(New Horizons in Public Policy Series) Howard J. Elcock - Political Leadership (2001, Edward Elgar Pub) PDF

Political Leadership
Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc.

NEW HORIZONS IN PUBLIC POLICY
General Editor: Wayne Parsons

Professor of Public Policy, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London,
UK
This series aims to explore the major issues facing academics and practitioners working
in the field of public policy at the dawn of a new millennium. It seeks to reflect on where
public policy has been, in both theoretical and practical terms, and to prompt debate on
where it is going. The series emphasises the need to understand public policy in the
context of international developments and global change. New Horizons in Public Policy
publishes the latest research on the study of the policy making process and public
management, and presents original and critical thinking on the policy issues and problems
facing modern and post-modern societies.
Titles in the series include:
Beyond the New Public Management

Changing Ideas and Practices in Governance
Edited by Martin Minogue, Charles Polidano and David Hulme
Economic Decentralization and Public Management Reform

Edited by Maureen Mackintosh and Rathin Roy
Public Policy in the New Europe

Eurogovernance in Theory and Practice
Edited by Fergus Carr and Andrew Massey
Politics, Governance and Technology

A Postmodern Narrative on the Virtual State
P.H.A. Frissen
Public Policy and Political Institutions

The Role of Culture in Traffic Policy
Frank Hendriks
Public Policy and Local Governance

Institutions in Postmodern Society
Peter Bogason
Implementing European Union Public Policy

Roger Levy
The Internationalization of Public Management

Reinventing the Third World State
Edited by Willy McCourt and Martin Minogue
Howard Elcock
Howard Elcock
Professor of Government and Honorary Research Fellow,
University of Northumbria at Newcastle, UK
NEW HORIZONS IN PUBLIC POLICY SERIES
Edward Elgar
Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA
© Howard Elcock 2001
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system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
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Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc.

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Elcock, H.J. (Howard James)
Political leadership / Howard Elcock
(New horizons in public policy series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Political leadership. I. Title. II. New horizons in public policy.
JC330.3 .E43 2001

303.3'4–dc21 00–057679
ISBN 1 84064 059 6

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bookcraft (Bath) Ltd.
Contents
Preface vii
PART I THEORIES OF LEADERSHIP
1 Why is leadership important? 3

2 Some classic analyses of political leadership 20
3 The personalities and environments of political leaders 43
4 Leadership, administration and management 64
5 The psychology of leadership 85
PART II LEADERSHIP ROLES
6 The functions of leadership: governing roles 105

7 The functions of leadership: governance and allegiance roles 128
8 The apparatus of leadership 149
9 Case study: leadership in British local government 166
10 Setting the course: leadership, not management 186
Bibliography 195
Index 209
v
In Memoriam
ROBERT BAXTER
Fearless iconoclast and true friend

Preface
Politics, declared Aristotle, is the master science. Rather more recently, Bernard
Crick described political science as either the most imperialistic or the most
parasitic of the social sciences. Certainly, it is very wide ranging and no scholar
would nowadays claim to be equally interested or expert in all branches of this
large and fissiparous discipline.
My primary interest in politics has always been in how political decisions are
taken. At first, the primary focus was international and historical: the process
by which the Treaty of Versailles was written. More recently, it has been
decision making in local government, both as a scholar and in practical terms
as a member of the first two Humberside County Councils and a member of its
leadership group.
Over the last five years, the opportunity has come my way to interview senior
politicians and officials about their leadership roles in local governments in the
United States of America, Germany and northern England. However, when
seeking analytical frameworks to use in presenting the findings resulting from
these interviews, I found that such analytical frameworks were curiously
lacking, despite the repeated debates about the ‘core executive’ in local
government which have been carried on in Britain under the general banner of
corporate management. This book is an attempt to develop some of the outlines
for such a framework.
This task, however, is the philosopher’s stone of modern political science.
Hence, to claim to have provided definitive answers to the many questions that
surround political leadership would be arrogant indeed. So this effort is offered
as a contribution to enabling people to think through the concept of political
leadership at a time when the managerialist receipts offered by the ‘New Right’
may be giving way to a new political and administrative paradigm: the ‘Third
Way’. It is certainly no claim of mine that all the relevant questions have been
satisfactorily answered here. Indeed, some of them may not even have been
asked! I hope only that perhaps what follows will help make a little more sense
of a complicated, greatly abused but most important political concept.
This is a book in the British political science tradition. It is eclectic in its
methodology, drawing on a wide range of sources. It does not seek to formulate
‘scientific’ propositions about how leaders behave and what objectives they
seek. The public choice theorists and their supporters in political science would
vii
viii Preface
have us treat leaders as ‘rational maximizers’ who will act in the ways which
are guaranteed to maximize their support among their followers. No allowance
is made for idealism and altruism, yet there is plenty of evidence that political
leaders are motivated by both – and, equally, by irrational hatreds.
The debts of gratitude I have incurred in nearly 40 years of teaching and
research are obviously legion. However, a few people must be singled out for
special thanks. First among equals come my good friends and colleagues at the
State of New York College at Fredonia, who helped me greatly both with the
interviews with American mayors and in developing the ideas that underlie this
book. In particular, my hearty thanks for their friendship and advice go to Len
Faulk and Bill Muller in the Political Science Department, Tom Rywick in
Psychology and Lee Braude in Sociology. In Germany, good friends at the
Fachhochschule fuer oeffentliche Verwaltung Nordrhein-Westfalen, with whom
the University of Northumbria has enjoyed scholarly links for ten years and
more, have given me much help and support, notably Friedrich Schwegmann
of the Fachhochschule’s Muenster campus and Wolf Bovermann in Wuppertal.
Simone Kruthoff and her friend Petra Weber were invaluable and charming
companions and translators during the German phase of the research.
I am also truly grateful to the very busy men and women in all three countries
who gave their time to answer my questions. Since they were mostly
interviewed on condition of anonymity, they cannot be named here but, if any
of them read this, you know who you are and I am sincerely grateful. My fellow
members and the officers of the former Humberside County Council also gave
me many insights, whether consciously or otherwise!
In Britain, I must thank my colleagues and students at the universities of
Hull and Northumbria for their tolerance of my eccentric teaching and other
habits over the years, as well as for their own varied contributions to my ideas
about leadership and management and their support of my research efforts.
David Welsh, Bill Hartas and Lord Norton of Louth have been especially
helpful. Other friends who have helped by reading and commenting on parts of
the book include David Shaw and Judith Phillips. Lastly, this book’s dedicatee
was, until his tragically early death, an invaluable source of inspiration, encour-
agement and challenge, as well as being a greatly treasured friend.
Of course, none of these good souls bears any responsibilities for the in-
adequacies and errors in what follows.
Howard Elcock
PART I
Theories of Leadership
1. Why is leadership important?
RIVAL THEORIES OF LEADERSHIP
Leadership is central to politics and government but its definition is elusive.

The Book of Proverbs warns that ‘Where there is no vision, the people perish’
(29: 18). Vision has to come from leaders. We often hear people complain that
‘scum rises to the top’, or ‘a fish rots from the head down’, when they are
disgruntled about the organization they work for or pessimistic about its future.
However, leadership has had a mixed press. On the one hand some, like Georg
Friedrich Hegel (1822) and Thomas Carlyle (1841), have argued that world
historical figures or ‘Great Men’ emerge to change the course of history when
they are needed. For Hegel, such ‘world historical individuals’ are the ‘chosen
vessels of the Spirit’ but they may also ‘act from selfish or wicked motives’
(Plamenatz, 1963, vol. II: 205). Such theories have also been used to justify
the actions of leaders who have perpetrated horrors required by their visions,
such as Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, whose projects transcended all the
barriers, not just of decency but of simple humanity (Bullock, 1990).
Although Hitler’s ‘Final Solution to the Jewish Question’ must stand alone
in its sheer evilness, there have been many others. Stalin’s forced collectiviza-
tion and industrialization of the Soviet Union in the late 1920s and early 1930s
served both to bring about economic change and to reinforce his personal hold
on power. However, these aims were achieved at the cost of untold millions of
deaths among the kulaks, ethnic minorities and dissidents who were displaced,
persecuted or eliminated to secure obedience to Stalin’s commands. Regrettably,
there have been many examples since of leaders who have led their peoples to
vilification and doom. Current examples include Presidents Saddam Hussein of
Iraq and Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia. Their determination to act out their
nationalistic fantasies have turned their countries into impoverished rogue states
because of the evil deeds, including mass exterminations, which have been
carried out on their orders.
On the other hand, there are those who argue that individual leaders and their
followers are in reality merely pawns in the hands of the economic or social
forces which really determine the development of peoples and nations. Marxist
analyses of political power assert that social change and revolutions result from
conflicts between successive ruling classes and the new classes which displace
them as the economy moves from one stage of development to the next. Thus
3
4 Theories of leadership
aristocracy is displaced by the bourgeoisie as society moves from feudalism to

capitalism with the development of manufacturing industry and consequently
urban communities. Capitalism in turn generates an exploited proletariat with
nothing to sell but its labour. Thus alienated from the products of their labour,
the proletarians will eventually overthrow capitalism and bring about the final
socialist revolution. The triumph of the proletarian revolution leads to the estab-
lishment of the final and ideal society in which there will be no further
revolutions because there is then no further oppressed class to rebel against it.
The driving force behind this process of historical determinism is the conflict
between the economic power holders – the ruling class – and the oppressed
class, which sooner or later displaces them. The political system and its
development are part of the superstructure, whose function is to conceal the
power of successive ruling classes from the masses. Hence economics governs
politics. Politics persuades the mass of the people that they have a say in the
government of their country when in reality the political leaders they elect are
either members of the ruling class or that class’s pawns. Politics, like religion,
is therefore an opiate of the masses which prevents them from becoming
conscious of their oppressed state and removing the ruling class by mounting
a revolution.
By contrast, elite theorists, including Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto and
Robert Michels, whose ideas were developed in opposition to the Marxists’
socioeconomic analysis, argue that the source of the domination of the mass of
the people by small groups of leaders is essentially political, not economic. It
results from the development of collective political organizations such as
political parties which become dominated by their functionaries: leaders,
secretaries, delegates to party bodies or bureaucrats. The cause of this domination
of the many by the few is therefore political, not economic. It is at least in part
covert. Geraint Parry summarized the elite theorists’ thesis as follows:
The appearance of democratic majority control over the minority is deceptive. The
minority is in a position to manipulate the electoral process to its own ends by means
of a range of measures from sheer coercion of voters, through bribery or the skilled
use of propaganda to the selection of the candidates. The sovereign electorate will
‘choose’ its leaders from those acceptable to the elite. (1969: 31)
Elite theorists argue that all political structures will inevitably be dominated
by small groups of office holders: this is Robert Michels’s ‘iron law of
oligarchy’ (1915, bk VI, ch. 2). Michels argues that, once a person gains a party
office, such as local, regional or national secretary or treasurer, he or she will
retain that office for many years and so becomes a member of the party’s
decision-making and administrative apparatus. The network of such func-
tionaries runs the party and hence controls its decisions. Hence his famous
Why is leadership important? 5
saying, ‘who says organisation, says oligarchy’ (1915: 401), because mass
membership political parties are run by these networks of office holders. For
elite theorists, political structures and processes, not economic processes, are
fundamental to explaining power structures.
More recently, public choice theorists have argued that the self-interested
rationality of politicians and bureaucrats inevitably produces inflated bureau-
cracies because officials aim to maximize their budgets as well as the number
of people who work for them (Tullock, 1976). Inefficiency is compounded by
the electoral cycle, which leads to the over-provision of public services because
politicians expand them in order to win elections (Downs, 1957), because
political leaders are rational maximizers who act to maximize their electoral
support (Fiorina and Schepsle, 1989). Again, therefore, the power to make
collective decisions falls into few hands.
LEADERSHIP IN THE NEW RIGHT DECADES
Over the last 20 years, the public choice theorists have seen their ideas adopted
by two political leaders who were important agents of change. Margaret
Thatcher and Ronald Reagan led their countries in directions in which, in some
respects, political leadership might be expected to become less important as a
result of the changes they wrought, because their project was to reduce the part
that government plays in people’s lives, to get the state off the backs of the
people. However, they had to become dominant leaders and centralize control
in their own hands in order to be able to do this.
Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan both personified a new path in
government which proposed replacing the consensus welfare state policies
which had dominated the 30 years after the end of the Second World War with
new economic and social policies which favoured free markets and individual
self-reliance (Elcock, 1982). They regarded government intervention as
inherently undesirable because it is inefficient in providing public services, as
well as encouraging an unhealthy dependence upon the state among the
population. Wherever possible, therefore, public service provision should be
reduced or removed altogether and replaced, where providing the services is
necessary at all, by private provision, through hiving them off to private cor-
porations or contracting them out to private companies wherever possible.
Public spending should be reduced to the essential minimum so that taxes can
be cut and people thus set free to make their own spending choices. Citizens
should be encouraged to provide for themselves in unemployment, sickness
and old age, as far as possible independently of state support or services
For its part, the state must become a residual, discharging only those functions
which inescapably belong to it, even then doing so wherever possible through
the medium of contracts with private suppliers to provide the necessary goods
and services. The ideal government thus becomes little more than a bundle of
contracts. In consequence, the values dominating the management of
government were restricted to the ‘three Es’ – economy, efficiency and effec-
tiveness. The provision of collective goods or benefits and the collective public
interest were not important any more. Other values, including equity and even
probity, were neglected or downgraded in importance in the drive to promote
‘can-do’ management, at the price of reducing public servants’ defences against
corruption (Chapman, 1988a, 1988b). Furthermore, the importance of
developing public policies is greatly reduced if one accepts that the ‘hidden
hand’ of the market, rather than the development of government policies, is the
way to secure optimal results.
Although Thatcher and Reagan were important in setting a new tone in
government and society alike, their philosophy appeared to involve reducing the
importance of political leadership because increasing numbers of decisions
were handed over to markets and the competing companies within them.
Equally, the citizen was to become a customer who chooses whether or not to
purchase a good or service, as well as deciding who should supply it or where
to buy it. Like a customer in a shop, the user of a public service is not expected
directly to participate in its supplier’s government or management. Hence a
form of economic democracy based on market choices would replace political
decision making and public participation in taking government decisions in the
‘New Right’ state, except at the level of Parliament (Waldegrave, 1993).
However, in order to ensure the adoption of these changes across the public
sector, the Thatcher administration in particular greatly centralized control over
the machinery of the state. The powers, discretion and functions of local
councils were greatly reduced by a three-pronged attack. First, financial
stringency was coupled with local tax capping to constrain their budgets.
Secondly, local authorities which became major centres of resistance to the
policies of the ‘New Right’, most notably the Greater London Council, were
abolished. Lastly, local authorities were first encouraged and then compelled
to put many of their activities out to competitive tender. However, the chief
result of this last reform was that councils made changes in their own
management by reorganizing their departmental structures, as well as their
management and industrial relations procedures, in order to retain the contracts
to provide the services for which they are responsible in the face of competition
from the private sector. They were usually successful in winning these contests
against private contractors (Elcock et al., 1988; Shaw et al., 1994, 1995).
Nonetheless, in some cases local government services were taken over by
private contractors.
Furthermore, some local functions were removed from local authorities
altogether and handed over to corporations controlled by boards appointed by
ministers, which were encouraged to run them more entrepreneurially than local
authorities could or would have wished. This in turn aroused mounting concern
that public services were being increasingly provided by a ‘new magistracy’
(Stewart, 1993) which could not be held to account by citizens or their repre-
sentatives. This was the paradox of the Thatcher and Major years: that in order
to devolve power to markets and customers they had to centralize control over
the state (Jenkins, 1995). Similar trends can be identified in the United States,
where special purpose local governments have become more common over the
last 20 years because the traditional local governments are regarded as being
unable to provide specialist services efficiently. However, in the USA they are
usually controlled by committees of elected representatives rather than by
government nominees (Davis and Hall, 1996).
As the 1990s wore on, increasing doubts were expressed about the effects and
even the moral validity of these policies. There is increasing evidence that the
rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, with resultant increasing
social tensions. The managerial values of the ‘three Es’ and their associated
results, such as lower levels of taxation, benefit the middle classes but not the
working classes. They certainly do not benefit the former workers who have
been squeezed out of economic activity by technological change and consequent
reductions in employment opportunities, especially manual workers such as
miners and steelworkers. Churchmen expressed increasing concern about the
‘communities of the left behind’ which have resulted from New Right economic
and social policies (Sheppard, 1983). David Sheppard, Bishop of Liverpool,
David Jenkins of Durham and Graham Dow of Willesden have all provided
spiritual and moral leadership for those who regard the social consequences of
New Right free market policies as morally unacceptable. Significantly, all three
presided over dioceses which have faced economic decline and consequent
severe social problems since 1979.
Several economic analysts, notably Will Hutton (1995) in Britain and J.K.
Galbraith (1993) in the USA, identified an increasingly divided
‘forty–thirty–thirty’ society resulting from these New Right policies. The top
40 per cent, the ‘contented’ population (Galbraith, 1993) do well, holding secure
highly paid jobs and enjoying affluent lifestyles, but the remaining 60 per cent
are in roughly equal proportions marginalized or excluded altogether from the
benefits of increasingly affluent high-technology societies. As a result, urban
riots have broken out repeatedly since 1980 among the excluded populations in
cities from Los Angeles and Chicago to Liverpool and Newcastle upon Tyne.
These and other large cities have also become increasingly dangerous places in
which to live and have in consequence been deserted by the higher income
earners, making the dangers of living there worse and reducing local
governments’ ability to deal with them because of loss of local tax revenue from
the better off (Rusk, 1993). Furthermore, the ‘contented’ 40 per cent may be able
to maintain governments in office which will protect and promote their interests
to the detriment of the marginalized and excluded majorities (Galbraith, 1993).
For the last 20 years public management has been seen as the cure-all for
the ills of government: better management must mean better government. Above
all, it should mean less government. It was accompanied by reforms designed
to encourage individuals to provide for their own welfare rather than relying on
collective provision. Notoriously, Margaret Thatcher told the General Assembly
of the Church of Scotland that ‘there is no such thing as society, only individuals
and families’. This reflected a paradigm shift in social morality, as well as a
similar shift in public policy in the USA and the UK towards a new public
management. It was spearheaded by two charismatic transformational leaders
who changed the established value slopes of their governments and societies.
However, these New Right values did not penetrate the rest of Europe to the
same extent, although some of the resultant policies, notably privatization, have
been more or less extensively copied there and throughout the world.
In continental Europe collectivist Christian-Democratic and Social
Democratic values have survived because the parties of the Right did not
abandon them in favour of the New Right agenda. Although the competition
between Christian and Social Democratic parties has long constituted the basis
of party rivalry in most European democracies, both usually retain a strong
belief in the importance of protecting communal interests. In consequence, both
have continued to accept the need for governments to provide extensive public
services and welfare for the poor. At the end of the 20th century, the social-
democratic tendency was in the ascendant. It has been represented by
Social-Democrat leaders including Jacques Delors, who pursued this agenda
when he was President of the European Commission, Lionel Jospin, Socialist
Prime Minister of France, Gerhardt Schroeder, Federal Chancellor of Germany,
as well as the Scandinavian social democrat governments. Eleven of the
European Union’s 15 member states were governed by social democrat parties
at the end of the millennium.
By contrast, in Britain and the USA the value implications of the new public
management in terms of weakening collective concern and action were
neglected. The ‘three Es’ have been applied to the exclusion of other values,
including equity and support for the disadvantaged. The defences provided by
traditional bureaucratic systems against corruption and other misconduct have
been weakened in the interest of promoting greater efficiency and enterprise,
sometimes with disastrous results (see Elcock, 1991; Chapman, various;
O’Toole, 1996; Lewis, 1997). At the same time, market and business values,
notably individualism and the pre-eminence of the ‘bottom line’ profit margin
as the sole criterion of success, have been accepted as the only legitimate
objectives for governments to pursue, regardless of the social consequences of
thus transplanting business methods into governments. The poor have been
increasingly regarded as undeserving, regardless of the reasons for their poverty

in the ‘forty–thirty–thirty’ societies that the New Right governments created
(Hutton, 1995). The issue is no longer just poverty but the marginalization or
exclusion of the poor from the standard of life and work expected by the rest
of society.
This focus on achieving greater economy and efficiency, coupled with greater
effectiveness, although this has been defined in restricted terms, has produced
undeniable improvements in public management, particularly in terms of
increased efficiency and more helpful customer service. The chief executives
of Next Steps agencies, for example, have been innovative and enterprising in
finding ways to deliver better public services for constant levels of resources
or to maintain service quality while saving money. Public servants at official
counters have been persuaded to become more helpful. The surroundings in
which they work have been rendered more comfortable for staff and clients
alike. These gains are undeniable but the New Right ideology has also resulted
in a series of policy disasters.
Potentially the most cataclysmic of these was the BSE (bovine spongiform
encephalopathy) catastrophe, which may have been a direct result of deregu-
lation. In the early 1980s, regulations requiring animal foodstuffs to be heated
to a high temperature in order to kill off infective agents were abolished and the
practice ceased. By 1986, the effects of the cross-transmission of the sheep
disease scrapie to dairy cattle through food containing the remnants of sheep
carcases was becoming apparent in the appearance of the first ‘mad cows’. The
possibility that it has spread to humans through eating beef, in the form of new
variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, threatens Britain with a possible public health
disaster of unknown but possibly massive proportions.
Some other policy disasters which have been partly or wholly the result of
the new managerialist approach, are set out in Box 1.1.
The long hegemony of the New Right also led to increasing scandals about
misconduct in more or less high places. The climactic revelations of such
malpractice in British government were the Scott Report on the Arms for Iraq
affair and the ‘cash for questions’ scandal in the House of Commons in the
mid-1990s.
Growing doubts about the outcomes of New Right policies and the new public
management, coupled with rising concern about low standards of public (and
private) morality, have led to a decline in public support for the New Right. At
the same time, repeated electoral rejection of the traditional collectivist policies
of socialism led to the emergence of another new value paradigm on the Left,
notably in the US New Democrat Party and the British New Labour Party. These
values are imperfectly defined, but their outlines have gradually emerged more
clearly, as the ‘Third Way’ (Giddens, 1998; Gould, 1998). Its definition is still
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BOX 1.1 POLICY DISASTERS OF THE NEW RIGHT

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• Railway privatization was carried out with excessive haste

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before the 1997 General Election, resulting in a deteriorating

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for passengers as a result of the fragmentation of the industry.

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The National Audit Office has now confirmed that the railway
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system was sold off too cheaply.

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• The Poll Tax, which was defeated by public hostility to it, was
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the second biggest New Right policy disaster. The government

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obstinately implemented its Community Charge in the face of

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repeated warnings that it was unworkable. It subsequently

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persevered in the face of rising public anger and disorder which

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developed as the injustices of the new tax became evident. Its

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failure was the result of ideological blinkering because

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dissenters were excluded from the policy-making process

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during Thatcher’s third term of office.

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• The elimination of redundancy to increase efficiency has

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involved ending the provision of extra facilities or resources

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which are not normally needed but whose availability may

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become vital in exceptional circumstances. One adverse

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consequence has been the annual hospital beds crisis in the

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NHS, because the slack in the system that formerly absorbed

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exceptional demands is no longer available.

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• Increased vandalism has resulted from de-manning because

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vandals can now usually deface buildings and vehicles without

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fear of detection. The response has been to introduce closed-

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circuit television (CCTV) cameras, with attendant threats to

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privacy and civil liberties.

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• The loss of community policing, partly through misdirected

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enthusiasm for efficiency and economy and partly through

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misguided faith in the ability of new technology to substitute for

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police officers patrolling and living in the communities whose

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members they should be protecting. As a result, the nature of

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the relationship between police and public has been funda-

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mentally changed. The Macpherson inquiry into the bungled

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Metropolitan Police investigation of the racialist murder of

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Stephen Lawrence demonstrated the extent to which the police

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have lost contact with local communities.

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• Failures by private contractors to deliver adequate levels of

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services. For example, Wandsworth London Borough Council

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was one of the first local authorities to contract many of its

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services out to private contractors in the wake of the 1980 Local

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Government Planning and Land Act. It tendered out the catering

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for its old people’s homes but it became apparent as a result of

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relatives’ complaints that the caterer had reduced the residents’

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meal portions to starvation levels in order to protect the

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company’s profit margin. The contractor concerned was

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discharged, but not before significant suffering had occurred.

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The issue of how to monitor contractors’ performance effectively,

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without spending most of the money saved by resorting to

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tendering in the first place in order to do so, has resurfaced

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repeatedly as contracting out has become more common

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throughout the public services.

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hazy: indeed, in January 1999, a Labour peer described it as ‘gibberish’

(Hattersley, 1999). Nonetheless, its guiding ideas are clear, including a new com-
munitarianism (Etzioni, 1968) as well as the revival of some but not all the
collectivist values of socialism and post-1900 British liberalism which found
their ultimate expression in the economic theories of J.M. Keynes (Keynes,
1936). Although defining the ‘Third Way’ is still fraught with difficulties,
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BOX 1.2 POLICY COMPONENTS OF THE THIRD

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• Ending social exclusion, especially through the ‘New Deal’ by

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which the unemployed are to be encouraged and assisted to

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return to work both for their own satisfaction and to reduce the
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burden imposed on the economy by social security benefits.

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This ‘New Deal’ has been copied by Tony Blair’s government

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from President Clinton’s ‘welfare to work’ policies. However, in

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both the USA and Britain, there is a danger of confusing the

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objectives of the reform of the benefit system between

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increasing social inclusion and saving money. Nonetheless,

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protecting the vulnerable is a basic Third Way value.

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• Freedom as autonomy. People are free if they can strive to

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achieve their aspirations and are constrained only in the interest

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of protecting others from harm, in the spirit of Sir Isaiah Berlin’s

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(1962) negative concept of liberty.

