Political Leadership

Abstract

This chapter draws on the fields of politics and performance to analyze the nature of leadership performance in contemporary political societies. It recovers neglected themes about leadership performance originally articulated by two political thinkers deeply interested in the role of public performance by political leaders, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Walter Bagehot, both of whom can help strengthen contemporary appraisals of leadership performance. The two thinkers evaluate leadership performance quite differently, using different performance standards. The eighteenth-century philosopher Rousseau devised a moral critique of modern liberalism, including a detailed evaluation of underdeveloped modes of leadership performance typical of modern liberal political regimes. Rousseau’s alternative leadership morality sketched in The Social Contract remains a powerful source for contemporary analysis of the limits of liberalism and of the options for more egalitarian, republican alternatives.