Course Description
Summary
As an interactive process between leaders and their followers or supporters, political leadership is a socially ubiquitous, yet analytically elusive and normatively contentious, concept. This exploration of the qualities of political leaders and the process of political leadership will accomplish five things: (1) Survey contributions to studies of political leadership from various theoretical and philosophical traditions and social science disciplines, including positivism, constructivism, feminism, political science, psychology, and anthropology; (2) Analyze different taxonomies and models of political leadership, including so-called transactional and transformational leadership types; (3) Examine patterns and norms of political leadership across regions of the global north and south, and in various contexts, including democracies and autocracies, presidential and parliamentary regimes, national and international organizations, and formal and informal spaces; (4) Undertake analytic case studies of a selection of iconic and not-so-iconic political leaders; and (5) Reflect on, and reimagine, the future of political leadership as an institution and a field of inquiry.