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• Equality is equality of opportunity rather than the equality of

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outcomes favoured by some traditional socialists. It is to be

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achieved especially through generally higher standards of

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educational attainment.
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• Greater fairness and equity which entails affording protection to

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the vulnerable while encouraging them to make greater efforts

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to support themselves.
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• The necessity of maintaining ‘prudent finance’. The centre-left

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governments of the late 1990s are determined to present

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themselves as not being ‘tax and spend’ governments like their

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predecessors. The new approach was pioneered by Bill

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Clinton’s ‘New Democrats’ during the 1992 presidential

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campaign. It is intended particularly to reassure the ‘contented’

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40 per cent that they can vote for left of centre candidates
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without fearing that they risk imposing higher taxes on

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themselves.
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• The development of partnerships, especially government–

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business collaboration, which should replace the old left-wing

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tradition of taking labour’s part in its eternal conflict with capital.

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The policy of New Right governments of levering support from

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private companies for public projects is being continued through

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business–government partnerships like the British Private

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Finance Initiative (Osborne and Gaebler, 1993, ch. 7).

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• The need to restore a sense of community and collective

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responsibility. Individuals and communities must accept respon-

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sibility for their welfare. Rights carry with them correlative duties
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(Hohfeld, 1913). The British Labour government’s slogan in

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dealing with both individuals and other government agencies

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is ‘something for something’.

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• There should be no authority without democracy. Devolution

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and community government are being developed, notably

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through the creation of elected assemblies in Scotland, Wales

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and Northern Ireland, but the Blair government is over-anxious

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that it should be able to control what happens in these devolved

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governments. In the United States, several functions and

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powers, notably welfare, have been transferred from the federal

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government to the states.

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• The state should act as a regulator rather than necessarily being

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a direct provider of goods and services. Third Way politicians

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often quote with approval Osborne and Gaebler’s dictum that

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the state’s role should be ‘steering rather than rowing’ (1993,

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ch. 1). The state enables people to survive and prosper, rather
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than providing them directly with the means to do so.

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• ‘Joined-up’ government: the need to reduce ‘departmentalitis’

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and develop coordinated approaches to policy problems such

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as ending social exclusion. In Britain, a Social Exclusion Unit

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based in the Cabinet Office is charged with developing coherent

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policies to end social exclusion.

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• Sustainability is recognised as a means to respond to expert

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and public concern about the environment. However, the

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evidence from the fate of the deputy prime minister’s integrated

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transport policy so far seems to indicate that the British New

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Labour government is not prepared to take on the car lobbies.

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Equally, President Clinton failed in his attempt to introduce an

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energy tax after 1992, which was watered down by Congress

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from a tax on every British thermal unit of energy used, to

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encourage energy conservation, to a 5 cents a gallon increase

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in the USA’s ludicrously low gas tax, as a result of lobbying by

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the oil and automobile companies (Stephanopoulos, 1999).

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@@
Box 1.2 attempts to summarize its principal policy components in order to

illustrate how different its precepts are from those of the New Right.
The successful implementation of this agenda requires another radical shift
in the ‘value slopes’ of governments, especially in Britain and the USA where
the Third Way is challenging market-based policies and approaches to
management which became entrenched during long periods of government by
the New Right. Changing value slopes is a matter for leaders, not managers,
because the tone, the ethos of society has to be changed, not just the way the
government and its agencies operate. Above all, the Third Way leaders must
address the creation of a renewed sense of collective responsibility if their
policies are to be implemented and their governments are to retain office. They
must do this in the face of the individualism which is still being energetically
preached by the leaders of the New Right and their denial of valid roles for
society in protecting individuals and their families.
THE IMPACT OF NEW UNCERTAINTIES
The New Right also neglected the need for governments to influence and control
the effects of increasingly rapid technological change and the consequent
economic and social disruption. Rapidly developing information and commu-
nications technologies have produced enormous changes in working methods
and organizational structures. New technologies have also made new approaches
to evaluating public and indeed private services possible. Often the response,
especially in the private sector but increasingly in government too, encouraged
by the management gurus of the 1980s, has been to throw large numbers of
people whose roles have become redundant on the rubbish heap of long-term
unemployment through programmes of ‘downsizing’ or ‘delayering’. Charles
Handy (1997) has written eloquently of the moral dangers inherent in the
increasingly pressured and self-centred lifestyles of the managers of major
industries and the need once more to consider the human needs of those who
work in them. He argues that managers, workers and the redundant alike are
hungry in spirit for recognition that they too are human, that they too have
needs for a satisfactory working life, environment and lifestyle. Management
methods need to change in order to prevent the dehumanization of industry as
the pace of technological change accelerates ever faster (Toffler, 1979).
Equally, the uncertainties created by the development of European
integration, not to mention ‘globalization’, are making new demands on political
and business leaders at the local, regional, national and supranational levels.
Because of the accelerating pace of technological, economic and international
change there is a need for leaders to set a new moral tone in industry,
government and society which encourages flexibility but also provides some
reassurance of individual and collective security. However, it is not yet at all
clear either that the necessary leaders are emerging or that the circumstances
of contemporary societies will permit the development of such leadership.
As the need for leadership has increased in the face of increasingly complex
and urgent environmental, economic and social problems, together with the
difficulty of coping with increasingly rapid change, the ability of democratic
polities to deliver leaders of the calibre required has been reduced. It is
becoming harder for talented individuals to win and retain office, not least
because of the huge sums of money now required to finance nomination and
election campaigns, especially in the USA. Furthermore, public scandals arising
from leaders’ misdeeds and mistakes have reduced the authority of leadership
offices, so that the citizenry is less inclined to take heed of what its leaders say.
These problems have been exacerbated because today’s media are mercilessly
investigative, ruthless in exposing the actual or possible failings or misdeeds
of incumbent or potential political leaders and other public figures. They reveal
leaders’ peccadilloes regardless of the danger of weakening the legitimacy and
effectiveness of leadership offices such as the US presidency. Thus the damage

done to the prestige of the presidency by the Watergate affair in the early 1970s
(Woodward and Bernstein, 1974, 1977), coupled with the inherent weakness
of that office (Neustadt, 1980) and increasing public cynicism about the wholly
excessive amounts of money now needed to win American nominations and
elections, render the climate for the emergence of effective leaders in that
country adverse.
The Watergate affair reduced the ability of presidents to command legitimacy
or resist allegations about their public or private conduct. It also resulted in the
ending of the informal constraints which had inhibited the White House press
corps from making disclosures about the president’s personal problems or
misdeeds. It began on 17 June 1972, when five burglars were arrested while
breaking into the Democratic Party’s campaign headquarters in the Watergate
complex in Washington, DC. Diligent investigation by two young Washington
Post reporters forced from the White House a series of increasingly damaging
admissions about the complicity of senior White House staffers and eventually
of President Nixon himself in the burglary and other related illegal or at least
questionable activities. It became clear that the burglary was part of an attempt
by the Republican Party and the president’s own staff to destabilize and discredit
the Democrats’ campaign against President Nixon’s re-election in November.
This chain of misdeeds was the more extraordinary because there was never
much doubt that Nixon would secure re-election (Woodward and Bernstein,
1976, 1977). The climax was Nixon’s resignation from the presidency in August
1973 in the face of impeachment. Although at the time the exposure of
Watergate was regarded as a triumph for persistent investigative journalism
which made heroes of the two reporters, not least in a major movie, the longer
term consequences of their actions have not been wholly beneficial to the
development of the American polity. Subsequent presidents’ ability to lead
their country has been impaired, both by the loss of credibility of the office
which resulted from Richard Nixon’s crimes and because of the ruthless
exposure since of presidential errors and personal peccadilloes by the press.
Clinton adviser George Stephanopoulos declared that ‘Every President is a
Nixon until proved innocent’ (1999: 186).
In the late 1990s, the presidency was still further weakened by the existence
of a divided government in which a Republican Party which is more ideolog-
ically committed than it used to be dominates Congress. It was therefore
particularly disinclined either to accept the policies of the Democratic President
Clinton or to excuse his personal failings, with the result that the House of Rep-
resentatives voted to impeach him just before Christmas 1998, although the
Senate subsequently declined to ratify the charges. This was only the second
time the House had ever used this power. In such a climate of distrust and
perpetual scrutiny, neither effective national nor world leadership is easy for
today’s American president to achieve.
STUDYING LEADERS
Another problem as we seek to identify the attributes and support needed by

political leaders at the end of the 20th century is that, despite the existence of
a multidisciplinary literature (John and Cole, 2000), the tools available to us to
do this are strangely lacking. Studies of political leadership in local governments
in Britain, the USA and Germany are less satisfying and illuminating than they
should be because of the absence of analytical frameworks sufficiently robust
to make sense of the common issues and problems such leaders face, or to permit
effective comparisons among them (Hambleton, 1991; Stoker, 1996; Elcock,
1995b, 1998a, 1998b). From the perspective of the social psychologist, Thomas
Rywick has commented that ‘Leadership is a topic that has had a central position
in the field of group dynamics for several decades but has not, in my view, been
successfully conceptualised nor empirically investigated’ (1998: 55).There are
classic accounts of the nature of leadership, notably those of Niccolo Machiavelli
(1513) and Max Weber (1948). There are also many biographical studies of
individual political leaders, such as American presidents and British prime
ministers, but there have been relatively few attempts to draw systematic
conclusions by comparing political leaders’ careers. James D. Barber’s (1992)
analysis of the characters of successive US presidents is a rare exception.
There is also an extensive literature on leadership in management, ranging
from the idiosyncratic but persuasive accounts of the nature of leadership in
industry given by Sir John Harvey Jones (1988, 1990, 1992) to the more
systematic analyses of business leaders offered by Henry Mintzberg (1973,
1983) and Warren Bennis (1989). Social and organizational psychologists too
have produced many analyses of reasons why some people emerge as leaders
while others remain content to be followers. They have identified major dangers
in the conduct of leadership, notably Irving Janis’s concept of groupthink (Janis,
1972). The victims of groupthink shield themselves from unwelcome news or
advice which conflicts with their preferred policies or their long established
attitudes, relationships and practices. They therefore make mistakes like the
Bay of Pigs invasion, the escalation of the Korean War and the failure to prepare
for an attack on Pearl Harbor, which were at least in part the result of groupthink.
Patrick Dunleavy (1995a) has suggested that groupthink was one factor
accounting for the many British policy disasters of the New Right years, most
notably the failure of the Poll Tax.
The differences between business and political leadership may make it
difficult to deploy the lessons learnt in business management and organiza-
tional psychology in the service of improving political leadership, above all

because in business, or in the military, it is often possible to identify potential
leaders as they rise through the ranks and train them appropriately (Notar, 1998).
Political leaders are, by contrast, sui generis. Their careers are highly individual
and very varied. Although they may often need and deploy particular assets, par-
ticularly oratorical and forensic abilities, in order to attract and retain support,
they usually rise to office through a series of accidents which may have little
connection with their ability to govern a local community, a province or a
country.
The sources of their power are many and various. Adolf Hitler had little to
commend him as a party or national leader to anyone other than his oratorical
power; until he became leader of the Nazi Party his life had been a consistent
story of failure and obscurity (Bullock, 1962, 1990). He would never have
achieved power but for historical accidents, notably the Great Crash of 1929 and
its disastrous consequences for the German economy in the early 1930s.
However, other leaders’ careers prove that oratorical ability is not a necessary
qualification. The Georgian Joseph Stalin rose through the ranks of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union to become its all-powerful and feared
general secretary not through oratorical brilliance but by unremitting and
devoted committee and administrative work within the Communist Party
apparatus (Bullock, 1990). Had Lenin lived a little longer, Stalin might well
not have survived as general secretary because during the last months of his
life Lenin increasingly sought to warn his colleagues about Stalin’s growing
power (Lenin, 1923).
At a very different level, the legendary ‘boss’ figure of Chicago, Mayor
Richard J. Daley, was a notoriously colourless public speaker (Royko, 1971).
His son Richard M. Daley, the present mayor, is prone to ‘tongue slips’. Paul
M. Green (1991) comments that ‘young Daley’s battles with the English
language were legendary’ (p. 24). The Daleys’ hold on power is explained by
their ability to win and retain the support of a coalition of particular interests
and ethnic groups in Chicago and hence maintain a coherent coalition of support
through the Chicago Democratic machine, not by their oratorical abilities
(Banfield, 1961; Royko, 1971; Green and Holli, 1991).
Hence it is difficult if not impossible to identify potential political leaders and
train them in advance in the ways that are commonly advocated and adopted
to train military officers or senior business managers, because both their careers
and their personal attributes are too varied and unpredictable to permit the
preparation of a generalized training and development programme for them.
All that can be done is to try to identify potential leaders and encourage their
development through training and in other ways, but the individuals who have
been so trained may not in the event be appointed or elected to the leadership
positions for which they have been prepared. Of course, advice and training
can also be offered once they are in office, but they are then likely to be too busy
and preoccupied to take advantage of them.
Our first purpose, therefore, is to consider these various literatures and try to
bring them together to provide an analytical framework for the study of political
leadership, while at the same time also examining methods and structures which
may improve leaders’ chances of success in government. In short, we shall both
increase our understanding of political leaders and leadership and propose ways
in which their ability to govern and govern well might be improved. In the
chapters that follow, therefore, we shall examine first the classic theories of
Niccolo Machiavelli and Max Weber, then look at the accounts of modern
political leadership offered by Richard Neustadt, James D. Barber, R.T.
McKenzie and others. After that we shall consider the management and psy-
chological literatures. The intention is both to increase our understanding why
leaders succeed or fail and to develop suggestions as to how present and future
political leaders can be more effective. To embark on such a dual mission, to
increase our understanding of leadership and to suggest ways of improving
leaders’ performance, may be controversial, but unless we undertake both we
sacrifice an opportunity to try and be useful.
PLAN OF THE BOOK
Part I discusses the various past and present literatures on political and
managerial leadership in order to identify the major issues which a systematic
study of political leadership must address. This chapter has introduced some of
the problems and issues surrounding political leadership and management at
the beginning of the new millennium. Chapter 2 explores the issues concerning
leadership which are raised by some classics of political theory, notably the
writings of Niccolo Machiavelli and Max Weber. It also discusses the contri-
butions made by Robert Michels and other elite theorists to the developing
debate about leadership in modern, complex societies. Chapter 3 looks at more
recent studies of leadership, notably major studies of the great dictators, the
presidents of the United States and British prime ministers. It also includes
studies of local political leadership, including the burgeoning community power
study industry of the 1950s and 1960s.
The emphasis then shifts to attempts to diagnose and remedy the problems
caused by poor leadership and to produce better leaders. Chapter 4 discusses
theories of leadership in management, drawing especially on the work of Henry
Minzberg, Sir John Harvey Jones, Charles Handy and Warren Bennis, to discuss
the importance of leaders in setting the objectives and values of an organiza-
tion. Above all, leaders must maximize the enthusiasm, energies and enterprise
of the organization’s employees and harness them to the achievement of the
company’s objectives. Contingency theories which postulate that the appropriate

leadership style is related not only to the attributes of the organization’s
personnel but also to the nature of the task it has to undertake are particularly
relevant to political leadership but, because of the varied and uncertain nature
of political careers, business approaches to leader training may be of only
limited usefulness. In Chapter 5, the focus moves to examining the psychology
of leaders. From the point of view of seeking to improve leaders’ performance,
the most important contribution made by social psychology has been to increase
our understanding of group dynamics and propose means to avoid groupthink
(Janis, 1972). The dual mission, to increase understanding and propose improve-
ments, is present in all this management and psychological literature.
Part II discusses the roles leaders play in modern government. Chapters 6
and 7 discuss the various governing, governance and allegiance roles leaders
play and explore the personal qualities and support systems they need to fulfil
these roles. Chapter 6 focuses on the governing roles leaders must play if they
are to control and manage the organizations they have been elected or appointed
to lead. Chapter 7 looks at the way leaders manage their relations with other
organizations and hence fulfil their governance roles. Lastly, leaders’ allegiance
roles are concerned with their relationships with the supporters on whom they
must rely for their elevation to and maintenance in their offices.
Chapter 8 examines how leaders are supported in playing these roles and the
ways in which such support has developed in the 20th century, examining them
under three general headings: reducing uncertainty in order to secure more
reliable decisions, increasing creativity in order to challenge established and
complacent orthodoxies, and developing collective learning processes so that
at least some of the mistakes that have been made in the past may be avoided
in the future.
The analysis thus offered is then applied in Chapter 9 to a case study of
political leadership in local government in which we examine the Blair Labour
government’s proposals for strengthening the ‘core executive’ in Britain’s local
authorities, including introducing directly elected executive mayors. In making
these proposals, the government has drawn on other countries’ experience. We
shall assess the proposals’ impact on the governing, governance and allegiance
roles of local government leaders to assess whether the proposed changes are
likely to achieve the government’s stated objectives. Lastly, in Chapter 10, we
return to the central issue: the need for leadership rather than management if
governments are to cope with the pressures and demands made upon them at
the beginning of the new millennium.
2. Some classic analyses of political
leadership
Classic writers on political leadership offer analyses of the related concepts of
power, authority and influence. Modern examples demonstrate how the precepts
of Niccolo Machiavelli, Lao-Tzu, Max Weber and Robert Michels are
applicable to recent political events and phenomena. They also offer pointers
towards both deepening our understanding of the problems of leadership and
proposing means to improve leaders’ chances of success.
MACHIAVELLI’S PRINCE
Gaining and Maintaining Support
Machiavelli’s The Prince (Il Principe) was completed in 1513, but its present-
day relevance is quite extraordinary. He offers a view of the qualities required
for political leadership which still rings true today because Machiavelli was
concerned above all with the fundamental issue of how a ruler first acquires a
coalition of support sufficient to gain office, then maintains it in order to sustain
him in it. The nature of competition for political office has changed enormously
since Machiavelli’s time. Then, the prince needed to gain the support of rival
controllers of armies and wealth, whereas now political leaders need above all
to gain and retain the support of electorates and legislators. Nonetheless, for
both Machiavelli’s Prince and for a modern political leader the central condition
for success is being able to build and thereafter maintain a coalition of support
sufficient to maintain him or her in office. For Machiavelli this was an especially
serious issue where the Prince had captured the state using a mercenary army
and therefore lacks legitimacy: ‘it is necessary for him to be sufficiently prudent
that he may know how to avoid the reproach of those vices which would lose
him his state’ (1513: 85). Modern princes need to maintain the support of
legislators, party workers and voters, all of whom are in a sense mercenaries
because their support must be secured by promises of action in their favour and
maintained by the delivery of at least some of these promised benefits (Fiorina
and Schepsle, 1989). Later we shall identify the skills needed by modern
20
Some classic analyses of political leadership 21
political leaders to gain and retain the support of legislators, party workers and
lobby groups.
Machiavelli listed the attributes that princes need to possess at some stage in
their careers, although some attributes are best avoided at all times. The
combination of the right qualities in the Prince is Machiavelli’s central concept
of virtù – these are the qualities needed to win and hold on to power. Some
may be particularly important while a politician’s career is in the ascendant
because they are needed to win office. However, they may become less
important or even counter-productive once he or she has gained office and
needs to retain it, when other qualities may become more important. Table 2.1
lists the qualities that need to be considered.
Table 2.1 The qualities of the Prince
Liberal (with money) Miserly

Generous Rapacious
Cruel Compassionate
Faithless Faithful
Effeminate and cowardly Bold and brave
Affable Haughty
Lascivious Chaste
Selfish Caring
Hard Easy
Grave Frivolous
Religious Unbelieving
Source: Machiavelli (1513: 84–5).
The Prince must exercise these qualities in the right mixture to maximize and
then retain his support. Above all, he ought to be both ‘a most valiant lion and
a most cunning fox; he will find him feared and respected by everyone’
(Machiavelli, 1513: 92). There are times when it is necessary to make bold
lion-like stands but at others a fox-like deviousness, even evasiveness, is needed
to maintain support. Machiavelli famously advises that ‘a wise lord cannot, nor
ought he to keep faith when such observance might be turned against him and
when the reasons that caused him to pledge it exist no longer’ (ibid.: 93). A
successful prince need not be personally good – at least not all the time.
President Bill Clinton demonstrated his ability to retain a high rating in the
opinion polls because his administration maintained a prosperous, low-inflation
economy as well as achieving a series of foreign policy successes, despite
persistent allegations about improprieties and illegalities in his personal conduct.
Monica Lewinsky, Kathleen Lilley and Paula Jones received a great deal of
media coverage as they made their various contributions to Special Prosecutor

Kenneth Starr’s investigations, but their allegations did not affect the president’s
popularity with the voters: quite the reverse. His high poll ratings even survived
the holding of an impeachment trial by Congress in late 1998 and early 1999.
Hence a modern prince may survive allegations of lasciviousness and faith-
lessness if he is achieving economic and foreign policy success at the same
time.
The Necessity of Good Judgement
Above all, however, the prince has to exercise good judgement and try to avoid
making mistakes:
He need not make himself uneasy at incurring a reproach for those vices without
which the state can only be saved with difficulty, for if everything is considered
carefully, it will be found that something which looks like virtue, if followed, would
be his ruin; whilst something else, which looks like vice, yet followed brings him
serenity and prosperity. (Machiavelli, 1513: 85)
All leaders make mistakes. The art of good judgement lies in not making those
mistakes which will erode their support to the point at which their tenure of
office might be endangered.
This again has contemporary relevance. Richard Neustadt (1980) offers a
remarkably similar view about the ways in which US presidents must ensure
that the mistakes they make are not so extreme or so frequent that they begin
to appear incompetent:
A President who values power need not be concerned with every flaw in his
performance day by day but he has every reason for concern with the residual
impressions of tenacity and skill accumulating in the minds of Washingtonians-at-
large. His bargaining advantages in seeking what he wants are heightened or
diminished by what others think of him. Their thoughts are shaped by what they see.
They do not see alone, they see together. What they think of him is likely to be much
affected by the things they see alike. His look in ‘everybody’s’ eyes becomes strate-
gically important for his influence. Reputation of itself does not persuade but it can
make persuasion easier, or harder, or impossible.
Influence and support can be eroded by making too many mistakes or making
mistakes at crucial points in crises or over important policy decisions. The point
is to avoid making those mistakes or exhibiting those vices which ‘would lose
him his state’.
In his classic study of influence in Chicago, Edward C. Banfield (1961)
argues that influence may be regarded as a sort of currency which its possessor
may either conserve or ‘spend’ in order to secure desired outcomes. Influence
is ‘the ability to get others to act, think or feel as one intends’ (p. 3). However,
excessive ‘saving’ of influence by inaction when action is required, just as
much as unwise ‘spending’ of influence by supporting lost causes or taking
decisions which turn out to be wrong or unwise, may cause the leader’s holding
of the ‘currency’ of influence to be dissipated every bit as quickly as one may
lose one’s savings by making foolish investments on the stock exchange.
Sir Geoffrey Vickers (1965) argued that for policy makers there is in the end
no substitute for the exercise of good judgement, albeit that this can be
developed by studying and practising the ‘art of judgement’. We may be able
to assist leaders to make better judgements by providing more information and
analyses for them to consider in making their judgements, but in the end the
decision maker must make the judgement alone, within the limits of his or her
appreciative system:
The policy-maker’s function ... is to ‘balance’ and to ‘optimise’. He must maintain

these relations between inflow and outflow of resources on which every dynamic
system depends; and he must also adjust all the controllable variables, internal and
external, so as to optimise the values of the resulting relations, as valued by him or
by those to whom he is accountable. (Ibid.: 195)
Then he or she must themselves be judged by the decision’s outcomes. Much

of the policy analysis literature is concerned with ways of providing more
support for leaders as they make their judgements through research units, ‘think
tanks’ and the like, as well as providing systematic feedback to permit them to
re-evaluate their decisions (Hogwood and Gunn, 1984). In the end, however,
the leader has to decide: in Harry Truman’s celebrated phrase, ‘the buck stops
here’.
In making decisions and trying to secure the collaboration of others, leaders
must consider how they can bring influence to bear on other actors. For this
purpose, they will need to make judgements about the other actors’ motives.
Like Thomas Hobbes after him, Machiavelli had a pessimistic view of human
nature. Writing of the need for princes sometimes not to keep faith with their
previous promises, Machiavelli declared: ‘If men were entirely good, this
precept would not hold but because they are bad and will not keep faith with
you, you are not bound to observe it with them’ (Machiavelli, 1513: 92–3). For
Machiavelli, people tend to be motivated solely by their own self-interest: he
advises the Prince that ‘when you see the servant thinking more of his own
interest than of yours and seeking inwardly his own profit in everything, such
a man will never make a good servant, nor will you ever be able to trust him’
(ibid.: 114–15). Hence the Prince needs to maintain his servants’ allegiance by
showing them favour to gain their support and keeping them in fear of the con-
sequences if they betray him or disobey his instructions.
The Public Interest
Machiavelli’s pessimistic view of human nature also finds an echo in the public
choice theorists, who argue that politicians and bureaucrats govern in their own
interests, however much they may protest that they act in the name of a wider
and unselfish public interest. They argue that bureaucrats seek to maximize
their budgets or the size of their bureaux in order to increase their standing and
incomes, while politicians provide increasing numbers of public servants and
amounts of public services in order to gain votes, especially during the run-up
to elections.
Machiavelli foreshadows an issue in modern public administration to which
public choice theories give rise: the existence and moral demands of a common
public interest which must take precedence over individual self-interest. He
warns that ‘he who has the state of another in his hands ought never to think
of himself but always of his prince and never pay attention to matters in which
the prince is not concerned’ (Machiavelli, 1513: 115). A core value of the
British civil service tradition is that civil servants have a duty to put the public
interest before their personal interests. Their education and training is supposed
to develop in them a degree of altruism and detachment which enables them
to advise their princes dispassionately. Civil servants themselves, as well as
supporters of the traditional values of British public administration, argue that
the model for the development of such an altruistic elite during the Victorian
age was even more ancient: Plato’s Guardians (Chapman, 1988a, 1988b;
O’Toole, 1996). The values of detachment and integrity which form the
backbone of the civil service tradition led to the adoption of strict rules about
political activity and financial conduct, as well as a stringent interpretation of
the need for officials to maintain their political neutrality so as to be able to
advise ministers of all parties (Sisson, 1959). This powerful tradition of political
neutrality among public servants is peculiarly British. On the continent of
Europe, senior officials are permitted openly to declare their partisan affilia-
tions, but they may face dismissal when control of the government changes
hands, whereas this is almost unheard of when the British government changes
(Elcock, 1998b). Elsewhere in Europe, holding extreme or unorthodox political
opinions may result in discrimination against their holders if they hold public
offices. For example, for many years German public servants, including
teachers, who held extreme left- or right-wing opinions suffered dismissal
under the Berufsverbot.
However, the existence of a civil service with a strong perception of its role
in upholding the public interest raises another classic problem: that of how
influence over government decisions should be divided between elected
politicians and the career bureaucrats who advise them. Devotees of the BBC
series starring Paul Eddington and Nigel Hawthorne (Lynn and Jay, 1981, 1982)
might want to call this the Yes, Minister problem. There are frequent allegations
that British senior civil servants excessively influence government policies (see
Bevins, 1965; Benn, 1980). However, the dividing line between the spheres of
political and administrative influence will fall in different places in different
governments, different countries and at different times. The British constitu-
tional assumptions that politicians make policy and that, in consequence,
officials must be politically neutral suggest that in Britain official influence
over policy must be less great than it may be in continental Europe and the
United States, where political intervention by public servants is more accepted
and the political loyalties of appointed bureaucrats more openly acknowledged.
Machiavelli says that maintaining the Prince’s servants’ loyalty to him was
a matter of instilling the right mixture of love and fear into them, rather than
trying to develop altruism among them. ‘Above all, the prince must let (his
servant) see that he cannot stand alone’ (Machiavelli, 1513: 130); he or she is
dependent upon the prince’s support. Equally, civil servants need the assurance
that their minister will defend them from criticism in Parliament or elsewhere
in return for loyally doing the minister’s bidding.
The Uses of Advice
Another major problem of modern government on which Machiavelli’s writing

sheds important light is the need for leaders to have access to a range of advisers
in order to ensure that they are able to test their own ideas against a variety of
views, so that that they do not make wrong or unwise decisions. The Prince
needs advisers who have ‘the liberty of speaking the truth to him’ (Machiavelli,
1513: 116). For his part, the prince must be ‘a constant inquirer and afterwards
a patient listener’ (ibid.: 117). However, he ‘ought always to take counsel when
he wishes and not when others wish’ (ibid.). Leaders must retain control and
not feel compelled to accept advice which goes against their better judgement.
Hence ministers should heed the advice of their civil servants but not feel bound
by it (Benn, 1980; Lynn and Jay, 1981, 1982). Equally, leaders’ advisers must
feel able to play the role of King Lear’s bitter Fool, who insisted on telling the
King what he did not wish to hear. Also leaders must be aware that, however
good are the sources of advice available to them, ‘a prince who is not wise
himself will never take good advice’ (Machiavelli, 1513: 117). Again we are
back to the art of judgement.
Two modern examples illustrate the present-day relevance of Machiavelli’s
view about the relations between princes and their advisers. The first was the
Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS), which was established by Edward Heath’s
Conservative administration in 1970 to provide a source of advice for the
Cabinet’s members alternative to that offered by the Whitehall machine. Its
function was to provide a strategic overview of the government’s performance,
as well as to challenge advice to the Cabinet from the Whitehall hierarchy when
it saw fit to do so (Pollitt, 1974; Blackstone and Plowden, 1988). However,
early in its history its first director, Lord Victor Rothschild, fell foul of Heath
when he gave a public lecture in which he indicated that Britain’s economic
performance was so poor by the early 1970s that she would soon be overtaken
in terms of gross domestic product per head of the population by almost all the
other current and prospective members of the European Community. For thus
embarrassing the government in a public statement, albeit before an academic
audience, Rothschild was reprimanded by Heath.
The CPRS retained its strategic role during Heath’s government but under
later administrations its role was increasingly restricted to advising on specific
problems or crises. Blackstone and Plowden declared that ‘Work on strategy
could be done successfully only with the active support of the Prime Minister’
(1988: 215). This was only really forthcoming from Heath: ‘we doubt whether
Wilson, Callaghan or Thatcher would have welcomed frequent strategy
discussions informed by CPRS analysis’ (ibid.). However, the CPRS was asked
to address specific policy problems, such as the future of the British car industry
when British Leyland and Chrysler UK were both on the verge of bankruptcy;
whether or not to construct the Drax B coal-fired power station in Yorkshire;
and what the future role of the diplomatic service should be in the service of
post-imperial Britain. The CPRS’s initial focus on developing the government’s
strategies, or giving programme advice, was thus increasingly displaced by
advising on specific issues, or process advice (Pollitt, 1974). Often the staff’s
advice was ignored or even rejected at the time, but the changes that they
proposed often came to pass in the longer term (Blackstone and Plowden, 1988:
217ff). Hence the staff gained initial exposure for ideas or policies whose time
had not yet come but which were accepted later.
Under Margaret Thatcher policy advice from the CPRS was less heeded
because her ‘conviction politics’ meant she thought she knew what her
objectives were. Hence Hugo Young declared that ‘the very need for a separate
fount of unorthodoxy is apparently reckoned to have expired’ (quoted in
Blackstone and Plowden, 1988: 184). Also, if the state was to be no more than
a residual provider of those public needs which could not be met by the private
or voluntary sectors, there was less need to develop policies or strategies for the
future development of government: it was simply to be minimized. Eventually,
the CPRS was abolished in 1983, after another embarrassing leak, this time of
a report which argued that the government would have to choose between
radically reducing the coverage of the welfare state, including the much-valued
National Health Service, or increasing taxation to pay for it. The first was unac-
ceptable to public opinion; the second was anathema to the Conservative
government. In consequence, the CPRS was summarily executed immediately
after Thatcher’s second election victory in the summer of 1983.
However, the second example of problems arising from the way leaders
approach their advisers illustrates the wisdom of Machiavelli’s advice about
the relationship between princes and their advisers. This was the way Nemesis
ultimately overtook the Thatcher administration. Patrick Dunleavy (1995a,
1995b) and others have argued that, as Thatcher isolated herself from sources
of alternative advice, including abolishing the CPRS and dismissing her
dissident, ‘wet’ colleagues from the Cabinet, she became dangerously prone
to groupthink, because she received only the advice that she wanted to hear.
Irving Janis (1972) has vividly described the process to which he gave the name
‘groupthink’, through which groups of decision makers may unwittingly delude
themselves into thinking that, because they are all agreed on a course of action,
their decisions must be wise and sensible when in reality they turn out to be
disastrous (see Chapter 5 below). The dangers of groupthink are greatly
reinforced if the leader deliberately excludes the proponents of opposing points
of view from the discussion. Janis wrote of this process as follows:
During the group’s deliberations, the leader does not deliberately try to get the group
to tell him what he wants to hear but is quite sincere in asking for honest opinions.
The group members are not transformed into sycophants. They are not afraid to
speak their minds. Nevertheless, subtle constraints, which the leader may reinforce
inadvertently, prevent a member from fully exercising his critical powers and from
openly expressing doubts when most others in the group appear to have reached a
consensus. (1972: 3)
During Margaret Thatcher’s third term in office the danger of groupthink

developing, which is always significant in the closed, collegiate British Cabinet
in which public and even private dispute is muted by the doctrine of collective
responsibility, was reinforced by the expulsion from her Cabinet of almost all
of the senior Conservative politicians who dissented from her policy line. The
result was a series of policy disasters, including a dispute over economic policy
in 1988 which cost her both her chancellor of the exchequer, Nigel Lawson,
and her valued chief economic adviser, Sir Alan Walters. Above all, she
persisted obstinately with introducing the disastrous Community Charge or Poll
Tax, first in Scotland in 1990, then in England and Wales in 1991 (Butler et al.,
1994). Had Thatcher read and heeded Machiavelli’s advice about the proper
role of advisers and listened to advice other than that which she wished to hear,
she might have heard the warnings from a virtually unanimous chorus of local
government finance experts and practitioners that the Poll Tax would not be
accepted as fair by the public and would therefore be unworkable. In the event,
it led to a confrontation with the public over taxation whose only parallel was
the Wat Tyler revolt, also against a poll tax, in the Middle Ages (Tonge, 1994).
Hence Machiavelli’s analysis of the ways in which princes win and retain
power offers a series of important modern lessons about the need to maintain
support and influence by exercising the appropriate virtues and maintaining

sound judgement. Machiavelli’s emphasis is very much on the personal
attributes of his Prince, the bundle of qualities that constitute virtù, although the
Prince needs luck (fortuna) as well. He also offers relevant if more controver-
sial advice concerning the motives of administrators which has been repeated
by some economists whose views were influential on the policies and conduct
of New Right administrations in Britain and the USA during the 1980s and
1990s. Lastly, Machiavelli’s caution about the necessity of leaders opening
their ears to independent advice even when it is unwelcome and uninvited has
a relevance today because of the danger of groupthink.
MAX WEBER
Max Weber’s importance for students of political leadership is twofold. First,

his thought enables us to develop Machiavelli’s principle that in order to survive
in office leaders must gain and retain sufficient consent, by further exploring
the sources of such consent in modern government. For Weber, ‘organised
domination ... requires that human conduct be conditioned to obedience towards
those masters who claim to be the bearers of legitimate power’ (1948: 80).
Secondly, his analysis of bureaucracy enables us to understand the problems
surrounding one of the issues whose resolution is central to effective political
leadership: the proper balance of influence between political heads – ministers,
mayors and presidents – and the administrators who sit at the head of the bureau-
cratic chains of command which carry out their bidding. They are, in
consequence, important but not infallible or disinterested sources of authorita-
tive advice for the elected political heads of the government. Above all, Weber
raised the issue of the extent to which leaders’ power is determined by their
own attributes and how far it is determined by the institutions within whose
rules they must govern and the circumstances in which they find themselves.
Weber and Authority
First, then, we examine the sources of consent, or authority. Before considering

Weber’s three types of authority, we need to offer definitions of that concept
and the closely related concepts of power and influence. The following
definitions from J.R. Lucas’s The Principles of Politics (1966) are concise and
to the point:
• A man or body of men has authority if it follows from his saying: ‘let X happen’,
that X ought to happen.
In contrast, let us define power by saying:
• A man or body of men has power, if the result of his saying ‘let X happen’, is that
X does happen.
And again:
• A man, or body of men, has influence if the result of his saying, ‘Let X happen’,
is that other people will say (perhaps only to themselves), ‘Let X happen’. (Lucas,
1966: 16)
Hence Lucas defines power as a descriptive concept denoting only the ability
of leaders to secure compliance with their wishes. Influence is defined as the
ability to offer inducements or threats to secure action, following Banfield
(1961). Here we are concerned chiefly with the first definition, that of authority,
where the instruction ‘Let X happen’ is accepted as legitimate by those who
have to carry it out, as well as by the wider citizenry. Hence the authority holder’s
commands will be voluntarily obeyed by most of them most of the time.
The next issue is therefore why people accept the commands of those with
authority over them. For Weber, the sources of authority are three (1948: 295ff).
The first is traditional, where legitimacy is conferred by long-standing practice:
‘Domination that rests ... upon piety for what actually, allegedly or presumably
has always existed’ (ibid.: 296). The divine right of kings was based on
acceptance of the tradition that the king’s eldest son becomes monarch when the
king dies: ‘The King is dead, long live the King.’ The guilt which destroys the
eponymous hero of Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov and saps his authority
as tsar stems from his disruption of traditional authority, the order of succession
to the throne, by having murdered the Tsarevich Dimitri, before the opera opens.
Again the pope’s authority over the Roman Catholic Church is founded on
the belief that, by his election and consecration, the authority which was
originally vested by Jesus Christ in St Peter is passed to the new pontiff, who
in his turn stands in the shoes of the Fisherman. Traditional authority may be
weakened either by its unwise use or by challenge from other sources of
authority. For example, 26 Anglican bishops have sat in the House of Lords
since the reign of Henry VIII, but their authority and that of the wider Church
was weakened by Margaret Thatcher’s attacks on ‘cuckoo bishops’ after some
of their number took issue with her government’s policies in the mid-1980s.
Weber’s second source of authority he calls legal–rational, where legitimacy
is conferred by a grant of power by election to a legislature or council, or by
making an authorized appointment to a legally defined office. Legal–rational
authority involves ‘the rule of general laws applying to all citizens of the state’
(ibid.: 299). Furthermore, he says that ‘bureaucratic rule was not and is not the
only variety of legal authority but it is the purest’ (ibid.). The conferment of
legal–rational authority may be indicated by the wearing of a uniform, as in
the case of a police officer, or it may be confirmed by an act of acceptance,
such as a prime minister accepting the Queen’s commission to form a
government by kissing her hand, or a newly elected US president taking the
oath of office before the Capitol. It is particularly important at the more routine
levels of government where it ensures that most people habitually do the bidding
of police officers or tax collectors, which obedience is essential for the
maintenance of effective government. Legal definitions not only provide the
source of legal–rational authority but may also limit its holder’s power. For
example, the American Constitution makes the president almost wholly
dependent on congressional cooperation to secure effective action. Hence
Richard Neustadt’s (1980) conclusion that the president’s only power is ‘the
power to persuade’.
Last comes charismatic authority, which its holder possesses by virtue of his
or her personal qualities: ‘an extraordinary quality of a person, regardless of
whether this quality is actual, alleged or presumed’ (Weber, 1948: 295, original
emphasis). Shakespeare provides an excellent example:
KENT: Thou hast that in thy countenance which I would fain call master.
LEAR: What’s that?
KENT: Authority. (King Lear, Act 1, scene 2, lines 27–30)
Such individual authority was central to Thomas Carlyle’s account of the role
of Great Men in history and he proposes that leadership stems from the personal
qualities of leaders. The arguments of Thomas Carlyle in favour of heroes and
hero-worship are closely related.
Thomas Carlyle and hero-worship

Thomas Carlyle in his Lectures on Heroes and Hero-worship (1841) argued
that the leader will be identified by the citizenry as a Great Man:
The Commander over Men; he to whose will our wills are to be subordinated, and
loyally surrender themselves and find their welfare in doing so, may be reckoned the
most important of Great Men. Hs is practically the summary for all of us of all the
various figures of Heroism: Priest, Teacher, whatsoever of earthly or of spiritual
dignity we can fancy to reside in a man, embodies itself here, to command over us,
to furnish us with constant practical teaching, to tell us for the day and hour what we
are to do. (Carlyle, 1841: 257, original emphasis)
Once the Great Man emerges, lesser mortals owe him only obedience: ‘Find in
any country the Ablest Man that exists there; raise him to the supreme place and
loyally reverence him: you have a perfect government for that country’ (ibid.:
259. The 20th century has taught us to be a good deal more sceptical about
such claims.
There is a strong argument that, because all political leaders are sui generis,
all one can hope to do is to study the biographies of individual leaders in the
hope of understanding how their personal qualities, motivations and ambitions
affected their leadership and performance in office. Thomas Carlyle proposed

his thesis in the context of a revolutionary world, and of the French Revolution
in particular. He followed Georg Friedrich Hegel in arguing for the necessity
of both heroes and hero-worship. Great Men are needed to bring order to the
chaos caused by revolutions and lead nations to achieve their potential greatness.
He based his analysis on a series of studies of individual leaders who had made
an impact on both their countries and the development of the world, including
religious and political leaders. To accept and respect them is essential:
To me ... Hero-worship becomes a fact inexcusably precious; the most solacing fact
one sees in the world at present. There is an everlasting hope in it for the management
of the world. Had all traditions, arrangements, creeds, societies that men ever instituted
sunk away, this would remain. The certainty of Heroes being sent to us; our faculty,
our necessity to reverence Heroes when sent: it shines like a polestar through smoke
clouds, dust-clouds and all manner of down-rushing and conflagration. (Carlyle,
1841: 265)
Carlyle pursued his theme through the study of major historical leaders such as
Oliver Cromwell and Napoleon Bonaparte. His study of Cromwell is a clear
statement that the Great Man gives leadership by establishing his charismatic
authority. Thus Cromwell had to make an impact on Parliament through his
oratorical ability:
... his actual speeches, I apprehend, were not nearly so ineloquent, incondite as they
look. We find he was what all speakers aim to be, an impressive speaker, even in
Parliament, one who from the first, had weight. With that rude passionate voice of
his, he was always understood to mean something, and men wished to know what.
(Ibid.: 287–8)
Napoleon Bonaparte, by contrast, was not for Carlyle a truly Great Man. His
military victories ‘are but the high stilts upon which the man is seen standing,
the stature of the man is not altered thereby’ (ibid.: 310). However, Carlyle
acknowledged that Napoleon’s idea of la carrière ouverte aux talens ‘actually
is the truth and even the whole truth; it includes whatever the French Revolution,
or any Revolution, could mean’ (ibid.: 315). Carlyle argued that Napoleon’s
limitations meant that the implementation of his principle was not achieved in
the revolutionary state which he led. However, it has continued to be a guiding
ideal for the French administrative state ever since (see Hayward, 1983).
Carlyle also argued that ambition for public office is a sign of smallness, not
greatness:
We exaggerate the ambition of Great Men, we mistake what the nature of it is. Great
men are not ambitious in that sense, he is a small poor man that is ambitious so.
Examine the man who lives in misery because he does not shine above other men,
who goes about producing himself, pruriently anxious about his gifts and claims,
struggling to force everybody as it were begging everybody for God’s sake to
acknowledge him a great man and set him over the heads of men! Such a creature is
among the wretchedest sights seen under this sun. (Carlyle, 1841: 292)
Ambition, then, is not a sign of true greatness but the reverse. Lastly, Carlyle
argued that Great Men do not emerge by democratic means. Popular votes will
produce mediocrities, whom Carlyle calls ‘quacks’, not Great Men:
By ballot boxes we alter the figure of the Quack but the substance of him continues.
The Valet-world has to be governed by the sham-hero, by the King merely dressed
in King-gear. It is his, it is his! In brief, one of two things. We shall either learn to
know a Hero, a true Governor or Captain, somewhat better, when we see him, or else
go on to be forever governed by the Unheroic – had we ballot boxes clattering at
every street corner, there were no remedy in these. (Ibid.: 284–5, original emphasis)
What Carlyle never tells us, however, is how the true Hero is to be identified
except by himself and through the events that precipitated his rise to power.
The Great Man will emerge when events demand his appearance. Charles de
Gaulle’s accession to supreme power in France in 1958 was a case in point:
the people perceived the available choices as ‘de Gaulle ou les paras’.
Carlyle’s failure to offer specific means of identifying Great Men also gives
rise to the Raskolnikov problem. The hero of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and
Punishment (1958), the student Raskolnikov believes himself, following Hegel’s
philosophy, to be a world historical individual who has a unique contribution
to make to the world. He will not be able to make that contribution if he is
persecuted for not paying his debts to the mean old pawnbroker Alyona
Ivanovna. He therefore believes himself to be morally justified, for the greater
good of mankind, in murdering her and her sister Lizaveta with an axe in order
to rob the pawnbroker of her money and escape the debt. Most of the book is
concerned with the pursuit of his crime, especially by the interrogator Porfiry
Petrovich, but above all with the nagging of Raskolnikov’s own conscience
which leads to the climax. Raskolnikov realizes that his philosophy is wrong,
hence his murders were unjustified. In the end his conscience leads him to
confess, first to his friend Sonia Marmeladov and finally to the police. So he
pays the penalty of exile to Siberia exacted by the law. The notion of an extra-
ordinary man, for Raskolnikov a Napoleon, was unsound and his own
recognition of himself as such a man unfounded. In the 20th century, however,
men who regarded themselves as possessors of a special destiny were to cause
untold damage and suffering to millions of people.
Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler both won their positions of power by
brilliant oratory. The way in which they seized power legally as a result of
popular support based upon their flights of oratory confirms Robert Michels’s
contention that ‘In a democratic regime, the born leaders are orators and
journalists’ (1915: 69). Their charismatic authority enabled both to win power
constitutionally by gaining legislative majorities in elections held at times of
severe national crisis (Bullock, 1962). Their subsequent careers illustrate that
one of the major problems of charismatic authority is how to insure against its
misuse. It is also very difficult to establish the succession to a charismatic leader.
Thus it took four turbulent years after Stalin’s death in 1953 for the succession
to Stalin’s power to be resolved decisively in favour of Nikita Khrushchev in
the ‘anti-party group’ crisis in the Politburo in1957. Leaders require charismatic
authority if they are to command success, especially in democratic political
systems with highly developed mass media, but there is an increasing danger
that persons of real ability may be deterred from standing for public office by
the cost and the threat of media exposure of any problems or scandals in their
personal lives.
Charisma through quiet competence: Clement Attlee

On the other hand, charisma may develop from the competence of an apparently
modest leader who develops unsuspected abilities which secure the loyalty of a
reliable coalition of supporters despite his lack of apparent charisma. Clement
Attlee was widely regarded as at best a stopgap leader of the Labour Party when
he was elected in 1935. On hearing the result of the leadership election, Herbert
Morrison declared contemptuously, ‘and a little mouse shall lead them’.
However, the ‘little mouse’ was firmly supported by the major trade union
leaders, notably Ernest Bevin of the Transport and General Workers’ Union,
who firmly resisted the more flamboyant Morrison’s claims to the leadership.
Attlee ultimately became one of Britain’s most respected and successful prime
ministers, who led a radical Labour government in a considerable programme of
social and economic reform after the end of the Second World War. Yet he once
described his principal function in Cabinet as being to ‘stop ministers talking’.
Some people would, indeed, argue that the best leadership is invisible. Attlee’s
approach to leadership might perhaps be regarded as an illustration of the
Chinese sage Lao-Tzu’s (1948) argument that the best leadership of all is unseen:
Of the best rulers,

