Government Managers in Theory and Practice: A Centennial Perspective

The standard narrative to explain the evolution of roles filled by city managers suggests that managers originally served as administrative technicians who carried out the policy directives of city councils, but, over time, they became more involved in policy advice and community leadership. This article documents enduring involvement in policy and the recent expansion of community leadership, analyzing definitions of the manager's roles offered by practitioners and scholars since the beginning of the city manager profession 100 years ago. In addition, measurements of the manager's role performance at various points in time are examined, along with trends in the preparation of managers and the context in which they work. Ignoring the evidence that the policy role is integral to professional management can lead to unfounded questions about the legitimacy of city and county managers and impairs our understanding of the council‐manager form of government and political–administrative relations.     

South Korea: The Lasting Pitfalls of the ‘Imperial Presidency’

The use of the term ‘imperial presidency’ in South Korea refers to the fact that the country's 1987 constitution grants the state's highest office holder de facto imperial powers with regard to domestic and foreign policy making. This version of the term therefore differs from Arthur M. Schlesinger's usage in the US context, which was critical of the discretionary powers exercised by US presidents in efforts to subvert the checks and balances of the US Constitution. Concentrating political power in the South Korean presidency severely curtails the work of the other political institutions, including its parliament (the National Assembly). Every time the presidency changes hands, the leadership structures of all other public institutions are subjected to major restructuring according to political loyalty, which interrupts their routine functioning. Overall, the presidency in its current form is dysfunctional and works as a barrier against democratic deepening. This article examines why lengthy debate over South Korea's imperial presidency has so far failed to result in comprehensive constitutional reform.     

The Erosion of Party Politics in Britain

This article looks at the erosion of democratic practice enacted by "New" Labour in Britain under the leadership of Tony Blair. Building on the internal reforms of the 1980s, the process of Labour Party "modernization" has created an exclusive, top-down managerial style of leadership. This type of party leadership and management has far-reaching implications for British politics more generally, not least the role of political parties. The current crisis of the Conservatives and the destruction of representative democracy within the Labour Party pose serious questions regarding the medium-term future of parties as voluntary membership organizations. These changes are placed in the context of a possible longer-term transformation of British political structures in order to exchange the long-established administration of the Conservative Party for a new type of governmental machinery. The aim is not a new "traditional" party of government, but a partyless formation built around a dominant central presidential figure and his office—a change which necessitates abolishing the Labour Party and social democracy as they currently exist. It is argued that this anticipated remedy to a protracted crisis of the British state accords closely to the requirements of neoliberal economic management, while drawing upon developments in the wider global environment. However, if this is to succeed, Blair's "modernizing" tendency needs to be able to articulate a coherent ideology that strikes a popular chord. Thus far, Blair's managerial approach to politics may have scored a few points against the old party ideologies, but it has also undermined attempts to promote an alternative ideology—even one of a "partyless" nature.     

Agency Leaders, Gendered Institutions, and Representative Bureaucracy

This study examines three central questions: Do women state agency heads establish priorities that advance women's interests more frequently than men agency heads? Among state agency heads with women‐related top priorities, are there systematic differences between women and men in the influences on their priority choices? Do the organizational and political contexts in which agency leaders work explain variation in policy priorities? Analysis of data from a national survey of women and men department heads reveals that working in a redistributive agency affects whether a leader pursues a women‐centered policy agenda, regardless of the leader's gender, other personal characteristics, or reported influences on priority choice. The authors conclude that the way representative bureaucracy actually plays out can be more fully understood if the tenets of social science theory on gendered institutions are incorporated into analyses of how representative bureaucracy works.     

A rhetoric of style: Eleanor Rigby and the reordering of popular music

In this paper, we present a synthesis of Kenneth Burke’s rhetoric of identification and Jay Lemke’s social semiotics to frame Eleanor Rigby by the Beatles as a unique point in the phylogenesis of recorded popular music. We emphasise the social semiotic functioning of string arrangements as styles, with style also being understood in the manner of Burke, and style names and definitions being drawn from a corpus analysis of string arrangements for popular music. We argue that, through a rhetoric of style, Eleanor Rigby made canonical claims against rock's cultural counterpart, classical music. We demonstrate the working of the rhetoric and its political implications in the context of the counter-cultural forces active during the mid-1960s.     

The Impact of Political Connections on Donations to Chinese NGOs

ABSTRACT

In this study, we explore the returns to political connections in non-corporate contexts within China, a country transitioning from a planned to market economy. Using China as an empirical case study, we investigate two separate, but related, hypotheses on the financial benefits of political connections for a sample of 1,435 Chinese foundations from 2005–2011. This extends Western donation determinants literature to a Chinese context and political guanxi (social relationships where individuals or organizations exchange future favors or gifts) research to non-corporate contexts. Our empirical results show that there is no relationship between the presence of state employees on an NGO's staff (a measure of political guanxi) and private donations. However, there is a small but positive relationship between the amount of government funding an NGO receives (a signal of legitimacy) and private donations. These findings suggest that, in post-communist countries such as China, donors may not be seeking future favors from their contributions and instead are interested in developing a robust civil society with legitimate, high-quality NGOs. Additionally, the similarity between Western donation determinants research findings and Chinese donation determinants, in this article, requires future comparative studies of both how and why donors make decisions.     

