Follow the Leader?

Follow the Leader? PDF

Author: Gabriel S. Lenz

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2013-01-29

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 0226472159

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In a democracy, we generally assume that voters know the policies they prefer and elect like-minded officials who are responsible for carrying them out. We also assume that voters consider candidates' competence, honesty, and other performance-related traits. But does this actually happen? Do voters consider candidates’ policy positions when deciding for whom to vote? And how do politicians’ performances in office factor into the voting decision? In Follow the Leader?, Gabriel S. Lenz sheds light on these central questions of democratic thought. Lenz looks at citizens’ views of candidates both before and after periods of political upheaval, including campaigns, wars, natural disasters, and episodes of economic boom and bust. Noting important shifts in voters’ knowledge and preferences as a result of these events, he finds that, while citizens do assess politicians based on their performance, their policy positions actually matter much less. Even when a policy issue becomes highly prominent, voters rarely shift their votes to the politician whose position best agrees with their own. In fact, Lenz shows, the reverse often takes place: citizens first pick a politician and then adopt that politician’s policy views. In other words, they follow the leader. Based on data drawn from multiple countries, Follow the Leader? is the most definitive treatment to date of when and why policy and performance matter at the voting booth, and it will break new ground in the debates about democracy.

Why Leaders Lie

Why Leaders Lie PDF

Author: John J. Mearsheimer

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 155

ISBN-13: 0199975450

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Presents an analysis of the lying behavior of political leaders, discussing the reasons why it occurs, the different types of lies, and the costs and benefits to the public and other countries that result from it, with examples from the recent past.

Leaders, Politicians, Citizens

Leaders, Politicians, Citizens PDF

Author: Rasheed Kidwai

Publisher: Hachette India

Published: 2022-03-30

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 9391028241

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BALASAHEB THACKERAY. SHEILA DIKSHIT. A.P.J. ABDUL KALAM. NAMDEO DHASAL. S. JAIPAL REDDY. These are just some of the 50 dynamos whose lives and times are captured in this collection of profiles of some of the most prominent actors in independent India's political theatre. Game-changers Pranab Mukherjee, P.V. Narasimha Rao and Jyoti Basu; crowd-pulling swashbucklers Sheikh Abdullah and Laldenga; crusaders such as Kanshi Ram and Maulana Hussain Ahmad Madani; mavericks Chandraswami, Amar Singh and Ajit Kumar Jogi; charismatic leaders like Madhavrao Scindia and Mufti Mohammad Sayeed; possessors of star power, including Jayalalithaa, Vinod Khanna and M. Karunanidhi; and skilful navigators like Ahmed Patel and V.C. Shukla - all find place in this incontestable list. Traversing ideologies and bringing into focus the human facet of governments, Leaders, Politicians, Citizens presents a compelling history of Indian democracy and provides riveting insights into the evolution of its political culture.

Making Politics Work for Development

Making Politics Work for Development PDF

Author: World Bank

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2016-07-14

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 1464807744

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Governments fail to provide the public goods needed for development when its leaders knowingly and deliberately ignore sound technical advice or are unable to follow it, despite the best of intentions, because of political constraints. This report focuses on two forces—citizen engagement and transparency—that hold the key to solving government failures by shaping how political markets function. Citizens are not only queueing at voting booths, but are also taking to the streets and using diverse media to pressure, sanction and select the leaders who wield power within government, including by entering as contenders for leadership. This political engagement can function in highly nuanced ways within the same formal institutional context and across the political spectrum, from autocracies to democracies. Unhealthy political engagement, when leaders are selected and sanctioned on the basis of their provision of private benefits rather than public goods, gives rise to government failures. The solutions to these failures lie in fostering healthy political engagement within any institutional context, and not in circumventing or suppressing it. Transparency, which is citizen access to publicly available information about the actions of those in government, and the consequences of these actions, can play a crucial role by nourishing political engagement.