The people only know that they exist;
The next best they love and praise
The next they fear
And the next they revile.
When they do not command the people’s faith,
Some will lose faith in them
And they will resort to oaths!
But of the best, when their task is accomplished, their work done,
The people all remark, ‘We have done it for ourselves’.
There is no scope for flamboyant charisma in such a vision of good leadership

because it is as near as possible invisible. Nonetheless, to produce the illusion
that ‘we have done it for ourselves’ requires leadership skills of the highest
order, including enormous powers of quiet, behind-the-scenes persuasion. Attlee
possessed these attributes in great measure, while maintaining his modest
outward image. His biographer tells us:
Since the Labour Party is far from homogeneous, argument must be expected and
respected. The leader must be able to live with the party as it is. This is a task for
strong men who listen more than they talk, who will probably have to announce more
compromises than clarion calls ... The serendipity of [Attlee’s] rise to power caused
him neither embarrassment nor remorse. His occupation of the leadership as time
went on was justified simply by success and skilled management which commanded
the loyalty of many who were potentially his rivals. (Harris, 1982: 566–7)
His leadership was strong, his ruthlessness in dismissing colleagues who did not
come up to scratch was legendary, but he was in no way flamboyant in leading
his party or his country.
Weber and Bureaucracy
Weber’s three sources of authority are the basis on which political leaders seek
to control the bureaucratic structures of modern government, although Weber
himself seems to have considered it inevitable that the permanent status and
expertise of the officials will ensure that their policies prevail over the amateur
and temporary politicians elected to office by citizens and legislatures: the Yes,
Minister problem. The subordinate but influential role of the bureaucracy is
the inevitable concomitant of the democratic election of legislators and leaders
(Weber, 1948: 224f). Weber’s definition of bureaucracy (ibid.: 196ff) is well
known and need only be briefly set out here. Its five chief attributes are as
follows.
1. Administrative activities are controlled by rules – the laws and regulations

laid down by the Constitution, the legislature and the government.
2. The persons who apply these rules work in fixed posts or offices which are
themselves defined by the rules. They are ‘not considered the personal
servants of a ruler’ (p. 199). Their tenure of office should be for life –
nowadays usually until a fixed retirement age, 60 in the British civil service.
This ‘serves to guarantee a strictly objective discharge of specific office
duties free from all personal considerations’ (p. 202).
3. Each of these offices’ duties, rights and scope for discretion is defined by
the law and the regulations governing its conduct.
4. Officials are appointed by their superiors on the basis of their merit, as

established by objective tests and criteria, not through nepotism or bribery.
Elected politicians are not to be regarded as bureaucrats (pp. 200–201).
5. The salary attached to each office must be openly declared and the seeking
of rewards outside the office must be largely or totally forbidden. Tradi-
tionally, it was accepted that these rewards, in modern terms the bureaucrats’
salaries, must be sufficient to enable office holders to resist temptations to
engage in corrupt practices but that they should not mean riches for their
holders; Machiavelli argued that ‘magnificence’ is to be avoided.
Hence the nature of the bureaucrat’s role is determined by the laws and
regulations which define it. Promotion comes by discharging that role
competently, not through the bureaucrat’s personal attributes.
A fundamental problem of democratic government which Max Weber
anticipated and which is commonly recognized as a cause for concern is
ensuring that the expertise of the bureaucracy does not overbear the policies of
elected leaders, or prevent them implementing the manifestoes on which they
were elected to office (1948: 225ff). He wrote that, ‘Under normal conditions,
the power position of a fully developed bureaucracy is always overpowering.
The “political master” finds himself in the position of the “dilettante” who
stands opposite the “expert”, facing the trained official who stands within the
management of administration’ (ibid.: 232). A former head of the British home
civil service, Lord Bridges (1950: 19) talked about the need to let ‘the waves
of the practical philosophy [of the department] wash against ideas put forward
by the Ministerial master’. However, the problem is establishing where washing
against the minister’s policies becomes washing over, thereby diluting or even
drowning them. Tradition hallowed by the unwritten British Constitution
requires that ministers be recognized individually and collectively as the
ultimate sources of policy and decisions. Legal–rational authority is conferred
on them by their appointment as the Queen’s ministers, but traditional and
legal–rational authority combined may not be sufficient to ensure that ministers’
wishes or their election manifestoes prevail against the established civil service
orthodoxy (RIPA, 1980). Hence ministers’ ability to make their will prevail
depends also on their personal qualities of wisdom, diligence, determination
and persuasion – even perhaps their reading speed and the number of hours’
sleep they need (Crossman, 1975).
Hence charismatic authority based on the political leader’s personal qualities
must come to the aid of its legal–rational and possibly traditional counterparts
if the political leader’s ideas and policies are to prevail against the established
orthodoxies of the bureaucrats. Not all cabinet officers in any country, appointed
as they are for a range of reasons concerned variously with their past relation-
ships with the head of the government, their loyalty to their party and its leaders
or their status as the heads of important party factions, necessarily possess the
qualities they need to control a government department and secure the full
implementation of their policies. Alternatively, other means must be found to
ensure that politicians can make their values and policies prevail.
More recently, it has been suggested that the issue should not be discussed
in terms of the two absolute propositions that either politicians ought to
command bureaucrats to execute their policies or that bureaucrats will inevitably
override their political masters’ instructions. James Svara (1990) argued, on
the basis of his study of American local governments, that the relative influence
of politicians and bureaucrats will vary with the nature of the issues being
determined, as Figure 2.1 illustrates. Thus the politician should have primacy
in determining the government’s mission and policies while bureaucrats will be
Elected Official’s Sphere
Mission
Policy
Administration
Management
Administrator’s Sphere
Source: Svara, 1990, Figure 103, p. 20.
Figure 2.1 James Svara’s matrix of politicians’ and administrators’ spheres

of influence in American local government
mainly responsible for administration and management, although we shall see

later that in the 1980s and 1990s political leaders exercised powerful control
over the last. Also where the divide between political and administrative roles
lies will vary among countries and over time.
Aberbach et al. (1981) offer a sophisticated analysis of this issue on the basis
of interviews with senior politicians and bureaucrats carried out in seven
countries. They argue that the relationship may conform to one of four ‘images’
(ibid.: 5ff).
1. The traditional policy–administration divide as prescribed by Weber and

the conventions of the British Constitution; but in reality the existence of
this relationship is improbable, especially given the wide range of tasks
modern governments undertake. They conclude that ‘the classic theories
that excluded bureaucrats from any role in creating policy no longer fit
reality, if they ever did’ (p. 239).
2. Bureaucrats will concern themselves with facts, politicians with placating
interests. Administrators will ask ‘will it work?’ while politicians ask ‘will
it fly?’ However, bureaucrats will talk with interested parties too.
3. Politicians and bureaucrats likewise engage in policy making but politicians
will articulate broad, diffuse interests while bureaucrats negotiate with the
government’s clientele: ‘politicians are passionate, partisan, idealistic, even
ideological: bureaucrats are, by contrast, prudent, centrist, practical,
pragmatic’ (p. 9).
4. The pure hybrid, where political and bureaucratic roles overlap, producing
the politicization of bureaucracy and the bureaucratization of politics.
Ministers therefore ‘have occupied a Janus-like role at the top of
departments, facing simultaneously inwards as administrators and outwards
as political leaders’ (p. 17).
Aberbach et al. conclude that the first and fourth images do not reflect reality
at all closely; most governments operate within the parameters of their second
and, especially, third images because of the increase in the number and range
of clienteles who must be involved in policy making now that governments’
roles have expanded into almost every area of life. Bureaucrats seek ‘practical
agreement’ while politicians pursue their principles and their electoral advantage
(Aberbach et al., 1981: 241). A crucial issue is the extent to which the higher
bureaucrats themselves become political animals. Aberbach et al. argue that
American bureaucrats are ‘more polarised ideologically than their counterparts
in Europe’ (p. 243), partly because they have to negotiate with members of
Congress as well as with the president. On the other hand, political leaders
alone can ensure that policies achieve legitimacy: ‘However expert and
imaginative a civil servant is in substantive terms, however skilled in winning
consent from organised interests, however adept at co-ordinating his initiatives

with others, however successful in implementation, he needs endorsement from
political leaders for his actions’ (p. 248). They are ‘interdependent participants
in the policy process’ (p. 252). Political leaders for their part will try ‘to ensure
that their closest bureaucratic collaborators are broadly sympathetic to the
political and ideological orientations of the government in power’ (p. 249), a
precept accepted in most European democracies but not in Britain, with its
peculiarly strong tradition of civil service political neutrality, even if this has
been somewhat eroded since 1979.
ROBERT MICHELS AND THE IRON LAW OF

OLIGARCHY
Weber also recognized the importance of activists as power holders in

democratic states: ‘In all political associations which are somehow extensive,
that is associations going beyond the sphere and range of the tasks of small rural
districts … political organisation is necessarily managed by men interested in
the management of politics’ (1948: 399). The functions and powers of political
functionaries – in this case office holders in political parties – were examined
by Robert Michels in his study of European social-democratic parties in the
early 20th century, which led him to develop his ‘iron law of oligarchy’ (Michels,
1915, pt VI, ch. 2). Michels’s analysis is based on his detailed study of con-
temporary political realities: Geraint Parry describes him as ‘the most rigidly
scientific of any of the classical elitists’ (1969: 42). As such, his study can be
regarded as a parallel with Machiavelli’s work because both derived their
normative propositions from their knowledge of contemporary political realities.
Michels sought to develop the ideas advanced by the two founders of modern
elite theories, Gaetano Mosca and Vilfredo Pareto. Mosca argued that the
emergence of a ‘political class’ in modern democracies was inevitable. His
view of the government of society was the following:
In all societies ... two classes of people appear – a class that rules and a class that is
ruled. The first class, always the less numerous, performs all political functions,
monopolises power and enjoys the advantages that power brings, whereas the second,
the more numerous class, is directed and controlled by the first in a manner that is now
more or less legal, now more or less arbitrary and violent. (Mosca, 1939: 50)
The source of the ruling class’s power is that its members possess ‘some
attribute which is valued in society’, which may be wealth, concern for the
public good, military prowess or many others (Parry, 1969: 37). Such an elite
must be cohesive, conspiratorial and controlling. It is cohesive because its
members must be agreed upon their goals and actions. It is covert because the
mass must not become aware of the elite’s manipulation of their feelings and
votes. Lastly, the elite must have the means at its disposal, through possessing
the necessary influence or means of coercion, to ensure that its members’ wishes
are carried out.
Mosca presented two alternative models of ruling and ruled classes: first,
the aristocratic society, where elites are recruited by inheritance, secondly the
liberal society, where they are recruited from among the ruled (Mosca, 1939:
39). This division between rulers and ruled provided the starting point for
Michels’s study of the European social-democratic parties, whose central
concern as revolutionary parties was to replace aristocracy with democratic
rule, but Michels argued that this democracy would inevitably be governed by
its own elite of party functionaries.
Vilfredo Pareto, in The mind and society (1935), considerably developed
Mosca’s concept of the elite. He divided its members, following Machiavelli,
into lions and foxes. Men of strength and integrity are lions who rule by
coercion, while men of cunning and intelligence are foxes who attempt to rule
by consent. In particular he developed further the concept of the ‘circulation of
elites’ to explain how political elites renew themselves by ensuring the
recruitment and training of suitable candidates as the elite’s older members
leave the scene.
Michels’s development of these ideas in his study of party bureaucracies
led him to the conclusion which is encapsulated in his famous declaration,
‘Who says organisation, says oligarchy’ (1915: 401). He contrasted Mosca’s
two systems of government, arguing that ‘the eternal struggles between
aristocracy and democracy ... have never been anything more than struggles
between an old minority, defending its actual predominance and a new and
ambitious minority intent upon the conquest of power’ (ibid.: 377). The nature
of modern social democratic parties was determined by their goal of over-
throwing the aristocratic anciens régimes of Europe, but for Michels, as for
Pareto before him, this revolution would inevitably be followed by rule by
another minority, the party functionaries. So he argued that, although the social-
democratic parties of Europe were parties of revolution which had developed
from fundamental challenges to the former aristocratic regimes, most notably
in the French Revolution, those parties developed a new aristocracy in the form
of the party functionaries who control their organizations and hence the
countries they govern.
Michels tells us that ‘the appearance of oligarchical phenomena in the very
bosom of the revolutionary parties is a conclusive proof of immanent oli-
garchical tendencies in every kind of human organisation which strives for the
attainment of definite ends’ (1915: 11). However democratic a party’s origins
may be, it sooner or later falls under the control of an oligarchy because its
leaders and functionaries, including the delegates who make up its committees
and its appointed employees, become indispensable to the mass membership.
In consequence, ‘One who holds the office of delegate acquires a moral right
to that office and delegates remain in office unless removed by extraordinary
circumstances or in obedience to rules observed with exceptional strictness’
(ibid.: 45). Michels summarizes the process by which this takes place as follows:
‘At the outset, leaders arise SPONTANEOUSLY, their functions are
ACCESSORY and GRATUITOUS. Soon, however, they become PRO-
FESSIONAL leaders and in this second stage of development, they are
STABLE and IRREMOVEABLE’ (ibid.: 400–401, original emphasis).
This change towards professional organization and hence domination by
office holders comes about when the party develops beyond its revolutionary
origins, especially once it secures parliamentary representation and a role in
government. It therefore has to acquire leaders and officials whose expertise
becomes essential to the achievement of the party’s programme. They can and
do therefore retain their positions for long periods of time, even if they are
formally subject to regular re-election. Thus
Every party organisation which has attained a considerable degree of complication

demands that there should be a certain number of persons who devote all their
activities to the work of the party. The mass provides these by delegation and the
delegates, regularly appointed, become permanent representatives of the mass for
the direction of its affairs. (ibid.: 36)
The delegates therefore run the party on behalf of the masses. As the party gets
larger and wins seats in parliament
The moment invariably comes when neither the idealism and enthusiasm of the intel-
lectuals, nor yet the goodwill with which the proletarians devote their free time on
Sundays to the work of the party, suffice any longer to meet the requirements of the
case. The provisional must yield to the permanent and dilettantism must yield to pro-
fessionalism. (ibid.: 80)
Then the party’s leaders acquire and retain by virtue of the offices they hold ‘A
wider extent of knowledge which impresses the members of the leader’s
environment; a catonian strength of conviction, a force of ideas verging on
fanaticism ...; self-sufficiency, even if amounting to arrogant pride ... In
exceptional cases, finally, goodness of heart and disinterestedness’ (ibid.: 72).
For their part, the mass membership of the party and even more the electorate
will remain passive: ‘Although it grumbles occasionally, the majority is really
delighted to find persons who will take the trouble to look after its affairs’ (ibid.:
53). They therefore come to regard their leaders as indispensable, so they usually
retain their offices indefinitely. The development of oligarchy is the inevitable

product of modern political structures.
These statements have an invincible ring of truth, although the ‘iron law of
oligarchy’ may not be universal and immutable. ‘Green’ parties have rules and
structures that are designed to prevent their becoming dominated by either their
leaders or their party functionaries. For instance, offices including legislative
seats and government offices are required by party rules to be rotated frequently
(Harmel, 1989). The ‘iron law’ usually still prevails, however. In Britain, the
electorate numbers some 36 million people, but the membership of each major
political party is but a few hundred thousand. The number of these members
who are active in attending meetings and taking part in party campaigns is even
smaller. Furthermore, electorates are becoming increasingly apathetic. In the
USA, falling electoral turnouts are raising fundamental questions about the
validity of democratic government there. In the knife-edge presidential election
of 1960, over 60 per cent of the electorate voted (White, 1961) but since then
there has been a linear decline to the dismal 48 per cent who voted in the 1996
presidential contest. Politics may be a minority interest; the question is, when
does that minority become so small as to call into doubt the legitimacy of
democratic political systems themselves? This may soon become the source of
a crisis in the USA. It is a besetting problem for the European Parliament,
especially in Britain, where turnouts for elections to the European Parliament
are persistently so low as to give rise to repeated doubts about the legitimacy
of the Parliament itself.
The next stage of Michels’s argument is that the party’s indispensable leaders
will gradually distance themselves from its mass membership. Increasingly,
they will act in their own interests. They will ‘show themselves more and more
inclined, when gaps in their own ranks have to be filled, to effect this not by
popular election but by co-optation’ (Michaels, 1915: 104). No-one who has
read it can forget George Orwell’s account of this process in Animal Farm,
where the fundamental proposition of the revolution, ‘All animals are equal’ had
added to it the suffix, ‘but some animals are more equal than others’. Eventually,
the ruling pigs become indistinguishable from the farmers who formerly
enslaved them and the rest of the animals. However, the increasing isolation of
the functionaries from the masses, coupled with the self-renewal of the
leadership, leads Michels to warn of the danger which Irving Janis (1972) later
identified as groupthink: ‘There arises in the leaderships a tendency to isolate
themselves, to form a sort of cartel and surround themselves, as it were, with
a wall, within which they will admit only those who are of their own way of
thinking’ (Michels, 1915: 104). However, the overthrow of the leadership by
the masses is unlikely because ‘it is in virtue of the law of inertia that the leaders
are so often confirmed in their office as long as they like’ (ibid.: 98).
Michels’s pessimism about the apathy of the mass of the people is confirmed
by his bald statement that ‘the majority is ... permanently incapable of self-
government’ (ibid.: 390). Hence ‘Leadership is a necessary phenomenon in
every form of social life’ (ibid.: 400) but, although ‘the defects inherent in
democracy are obvious [it] is nonetheless true that as a form of social life we
must choose democracy as the least of all evils’ (ibid.: 407). At least in a
democracy the leaders can be challenged when they face re-election or when
they lose the confidence of the legislature or the electorate, whereas aristocrats
cannot be challenged by either. Also the process of election is more likely than
aristocratic inheritance to result in the elevation of talented persons to positions
of leadership.
CONCLUSION
Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber and Robert Michels all offer insights into the
nature of political leadership which generate propositions whose validity we
can test against more recent examples. We shall return to them later in proposing
the kind of political and managerial leaders we need now and in the future, as
well as the way they need to be advised and supported. Before pursuing these
and other themes further, we need to look at some more recent studies of
individuals who have achieved leadership positions and how they have used
those positions once in office. Some of the authors we consider next have sought
only to understand the motivations of individual leaders and the reasons why
they achieved and retained their power. Others have sought, like Machiavelli,
Weber and Michels, to draw general lessons from studies of political leaders.
They all offer further insights into the psychology of leaders, the institutions
which form and restrain their powers and the events which bring leaders to
office and then sustain them in it.
3. The personalities and environments of
political leaders
THE VALUES AND WEAKNESSES OF POLITICAL
BIOGRAPHY
The writings of Machiavelli, Weber and Michels contain important pointers to

the roles political leaders must play and the sources of their power, based on
attempts to develop general lessons from studies of specific states or organi-
zations and their leaders. So, too, do at least some other historical or biographical
studies of political leaders, such as Thomas Carlyle’s Lectures on Heroes and
Hero-worship (1841). The many biographies of modern political leaders that
have been written by such scholars as Alan Bullock (1962, 1990) and A.J.P.
Taylor (1955) focus mainly on individual leaders’ careers, the sources of their
success and the reasons for their failures. Later, we shall be concerned with
studies that have attempted to produce propositions of general salience about
political leadership, rather than being confined to explaining the behaviour of
a particular individual, such as Hitler, Stalin or Churchill.
An overarching theme of this discussion is the extent to which leaders’
attributes and backgrounds influence their performance in office and the extent
to which their performance is the result of the institutional context of their
careers and the circumstances in which they came to power. The question of the
extent to which leaders’ ability to succeed is formed by their upbringing and
careers or whether their success or failure was constrained by constitutions and
contemporary events will arise again and again. Leach and Wilson (2000: 9)
suggest two sets of influences: the political and organizational culture, on the
one hand, and the leader’s personal agenda and political skills, on the other. In
between is an area of uncertainty or negotiation. Aaron Wildavsky articulated
one view of this debate in typically brisk fashion: ‘when you know more about
what a third baseman is likely to do by knowing his personality than by under-
standing the rules and customs of baseball, one of you is crazy. Whether you
will be seen to be out of your mind or whether your views will become
normative, hence your designation as a charismatic leader, depends not only
on your behaviour but also on the cultural context that alone gives it meaning’
(1989: 109–110). However, in politics individual leaders may change the
43
culture, the rules of the game, in ways not possible in baseball, although William
Webb Ellis did precisely this to create rugby football.
Lord Bullock and the Dictators
Many historians regard generalization from historical studies of leadership as

being at best unnecessary and risky, at worst impossible and illegitimate.
However, we can at least argue that the history of the 20th century has taught
us to look askance at heroic rulers. In an authoritative study of two such heroic,
or rather anti-heroic figures, Lord Bullock (1990) demonstrated the very
different sources of Adolf Schicklgrueber’s and Josif Dzhugashvili’s rise to
pre-eminence in their respective countries, which enabled them to establish
regimes which carried out acts of unparalleled evil. He argues that the sources
of both their success and their policies lay deep in their childhoods and early
experiences as political activists.
Adolf Hitler achieved control of, first the Nazi Party, then Germany, through
sheer oratorical ability. He had little else in the way of education, ideas or other
abilities to recommend him as a leader. He rose from a life of obscurity and
failure to become the leader of the Third Reich because he had an ability that
others needed in order to secure power, but he outwitted them and accrued that
power to himself instead. His power to spellbind audiences made him indis-
pensable first to his party and later to Germany’s business and government
elites. Thus Bullock (1990: 75) records the beginning of his ascendancy over
the German Workers’ Party, which later became the NSPAD. After deciding
to join the party, Hitler ‘immediately set about writing invitations and sending
out announcements of a public meeting. When it took place, on October 16th,
1919, with just over a hundred people in the audience, he electrified those
present by his passionate outpouring and made a collection of 300 Marks.’
There could perhaps be no more vivid example of the beginning of a career
founded on the establishment of charismatic authority alone. Hitler was able to
win power because by 1932 he dominated the Nazi Party, which by then offered
the only alternative to a communist takeover at the height of the Great
Depression (Bullock, 1990, ch. 4). In the early 1930s, unemployment in
Germany was rising rapidly because of the Depression. At the same time, the
ending of the Dawes Plan, because the United States could no longer afford to
support Germany financially, led to a bout of hyperinflation which impoverished
the middle classes, as the first hyperinflation of 1923 had previously done, by
destroying the value of their savings. In consequence, in a series of elections
held in rapid succession between 1928 and 1932, the German people increas-
ingly turned away from the Social Democrats who had sustained the successive
governments of the Weimar Republic in office since its foundation in 1919. As
the economic situation of Germany deteriorated, they increasingly voted for
Personalities and environments of political leaders 45
the parties who argued that salvation lay, not merely in changing the government
in office, but in dismantling the Republic itself: Hitler’s Nazis and the German
Communist Party (Bullock, 1962: 216ff).
Businessmen and the middle classes therefore turned increasingly to Hitler
and his Nazi Party in order to defeat the Communists, led by Ernst Thaelmann,
who were following Stalin’s ‘Class against Class’ policy of ruthlessly attacking
the Social Democrats. In consequence, the severity of the threat which they
perceived from a Communist Party dedicated to the imminent overthrow of
both capitalism and the Weimar Republic drove many German businessmen
and middleclass people into supporting Hitler’s party, although it too openly
proposed dismantling the existing democratic regime. Hitler therefore acceded
to power through the legal processes prescribed by the Weimar Constitution
as a result of a combination of his own charisma and the political tensions
generated by the Great Depression. Bullock’s summary of the outcome (ibid.:
250) cannot be bettered: ‘The improbable had happened: Adolf Hitler, the petty
official’s son from Austria, the down-and-out of the Home for Men, the Melde-
gaenger of the List Regiment, had become Chancellor of the German Reich.’
The passing of the Enabling Act by a cowed Reichstag in March 1933 gave
Hitler absolute power. Bullock commented that, by legal process, ‘The street
gangs had seized control of the resources of a great modern State, the gutter
had come to power’ (ibid.: 270). At their head was a man whose only leadership
attribute was his oratorical ability.
Stalin, by contrast, achieved his supreme power by diligent committee and
secretarial work over many years, beginning in his native Georgia and later at
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s (CPSU) headquarters in the Moscow
Kremlin. After the 1917 Revolution, Stalin became the only member of the
Politburo (Political Bureau), which was responsible for developing the party’s
ideology and policies, who was also a member of the Orgburo (Organization
Bureau) which was concerned with the humdrum details of party membership
and organization. He was prepared to undertake the organizational work of the
Communist Party while the other revolutionary leaders, notably Trotsky, con-
centrated on dialectical disputes and matters of high policy. Hence he was able
to work himself into a position of control over the party Apparat, including
appointing and promoting party officials – the Apparatchiki – which later
enabled him progressively to eliminate his more eloquent colleagues, especially
after Lenin’s death in 1924. When he became general secretary of the CPSU,
The strength of Stalin’s position was that the concentration of power which followed
‘objectively’ from the party’s need to strengthen its organisation coincided with his
personal interest. To those who claimed, justifiably, that the General Secretary was
using the party to build up his own power, Stalin could reply – with equal justifica-
tion – that he was providing what Lenin had called for. What alternative was there,
if the decisions made by the leadership were to be carried out on the ground?
(Bullock, 1990: 188)
Among the obscure administrative posts Stalin took to himself in order to

reinforce his control over the party bureaucracy was the directorship of
Rabkrine, the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate. Stalin’s tenure of this office
was criticized by the ailing Lenin in a vain attempt to warn his colleagues on
the Politburo against Stalin’s growing power (Lenin, 1923). Although he did
not name him, Lenin’s suspicions about Rabkrine and hence its head could not
have been more direct:
Let us say frankly that the People’s Commissariat of the Workers’ and Peasants’
Inspectorate does not at present enjoy the slightest authority. Everybody knows that
no other institutions are worse organised than those of our Workers’ and Peasants’
Inspection and that under present conditions nothing can be expected from this
People’s Commissariat. (ibid.: 490)
Lenin had detected Stalin’s growing power over the Apparat and tried to reduce
it by discrediting his work as commissar of Rabkrine. He may also have tried
to prevent Stalin’s accession to the leadership of the CPSU by denouncing him
in his Testament, allegedly written shortly before he died, although the authen-
ticity of this document has never been finally established.
Once Lenin was dead, Stalin was able to use his organizational power base
to eliminate his chief rival, Trotsky, and with him the ‘Left Deviation’ in the
mid-1920s. He did this by proclaiming the doctrine of ‘Socialism in one country’
to counter Trotsky’s demands for ‘permanent revolution’ throughout the world
and then denouncing Trotsky as a traitor. Trotsky was forced into exile, first in
Paris and finally in Mexico, where he was brutally murdered by a NKVD
assassin on Stalin’s orders. Once the ‘Left Deviation’ had been safely disposed
of, Stalin switched policy from a partial accommodation with capitalism –
Lenin’s ‘New Economic Policy’ – towards enforced industrialization and the
collectivization of agriculture. Apart from causing millions of deaths, this policy
shift enabled him to oust Bukharin and the ‘Right Deviation’ in the early 1930s.
He then became the undisputed supreme power holder in the USSR as general
secretary of the CPSU, until his death in 1953. Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s
summary of Stalin’s position at the end of his life cannot be bettered:
The name of this man was for ever headlined in the world’s newspapers, intoned by
thousands of announcers in hundreds of languages, declaimed by orators, piped by
childish voices, chanted in benediction by priests; the name of this man was frozen
on the dying lips of prisoners of war and on the swollen, toothless gums of men in
labour camps and jails. His name had been lent to countless cities and squares, streets
and avenues, schools, hospitals, mountain ranges, battleships, icebreakers, fishing
boats, cobblers’ shops and crèches – to which would have been added, if a certain
group of Moscow journalists had had their say, the Volga and the moon.
But he was just a little old man with a wizened fold of skin on his neck. (Solzhen-
itsyn, 1970: 110)
The fundamental weakness of personal dictators is that they are mortal and
there is no provision for their succession.
Such accounts as Bullock’s massive biographies help us to understand the
personal sources of the power of the leaders of the two most evil regimes of
modern times, but they cannot be applied to developing general studies of
leadership, nor did their author intend that they should. For such explanations,
so far as they are available, we must look elsewhere. However, some moral
lessons may be learnt. Sir Isaiah Berlin identified a basic feature of the
ideologies of Hitler and Stalin which explains how they justified the evil they
wrought and gained support from those who held similar prejudices:
The division of mankind into two groups – men proper and some other, lower order
of beings, inferior races, inferior cultures, subhuman creatures, nations or classes
condemned by history – is something new in human history. It is a denial of common
humanity – a premise upon which all previous humanism, religious and secular, had
stood. (Berlin, 1990: 179–80)
If some people are inherently inferior – for Stalin, the kulaks, various non-
Russian nationalities and members of the ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ Deviations; for
Hitler, the Jews and Slavs – then their persecution and extermination was
justifiable in the name of a higher common interest: the Deutsches Volk, or
progress towards the ultimate communist society. Michael Ignatieff sums up
Berlin’s view of this twisted morality as follows:
The curse of the twentieth century ... has been that both of its major utopias – Hitler’s
and Stalin’s – rejected the very idea of the indivisibility of the human species. A
communist true believer did not even attempt to persuade a bourgeois or aristocrat
of the truth of communist principles: they were class enemies, to be re-educated or
disposed of. Likewise, fascists did not deign to reason with Jews, gypsies or other
racial enemies. They were to be extirpated as vermin. Romanticism’s denial that all
human beings were everywhere the same could lead ultimately to the denial that they
deserved to exist. (Ignatieff, 1998: 248)
If only the imperfections of present society, including these lower races, could
be removed, all men would be able to live at peace in the Reich or the ideal
socialist society. It was to such beliefs that Hitler and Stalin hitched their stars
and they were able, for a time, to bring them to ghastly fruition. The sources
of their hatreds are to be found in their upbringings and early lives.
The only defence against this danger, for Berlin and other liberal thinkers,
is to accept that people’s values, policies and interests always conflict and that
politics is and must be about the peaceful resolution of disputes concerning
them. We must recognize that, however much it may be justifiable to surrender
some of one value, for example freedom, in order to increase another, for
instance justice or equality, in the case of liberty ‘the loss remains and it is a
confusion of values to say that although my “liberal” individual freedom may
go by the board, some other kind of freedom – social or economic – may be
increased’ (Berlin, 1997: 197). The defence of freedom is therefore a moral
absolute which must be upheld by leaders and citizens alike. Above all, the
equal moral status of all human beings must be accepted as axiomatic.
Generalizing about Leadership
Unlike most historians, social scientists do see it as their business to generate

general propositions about human behaviour and development from their
empirical studies. Robert Michels declared that ‘Like all other scientific laws,
sociological laws are derived from empirical observation’ (1915: 400). Hence
political scientists and others have sought to draw general propositions about
the nature of political leadership from their studies of individual leaders. In
many cases this results in analyses of leadership which stress the importance
of constitutions, laws and events as well as leaders’ personalities, backgrounds
and upbringings, as the major influences on the way they achieve power and
how they act while they are in power.
In examining attempts to produce general propositions about political
leadership, the issues we need to focus on are of two kinds. The first concerns
the ways in which the structures and rules governing the office to which the
leader is elected or appointed influence, even determine, the approach leaders
must take to their tasks of policy making and governing. This analysis is in part
an application of the nature of Weber’s legal–rational authority as a formative
influence on political leaders. The second set of issues concerns the impact of
different kinds of personality on leadership offices, including the role of
charisma or the lack thereof, as a means of explaining how leaders achieve
dominance and how they conduct themselves once they have gained it.
Inevitably, much of the discussion of these issues will be about the presidency
of the United States of America because much of the relevant research is
contained in studies of the holders of that office. Thus we shall look in particular
at the classic study by Richard Neustadt (1980) under the first heading, the
influence of political structures on the leader’s role. We will also consider under
this heading R.T. McKenzie’s (1963) analysis of the influence of Britain’s par-
liamentary system on the way prime ministers and leaders of the Opposition
have been selected and expected to perform. Then we shall examine, by contrast,
the approach to the study of presidential personality developed by James D.

Barber (1992) under the second heading, assessing the role of leaders’ person-
alities and upbringing in influencing their performance in office.
Institutions and leadership I: Richard Neustadt and the power to

persuade
The constitutional limitations on the office of president of the USA are too well
known to require more than a brief rehearsal here. The president lacks the
capacity to command obedience. Harry Truman was pessimistic about the likely
ability of his ex-military successor, General Eisenhower, to achieve much in
office: ‘He’ll sit here and he’ll say “Do this! Do that!” And nothing will happen.
Poor Ike! It won’t be a bit like the Army. He’ll find it very frustrating’ (quoted
in Neustadt, 1980: 9). Although the US Constitution designates the president
as the country’s chief executive and supreme commander of its armed forces,
it limits the president’s power in many ways.
Executive powers under the US Constitution are shared, not separated as the
constitutional orthodoxy claims. Thus the president commands the armed forces
but the Congress has the power to declare war and make peace. The president
proposes the budget but Congress can reduce and increase both taxes and
spending; its power to increase both spending and taxes is unique among
Western legislatures. Congress passes legislation and the president can veto it
but, in turn, Congress can override presidential vetoes if two-thirds majorities
are carried in both its Houses against them. The president is not even totally
master in his own governmental house because his senior appointments to his
Cabinet have to be confirmed by the ‘advice and consent’ of a two-thirds
majority of the Senate.
The president’s control over Congress is further weakened by the absence of
party discipline in both chambers. In consequence, members of Congress
habitually operate as individual legislators subject to the pressures of their
electors and the lobby groups that fund their election campaigns: ‘if a legislator
is sent here from a bean section, he will – and seemingly must – protect beans.
His constituents demand it as his first interest’ (quoted in Potter, 1955: 169).
The president can therefore secure passage of his legislation and his budget
only by offering sufficient inducements or making sufficient threats to secure
the individual votes of enough senators and members of the House of Repre-
sentatives to win majorities for his bills in both houses. In consequence, the
president, his Cabinet colleagues and his staff must constantly seek to build
coalitions of support for the individual administration bills which are coming
up for passage. They must first secure their release from Congress’s labyrinthine
committee system, which Woodrow Wilson called ‘those dark dungeons of
silence from which few return’. Then they must secure the bills’ passage on
the floors of both houses.
George Stephanopoulos (1999: 177) vividly described just such a cliff-

hanging log-rolling process during the passage through Congress of President
Bill Clinton’s economic plan in 1993:
I was the coxswain. My official function was to get the right people on the phone, to
record the deals and ensure they got done, to pass bulletins back to the Hill and relay
the responses back to Clinton. But I also served as coach and companion, prompting
the president during his calls with handwritten notes, gingerly urging him to do a little
less listening and a little more demanding, helping him decipher the hidden meanings
in a member’s words: ‘I’ll be there if you need me ... Don’t worry about me ... I won’t
let you down ... I won’t let it die’. With the Republican attack – ‘Biggest tax increase
in the history of the universe’ – already ringing in their ears, the final holdouts repeated
variations on a theme: ‘I’ve been thinking of my own protection’. They didn’t want
to say no to the president but they couldn’t bring themselves to say yes; so they stalled
for time, hoping the president would get enough votes without them. Some solved
the dilemma by simply disappearing: Congressman Bill Brewster spent the afternoon
tooling around Washington in his car with his cell phone turned off.
In the end the economic plan passed the House by two votes, one of several
such narrow victories to occur even while the Democrats still controlled both
the White House and the two houses of Congress.
Richard Neustadt (1980) explored the nature of presidential power through
three case studies of major presidential decisions. These were Harry Truman’s
dismissal of General MacArthur in 1951, Dwight D. Eisenhower’s seizure of
the steel mills to avert a strike in 1952, although he was subsequently forced
by the Supreme Court to relinquish it, and the same president’s order to federal
troops to enforce the entry of nine Negro children into a school in Little Rock,
Arkansas, in 1957. However, Neustadt argued that firm and effective presi-
dential interventions in these cases were the exception rather than the rule
because five conditions were fulfilled in all of them:
On each occasion the President’s involvement was unambiguous. So were his words.
His order was widely publicised. The men who received it had control of everything
needed to carry it out. And they had no apparent doubt of his authority to issue it to
them ... Lacking any one of them the chances are that mere command will not produce
compliance. (Neustadt, 1980: 16)
The normal situation of a president is very different: ‘the limits on command

suggest the structure of our government’ (ibid.: 26). The shared powers imposed
by the Constitution require the President to engage in a continuous process of
coalition building. They ‘prescribe the terms on which a president persuades’
(ibid.: 27). This caused Neustadt to argue that in reality the president’s only
power is the power to persuade, because the constraints that the Constitution
imposes on his power require him to engage in endless acts of persuasion to
secure the passage of his legislation and the execution of his policies.
Equally, however, the other actors in the system, the Congress and the
bureaucracy, cannot achieve their goals without the president’s agreement.
Hence Neustadt suggests that ‘A President, these days, is an invaluable clerk.
His services are in demand all over Washington. His influence, however, is a
very different matter. Laws and customs tell us little about leadership in fact’
(ibid.: 7). State governors and local mayors in the USA likewise face the same
need constantly to lobby to secure support in their legislatures in order to gain
passage of their ordinances and budgets (Elcock, 1995b). Hence Campbell
(1983: 340) argues that most presidents will be most at home with a broker
politics leadership style.
Nonetheless, Neustadt argues that the personal qualities of the president are
important because the stronger his credibility is in Washington, the more likely
are his views to prevail. James Barber has similarly argued that ‘the President’s
real or supposed popularity is a large factor in his performance’ (1992: 6). His
standing and therefore his ability to secure the passage of his legislation may
be affected by many factors, including the success or failure of his policies, the
state of the economy and his personal reputation. Bill Clinton ascribed his initial
and continuing success to a booming economy: ‘It’s the economy, stupid!’ His
policy successes maintained his opinion poll ratings at a high level despite the
repeated allegations that were made about his illicit sexual liaisons. Other factors
may help or hinder a president in his task of constant persuasion. Thus Lyndon
Johnson was able to secure the passage of much of John Kennedy’s social
legislation which had become bogged down in Congress because of his own
very extensive experience as a senior member of the Senate and the web of
influential contacts it gave him. He was also able to secure the passage of his
own radical ‘Great Society’ legislation (Neustadt, 1980: 177ff).
On the other hand, the status of the presidency was irreparably damaged by
Richard Nixon’s misdeeds in the Watergate conspiracy and the subsequent
attempt to cover up his responsibility for the burglary of the Democratic Party’s
campaign headquarters (Bernstein and Woodward, 1974 and Woodward and
Bernstein, 1976), because since then the Washington press corps has ruthlessly
sought to expose governmental or personal misconduct by the incumbent of the
White House, to the extent that no president can hope to emerge wholly
unscathed unless he is a saint indeed. We can contrast the trials and tribulations
of current presidents with the concealment for many years of Franklin D.
Roosevelt’s paralysis or John F. Kennedy’s sexual misdeeds. Nowadays,
presidents face the instant exposure of actual or alleged misdoing that charac-
terized both the Reagan and the Clinton presidencies, ‘Irangate’ in the former
case, ‘Whitewatergate’ and ‘Monicagate’ in the latter. The merciless focus on
the president’s personality and conduct which characterizes much current
Washington reporting may well deter or prevent many prospective candidates
from seeking the office. Neustadt argues that the pressures on the president
are now such that ‘we shall have to pick them from among experienced
politicians of extraordinary temperament’ (1980: 143) but, as the need for
exceptional leaders becomes greater, they are becoming less likely to come
forward to seek office.
Institutions and leadership II: The ‘presidential’ British prime minister

The British prime minister has far more untrammelled powers than an American
president because of the weaknesses of the checks and balances in Britain’s
unwritten Constitution and the secure control of his or her House of Commons
majority which is usually exercised by the majority party’s whips. However, by
tradition, a prime minister is regarded only as primus inter pares relative to his
or her Cabinet colleagues. He or she is Her Majesty’s chief minister but only
one of the collection of around 20 secretaries of state and senior ministers who
make up the Cabinet, where final collective decisions are supposed to be made.
These are then regarded as binding upon all members of the government, who
must support the Cabinet’s decisions or resign.
However, prime ministers’ power to appoint and dismiss other ministers and
their right to seek a dissolution of Parliament from the Queen, as well as their
control over the Cabinet’s agenda and conclusions, are all adduced as evidence
that in reality the premier’s role is now akin to that of an executive president
(Crossman, 1963; Mackintosh, 1962). Richard Crossman once declared that
the prime minister’s powers were so great that they would be the envy of the
general secretary of the CPSU. John Mackintosh likewise declared:
all our institutions change as British society and world conditions alter. Now the
country is governed by a Prime Minister, his colleagues, junior Ministers and civil
servants with the Cabinet acting as a clearing house and court of appeal. Despite the
number and strength of the various pressure groups, governments with a definite will
to act and popular backing have a wide field open to them. Governments are restrained
not so much by Parliament or by the Opposition as by their own desire to keep in
step with public opinion and to increase their strength. (1962: 524)
Indeed, it is clear that the extent of the prime minister’s powers, reinforced as
they usually are by dependable party discipline and therefore reliable support
in the House of Commons, must be the envy of any US president. However, the
prime minister can be checked or even brought down if the majority party in
the House of Commons loses its trust in him or her. Indeed, several prime
ministers who achieved great dominance have been toppled remarkably quickly
once their credibility had been damaged and, as a result, their support in the
majority parliamentary party was eroded. Three examples will suffice.
First, David Lloyd George seemed unbeatable as ‘The man who won the
war’ in 1918, but within four years he was excluded from office for ever because
the Conservatives who made up the bulk of his parliamentary majority decided
to desert him in October 1922 (Beaverbrook, 1963; McKenzie, 1963: 57f).

Policy failures by Lloyd George’s peacetime administration, particularly rising
unemployment, rendered the prime minister an electoral liability rather than
an asset. Furthermore, his conduct in office had become increasingly autocratic,
especially in foreign policy. The incident which ultimately provoked Lloyd
George’s fall was the Chanak territorial dispute between Greece and Turkey,
in which the prime minister consistently took Greece’s part despite his Foreign
Secretary Lord Curzon’s support for Turkey. The prime minister’s handling of
this issue eventually provoked Curzon to resign. Curzon’s discontent with the
prime minister’s repeated incursions into foreign policy is well summarized by
his comments to his wife in the Spring of 1921: ‘Girlie, I am getting very tired
of working with or trying to work with that man. He wants his Forn. Sec. to be
a valet, almost a drudge and he has no regard for the conveniences or civilities
of official life’ (quoted in Beaverbrook, 1963: 251).
After Curzon resigned, dissent within the Conservative ranks accelerated to
the point at which the party decided to withdraw from supporting Lloyd
George’s coalition government despite the reluctance of their leader, Austen
Chamberlain, to bring it down. Chamberlain was a close associate of the prime
minister and was himself a senior minister (Beaverbrook, 1963: 170ff). He was
replaced as Conservative leader by Andrew Bonar Law after the government
fell. Lloyd George remained in Parliament until 1945, but he never held any
government office again.
The second example is Harold Macmillan, who ruled apparently supreme as
‘Supermac’ after winning the 1959 General Election with a Conservative
majority approaching 100. He had led a rapid recovery from the despair that
beset the Conservatives after the collapse of the Suez invasion in 1956 and the
resignation of Sir Anthony Eden soon afterwards. However, he carried out an
ill-judged Cabinet reshuffle in July 1962, which became immortalized as
Macmillan’s ‘night of the long knives’ (Bevins, 1965, ch. 17), when he
dismissed a third of the Cabinet. As a result of the enmities of senior Conser-
vatives he thus provoked, by the summer of 1963 he was brought to the verge
of resignation by the Vassall and Profumo sex scandals. His retirement in the
autumn of that year was ostensibly for reasons of ill-health but it was widely
acknowledged that he had lost his authority over both his party and the country.
Lastly, Margaret Thatcher’s dominant position in her Cabinet and party was
quickly destroyed in 1990. She comfortably survived Michael Heseltine’s
dramatic resignation over the Westland affair in 1986 in protest at her autocratic
decision-making style (Dunleavy, 1995a). However, the increasingly apparent
injustice and unpopularity of the Poll Tax, which she had described as the
‘flagship’ of her third administration (Butler et al., 1994; Tonge, 1994) made
it a policy disaster which severely damaged her reputation for invulnerability
(Dunleavy, 1995b). Then growing discontent over her antagonism towards the
European Community weakened her standing with many Tories. When this
was coupled with resentment at her autocratic ways and her growing tendency
to succumb to groupthink, which were ruthlessly exposed by Sir Geoffrey
Howe’s savage denunciation of her methods of governing in his resignation
speech to the House of Commons in autumn 1990, her position quickly became
untenable. The result within a few weeks was the collapse of her premiership
and her withdrawal from the consequent election to the leadership of the Con-
servative Party after failing to secure re-election in the first ballot.
These examples all indicate that uneasy indeed lies the head that wears the
prime ministerial crown. The greater the pre-eminence a prime minister
achieves, the heavier will be his or her fall from grace and office whenever it
comes. In the end, the forum where such falls come about is the floor of the
House of Commons, to which the prime minister and the government are
ultimately accountable. Today, the rise and fall of leaders are brought about by
their own parliamentary supporters.
Robert McKenzie argued that the power of the office of prime minister acts
as a major formative influence on Britain’s party structures. The nature of the
office has helped form the rules by which it is secured and conducted, but it
largely determines the processes by which political leaders emerge and the roles
they are able and expected to play once they are in position as party leaders
and hence either incumbent or potential prime ministers. In a historical and
institutional study of the structures of the two main British political parties,
McKenzie (1963) argued that party leaders gain their ascendancy over their
party machines inside and outside Parliament by virtue of their being either the
prime minister in office or the prime minister in waiting. This could be seen by
examining the evolution of leadership in the Labour Party.
From its foundation, the Labour Party sought through its constitution to ensure
that no single leader could dominate its organizational structures and policy-
making processes. Thus the power to determine the party’s policy was vested
by its constitution in the party’s Annual Conference and, between conferences,
in the National Executive Committee (NEC). The Parliamentary Labour Party
is expected to carry into law and practice the policies determined by Conference
and the NEC (McKenzie, 1963, ch. 6). Originally, there was no leader of the Par-
liamentary Labour Party, only a chairman. However, once the prospect of the
party’s leader becoming prime minister became realistic after the First World
War, the office of leader developed into a position comparable in power and
authority to that enjoyed by the Conservative leader. McKenzie wrote:
The Labour Leader’s formal powers appear to be much more limited than those of
the Conservative Leader but, like the latter, he becomes from the moment of his
election as Leader a potential Prime Minister. It must be emphasised ... that this above
all else is the principal source of his influence and authority. Like his Conservative
counterpart, the Labour Leader wields this influence on sufferance. If his followers
in Parliament withdraw their consent to his continued leadership, his authority
collapses immediately. (1963: 384, original emphasis)
From 1922 on, the Labour leader increasingly became regarded as a prime
minister in waiting, as Labour gained more seats in the House of Commons
and displaced the divided Liberal Party as the principal opposition party.
Ramsay MacDonald became the first Labour prime minister in 1923, albeit at
the head of a coalition Labour and Liberal government. He returned to office,
again at the head of a coalition, in 1929, but split the Labour Party by forming
a National government with the Conservatives in 1931 at a time of acute national
financial crisis, thus expelling himself from the Labour Party. Clement Attlee
was elected leader four years later, when George Lansbury resigned because of
his principled objection to supporting rearmament. Attlee won the leadership
in 1935 largely because most of his better known potential opponents were out
of the House, having lost their seats in the 1931 electoral débâcle. He was
therefore widely seen as a caretaker leader only. However, he was quickly re-
elected when the new Parliamentary Labour Party assembled after the 1935
General Election.
Attlee became the first Labour prime minister with an overall House of
Commons majority in 1945 and oversaw the passage of a massive programme
of reform, including the nationalization of the basic infrastructure industries
and the foundation of the National Health Service. From 1923 until the early
1980s, the leader’s domination of the Labour Party was firmly established.
The 1980s saw an attempt to weaken the leader’s control over the Labour
Party machine, but that dominance has been overwhelmingly restored by Tony
Blair as a result of the party reforms initiated by his predecessors, Neil
Kinnock and John Smith, and vigorously carried forward since he became
leader in 1994.
In the Conservative Party, by contrast, the leader’s control over policy is and
always has been absolute. The only way to change Conservative policy is to
overthrow the leader and replace him or her with someone else (McKenzie,
1963, ch. 2). Until 1963, new Conservative leaders ‘emerged’ through informal
processes of consultation in which the sovereign sometimes became involved,
but after the tensions of the leadership contest which followed Macmillan’s
resignation in 1963, this process of ‘emergence’ was replaced by a formal
system of election which has been revised several times since. It now requires
the involvement of the party’s wider membership. What has not changed,
however, is the Conservative principle that the party’s policies are determined
by the leader. An attempt to change this procedure was roundly rejected by a
Conservative Chief Whip in 1906:
The policy of the party must be initiated by its leader, who would, without doubt,
receive valuable advice and assistance from the advisory committee. But they could
never submit to have the policy of the party dictated by a committee. No Leader and
no Whip would ever submit to it. (Sir A. Acland-Hood, quoted in McKenzie,
1963: 65)
This remains the position to this day. The leader ‘has exclusive responsibility
for the formulation of party policy’ (ibid.: 63). Hence changing the party’s
policy must entail changing the leader by withdrawing its support from the
incumbent. McKenzie demonstrated that ‘there is ample precedent in the history
of the Conservative Party for the withdrawal of that consent’ (ibid.: 66). Con-
servative leaders have repeatedly been removed from office by the party, usually
after they have committed the ultimate sin in the Conservative calendar of losing
an election. On many other occasions Conservative leaders have been threatened
or even overturned because of discontent with the policies they had been
following, whether in office or in opposition. McKenzie summarized the
position in a memorable sentence: ‘When appointed, the Leader leads and the
party follows, except when the party decides not to follow; then the Leader
ceases to be Leader’ (ibid.: 145).
The same principle determines the role of Conservative leaders in local
government (Dearlove, 1973; Saunders, 1976). A former Conservative council
leader in Leeds, when asked what his council group would have to do if they
wanted to change the party’s policy, replied: ‘Well, I suppose they would have
to get rid of me!’ (Elcock, 1994: 82). A Conservative committee chairman on
Kensington and Chelsea Council told John Dearlove that ‘The only way one can
stop the leader marching too far ahead, short of a friendly chat and raising it at
one or two party meetings, is to raise a censure motion’ (Dearlove, 1973: 139).
It is with this absolute control over policy that the Labour leadership has
converged since that party’s leader became the principal contender with the
Conservative leader for the key to 10, Downing Street or the leader’s office in
the Town Hall.
Mackenzie therefore argued that the nature of the office of prime minister
has produced a convergence in the power structures of the main British
political parties, despite their very different origins and the different formal
locations of decision-making authority within them: hence an institution
formed the power of the party leaders. The domination of the Labour Party’s
leader over its policies and personnel has steadily increased since McKenzie
wrote, especially during the periods of office of Harold Wilson and Tony Blair.
This has been in part the result of the growing stature of the Labour leader as
a prime minister either in office or in waiting and in part the result of the
personal characteristics of successive Labour leaders, especially Attlee, Wilson
and Blair.
PERSONALITY AND LEADERSHIP: PRESIDENTIAL

CHARACTER
In both the last two analyses, we have been concerned with the effect of con-
stitutional rules and political institutions on the nature and extent of leaders’
power. Now we need to consider the issue raised by Woodrow Wilson’s
statement that the power of the presidency is ‘anything he has the sagacity and
power to make it’: the impact of individual characters on the office. James D.
Barber’s The Presidential Character (1992) offers an analysis based on detailed
psychobiographical accounts of all the holders of the office of president in the
20th century. Barber’s analysis may be represented by a matrix made up of two
dimensions (Figure 3.1). The first, vertical, dimension is active/passive, which
relates to the president’s policy orientation. If he believes that intervention by
the federal government is desirable in order to change economic and social
balances or to resolve social or economic problems, he will be an active
president. However, if he thinks that markets or political processes should take
their natural courses most of the time, with the president intervening only when
it is absolutely necessary, he will be a passive president. Thus both Dwight D.
Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan were passive presidents at least partly because
of their belief that free markets and competition will produce optimal economic
ACTIVE
Roosevelt
Kennedy Wilson
Clinton Nixon
POSITIVE NEGATIVE
Eisenhower Harding
Reagan
PASSIVE
Source: Adapted from Barber, 1992, p. 8ff.
Figure 3.1 Barber’s matrix of presidential character

and social outcomes if they are left to operate without let or hindrance. However,
both were capable of decisive intervention when they thought it necessary.
Eisenhower sent troops into Little Rock, Arkansas to compel the admission of
nine black children to a formerly all-white school. Equally, Ronald Reagan
responded to an air traffic controllers’ strike by firing the controllers and sub-
stituting Air Force personnel until new and more compliant civilian controllers
could be trained. However, Reagan’s communication skills, which caused
Barber to call him ‘Reagan the dramatist’ (ibid.: 253) because they stemmed
from his earlier experience as a movie actor, enabled him to present his radical,
laissez-faire policies in a manner which reassured the American people, rather
than abrasively challenging them as Margaret Thatcher did in Britain.
By contrast, Lyndon B. Johnson believed that a major federal government
initiative to secure better conditions for the poor and a better deal for racial
minorities was urgently needed in the 1960s, hence his ambitious and inter-
ventionist ‘Great Society’ programme. Barber traces Johnson’s motives back
to his own deprived childhood: ‘The family may not have missed many meals
but they knew what economic insecurity looked like and what it meant to skimp
on necessities’ (ibid.: 113). The most far-reaching instance of presidential
activism was Franklin D. Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ of the 1930s, with its
spending on massive construction projects, together with many other initiatives
which were intended to get the American economy out of the Great Depression.
Such economic interventionism is less fashionable now. President Clinton
attempted but failed to secure a major reform of the USA’s increasingly
expensive and shaky insurance-based healthcare system in 1993, again marking
him out as an active president.
The second dimension, which is affective, is a little more difficult to explain
simply. It requires a more subjective series of judgements about the personality
of the president being studied. This is the positive/negative affect dimension,
running horizontally across Figure 3.1. It relates to whether the president
actively sought the office and is enthusiastic about exercising it, or whether he
accepted it as a matter of duty and exercises it despite misgivings and lack of
confidence about his ability to do so. John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and
Bill Clinton are obvious examples of positive presidents who clearly enjoyed
the role and felt confident exercising it.
The roots of Kennedy’s confidence are to be found in his early life: he was
encouraged to seek success from childhood and to enjoy its fruits: ‘Joe Kennedy,
Snr. pressed his children hard to compete, never to be satisfied with anything
but first place. The point was not just to try: the point was to win’ (ibid.: 345).
Success bred both confidence and the satisfaction of winning. By contrast,
Woodrow Wilson and Richard Nixon were both unsure of their ability to do
the job of president but they undertook it from a deep sense of duty to their
country and their party. Wilson’s closest confidant, Colonel House, found him
‘strangely lacking in self-confidence’. Barber comments:
His very frequent depression and discouragement, his self-punishing work habits,
his inability to laugh at himself as President, his continued defensive denial that his
own preferences were involved in his decisions and particularly the extremely high
standards he set for his own performance ... all reveal a person gripped by an extra-
ordinary need to bolster his self-esteem. (Ibid.: 57)
Again, he describes Richard Nixon as ‘a suffering martyr in the Presidency’