Testing the Influence of Autocratic Leadership,Democratic Leadership,and Public Service Motivation on Citizen Ratings of An Agency Head’s Performance

Abstract

Research is lacking concerning the impact of leadership styles on citizen attitudes toward the performance of government leaders. To address this gap, an online experimental survey was conducted to determine the effect of leadership styles on respondents’ perceptions regarding a fictitious superintendent’s performance in a school district. The results demonstrate that democratic leadership practices enhanced the performance reviews of the superintendent, while autocratic leadership practices decreased them. Respondents’ level of public service motivation (PSM) was also found to have a positive effect on the superintendent’s performance ratings. Furthermore, democratic leadership style moderated the relationship between PSM and the performance ratings assigned by respondents. In particular, individuals with high PSM rated the performance of democratic leaders higher as compared to individuals with low PSM. However, autocratic leadership was not found to moderate the relationship between PSM and the superintendent’s performance. These results are thoroughly discussed in the paper.     

Leadership and Economic Theories of Nonprofit Organizations

Economic theories of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) have modified standard economic assumptions to explain altruism and nonprofit entrepreneurship but have neglected their dependence on leadership due to the traditional reluctance of economists to consider phenomena associated with preference change. The relevance of Hermalin's (1998 ) model of leadership by example and Casson's (1991 ) theory of leadership through moral manipulation are considered within an NPO context where leaders seek to influence stakeholder commitments to the organization's quest. The propositions Elster (1998 ) advanced with regard to the relationship between the emotions and decision making are then applied in a theory that explains how NPO leaders can develop a culture of hope that maintains the quality control and product differentiation advantages claimed for these organizations. It is argued that policymakers should consider the dependence of NPOs on the quality of leadership when choosing the organizational mechanism for social service delivery.     

Political Myths in Climate Leadership: The Case of Danish Climate and Energy Pioneership

Climate leadership is important for the transition to a low‐carbon economy, where some countries are seen as leaders because of their ambitious climate and energy policies. Climate leadership is dynamic and evolves over time to become a political myth, however, which governments use in their policy strategies. Changes in governments lead to new climate and energy strategies that affect the respective countries' leadership positions. This article links the growing literature on environmental/climate leadership and the political myth literature. Specifically, it draws on the environmental/climate leadership framework to analyse the connection between political myths and the climate and energy policy strategies of governments to understand how the changing interpretation of the political myth influences leadership. The article uses Denmark as a case study because of the consensus in the literature on it being a climate and energy policy pioneer. This article analyses how Danish governments interpret the political myth of Danish climate and energy pioneership and how their policies influence the Danish leadership position, concluding that whilst the continued reinterpretations of the political myth of leadership do not always reflect the original myth, the myth remains important for government claims to leadership.     

India: Searching for a Consensus by Amending the Constitution?

Two major themes have dominated the debate over India's constitutional destiny since the 1980s: parliamentary versus presidential government and federalization of its predominantly parliamentary system. India will do well to continue with its parliamentary form of government. Besides familiarity with it through British colonial experience and practice for nearly half a century, India's social diversity and fragile democracy are better served by a “collective” parliamentary/cabinet system than a “singular” presidential one. The latter may prematurely centralize the system and promote executive aggrandizement and adventurism. But India's continental diversity and complexity cannot be adequately represented solely along the parliamentary axis; they require the additional — and more vigorous — federal axis for democratic accommodation and national integration. The impact on India's parliamentary/federal system of the changing nature of the party system and premiership styles is also analyzed. Six phases of party system evolution are identified: (1) predominant party system-I (1952–1969); (2) multi-party system-I (1969–1971); (3) predominant party system-II (1971–1977); (4) two-party system (1977–1984); (5) (a stillborn) predominant party system-Ill (1984–1989); and (6) multi-party system-II (1989–to date). Three styles of prime ministerial leadership are delineated: (1) pluralist, (2) patrimonial, and (3) federal. Federal forces and features of the political system were generally accentuated when the party system was not a one-party dominant one and the prime ministerial leadership was not a patrimonial one. Some viable constitutional amendments designed to promote federalization are considered. The two particularly promising avenues of federalization that combine “responsible federalism” with “responsible parliamentary government” are those that establish a series of autonomous federal instrumentalities recommended by the Sarkaria Commission and create a President-in-Council interlocked with the Inter-Governmental Council that takes away the power of proclaiming president's rule in a state from the federal Home Ministry.