Dispersed Democratic Leadership : Origins, Dynamics, and Implications

This collection of essays seeks to explore the unique way democracy disperses leadership, and the significant opportunities and challenges it presents to democratic leaders.

This book examines both the scope and consequences of the dispersal of the leadership role in democratic societies, a topic that has been relatively neglected by a political science literature dominated by studies of executive power. Individual chapters investigate the many loci of leadership found in modern democracies, some ancient and some newly emergent, some institutionalised and some ad-hoc, some self-consciously political and some avowedly a-political. In assessing the effects of leadership dispersal, the book argues that understanding how policies are shaped in a democracy requires balancing the usual person-centred approach with one that is more contextual, institutional, and relational. The public leadership role of people in business, the media, non-governmental organisations, bureaucracy, law, show-business and many other areas are instructively investigated to enhance our appreciation of the complexity of democratic political systems and to allow us to assess the effects, both good and ill, of democratic leadership dispersal.