Interactive Political Leadership

Interactive Political Leadership PDF

Author: Eva Sørensen

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2020-01-10

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 0198777957

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Building on recent theories of interactive governance and political leadership, Interactive Political Leadership develops a concept of interactive political leadership and a theoretical framework for studying the role of elected politicians in the age of governance. The purpose of the theoretical framework is to inspire and guide empirical research into how elected politicians perform political leadership in a society where citizens and other stakeholders play an active role in making and implementing political decisions and what barriers, challenges, and dilemmas they encounter in relation to the performance of interactive political leadership. The research framework draws extensively on recent theories of interactive governance and political leadership and other new developments in political science and public administration research. Moreover, it finds inspiration in current tendencies and embryonic examples of interactive political leadership performed by elected politicians operating at different levels of governance in Western liberal democracies. The basic assumption is that political legitimacy is essential for the survival of a political system, and that interactive political leadership stands out as a promising way of securing what political scientists denote as input-, throughput-, output-, and outcome legitimacy in the age of governance. Hence, interactive political leadership aims to establish a bridge between representative democracy and emergent forms of political participation, to promote political learning and accountability, to strengthen the political entrepreneurship of elected politicians, and to advance the political system's implementation capacity through resource mobilization. The book develops 20 propositions that sets the agenda for a new and much needed field of empirical research into political leadership in the age of governance.

The Recruitment of Political Leaders

The Recruitment of Political Leaders PDF

Author: Kenneth Prewitt

Publisher: Praeger

Published: 1981

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13:

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This study is based on data collected by the City Council Research Project, Stanford University. The project was concerned with decision making in small, natural-state legislative groups, legislative behavior within the city council, the kinds of people who become members of the city council, how they are chosen, how they learn their jobs, and the many problems they have to deal with.

Political Leadership, Parties and Citizens

Political Leadership, Parties and Citizens PDF

Author: Jean Blondel

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2009-12-04

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1135179212

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Social structure may historically have been of primary importance in accounting for the attitudes and behaviour of many citizens, but now changes in social structure have diminished the role played by class and religious affiliation, whilst the significance of personality in political leadership has increased. This volume explores, both theoretically and empirically, the increasingly important role played by the personalisation of leadership. Acknowledging the part played by social cleavages, it focuses on the personal relationships and psychological dimension between citizens and political leaders. It begins by examining the changes which have taken place in the relationship among citizens, the parties which they support and the leaders of these parties in a European context. The authors then assess how far the phenomena of ‘personalised leadership’ differ from country to country, and the forms which these differences take. The book includes comparative case studies on Britain and Northern Ireland, France, Italy, Poland, Japan and Thailand; it concentrates on eleven prominent leaders epitomising personalised political leadership: Thatcher, Blair, Mitterand, Chirac, Le Pen, Berlusconi, Bossi, Walesa, Lepper, Koizumi and Thaksin. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, comparative politics and political leadership.

Citizen Power

Citizen Power PDF

Author: Harry S. Pozycki

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2020-10-23

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 1978824408

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The Citizens Campaign, co-founded by the author and his wife, Caroline B. Pozycki, offers citizen leadership training and citizen leadership service opportunities for regular citizens. CITIZEN POWER gives all Americans the know how to become no-blame problem solvers and be part of what is emerging as a new model for a citizen driven national public service. Citizen Power portal (https://thecitizenscampaign.org/register/).

Politicians in Hard Times

Politicians in Hard Times PDF

Author: Xavier Coller

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-04-27

Total Pages: 419

ISBN-13: 3030702421

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This book analyses the Spanish parliamentary elites in a comparative perspective within southern Europe. What has been the impact of the Great Recession on the configuration of parliaments and the diversity of legislators? Have new parties delivered better representation of citizens in terms of demographics (gender, age, social class), ideology or political attitudes and beliefs? This original research is based on a 2018 survey on members of two national chambers and 17 regional parliaments. Comparing these data with those of a simultaneous survey carried out on Spanish citizens and with data from previous research a decade ago, the book examines the changes that have occurred in representation during the course of the Great Recession and provides evidence of the growing distance between citizens and parliamentary elites. Additionally, using data from the Comparative Candidates Survey, the book compares the ideological congruence between citizens and their representatives in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece.