Synopses & Reviews
The seven essays in Leadership in Context explore important questions that are at the heart of the understanding of political leadership. What are the relationships among personal political skill, the strength or weakness of institutional roles available to leaders, and the changing historical and political contexts within which leaders act? Politicians with agendas for change seek to create dynamic relations of talent, institutional powers, and the politics of strategic leadership in the environments that they face. Passive leaders may leave things as they are or inadvertently stimulate new political opposition. Institutional powers may strengthen the hand of less skillful politicians if the environment is favorable. And political climates will vary greatly in the degrees to which they are favorable to potentially skillful leadership. Effective leadership may be successful by a hair's breadth, or it may be over determined by context.
Synopsis
What is political leadership and does it operate differently in different political contexts? In addition to context, personal political skill plays a large role in the area of leadership, often yielding significant results. Whether a leader is active or passive, creating dynamic relations of talent and institutional powers or choosing to leave situations as they are, skill is frequently the key factor in policy achievement. In this book, editors Hargrove and Owens gather seven very different studies of skill in context. From the role of the European Commission president to the well established function of the president of the United States, each essay analyzes and interprets the effects of institutional powers and the environments in which leaders operate on their effectiveness and degree of personal talent each brings to the table.