(ibid.: 147). Both Wilson and Nixon had considerable achievements to their
credit but they also made major mistakes which destroyed their reputations.
Thus Wilson led the USA successfully into and through the First World War,
but his arrogant assumption of the mantle of righteousness caused him to fail
to secure ratification of the Versailles Peace Treaty by the Senate. Equally,
Richard Nixon secured détente with the Soviet Union and opened America’s
first positive relations with Communist China, but these achievements were
overborne by the crimes he perpetrated during and after his 1972 re-election
campaign. These stemmed from his chronic insecurity and fear of failure,
despite the opinion polls consistently showing that he was certain to win.
From his systematic analysis of the characters of 20th-century presidents,
relating it to their records in office, Barber argues that it should be possible to
predict whether a particular person is likely to be a success or a failure in the
White House and what he is likely to do in office by assessing his location on
the two dimensions of the matrix. He summarizes his conclusions about the
impact of character on achievements in the White House as follows:
Active–positive Presidents want to achieve results. Active–negatives aim to get and

keep power. Passive–positives are after love. Passive–negatives emphasise their civic
virtue. The relation of activity to enjoyment in a President thus tends to outline a
cluster of characteristics, to set apart the well adapted from the compulsive, compliant
and withdrawn types. (Ibid.: 10)
However, nowadays the demands of the job, as well as the media and other
pressures on the president, are so great that only a candidate with a positive
orientation towards the position is likely to make the huge effort and undertake
the vast expenditure required to seek it. Hence Richard Nixon may well have
been the last negative president to stand for, let alone win, the office.
HOLISTIC STUDIES OF LEADERSHIP IN LOCAL

GOVERNMENTS: COMMUNITY POWER
A final group of modern leadership studies to look at are studies of local

government leaders, especially in the USA, which set out, not just to examine
the power structures of local communities in their social and economic context,
but also to develop general theories of power and influence. Although the jump
from studying the occupants of the White House to examining leadership in
local communities may seem large, the issues of the extent to which legal, insti-
tutional and other frameworks determine leaders’ impact and the extent to which
it is determined by leaders’ own personal attributes can be explored at both
levels. Verdi’s Aïda may have a different impact when played in the Arena di
Verona and in a small regional opera house, but it is still the same drama. To
some extent, community power studies enable us to bring together the central
questions about the relative influence of institutions and personalities in the
context of studies of the government of local communities. Many such
community power studies have been carried out – perhaps over 500; here we
consider briefly three trail-blazing instances.
The first is the elite theory of community power developed by Floyd Hunter
(1953) based on his study of Atlanta, Georgia, concealed under the name
‘Regional City’. The development of Hunter’s theory was influenced by the
classic elite theories of Mosca, Pareto and Michels. Hunter came to the
conclusion that ‘Regional City’ was controlled by a covert elite of business
leaders who manipulated the city’s elected political leaders in their own interests.
The second study, which was in part a reaction against Hunter’s elite analysis,
was Robert A. Dahl’s study of New Haven, Connecticut (1962), from which he
developed a pluralist analysis of community power. Here power is essentially
dispersed because most individuals’ influence is confined to one issue area in
a ‘pattern of petty sovereignties’. Somewhat different, but again coming to an
essentially pluralist conclusion, was Edward C. Banfield’s study of political
influence in Chicago (1961) – perhaps surprisingly at first sight, in view of the
all-powerful popular reputation of that city’s then Mayor, Richard J. Daley.*
For Hunter, the control exercised by ‘Regional City’s’ business elite was
based on the elite’s unity in defending and promoting its members’ interests,
coupled with its ability to persuade, induce or intimidate the other actors in the
city’s political system into compliance with its members’ wishes. In short, the
rulers of ‘Regional City’ fulfilled all the conditions for elite rule summarized
by the ‘three Cs’: cohesion, covert operation and coercion. Hunter tells us that
‘Expressions of fear in community life are prevalent among the top leaders.
Pessimism is manifested among the professionals and silence is found in the
mass of the citizenry in Regional City’ (1953: 228). He vividly describes the
approach of one elite member to getting his way:
One of the top leaders in Regional City has a habit of closing his eyes and softly
whistling to himself as he pats his fingers together when a subject of which he
* For a more detailed account of these and other community power studies, see H. Elcock, Political
Behaviour, Methuen, 1976.
disapproves is up for discussion. Such signs as these are watched for carefully by the
under-structure personnel. A community agency dependent upon the goodwill of one
of the top leaders is extremely careful not to incur his displeasure and be thereby
excluded from his interest and beneficence. (Ibid.: 198)
Hunter’s study has been much criticized for its over-reliance on interviews
with elite members, coupled with studies of their backgrounds and careers, as
opposed to examining how decisions are taken. However, he also vividly
conveys the means by which the business elite established and maintained its
power in the community. His book was later cited by C. Wright Mills in support
of his Power Elite thesis, in which he argued that the USA was ruled by an elite
consisting of the president and his staff, the heads of the armed services and the
most senior officials of the major corporations, especially those in the
armaments business (Wright Mills, 1959). This analysis has attracted much
subsequent support (see, for example, Cater, 1965). However, it has also been
criticized as being time-bound because the alliance between the president, the
military and the major armaments corporations was bound to be particularly
close when the president was a retired army general and the country was facing
the possibility of imminent nuclear attack at the height of the Cold War.
Dahl, by contrast, concentrated primarily on tracing the decision-making
processes which operated in three issue areas: public education, urban
development and political nominations. Among the large number of actors he
identified, only the two mayors of New Haven who held office during his study
wielded influence in all three issue areas. Otherwise, any individual’s influence
was confined to one or another of them. Decisions were made incrementally by
individuals or groups who sought piecemeal changes. Radical change is rare,
as can be illustrated by his account of decision making when a major redevel-
opment of the city centre was proposed:
The pattern of petty sovereignties is perfectly adapted to piecemeal changes, which

are typically produced by one or several intensely interested individuals who believe
they stand to gain from some relatively small alteration in the physical plan of the city
... Rapid, comprehensive change in the physical pattern of the city is a minor
revolution.
In the political context of a city like New Haven, such a revolution requires a dis-
tribution of costs and benefits nicely adjusted so as to command the support of a
powerful coalition ... In order for comprehensive action to succeed, the influence
over the decision asserted by the coalition that supports the broad strategic plan has
to be greater than the influence of any opposing coalition. (Dahl, 1962: 205)
The parallel with Neustadt’s analysis of the presidential power to persuade and
its source in a fragmented power structure is noteworthy. It may also be
compared with Edward Banfield’s definition of systems of influence based on
his study of six major decisions taken in Chicago.
The decisions Banfield studied included the merger of two welfare districts,
establishing a new branch hospital, whether to subsidize the Chicago Transit
Authority and whether to build a new exhibition hall. He argued that his
accounts of these case studies demonstrated that the dynamic of decision making
was generated by the conflicts among the city’s major stakeholding organiza-
tions. Civic controversies ‘arise ... out of the maintenance and enhancement
needs of large, formal organisations. The heads of an organisation see some
advantage to be gained by changing the situation. They propose changes. Other
large organisations are threatened. They oppose and a civic controversy takes
place’ (1961: 265).
The mayor’s role is to arbitrate among the stakeholders in order to resolve
disputes among them. He will attempt to negotiate a compromise. If he fails to
do so, ‘the political head will be satisfied to patch matters up for the time being’
(ibid.: 272). The mayor’s role is also to maintain a balance among the stake-
holders so that none of them will challenge his own position. In doing so he and
others must acknowledge that decisions are compromises arising from contesting
views, ‘each of which is preferable in terms of a different but defensible view
of the public interest’ (ibid.: 329). In consequence, democracy is preserved and
no one group can gain excessive control over the destiny of Chicago.
CONCLUSION
A political leader, then, is the product of three sets of influences.
1. The power and influence which are available to him or her in office by
virtue of the constitutional provisions, laws and the conventions which
govern it, including constitutional checks and balances. These are often
reflected in the application of the doctrine of the separation of powers, as
well as the extent to which leader and party can control legislators’ votes.
These provisions act as constraints on the leader’s freedom of action.
2. The events and circumstances which brought him or her to office and
continue to influence policy during his or her incumbency. A leader who
wins an election by a very large majority, like Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936
or Tony Blair in 1997, can both feel more secure in office and expect greater
compliance with his or her wishes than leaders who hold only narrow popular
and legislative majorities. Equally, leaders who secure their offices as a result
of emergencies can expect greater compliance with their wishes, at least in
the short term, than those who hold office in comparatively settled times.
3. The abilities conferred and the limitations imposed by the leader’s personal
qualities and disabilities, including their oratorical powers, their organiza-
tional capabilities and their ability to manage the mass media of
communication, as well as the success or otherwise of the decisions they take

in government.
We may explore these conclusions a little further by looking at the work of

Bryan D. Jones, who has argued that there are two approaches to the study of
political leadership. The first is a Newtonian view in which the premise is that
‘Social actors are utility maximisers’ (Jones, 1989: 8). Hence ‘voters are
preference revealers; politicians are vote maximisers’ (ibid.). This approach
takes its lead from public choice theories which similarly argue that actors in
an economy must be regarded as rational, self-interested beings. Hence ‘The
political world envisioned by this analysis is one of high information and
systematic predictable interactions among well behaved variables’ (ibid.).
Leaders do what is necessary to maximize their support among their followers
(Fiorina and Schepsle, 1989). However, Jean Blondel, writing about
comparative government, has pointed out a major problem with such
approaches: ‘Since … what is considered to be rational is in many cases far
from clear, the approach is unlikely to provide more than important but partial
guidelines for the understanding of comparative government’ (1999: 159). In
any case, it has long been clear that electors do not necessarily act rationally.
Geoffrey Evans (1999) has cast doubt on the importance of economic factors
in voters’ minds when they choose to which party to give their support.
A second analytical framework is more ‘ambiguous and complicated’ (Jones,
1989: 9). Here the role of political leaders is not only to follow the people’s
preferences but also to change them by persuasion. Transformational leaders,
indeed, may need to change the people’s preferences radically. This is a
biological view in which leaders are recognized as having an active role to play
in the evolution of the government and its policies by building coalitions, acting
as policy entrepreneurs defining or redefining a policy problem and seeking to
persuade the electorate to accept new goals and values. However, neither of
these approaches can fully encompass the rich and varied literatures we have
examined.
A full and balanced study of political leadership must take account of the
institutions and events that form leaders’ actions and impose constraints upon
them. It must also involve scrutinizing their personalities to see whether they
are likely to be transactional leaders who are content to make incremental
changes to policies and institutions, or whether they are transformational leaders
who will set the government on a new value slope and introduce radically
different policies. What is certain is that there is an enormous range of political
leaders to study, as well as a wide range of approaches to studying them. We
now progress to consider one set of such issues: the relationship between
leadership and management.
4. Leadership, administration and
management
RIVAL MANAGEMENT VALUES
At the end of the 20th century management had become the philosopher’s stone
of better government. Political leaders and management gurus advocating the
development of a ‘new public management’ believed that better management
would increase efficiency, lead to reduced taxation, improve the quality of
public services and make those services more responsive to their users’ needs
and wishes (Waldegrave, 1993). Above all, there was a widespread belief that,
by the extension of the management practices of private businesses into the
public services, the performance of their providers and the quality of the services
they provided would be improved. This led to a ‘generic management’
movement, one of whose main tenets was that the principles of business
management could be successfully applied to any organization operating in
any economic or social context (Perry and Kraemer, 1983). Hence a major pre-
occupation of the political leaders of the New Right became improving public
management, in part because of their belief that the ‘burden of the state’ needed
to be reduced to its smallest possible compass. The way to secure this was to
compel public servants to concentrate on achieving the maximum economy to
save money and maximum efficiency to secure the provision of the most
services possible for the least input of resources. Hence these political leaders
demanded that public servants should address new management objectives set
by imitating business management.
However, this generic view conceals a series of fallacies (Elcock, 1995a).
Above all, it does not recognize that the values and objectives which any or-
ganization is seeking to achieve must determine the requirements for its
management. Whereas the ultimate objective of a private company is simple,
single and unambiguous (to maximize its profit), the goals and purposes of a
government are many, changing and conflicting. Governments’ goals may
include greater equality, lower taxes, better public services, the redistribution
of income and greater independence for service users, depending on the
competing ideologies of the political parties whose elected members alternate
in office, whose leaders must symbolize and enact those values and policies. The
late 20th century has seen two major changes in the paradigms set by political
64
Leadership, administration and management 65
leaders: first, the New Right’s attempt to reduce the state to a residual, then the
more positive role for the state envisaged in the Third Way (Giddens, 1998).
Hence leadership is crucially important in government, with its changing,
multiple objectives which must be set by its elected or appointed leaders.
Furthermore, the role of leaders lies beyond the realm of management. Warren
Bennis has declared that the difference between leaders and managers is ‘the
difference between those who master the context and those who surrender to
it’ (1989: 44). Leaders at various levels of government have to set the values
that their subordinates are expected to achieve. Hence they must be concerned
with management, although they ought not to permit themselves to become
totally absorbed in it, otherwise they will lose the opportunity and the facility
to think creatively about their government and where it is heading.
There is therefore a need to define the rival sets of values for public admin-
istrators. This has been done by Christopher Hood (1991) in his definitions of
the Θ, Σ and Λ values of public management. Both the preservation of a
traditional set of administrative values and their supplanting by the New Public
Management have been the concerns of dominant leaders.
The Θ values are those of the traditional public administrator and fundamental
to Weber’s bureaucracy. They include maintaining the highest standards of
probity in recruitment and promotion procedures, to ensure that public funds
are properly spent on the purposes for which they were allocated and to provide
equity in the treatment of individuals. Like cases must be treated alike and
unlike cases must be treated differently. As John Lucas declared, ‘civil servants,
although superb, are still ... fallible. They need guidance and we need
safeguards’ (1966: 193). The Θ values provided those safeguards. In order to
uphold them, administrators must remain detached from both personal and
political considerations in protecting and promoting the public interest, a
requirement which forms the cornerstone of the traditional administrative values
of the British civil service. The administrator ‘should be uncorrupt, competent,
impartial, hearing both sides of the case, reaching a decision based on the
relevant facts and deciding similar cases similarly’ (ibid.: 198).
Discussing Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s view of the administrator’s role, Richard
Chapman summarized this requirement for detachment:
the good civil servant who was a good citizen must completely set aside his natural
feelings. A civil servant who preserved natural feelings in public life was unstable,
because he was continually hesitating between his wishes (or natural inclinations)
and duties (to wholly subordinate himself to the general will) ... Nothing is more
dangerous than the influence of private interests in public life. (Chapman, 1988a: 12)
This detachment from personal interests has been particularly influential in

British public administration because it is the reason for the imposition of a
virtually complete prohibition against almost any kind of political activity on

many civil servants. A similar duty has been imposed on local government
officers who have advanced beyond the junior grades (Widdicombe Committee,
1986). Non-partisanship is required of British administrators to an extent that
is rare in other countries. It is an important aspect of the British approach to
administration.
This approach was itself established as a result of strong leadership by holders
of the most senior posts in the civil service, notably Sir Warren Fisher and Sir
Edward Bridges, who served as heads of the civil service in the formative inter-
war and post-Second World War periods. Fisher became head of the civil
service in 1919 and held that office for the next 20 years. His initial task was
to oversee the implementation of the recommendations of the Haldane
Committee on the Machinery of Government, which had reported in 1918. It
recommended the establishment of a fully unified civil service (Haldane Report,
1918). Under Fisher’s leadership, ‘the higher bureaucracy emerged as a
distinctive career Civil Service, one which was both highly centralised and
which insulated its members from any systematic political influence over their
careers’ (RIPA, 1987). Fisher also firmly established the primacy of the general
administrator over the specialist. He told the Tomlin Royal Commission that
‘It is not the business of the permanent heads to be experts, they are general
managers ... a man who has been running one of these huge businesses under
inconceivable difficulties can run any of them’ (Tomlin Commission, 1931).
Peter Hennessy acknowledged the importance of Fisher’s role in bringing about
the civil service culture which prevailed from the 1920s until the 1980s: ‘The
permanent government had truly come into its own, thanks to Lloyd George’s
last bequest to Whitehall ... and Fisher’s singular drive’ (1990: 75). Fisher also
established the Treasury as the department responsible for overall control of
the service (Hennessy, 1990: 70–75; Chapman, 1997: 48f).
During the Second World War the ethos of the civil service was considerably
affected by the importation into its ranks of large numbers of temporary civil
servants from academic life and the business world. After the war ended,
however, its established ethos and working methods were re-established by Sir
Edward Bridges, who became secretary to the Cabinet in 1938 and permanent
secretary of the Treasury and head of the home civil service in 1945 (Chapman,
1988b). He was perhaps more than anyone else responsible for articulating the
ethics of the civil service, unforgettably in his 1950 Cambridge lecture, Portrait
of a Profession. Here and elsewhere he stated his firm belief in the value of the
generalist administrator whose task is to advise his minister on whatever subjects
with which the latter needs help in order to avoid difficulties with the Press,
and above all in Parliament, to which he or she is individually accountable.
Bridges was also a firm defender of the need to ensure the total detachment
of civil servants from party politics: ‘The action taken by Parliament in [the
19th] century to prevent the corruption of Parliament itself by patronage resulted

in a series of Acts which ... brought into being a sharp distinction between
political and non-political offices; and prevented anything in the nature of a
spoils system in this country’ (quoted in Chapman, 1988b: 37). Its corollary
was a guarantee of secure employment for officials to pensionable age at
relatively generous but not exorbitant salaries, in order to mimimize the
temptation to indulge in the corrupt or improper use of their powers. Salaried
officials in other countries are freer than British ones to express their political
views, but they are also more liable to be dismissed from their offices if political
control of the government which employs them changes hands (Campbell,
1983; Elcock, 1998b).
Richard Chapman summarized Bridges’ leadership as that of ‘a great public
servant of the twentieth century’:
He was – and still is – the greatest defender of the values of generalist administra-
tion and his leadership is respected even though his values, and the traditions in the
Civil Service for which he stood, have become widely criticised. What also remains
is a Civil Service towards which he made significant contributions of lasting value
and a continuing flow of issues and cases involving ethical questions which will have
to be resolved by the judgements of numerous individuals acting both collegially and
independently ... It is unlikely that public administrators today will be as successful
without the standards of integrity Bridges had or the trust and respect he inspired in
others. (1988b: 315)
Bridges’ leadership moulded a formidably powerful profession dedicated to

the maintenance of Hood’s Θ values, which developed a strong collective
identity. However, these values, including integrity and political detachment,
have in recent times been at least in part displaced by other values, including
enterprise and flexibility.
Part of the ‘New Right’ shift of values in the 1980s was indeed the dis-
placement of the Θ values by the ‘three Es’ – economy, efficiency and
effectiveness – values which Hood designates with the Greek letter Σ. Here the
criteria of success are saving money (economy) and securing the best possible
relationship between inputs and outputs (efficiency). Hood’s last set of values,
designated by Λ, emphasize the need for flexibility and responsiveness to
changing circumstances and consumer preferences. These values have also
partially displaced the traditional Θ values, although recent administrative
leaders have insisted that the latter remain the prime values of the British civil
service. Thus Sir Robin Butler declared when he was Head of the home civil
service that the traditions of political detachment and the primacy of the public
interest remain sacrosanct in today’s civil service:
Today I have no doubt that the same fierce determination to serve loyally and with
commitment whatever government the electorate put in place remains as much the
badge of the profession as the obligation not to confuse private gain with public duty.
Integrity, impartiality, selection on merit and a real concern to serve democratically
elected governments and get results – these come under the heading of familiar pre-
scriptions, as valuable today, I suggest, as they have ever been in the past. (Butler,
1990: 9–10)
Nonetheless, civil service leaders had to contend with the increasing importance
attached by political leaders to the Σ and Λ values after 1979. Some observers
fear that important traditional administrative values have been lost sight of in
the rush for better management, especially by political leaders who have pressed
for ‘can-do’ management styles, with the consequent danger of exposing public
administration to corruption and malpractice (Chapman, 1988a; O’Toole, 1996).
Depending on which of these sets of values is being pursued, the content of
the management processes required to give effect to them will be radically
different. Hence the traditional values of probity and equity require careful
auditing and record keeping, together with a strong hierarchical system of
control. These attributes tend to inhibit speedy action, as well as putting
enterprise and creativity at a discount. The predominance of the Θ values is one
reason why bureaucracy, as defined by Max Weber, is the usual organizational
structure to be found in democratic governments at any level. It provides a clear
chain of command and control from the elected politicians and legislators who
bear responsibility for a government’s actions down to the staff responsible for
providing services and implementing the political heads’ policies. Also, because
bureaucrats’ decisions and actions are rule-bound, it helps to guarantee equity.
By contrast, the ‘three Es’, whose tenets are widely held to be derived from
private business management, require officials to exercise entrepreneurship to
find new ways of saving money and extract more services from fixed resources.
Furthermore, the managers of public service agencies must be set free to make
decisions and take risks free from criticism by their political or administrative
masters, in order that they may be able to innovate and experiment without fear
of reprimand or worse if their innovations fail. Granting such increased
managerial autonomy was a central objective of the Financial Management
Initiative and the establishment of Next Steps agencies in the British civil
service. However, both initiatives entailed weakening the chain of account-
ability from officials to ministers, sometimes with disastrous results for ministers
and agency chief executives alike (Gray and Jenkins, 1985; Lewis, 1997).
Again, the adaptability and flexibility required by the Λ values demand
enterprise, flexibility and creativity to enable appropriate response to rapidly
changing situations, the need for which is increasing as changes resulting from
the increasingly global economy and developments in information and com-
munications technologies accelerate (Toffler, 1979; Handy, 1997).
Thus, the content of management is determined by the nature of the task or

function being undertaken or the role the manager is expected to play, so that
the term ‘management’ is meaningless outside the context in which it is being
carried on. Business management, financial management, personnel manage-
ment and yacht race management are all activities which are meaningfully
described by the term ‘management’, but the content of the activity is so
different in these four cases that the actions required from the managers
concerned have nothing in common. Thus business management is concerned
with maximizing the profitability of the enterprise; financial management is
concerned with ensuring that money is not wasted or misappropriated; personnel
management concerns the recruitment, motivation and assessment of
employees; lastly, yacht race management concerns setting a fair racing course
in the given conditions of wind and tide. So, in defining the content of
management, the context is all (Elcock, 1995a).
In particular, leadership is not a subset of management, although management
textbooks and courses often include a section devoted to leadership (for
example, Handy, 1993). Indeed, Bennis (1989) has pointed out that leadership
is a very different activity from management and may indeed come into conflict
with it. Managers are concerned above all with maintaining control, while
leaders must be able to think freely, creatively and radically: ‘The manager
relies on control, the leader inspires trust’ (ibid.: 45). Hence ‘managers wear
square hats and learn through training, leaders wear sombreros and opt for
education’ (ibid.). Similarly, Michael Bichard, who has served successively as
a local authority chief executive, then as chief executive of the Benefits Agency
and permanent secretary at the Department for Education and Employment,
has argued as follows:
Managers who react well to situations and control their organisations effectively may
enable their organisations to survive. However, this is different from the leader who
creates a sense of purpose and of direction, who analyses and anticipates and inspires
his or her people. They are the people who will see their organisation flourish and they
are the people too who will have the skills to provide leadership to their wider
communities. (1998: 331–2)
Managers must operate within the rules and overall policies set by the or-
ganization and maintain their positions within it, while leaders must have the
right and the ability to challenge its existing policies and even its values. This
is particularly important in government because, when new political leaders
with new sets of values come to office, probably as a result of an election
victory, they must be able to ensure that their preferred values permeate the
government and its departments as quickly as possible.
Lastly, for an organization to succeed, neither management nor training is
enough on its own. ‘Training is good for dogs because we require obedience
from them. In people, all it does is orient them towards the bottom line’ (Bennis,
1989: 46–7). Bennis quotes Henry Kissinger (ibid.: 44), saying, ‘Presidents
don’t do great things by dwelling on their limitations but by focussing on their
possibilities.’ Leadership involves vision, not control, although to execute the
vision, control is needed as well.
MANAGEMENT GURUS AND GOVERNMENT
Nonetheless, in recent times management has been promoted, especially by

