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Course Description

Summary

Political leadership is one of the most under-researched and under-theorized subjects in contemporary political science, despite an abundance of political biographies and a rich literature on organizational and managerial leadership. This 7-week seminar is devoted to exploring and analyzing leadership from a political perspective. We will examine different prescriptive and empirical paradigms of political leadership, the relationship between leadership (agency) and structure or institutions in the political process, leadership as a potential driver of constructive social change, the contemporary crisis of leadership in many developing countries, and illustrative case studies of political leadership from around the world, including Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, and presidential leadership in the United States.