The Oxford Handbook of Political Leadership

Political leadership has made a comeback. It was studied intensively not only by political scientists but also by political sociologists and psychologists, Sovietologists, political anthropologists, and by scholars in comparative and development studies from the 1940s to the 1970s. Thereafter, the field lost its way with the rise of structuralism, neo-institutionalism, and rational choice approaches to the study of politics, government, and governance. Recently, however, students of politics have returned to studying the role of individual leaders and the exercise of leadership to explain political outcomes. The list of topics is nigh endless: elections, conflict management, public policy, government popularity, development, governance networks, and regional integration. In the media age, leaders are presented and stage-managed--spun--DDLas the solution to almost every social problem. Through the mass media and the Internet, citizens and professional observers follow the rise, impact, and fall of senior political officeholders at closer quarters than ever before.

This Handbook encapsulates the resurgence by asking, where are we today? It orders the multidisciplinary field by identifying the distinct and distinctive contributions of the disciplines. It meets the urgent need to take stock. It brings together scholars from around the world, encouraging a comparative perspective, to provide a comprehensive coverage of all the major disciplines, methods, and regions. It showcases both the normative and empirical traditions in political leadership studies, and juxtaposes behavioural, institutional, and interpretive approaches. It covers formal, office-based as well as informal, emergent political leadership, and in both democratic and undemocratic polities.

R. A. W. Rhodes is Professor of Government (Research) at the University of Southampton (UK); Adjunct Professor of Government and Public Policy at Griffith University (Brisbane, Australia); and Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of Newcastle (UK). Previously, he was the Director of the UK Economic and Social Research Council's 'Whitehall Programme' (1994-1999); Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University (2006-11); and Director of the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University (2007-8). He is the author or editor of some 30 books. He is life Vice-President of the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom; a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia; and an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences (UK). He has also been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and he was editor of Public Administration from 1986 to 2011.

Paul 't Hart is Professor of Public Administration at the Utrecht School of Governance, which he joined in 2001. He is also associate Dean at the Netherlands School of Government in The Hague. He was previously at Leiden University's Department of Public Administration from 1987-2004, and has held visiting positions at the University of Canberra, Nuffield College Oxford, and the Stockholm Centre of Organizational Research (SCORE) of Stockholm University. Between 2001-2005, he was adjunct professor of public management at the Swedish Defence College in Stockholm. He has authored or edited 20 books in English and a further 14 in Dutch.

1. Puzzles of political leadership, Paul t Hart and R. A. W. Rhodes
Part I. Thinking about political leadership: traditions and disciplines
2. Leadership in Western political thought, Nannerl O. Keohane
3. Theory of democratic leadership in action, Frank Hendriks and Niels Karsten
4. Confucianism and political leadership, Joseph Chan and Elton Chan
5. Feminism, Laura Sjoberg
6. Political science, David S. Bell
7. Administrative leadership, R. A. W. Rhodes
8. Political psychology and the study of political leadership, Margaret G. Hermann
9. Psychoanalytic perspectives on political leaders and leadership, Stanley A. Renshon
10. The social psychological study of leadership, Stephen D. Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam and Michael J. Platow
11. Whimpers from a dog that doesn't bark: rational choice approaches to leadership, Geoffrey Brennan and Michael Brooks
12. Anthropology and political leadership, Cris Shore
Part II. Studying political leadership: analytical and methodological perspectives
13. Institutional analysis, Ludger Helms
14. Contextual analysis, Paul t Hart
15. Political leadership and decision analysis, David Brule, Alex Mintz and Karl DeRouen, Jr.
16. Leaders as story-tellers: social constructionist approaches to political leadership, Keith Grint
17. Rhetorical and performative analysis, John Uhr
18. Experimental analysis, Rose McDermott
19. Observational analysis, Francesca Gains
20. At-a-distance analysis, Mark Schafer
21. Biographical analysis, James Walter
22. Political personality profiling, Jerrold M. Post
Part III. Political leadership at work
23. Civic leadership, Richard A. Couto
24. Party and electoral leadership, Marina Costa Lobo
25. Populism and political leadership, Cas Mudde and Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser
26. It's the singer, not the song: understanding leadership as performance, John Gaffney
27. Political leadership in networks, Erik-Hans Klijn
28. Political leadership in times of crisis, Chris Ansell, Arjen Boin and Paul t Hart
Part IV. Executive leadership in the West
Presidential leadership: the United States and beyond
29. Leadership and the American presidency, David McKay
30. Presidential communication from Hustings to Twitter, Jeffrey E. Cohen
31. Executive leadership in semi-presidential systems, Robert Elgie
Prime ministerial leadership: Westminster and beyond
32. The variability of prime ministers, Patrick Weller
33. The contingencies of prime ministerial power in the UK, Andrew Blick and George W. Jones
34. The mortal temples of the king: prime ministers and their advisers in parliamentary democracies, Chris Eichbaum and Richard Shaw
35. Cabinet ministers: leaders, team players, followers?, Rudy B. Andeweg
Part V. Political leadership below and beyond the national level
36. Local political leaders, Colin Copus and Steve Leach
37. Regional political leadership, John Wanna
38. Leadership and international cooperation, Charles F. Parker and Christer Karlsson
39. Leadership of international organizations, Bob Reinalda and Bertjan Verbeek
Part VI. Political leadership beyond the West
40. Political leadership in China, Bo Zhiyue
41. Latin American leadership, Harvey F. Kline
42. Post-communist leadership, Leslie Holmes
43. A leadership renaissance, revolution or reversion? Probing the emerging study and scholarship on African political leadership, Gerrie Swart, Jo-Ansie van Wyk and Maryke Botha
Part VII. Debating political leadership
44. Training and development for political leadership, Jean Hartley
45. Does gender matter?, Patricia Sykes
46. What have we learned?, Jean Blondel