New Right political leaders, as a means to remove the major defects of
government. Slow bureaucratic procedures, inefficiency and waste can be cured
by adopting specific sets of management receipts. One set of such receipts that
was particularly fashionable in business and government alike during the 1980s
was the ‘principles of excellence’ which Peters and Waterman (1982) culled
from a study of America’s 250 most successful companies. They became widely
known at the time and influenced much management thinking. A brief statement
and elaboration of them is offered here because they provided a source of
inspiration for many business and political leaders.
• Bias for action: the need to take action to deal with urgent problems,
rather than analyse and debate the issues endlessly. Managers throughout
the organization must have the confidence to take action in the knowledge
that mistakes will not be unduly criticized or punished. This is a difficult
principle to apply in government because bold actions which go wrong
will have adverse consequences for the political head of the department
or government. Hence public administrators tend to take time to consider
their actions and take refuge in precedents, rather than advocating new
policies or novel actions.
• Stay close to the customer: establish customers’ preferences and respond
appropriately to them. Quick responses are more desirable than careful
administration. Sue Richards and Stuart Haywood (Public Management
Foundation, n.d.) postulated a progressive shift from a public adminis-
tration paradigm through a public management paradigm in which the Σ
values would predominate, to a ‘new consumer paradigm’ in which
managers would mediate among politicians, service providers and service
users (ibid.: 29).
• Autonomy and entrepreneurship: the need to break the organization into
cost centres whose members are encouraged to think independently. This
organizational principle was also recommended by the late Fritz
Schumacher (1973). He argued that, when large organizations could not
be disbanded and reformed into smaller independent units, ‘quasi-firms’
should be created within them. Each ‘quasi-firm’ must be given its own
area of discretion to be entrepreneurial in carrying out its functions and
learning from its mistakes.
• Achieve productivity through people: this principle reflects Sir John
Harvey Jones’s notion (Harvey Jones, 1988, ch. 3) that managers’ task is
to ‘switch people on’ rather than switch them off. The employees’ talents
and enthusiasms need to be harnessed to the task in hand.
• ‘Hands on’, value-driven: executives need to stay in touch with what the
organization is doing and promote a strong organizational culture to
ensure that the right approach is adopted every time. This implies the
importance of strong, confident leadership which ensures that all those
working in the organization are inspired by a coherent set of values and
goals.
• Stick to the knitting: confine the organization to what it does best, hence
the current fashion for companies to concentrate on their ‘core
businesses’, either disposing of or contracting out activities that are
incidental to them. The strengths and weaknesses of the company in
carrying out its core business need to be identified, the strengths built
upon and the weaknesses eliminated.
• Simultaneous loose–tight properties: the centre of the organization – its
leaders – is responsible for setting its values and strategy but, having done
this, the leaders should let the managers and the workforce get on with
achieving the goals they have set as efficiently and effectively as possible
without interfering with their work. Also there is a need to encourage
debate and challenges to existing managerial orthodoxies in the interest
of generating ideas which will improve the company’s performance.
Creativity is important. Bennis warns us that ‘creation is the province of
the individual, not the committee’ (1989: 138). Individuals must feel free
to be unorthodox.
These principles were widely advocated for governments as well as in private

businesses, although cynics have remarked that many of Peters and Waterman’s
selected companies went bankrupt in the years after they completed their survey.
The ‘principles of excellence’ helped to inspire the development of the public
service orientation for British local government by J.D. Stewart and others in
the late 1980s (Stewart, 1986; Clarke and Stewart, 1988). Stewart (1986, ch. 4)
defines the values of new local government management as follows.
• Local governments must exercise real discretion which goes beyond both
central regulation and professional orthodoxies, so that they can respond
to the needs of their local communities. Central government must permit
local authorities to have real discretion. In turn, local authorities should

themselves devolve power to local communities.
• The political process is to be respected as the means by which local value
choices are made and priorities determined. Stewart notes that ‘Concern
for the value of the political process requires an understanding among
staff of the council’s political processes’ (1986: 37). The council’s
political leaders must be ‘hands on’, value-driven leaders.
• Councils must accept their responsibility to the communities they govern,
including consulting with other agencies and ensuring easy access to their
members and staff for individual citizens and the representatives of other
local organizations. Local authorities must, like Peters and Waterman’s
excellent companies, be close to their customers.
• Local authority services should meet their users’ needs, not ‘the
convenience of those providing them’ (National Consumer Council, 1979:
21). Stewart argues for a recognition of the difference between ‘service
for the public [and] the subtly different service to the public’ (1986: 39).
• The council’s staff must be permitted to exercise their professional
discretion and develop a sense of their own responsibility. Their concerns
must be heeded by their seniors and councillors alike. In public services,
most of which are by their nature labour-intensive, the importance of
achieving productivity through people is paramount.
• Lastly, local authorities need ‘an entrepreneurial approach’ rather than
regarding themselves as being constantly bound by rules and regulations.
‘What is required is an entrepreneurial approach guided by political
purpose’ (ibid.: 43) – a clear echo of Peters and Waterman’s ‘loose–tight’
company. Councillors should set the goals but then leave the staff to
provide services within them.
Thus Stewart demonstrated how the ‘principles of excellence’ could be applied

to local government. However, they required considerable adaptation before
they could be used to improve the performance of governments as opposed to
private companies. He concluded his account of the new managerial values
with a warning: ‘The values are easily stated but less easily achieved. Existing
procedures, structures and staffing policies are grounded in traditional
management. New procedures, structures and staffing policies are required for
the new management’ (ibid.: 44–5). Creating and inculcating them is essentially
a task for leaders, not managers.
Another major text which set out to achieve a synthesis between business
and public management appeared in 1993 and has achieved a ‘guru’ status
similar to that of Peters and Waterman’s book a few years earlier. David
Osborne and Ted Gaebler’s Reinventing Government attempted to distil lessons
from both private businesses and from governments in different countries and
at various levels to propose ways to improve government performance. Like

Peters and Waterman, Osborne and Gaebler supported their arguments with a
series of anecdotes about innovations in particular governments, rather than
presenting systematic research and analysis. Nonetheless, their book has had
considerable influence, especially in America where its principles were adopted
as the mission statement for the National Performance Review headed by Vice-
President Albert Gore, which was launched in 1993 with a pledge to eliminate
vast swathes of form filling and record keeping from the US federal government.
The main recommendations in Osborne and Gaebler’s book need also to be
recounted here because they have been widely adopted and pursued by leaders
in government. We can do this by setting out their chapter headings and briefly
expanding on the content of each chapter. There are many echoes of both the
‘principles of excellence’ and Stewart’s public service orientation.
• Catalytic government: steering rather than rowing. The government

should set the general policy direction but its execution should then be left
to field administrators or contractors who are better able than government
heads to ensure that the appropriate actions are taken.
• Community-owned government: empowering rather than serving.
Government should help citizens to achieve success for themselves, rather
than just supporting them when they fail.
• Competitive government: injecting competition into service delivery.
Efficiency should be ensured by putting blocks of work out to competitive
tender rather than assuming that the government’s own workforce are
automatically the best equipped agents to carry out the work required.
• Mission-driven government: transforming rule-driven organizations.
Governments should seek to achieve goals, not just apply the law and
other rules inflexibly as required by traditional bureaucracies, rather than
taking account of citizens’ needs and wishes.
• Results-oriented government. This addresses an old problem: that
politicians and senior officials tend to assume that putting more resources
into a service or ‘chucking money at a problem’ cannot but improve
matters. Instead, we need to try both to predict and assess the results of
policies and their success or failure. Systematic monitoring and review
are vital but the consequent ‘audit explosion’ has caused a multiplication
of requirements to complete and submit paperwork which at best reduces
time for service provision and at worst stifles creativity and enterprise.
• Customer-driven government: meeting the needs of the customer, not the
bureaucracy. Governments need to be sensitive to the actual desires and
needs of their citizens, not impose ready-made solutions on them which
may not address their real wants or needs. Also the interests of services
users as well as providers must be fully taken into account.
• Enterprising government: earning rather than spending. Governments

should earn money by developing services and, where appropriate, goods
which they can sell to raise revenue, rather than just levying taxes and
paying out benefits.
• Anticipatory government: prevention rather than cure. Anticipate
problems rather than just manage crises as they blow up. This entails the
development of a strategic planning capability.
• Decentralized government: from hierarchy to participation and
teamwork. Devolve power and discretion so that managers at the
subordinate or decentralized levels can use their initiative and involve
citizens in the provision of services or the implementation of government
policies. The parallel with Peters and Waterman’s ‘loose–tight’ organiz-
ation is evident here. Also, where appropriate, service provision should
be contracted out to private companies or not-for-profit agencies.
• Market-oriented government: levering change through the market. Do
not rely solely on taxation to fund government activities, but seek to
secure private finance for schemes that stand a chance of making a return
on the investment put into them. The government can thereby reduce
public borrowing and taxation, as well as gaining the benefits of private
or non-profit sector partners’ expertise and experience.
Although Reinventing Government is written in the classic anecdotal business

guru style and seeks to promote the extension of business methods into the
public sector, for instance through adopting competitive tendering for the
provision of public services, it is by no means simply either a paean of praise
for private business methods or a denunciation of the inevitable inefficiency
of government. Indeed, many innovations developed by individual governments
are singled out for commendation. The Introduction, ‘An American Perestroika’,
includes a section headed ‘Why government can’t be run like a business’, where
the authors argue as follows:
Government and business are fundamentally different institutions. Business leaders

are driven by the profit motive; government leaders are driven by the desire to get re-
elected. Businesses get most of their money from their customers; governments get
most of their money from taxpayers. Businesses are usually driven by competition;
governments usually use monopolies. (Osborne and Gaebler, 1993: 20)
Again, the chapter on ‘Anticipatory Government’ commends many government

initiatives, including a New Jersey initiative to prevent people becoming
homeless and therefore becoming charges on state funds:
New Jersey demonstrated this mentality when it sought to prevent homelessness by

intervening before people lost their homes – with tie loans, security deposits, or rent
payments. According to state officials, the effort helped more than 15,000 households
in the first six years – at one-thirtieth the cost of putting them in welfare hotels.
(Ibid.: 223)
Although most of the examples featured are American, British practice is

sometimes favourably mentioned too. For example, Osborne and Gaebler
commend the extension of the auditor’s role which has been achieved by the
Audit Commission and the Financial Management Initiative as evidence of a
global revolution in public service management in which auditors have extended
their concerns, from their traditional preoccupation with probity, to being
charged with encouraging greater efficiency and effectiveness too:
The British Audit Commission, originally designed to perform financial audits, now
audits the performance of both national and local agencies, often comparing and
ranking them according to their efficiency and effectiveness. In 1982, the national
government adopted a set of financial management initiatives designed to create, in
essence, organisations that understood their missions and measured their results. By
the late 1980s more than 1,800 input and output measures were in use. In 1991, the
British government restructured the National Health Service, separating policy
management from service delivery and forcing hospitals and physicians’ groups to
compete for contracts. (Ibid.: 328)
The reforms enumerated here have raised many unresolved questions and
controversies. By no means everyone is convinced of the desirability of either
performance league tables or batteries of statistical performance indicators (see
Pollitt, 1989, 1990). Nonetheless, they are undeniably part of a general trend
towards decentralized but strongly accountable management in government
which is itself part of a New Public Management or New Managerialism which
has been adopted in many countries (Hood, 1991; Pollitt, 1990).
Such revolutions require changes in the attitudes and behaviour of all
involved in providing public services. Bringing about such changes has to be
a matter of leadership, not just management. Osborne and Gaebler frequently
name individuals who have been responsible for changing the ways in which
governments perform: leaders who have been responsible for major, sometimes
fundamental, changes in the ways their governments operated. Some of them
have since become national political leaders, such as Richard Lugar, who helped
develop strategic thinking in Indianapolis while he was mayor of that city. He
ultimately became a prominent member of the Senate. Others have remained
in obscurity beyond their local communities, but they are remembered there
for the changes they wrought on them. The next questions which must be
addressed, then, are where these people come from and whether it is possible
to ensure that they are generated more systematically so that they are there
when we need them.
MANAGERIALIST ANALYSES OF LEADERSHIP
Much of the management literature on leadership is concerned with preparing

and training potential leaders to take on leadership roles as senior managers,
chief executives, directors or chairman of their company’s board of directors.
It should be possible to identify potential leadership candidates early in their
business careers and train them appropriately. Henry Mintzberg, in his Power
in and around Organisations (1983), seems to regard leadership as largely
charismatic. It is needed to create new organizations but it is likely to be short-
lived because no leader is immortal. He echoes Thomas Carlyle’s hero-worship:
On the one hand, society appears to impute a certain legitimacy to the Autocracy,
specifically to the single, forceful leader who creates a new organisation and then
guides it through good times and bad. Such people, notably the business entrepre-
neurs, are the subject of much of the folklore of management, especially in the United
States. The prime purpose of autocracy is to create new organisations, in order to
render new services or provide new goals to society. Also to see established organ-
isations through times of crisis and to enable small organisations to function
effectively ... All of these purposes legitimise personalised leadership. (Mintzberg,
1983: 483)
On the other hand, such personal, transformational leadership sits uneasily

with the democratic political cultures of modern states, especially the USA.
Furthermore, it is essentially temporary. An organization which is dependent
on a single leader is quintessentially vulnerable: ‘a single heart attack can
literally wipe out its basis of co-ordination and control’ (ibid.). Hence such
organizations are likely to decline or dissolve when the leader dies, disappears
or loses interest.
An instance of a chain of events which led to the rapid rise to power of such
a charismatic leader was the collapse of the French Fourth Republic in the face
of a threatened coup d’état originating from increasingly discontented military
leaders and settlers (les colons) in Algeria. Fears among the army and the colons
that the weak governments of the Fourth Republic were unable to prevent a
drift towards granting independence to Algeria produced threats that the army
might invade metropolitan France from Algeria and overthrow the Republic. In
consequence, the government and the people turned to their wartime leader,
General Charles de Gaulle, who had been living in retirement at Colombey-
les-Deux-Eglises since withdrawing from political life in 1946. He summarized
the subsequent course of events, inevitably somewhat immodestly:
the prospect was one of chaos, culminating in civil war, in the presence and eventually
with the participation in one way or another of foreigners – unless a national authority,
outside and above both the political regime of the moment as well as the movement
which was preparing to overthrow it, could immediately rally opinion, take over
power and restore the State. And that authority could be none other but mine.
I therefore felt myself to be the chosen instrument of this fresh start, the obligation
of which had fallen upon me in my retirement. (de Gaulle, 1971: 18)
For government and people alike, the choice was ‘de Gaulle ou les paras’.
In return for intervening to prevent the threatened coup, de Gaulle demanded
a new Constitution which gave him extensive powers, including the power to
rule by decree during a state of emergency (Article 16), as well as weakening
considerably the control over the government exercised by the National
Assembly. The power exercised by ‘les partis de jadis’ had to be curtailed. The
end result was the establishment of the Fifth Republic, initially as a ‘Roman dic-
tatorship’, and independence for Algeria within a few years despite the colons’
violent protests at what they regarded as de Gaulle’s treachery (Williams and
Harrison, 1960). The problem identified by Mintzberg of how the succession
to a charismatic leader can be arranged was overcome by a gradual erosion of
de Gaulle’s personal authority, coupled with his own political acumen in
identifying an acceptable successor in Georges Pompidou. We must also
acknowledge the success of the drafters of the Constitution of the Fifth Republic
in drawing up a document whose quality ensured its survival once its founder
left office in 1969.
For Mintzberg and many others, ‘leadership behaviours ... go well beyond
those specified in most training manuals or formal job descriptions’ (Forsyth,
1990: 219). They include acting as a figurehead or symbol for the organization,
as well as being its spokesperson. Both are important roles for political leaders.
The leader must also motivate the organization’s members, liaise with other
organizations, monitor its members’ performance and disseminate information
among them. Leaders must be entrepreneurs who identify new opportunities.
They also need to be disturbance handlers who resolve problems and conflicts
within the organization. They allocate its resources and negotiate disputes within
it (Mintzberg, 1973). Some of Mintzberg’s leadership behaviours are concerned
with mediating conflicts and debates within the organization, as well as setting
its overall goals, while others are concerned with managing its relationships
with other organizations, including its competitors. For Mintzberg, then,
business leadership has both internal and external dimensions.
Charles Handy (1993) widens the debate by discussing three approaches to
the problem of defining leaders and where they come from: trait theories, style
theories and contingency theories. Here we return to a major issue discussed in
Chapter 3: the relative influence of leaders’ personalities and of the rules
governing their roles. Trait theories focus on the attributes of individual leaders,
rather than the situations in which they find themselves, a view akin to part of
Barber’s (1992) approach to the study of presidential character, where he argues
that a president’s success or failure is determined primarily by his own attributes

and attitudes. Again Weber’s charismatic authority is an example of a trait
theory, in that it focuses on the personal resources available to leaders to
influence the course of events, rather than on the external institutions and cir-
cumstances that have enabled them to win power and which then constrain them.
This type of theory leads to the conclusion that, although we may not be able
to train good leaders, we may be able to select them by identifying the traits
which are most likely to be found in successful leaders. Prominent among them
are intelligence, self-assurance and the ‘helicopter factor’ (Handy, 1993: 99) –
the ability to perceive individual problems against the general strategic
background and think strategically about them. Good health, above or below-
average physical stature, enthusiasm and several other factors may also count
as leadership traits, but the evidence for the significance of any of them is incon-
clusive. On the basis of identifying people with the appropriate traits, their
careers could be planned in order to ensure that they reach the leadership
positions for which they are suited, but it is unclear which traits matter and
which do not.
Style theories, by contrast, argue that workers will work harder and more
enthusiastically for a manager who adopts a particular leadership style. The
appropriate styles range from the authoritarian to the democratic (ibid.: 100).
However, two major problems emerge. First, there is no evidence that the impact
of a particular leadership style on productivity is more than marginal: it was
found to produce at most a 15 per cent improvement in productivity. Secondly,
the style of leadership needed varies with the type of task being undertaken.
Routine or dangerous work requires relatively authoritarian leadership to ensure
that routines are learnt quickly and that soldiers, for example, will put
themselves in danger without challenging their orders, whereas tasks which
require the exercise of discretion require more democratic leadership. Signifi-
cantly, many tasks in government, especially in service provision and giving
advice, are of the latter kind, but the bureaucratic tradition tends to produce
authoritarian management with a heavy emphasis on control. Furthermore, if
the tasks to be done and hence the appropriate leadership styles vary in business,
how much more will they vary in government, with its much wider range of
objectives and functions.
Hence Handy argues that contingency theories, in which the type of
leadership which is appropriate is determined at least in part by the nature of
the task to be undertaken or the goal to be accomplished, are the most helpful.
They offer the most convincing analysis because they permit the analyst to take
account of the interactions among three dimensions.
• The leader, who may be supportive or distant, or a combination of the

two. Military leaders must maintain a certain distance from the men they
command because they need to feel able to order them to put themselves
in danger, whereas social work requires a more participative, collabora-
tive approach to leadership because workers with different skills need to
work together to address their clients’ multiple and varied problems.
• The subordinates prefer a particular kind of leadership. Authoritarian
leadership may be preferred to secure the execution of repetitive, routine
or dangerous work. Democratic leadership is appropriate where a high
level of communication, collaboration and coordination is needed. Hence
the appropriate approach to leadership depends on the nature of the task.
• The task which the leader and subordinates are required to undertake,
including whether or not it is dangerous and whether it requires routine
compliance with instructions or the exercise of a greater or lesser degree
of discretion.
Successful leadership therefore entails establishing the ‘best fit’ among these
three factors. All three may be evaluated along a continuum ranging from ‘tight’
to ‘flexible’ leadership (ibid.: 107). Relating leadership to task could be linked
to the accounts of the US presidency offered by Neustadt (1980) and of British
party leaders by McKenzie (1963), because they both argue that the nature of
the leader’s role is determined in large part by the Constitution and laws which
define it. Hence both the restrictions on presidential power which result in his
dependence on Congress, and the tendency of British major political party
leaders to dominate their parties because the leader is the prime minister either
in office or in waiting, are examples of leadership roles formed at least in part
by contingencies.
Handy argues that a range of factors will determine the leader’s approach to
the task, including the following:
• the leader’s own value system: his or her general definition of the leader’s
job;
• the extent of the leader’s confidence in the subordinates’ ability to
undertake the task without needing constant supervision;
• the leader’s usual or habitual style: participative or supportive leaders
find it hard to be distant or autocratic even when it may be appropriate
to be so, and vice versa;
• the extent to which the leader regards his or her personal contribution
to the task as vital. The more vital the leader thinks his or her own role
is, the more structured or autocratic the leader is likely to be;
• the extent to which the leader values certainty and predictability: partic-
ipative styles of leadership reduce the predictability of outcomes because
they entail relatively loose control over the subordinates;
• the degree of stress: urgent or dangerous tasks require authoritarian

leadership. Hence the strict discipline enforced in military or police forces,
but even here the nature and extent of authoritarianism required may vary;
• older people tend to be more hierarchical or autocratic than younger
people (1993: 108–10).
Thus assessing the nature of the tasks to be undertaken should make it possible
to allocate the most appropriate leaders for particular groups of workers
undertaking particular kinds of tasks.
The analysis of the subordinates and the task both produce mirror images of
the qualities required of the leader, who may or may not reflect them fully or
adequately. The issue is how well the leaders, the subordinates and the task fit
together. John Adair (1983) examines the extent of the interaction among
individual needs, group maintenance needs and task needs. Leadership is
required at all levels of the organization, not just at the top (Handy, 1993: 117).
The issues for a company to determine are how far it can either recruit people
with the qualities needed to provide the appropriate leadership styles at the
various levels of the organization, or train existing or new staff to develop them.
Much of the management literature on leadership is concerned to address these
two issues of leader recruitment and training.
The difficulty about applying these analyses to political leadership, although
less perhaps to administrative leadership, is the problem we have already
encountered several times: that political leaders’ careers are varied and largely
unpredictable. There is no clearly demarcated career route to the White House,
Number Ten or the mayor’s office. Gerald Kaufman (1997: 23) has vividly
made this point when describing civil servants’ initial reactions to the arrival
of a new minister:
the question in the minds of all civil servants who suddenly find themselves
encumbered with a new minister is quite starkly: ‘What have we got here?’ The new
minister may turn out to be rude, lazy, irascible, dirty, a drunkard, or – worst of all
– stupid. And they are stuck with him, particularly the Private Office, who have to
live with him all the time. To begin with, they operate on the safest principle, namely
that he is an imbecile.
This highlights a basic difference between political leadership and leadership

in a business or military context. Business or military units do not usually have
to adapt frequently to new leaders who are largely unknown quantities, but
officials in government must do this as a matter of routine because in
democracies the average tenure of office is short. The next election is seldom
more than four years away and changes may take place before then. For
instance, the average British ministerial tenure of office is only about 18 months.
Other elected leaders also have relatively short periods in which to make their
impact on the bureaucracy. Even American presidents may be replaced every

four years, as may German chancellors. The French president gets a longer
term of seven years, but he must share power with a prime minister who again
has only a four-year term of office.
Senior officials in government must therefore accommodate themselves to
a series of leaders who are elected or appointed through haphazard and unpre-
dictable electoral and selection processes. This is why the issue of how to
persuade political leaders to play the appropriate roles once they are elected or
appointed is so crucial. Much of this persuasion has to be done after the leader
has been elected or appointed, although some limited preparation and even
training may be possible beforehand. Thus, over the last 30 years, it has become
accepted practice in the months before a British General Election that leading
Opposition politicians should be allowed some access to senior civil servants
so that they can begin discussing the implementation of their programme if
they win the election. However, unlike their American counterparts, who are
permitted a two and a half-month period of preparation between their election
in November and their assumption of office the following January, British
political leaders have to take over the reins of government within days of being
elected to office. No prior training or preparation can prepare anyone for this
shock.
Warren Bennis addressed these issues, but mainly in the business context.
However, some of the examples he uses in his analysis of leadership are drawn
from government (Bennis and Nanus, 1985; Bennis, 1989). On the evidence
of interviews with 90 American business leaders, Bennis and Nanus defined
four themes or necessary areas of competence for business leaders.
1. Vision: a dream coupled with the confidence that they can turn it into reality.
In government this will probably be supplied by a party ideology and
manifesto. Handy has written that ‘A leader is someone who is able to
develop and communicate a vision which gives meaning to the work of
others’ (1993: 117).
2. Communication: the ability to communicate the dream to the workforce and
generate enthusiasm for it – again, compare Harvey Jones’s advocacy of
the need to ‘switch people on’. Elsewhere, Handy calls this the ‘Aha Effect’,
because successful leaders will cause their followers to say ‘Aha – of course,
now I see it!’ and hence be willing to cooperate.
3. Trust: integrity and consistency. Apart from anything else, ‘the leader must
live the vision. He or she must not only believe in it but must be seen to
believe in it’, for others to believe in it too (ibid.).
4. Self-knowledge: the leader must know his worth, while not being a self-
worshipper.
Handy summarizes Bennis and Nanus’s findings as follows:
A leader ... is someone who is able to develop and communicate a vision which gives
meaning to the work of others. It is a task too important to be left only to those at the
top of organisations. Leaders are needed at all levels and in all situations ... In fact,
anyone who wants to get something done with or through other people can and should
learn the lessons of leadership. We are all leaders at one time or another. (1993: 117)
At this level of generality we can accept such a view as being as appropriate

for political leadership as it is in business or anywhere else. The difficulty is how
to ensure that political leaders either possess or develop the capacity to lead,
given their varied and chancy career paths towards leadership positions.
In On Becoming a Leader (1989), Bennis develops his ideas a good deal
further. Early on, he sets out his ingredients of leadership, as listed below.
• A guiding vision, including the ability to think strategically and for the
long term. Leaders must also be able to think creatively: they ‘manage the
dream’ (p. 192). A warning particularly relevant to political leaders is
that ‘creation is the province of the individual, not the committee’ (p. 138).
However, it may also be the result of collective brainstorming.
• Passion and enthusiasm, which must be communicated to the subordi-
nates. Bennis declared that ‘Leaders expect the best of the people around
them’ (p. 198). He further tells us that, as a leader, ‘You have to be capable
of inspiring other people to do things without actually sitting on top of
them with a checklist – which is management, not leadership’ (p. 139).
They need optimism, faith and hope – what Bennis calls ‘The Nobel
factor’ (p. 196): the leader must believe that in the appropriate circum-
stances he or she could win a Nobel Prize.
• Integrity: self-knowledge, candour, maturity, so as to gain trust.
• Trust, which must be both earned and given: this is the art of ‘taking
charge without taking control’ (p. 161). Thus the leader’s attitudes and
ideas must permeate the organization without the need for his or her
continuous presence in order to enforce them. This prescription recalls
Lao-Tzu’s definition of the best leadership as being when the people say
‘we did it for ourselves’.
• Curiosity and the ability to learn from errors: ‘Failure is not the crime.
Low aim is’ (p. 194). Tolerance of mistakes and the encouragement of
dissent are needed throughout the organization if opportunities for
individual and collective learning are to be maximized. The British
comedy actor John Cleese said, ‘If we can’t take the risk of saying or
doing something wrong, our creativity goes right out the window’ (quoted
in Bennis, 1989: 95). Michael Bichard insists that successful leaders must
create ‘a climate where innovation and initiative are encouraged, where

