Political Leadership Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Political Leadership - Research Paper Example Shapiro (2007) has also pointed out that administration is a mere part of leadership because relying on administration solely makes a leadership style repetitive, predictable and vulnerable to macro environmental changes. To understand political leadership, one has to understand the multi-causal social processes which create the drive for leadership. Greenstein (2006) has defined political leadership as the subtype of human social leadership. An individual cannot define political leadership or grasp the normative prescriptions of political leadership without enquiring about values, power relations attitudes and action of leaders in cultural-institutional and historical context (Peele, 2005). In the political leadership, both leaders and followers pass through the casual but circular sequence of power exchange and motivation building (Walzer, 2007). However, Peele (2005) has argued that political leadership is a widely experienced phenomenon but understanding about the phenomenon is p retty much tacit in nature. For example, phenomenon such as war between countries, central human rights controversies, Olympic rivalries etc might act as situations which deal with political leadership. One thing is clear from the argument of research scholars that it is very difficult to create a standardized definition of political leadership due to involvement of both institutional and historical contexts. Ruscio (2004) has rightly stated that no political leadership concept is complete without the understanding its role on democratic government. For example, throughout the history of mankind, societies have asked for certain rules and procedures in order to create a practical framework which can represent the interest of democratic society.... This paper stresses that Readers of this research paper might question that why the researcher has not yet provided a concrete definition of political leadership? Well, the fact is that definition of political leadership changes from country to country. For example, a political leader with a sentimental and compassionate is ideal choice in Indian context but the same leader would be viewed as failure in Russian cultural context. According to Vigoda, Elgie and Peele, a political must have characteristics such as, 1- a strong ethical character and personality which can synchronize with ethical-cultural character of subordinates, 2- a constructive agenda for solving a particular problem, 3- interpretive judgment to define a situation to followers and 4- the material or intangible technique to mobilize the support of followers. However, there is no doubt that political leadership has direct connection with military, law authority or ideological leadership hence it will not be wrong to as sume that political leadership is modified version of social leadership. This report makes a conclusion that it is evident from the above discussion that responsibility of a political leader differs along with the political environment of a country. For example, behavior of a democratic political leader significantly differs from an autocratic leader. The researcher is begging pardon of the readers for emphasizing more on democratic aspects of leadership in contrast to other aspects. But, it was a matter of personal choice for the researcher and the researcher believes that democratic political leadership is flexible enough to fit into modern business environment.