risk is accepted and well managed and where the first reaction to mistakes
is to learn and not to blame’ (1998: 331). Political leaders such as
Margaret Thatcher who stifle dissent (‘I could not tolerate disagreement
in my Cabinet’) do so at their peril because they thus lose the opportunity
to learn from the mistakes they and others will inevitably make.
• Daring: take risks but take the right risks. In the end, leaders need to
develop Sir Geoffrey Vickers’s (1965) ‘art of judgement’.
The rest of Bennis’s book is devoted to amplification and exploration of these

ingredients.
Bennis’s research was confined to studies of business leaders because he did
not believe that political leaders would answer his questions candidly. However,
this is not a valid excuse for not trying. In particular, leaders at local or regional
levels of government, such as executive mayors or council leaders, are not
subject to the same constraints as presidents or prime ministers and valuable
lessons for all political leaders can be learnt from such local leaders’ experiences
(Elcock, 1995b; 1998a, 1998b). Quotations from government leaders such as
Henry Kissinger, as well as from various former presidents of the USA, litter
Bennis’s book as illustrations of the points he wishes to make.
Bennis’s determination to separate leadership from management emerges
again and again throughout this book. He also argues that training is never
enough. Although leaders are made, not born (ibid.: 5), their development of
leadership qualities is largely a matter for themselves: ‘more leaders have been
made by accident, circumstances, sheer grit of will than have been made by all
the leadership courses put together ... Developing character and vision is the way
leaders invent themselves’ (ibid.: 42). Again, ‘Leaders learn from others but
they are not made by others’ ibid.: 63). In consequence, Bennis’s analysis may
be more relevant to political leadership than he allows, because the qualities
he is seeking to define are developed by the triumphs and vicissitudes of a
business or political career, rather than by systematic recruitment and training.
Above all, leaders must break away from their socialization to establish their
independence of mind: ‘they are originals, not copies’ (ibid.: 4). He offers four
principal lessons that arise from his interviews: (a) you are your own best
teacher, (b) accept responsibility and blame no-one, (c) you can learn anything
you want to learn, and (d) true understanding comes from reflecting on your own
experience (ibid.: 56). These qualities can be acquired through self-discipline
but not from training courses.
The last theme from Bennis’s book is perhaps the most relevant of all to
political leadership: leaders must understand stakeholder symmetry; they must
be able to assess the balance among the competing claims and the relative power
of all stakeholder groups (ibid.: 200). For some observers of political leadership,
especially those in the USA, this is the most critical attribute because political
leaders need to secure the right balance among contending factions and interests
to secure support for and compliance with their policies. Hence they seek to
maximize their own influence in terms of Edward Banfield’s (1961: 3) classic
definition of influence, as the
ability to get others to act, think or feel as one intends….To concert activity for any
purpose – to arrange a picnic, build a building or pass an ordinance, for example – a
more or less elaborate system of influence must be created; the appropriate people
must be persuaded, deceived, coerced, inveigled or otherwise induced to do what is
required of them. Any cooperative activity – and so any organisation, formal or
informal, ephemeral or lasting – may be viewed as a system of influence.
In American politics in particular, where party discipline is weak and the

power to take action is widely dispersed among different levels and agencies
of government, a political leader must be able to ‘log roll’ a sufficient coalition
of support to secure the promulgation and implementation of his or her policies.
Hence we return yet again to Richard Neustadt’s definition of presidential power
as the power to persuade. Leaders in other polities may have more extensive
control over the course of events, for example through the strict discipline
enforced by the whips that characterizes most British party politics. Even so,
securing the implementation of leaders’ policies demands persuading other
individuals and agencies over whom they have no control to cooperate.
This is still more the case in today’s ‘hollowed out’ governance, where
political leaders’ decisions have to be implemented through fragmented,
sometimes fractious, networks of autonomous organizations (Rhodes, 1995).
Thus the contingency theories which take account of the leader’s political,
economic and social environment as well as of his or her personal qualities are
even more appropriate for increasing our understanding of political leadership
than they are for studying business leadership. No leader possesses all the power
and influence he or she needs to make his or her wishes happen. They need to
be able to persuade others to comply. They are individuals who need to develop
particular sets of attributes. They also need to learn to conduct their offices suc-
cessfully. In order to do this, they must either be born with or acquire the
personal characteristics that will enable them to become effective leaders. They
must also learn to work with others in group decision-making processes.
Therefore we now turn to consider the psychology of leadership.
5. The psychology of leadership
PSYCHOLOGY’S CONTRIBUTION TO THE STUDY OF
LEADERSHIP
The initial focus of this chapter is on the personality of individual leaders, on

which ‘much intellectual energy has been spent’ (John and Cole, 2000: 100).
In contrast with the previous chapter, which ended by discussing theories of
management which relate the role to be played by the leader to the nature of the
task he or she is set, together with the nature of his or her subordinates, this
one will focus initially on issues more closely related to Handy’s ‘trait’ theories
of leadership. It discusses how such traits develop through processes of
upbringing and socialization. Later it discusses group dynamics, which may be
the most important contribution social psychology has made to understanding
political leadership and indicating ways of improving the quality of leaders’
decisions, or at least reducing their propensity to make mistakes.
The beginning is the recognition of leadership as ‘a reciprocal, transactional
and transformational process in which individuals are permitted to influence
and motivate others to promote the attaining of group and individual goals’
(Forsyth, 1990: 216). Alternatively, as Harry Truman put it, ‘a leader is a man
who has the ability to get other people to do what they don’t want to do and like
it’. The focus of this chapter is therefore on leaders’ behaviour and its sources.
Psychological studies seek explanations for their subjects’ behaviour on the
basis of their upbringing and the processes by which they are socialized into
their expected social roles (see Dowse and Hughes, 1972: 200ff). Thus, for
example, Adorno et al. (1950) studied the origins of authoritarian attitudes in
their subjects’ upbringing as well as their educational and other socialization
experiences. They concluded that rigid parental discipline and the granting of
parental affection conditionally on obedience tended to produce authoritarian,
intolerant attitudes among the subjects of their studies. Hans Eysenck offers a
matrix which relates tough and tender social and religious attitudes to explicitly
political liberal or conservative ideological loyalties (1963, ch. 7). The expla-
nations, particularly of deviant or harmful behaviour, offered by such
researchers may be the prelude to diagnosis and proposals for a remedy, in
accordance with the medical model.
Hugh Berrington (1974) reviewed a literature which postulates that British
prime ministers tend to be men who were denied parental love as children, often
85
as a result of parental bereavement. He suggests that many prime ministers

were shy, withdrawn individuals. They may well have been unhappy at school:
‘To go to Eton is an undoubted advantage for any boy with ambition to become
Prime Minister; to be unhappy at Eton, it seems, is an even bigger one’
(ibid.: 357). He concluded that ‘political candidacy at this level draws towards
it men who are exceptional both in their high abilities and in their strong needs.
If it is lonely at the top, it is because it is the lonely who seek to climb there’
(ibid.: 369). Likewise, James Barber argues that the early lives of the presidents
have a considerable influence on their performance in office.
However, even if it is possible to conduct valid psychological studies of
individual political leaders, the scope for proposing means to improve leaders’
performance may be more limited than it was with contingency theories, which
can discuss the use of advisers as individuals (confidants) or in more or less
structured groups (policy or research units) to support leaders and try to
improve the decisions they take. From the psychological point of view, oppor-
tunities for improvement may be more limited even if extensive studies of
leaders’ backgrounds, lives and careers can be carried out, because their traits
are likely already to be irrevocably formed by the time they achieve high
office. Psychological studies may therefore explain individuals’ successes or
failures in leadership offices but they cannot necessarily be used to modify
leaders’ behaviour or exclude psychologically unsuitable individuals from
seeking or being elected to leadership offices. In any case, access to the
information required to carry out a psychological study of presidents or prime
ministers is likely to become available to researchers only after they have left
office or died. Such people are not likely to have the time or inclination to
submit themselves to psychological analysis or complete extensive question-
naires while they are in office, although local government leaders may be
more accommodating. Leaders may therefore only be susceptible to change at
the behest of psychological advisers or observers to a very limited extent, if
at all. Also the influence of such studies would be very restricted: indeed, their
contribution may be confined to the writing of posthumous analytical
biographies.
Furthermore, because of the variety of political leaders’ career paths, it may
be impossible to propose any general form of screening or training programmes
to improve their ability to perform their leadership roles before they achieve
office. However, there is real scope for proposing devices which may improve
the quality of leaders’ decisions and reduce the likelihood of their making
mistakes. Identifying the means to reduce the likelihood of ‘groupthink’
developing, for example, is likely to result in leaders taking better decisions or
at least to make it less likely that they will take bad ones. This was one of the
stated objectives of Irving Janis’s (1972) study of decision making, mainly in
the White House.
The psychology of leadership 87
THE FORMATIVE INFLUENCES ON LEADERS
An early psychological examination of a major political leader which was

undertaken in order to explain his ultimate failure was the study of Woodrow
Wilson undertaken by the celebrated psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, in collab-
oration with Ambassador William C. Bullitt, a former member of the US
Delegation to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. It may be of mainly historical
interest now, but it is worthy of note as a pioneering attempt to explore the psy-
chological sources of a leader’s behaviour in office. At the Peace Conference,
Wilson played a leading role in preparing the treaties which ended the First
World War. However, he was widely accused of having compromised the
principles for peace which he had set out in his ‘Fourteen Points’ speech of
January 1918 (see Elcock, 1972: 17ff), on the basis of which Germany sued
for peace the following November. Wilson’s apparent disregard for the Fourteen
Points at the Conference, in part because of his increasing hatred for the
Germans (Elcock, 1972), disillusioned many of his liberal supporters (see
Keynes, 1919; Nicolson, 1964).
After returning home Wilson failed to persuade the US Senate to ratify the
Treaty of Versailles, with the result that the League of Nations created by the
Treaty was denied American military and financial backing. This probably
made its eventual failure inevitable. Wilson’s defeat in the Senate was widely
blamed on his refusal to include leading senators in the delegation which
travelled to Paris to negotiate the peace treaties. Wilson expected the Senate to
bow before his achievement in settling the peace of Europe and above all
introducing the first organization expressly designed to prevent future wars by
negotiating the settlement of international disputes and enforcing the results of
those negotiations, if necessary through the deployment of collective force.
Senators thought otherwise, however, at a time when the popularity of Wilson’s
Democrats was waning and isolationism was reasserting itself in the USA after
the traumatic experience of participating in the First World War.
Bullitt and Freud’s study, which was not published until the 1960s because
of the authors’ deference to the feelings of Wilson’s widow who lived until
then, argued that Wilson had personality defects as a result of which he
developed the egocentricity and arrogance which caused him to fail to achieve
the goals he set himself for the Peace Conference. Freud’s introductory
comments about his subject are revealing, not least of Freud’s own feelings
about Wilson:
I must ... commence my contribution to this psychological study of Thomas Woodrow

Wilson with the confession that the figure of the American President, as it rose above
the horizon of Europeans, was from the beginning unsympathetic to me and that this
aversion increased in the course of years the more I learnt about him and the more
severely we suffered from the consequences of his intrusion into our destiny ... As
everyone knows, the hostile camp during the war also sheltered a chosen darling of
Providence: the German Kaiser. It was most regrettable that later on the other side a
second appeared. None gained thereby: respect for God was not increased. (Bullitt
and Freud, 1967b: 3–4)
Wilson’s arrogance and inflexibility was demonstrated by his failure to

recognize the need to take steps to secure support in the Senate if the treaty
was to have any chance of ratification. However, there were earlier signs of
arrogance. Even his proclamation of the ‘Fourteen Points’ in January 1918
smacked of it: one could sympathize with French Premier Georges
Clemenceau’s sneer that ‘The Lord God Himself had only ten!’ Wilson declared
as he travelled to Europe to negotiate peace, ‘Why has Jesus Christ so far not
succeeded in inducing the world to follow His teachings in these matters? It is
because He taught the ideal without defining the practical means of attaining
it. That is why I am proposing a practical scheme to carry out His aims’ (quoted
in Barber, 1992: 36). He seems to have assumed very heavily that God was on
his side.
Furthermore, at several stages during the conference itself Wilson’s arrogant
obstinacy, which caused Maynard Keynes (1961) to describe him as ‘the Pres-
byterian minister’, became evident. It was derived in part from his increasingly
bitter hatred of the Germans, whom he came to regard as both cruel and unwilling
to share his vision of his new world order. This caused him to approve the writing
of clauses into the treaties which infringed the Fourteen Points, as well as
bringing about the alienation of other important participants in the conference.
Two examples, both taken from the period when the conference was approaching
its climactic moment, the signing of the Peace Treaty with Germany in the Hall
of Mirrors at Versailles at the end of June, are discussed here.
One occurred early in June, when the British Prime Minister David Lloyd
George attempted to secure modifications to the Treaty of Versailles in order
to reduce its severity because he, along with many other members of the British
delegation, felt that German complaints that the Fourteen Points were not the
basis for the Treaty’s provisions were justified (Elcock, 1972, ch. 12). Wilson
abruptly dismissed the prime minister’s démarche, saying that ‘it makes me a
little tired for people to come and say now that they are afraid the Germans
won’t sign and their fear is based on things they insisted on at the time of the
writing of the treaty; that makes me very sick’ (quoted in Elcock, 1972: 276).
Wilson stubbornly resisted most of Lloyd George’s demands, with the result,
many argued, that the seeds of a new world war were sown by the Treaty’s
provisions, especially its territorial clauses (see Mantoux, 1946).
Secondly, Wilson took a high-handed line when the Supreme Council was
faced with Italy’s territorial demands upon the former Austro-Hungarian Empire
for control over large areas of Yugoslavia, as well as the city of Fiume (Rijeka).
He would not accept that he had already made concessions to French and other
Allied territorial demands which conflicted with the Fourteen Points, including
the transfer of territories inhabited by Germans to alien rule notwithstanding his
promise of national self-determination for them. Hence the Italians regarded it
as hypocrisy when he sought to forbid them the realization of their own
territorial ambitions on the ground that to do so would infringe the promise of
self-determination contained in the Fourteen Points. In April 1919, Wilson told
the Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando:
It was I who took the responsibility and the privilege of making the arrangements
which led to the Armistice. At that time we all understood and accepted clearly defined
principles which were to serve as the basis for peace with Germany. It is not possible
for us now to say that we are making peace with Germany on the basis of certain
principles but that we are adopting other principles in making peace with Turkey,
Bulgaria and with Austria. (quoted in Elcock, 1972: 222)
In the light of the concessions Wilson had made to the French and the British,
Orlando’s response does not seem wholly unreasonable: ‘having made
concessions left and right to respectable interests, he [Wilson] now wants to
recover the purity of his principles at our expense. How can we possibly accept
that?’ (quoted in ibid.: 225). The result of the rejection of most of Italy’s
demands by the conference, largely at Wilson’s behest, was national outrage in
Italy which resulted in a period of increasing political instability and national
ferment. This contributed significantly to the rise to power of Benito Mussolini
in the early 1920s. On this and many other occasions, Wilson was simply too
blinkered, too arrogantly inflexible to make concessions when to have done so
would have given the peace a better chance of long-term continuance.
Bullitt and Freud explained Wilson’s arrogance and inflexibility in terms of
his upbringing and the influences which were brought to bear upon him as a
child and a young man. Wilson had died in 1924, before the authors began their
collaboration, so the work is based on documentary evidence rather than a psy-
choanalysis of Wilson himself. Freud was by no means an unbiased analyst,
although Bullitt’s account of Wilson’s presidency, which occupies most of the
work, is based both on his own experience as a senior member of the adminis-
tration and on the very extensive documents available to him. Their concluding
paragraph, describing Wilson’s disease-ridden final years, summarizes their
psychological findings:
Wilson seems to have thought one thing one day and another thing the next about
many things and many people. The single consistent traits in his character during his
last years were his self-pity, his admiration for his dead father and his hatred of nearly
all men on earth. His illness seems to have thrown back a considerable proportion of
his libido from love-objects to his original narcissism. He never managed to get his
libido far away from himself, even his passionately loved friends were loved only
because they were representatives of himself and his illness seems to have concen-
trated all his love on his own body ... He loved and pitied himself. He adored his
dead father in Heaven. He loosed his hatred of that same father on many men. (Bullitt
and Freud, 1967b: 24)
Bullitt and Freud thus identified Wilson’s strong relationship with his father
and his much weaker relationship with his mother, coupled with the acquisition
of deep religious convictions as a young man, as the critical formative influences
on his personality.
Like Bullitt and Freud’s study of Wilson, James D. Barber’s portraits of the
20th-century presidents trace their lives back to their childhoods in search of
explanations for their subsequent behaviour in the White House. They therefore
offer psychological insights into the way their upbringing, education and other
socialization processes influenced their attitudes and actions while they were
in office. Barber adopts a psychologist’s preoccupation with the influence of
early events in an individual’s life on his behaviour later as president. The per-
sonalities of the successive incumbents of the White House are crucial to
explaining their achievements and failures, and those characters were formed
early in their lives. Like Bullitt and Freud, Barber regards childhood and early
upbringing as crucial in forming the president’s character. His analysis consists
of four layers:
First, a President’s personality is an important shaper of his Presidential behaviour

on non-trivial matters.
Second, Presidential personality is patterned. His character, world view and style
fit together in a dynamic package understandable in psychological terms.
Third, a President’s personality interacts with the power situation he faces and the
national ‘climate of expectations’ dominant at the time he serves. The tuning and
resonance – or lack of it – between these external factors and his personality sets in
motion the dynamic of his Presidency.
Fourth, the best way to predict a President’s character, world view and style is to
see how they were put together in the first place. That happened in his early life,
culminating in his first independent political success. (Barber, 1992: 4)
In sum, ‘every story of Presidential decision-making is really two stories: an

outer one in which a rational man calculates and an inner one in which an
emotional man feels’ (ibid.). The second half of the equation is largely
determined in childhood and adolescence. For Barber, ‘character has its main
development in childhood, world view in adolescence, style in early adulthood’
(ibid.: 7). Thus ‘slowly the child defines an orientation towards experience’.
In adolescence, ‘he is moved to relate himself – his own meanings – to those
around him’. Early adulthood is ‘the time of emergence, the time the young
man found himself’ (ibid.). At this point the personality is fully formed; what
matters from then on is how the young man gained or engineered the
opportunity to become president.
For Barber, Woodrow Wilson’s character was shaped by the consciousness
engendered by his father of his early physical and mental weaknesses, with
which his father’s method of dealing was severe. ‘On Sunday afternoons he
lectured Tommy on history, literature, science and theology. On Mondays he
took his son on trips to see farms, mills and factories ... His [father’s] idea was,
Dr. Wilson’s granddaughter wrote, that if a lad was of fine tempered steel, the
more he was beaten the better he was’ (ibid.: 87). The young Wilson became
isolated and reserved but also a striver after success: ‘Once into a game, Tommy
often came to dominate the play’ (ibid.: 89). He worshipped work, which ‘must
be hard. He must suffer with it’ (ibid.: 90). He also developed a strong and rigid
religious faith: ‘Before he was twenty, Thomas Woodrow Wilson had a faith
too high to be questioned’ (ibid.: 94). Hence Barber argues that ‘the themes of
Wilson’s Presidency were foreshadowed in his early life. The pattern was there:
deprivation, low self-esteem, a turning to external achievement, a confirming
world view, a definite style rigidly adhered to, a sequence from persuasion to
domination and the search for new worlds to conquer’ (ibid.: 101). There are
therefore clear resonances of the Bullitt and Freud study in Barber’s analysis
of the effects of Wilson’s upbringing on his performance in the White House.
Barber offers similar analyses of many other presidents. Joseph P. Kennedy’s
influence on John Kennedy through his determination that his children should
be successful is an obvious example. The traits John Kennedy thus acquired
included ‘a way of approaching experience with an expectation of success’
(ibid.: 358). Richard Nixon, by contrast, had a ‘lifelong propensity for feeling
sad about himself’. According to a law school room mate, he ‘never expected
anything good to happen to him, or to anyone close to him, unless it was earned’
(ibid.:128). Perhaps here lay the sources of the insecurity that caused him to
approve the Watergate burglary and then cover it up for fear that he would lose
the one-horse 1972 election campaign, together with his propensity for ‘keeping
notes on a lot of people who are emerging as less than our friends’ (ibid.:153).
This last characteristic was reflected most famously by his ordering the tape
recording of all conversations in the White House. These tapes were his final
undoing, mainly because of their content but also because of the frequent
profanities (‘expletive deleted’) which he was heard to utter.
However, Barber also acknowledges that a president’s actions and his success
or failure in office are also shaped by external events, which are mainly of two
kinds and are not the prime concern of this chapter. Nonetheless, they need to
be briefly mentioned to complete the account of Barber’s work. The first is the
constraints on his power imposed by Congress and the Supreme Court, which
bear more heavily on some presidents than others, depending on their own
popularity and the political balance in Congress and the Court. These institu-
tional constraints were the focal point of Richard Neustadt’s study of the
presidency. The second is the general climate of expectations among the
American people. The president may influence this climate through his own
campaigns, speeches and actions, especially through the press and television –
‘A President or candidate who knows how to say simply what many feel deeply
can make an even greater contribution to cutting away the underbrush of lies
and bluster’ (ibid.: 489) – but since Watergate this task has become much more
difficult.
The five concepts: ‘character, world view, style, power situation and climate
of expectations’ (ibid.: 8) are brought together in Barber’s matrix of two
dimensions (see Figure 3.1 above): the active–passive dimension which
concerns ‘how much energy does the man invest in his Presidency?’ (ibid.: 8)
and the positive–negative affect dimension, where we ask, ‘does he seem to
experience his political life as happy or sad, enjoyable or discouraging, positive
or negative in its main effect?’ (ibid.).
LEADERS AND THEIR FOLLOWERS
However, leaders do not operate on their own or in a vacuum. Their effective-

ness and the roles they play also depend on their relationships with their
followers. Much psychological work has been concerned with the interaction
of leaders’ personalities with their followers. Much of it has been concerned
with relations between managers and their workforces in private companies,
rather than with relationships within government.
In any group of people a leader is likely to emerge: ‘Think of a study group
that comes together for the first time – some person will emerge as leader. The
leader will be most active in the discussion, structure the discussion and suggest
when to meet again, etc.’ (M. Eysenck, 1998: 652). The emergence of leaders
is related to their personality traits but these may be less important in
determining their effectiveness (ibid.: 653) because the appropriate behaviour
for a leader ‘would depend, in part, on the kind of group you were leading’
(Forsyth, 1990: 217). Hence the roles leaders must play are determined in part
by the nature of their followers. Thus Fiedler’s (1978) contingency theory is
similar to the contingency theories discussed in Chapter 4, where the appropriate
style of leadership is shown to be related to the nature of the task to be
performed, together with the relationship between the leader and his or her
followers; specifically, how great is his or her control over them (M. Eysenck,
1998: 653)? Fiedler proposed a classification of leaders based on the nature of
their attitudes to their least preferred co-worker (LPC) because the reasons
leaders give for disliking this person are indicative both of the leader’s own
approach to leadership and of the nature of the group he or she is trying to lead
(see Forsyth, 1990: 231 for Fiedler’s questionnaire inventory).
For Fiedler there are two leader types: relationship-motivated leaders, who
‘try to find acceptance within their groups’ and task-motivated leaders, who
‘concentrate on completing the task as the primary goal of the group’ (Forsyth,
1990: 230). They are related to the least preferred co-worker analysis because
‘the high-LPC leader [on Fiedler’s scale] gives greatest priority to establish-
ing and maintaining satisfying interpersonal relationships within the group but
the low-LPC leader stresses successful completion of the task’ (ibid.: 127).
Task-motivated leaders are more authoritarian than their relationship-motivated
fellows because their main concern is to get the job done. Different leadership
styles may be appropriate in different circumstances, in particular the nature
of the task set for the group to carry out. Leadership styles are therefore
determined both by leaders’ personal attributes and by the nature of the
situations in which they are required to lead.
Fiedler envisages three situations, which he relates to the extent to which
leaders should focus on getting their tasks accomplished. If task accomplish-
ment is all-important or nearly so, leaders will need to be relatively authoritarian
and directive. In situations where completion of a specific task is less important,
they should be chiefly concerned about their relationships with their subordi-
nates. Thus ‘if the situation is very easy you can be task-oriented and even
authoritarian because you are accepted anyhow. If the situation is very difficult,
task orientation may be necessary to get the group off the ground. In the middle,
it is better to be relationship-oriented’ (M. Eysenck, 1998: 654). The nature of
the relationship between the leader and the group is therefore determined by the
extent to which leaders’ approach to their leadership roles is consonant with
the nature of the group and the task it is carrying out.
A final issue concerning leader types is the nature of charismatic or trans-
formational leadership where an organization has to be established or radically
changed. Transformational leaders must possess four attributes.
1. Idealized influence: the leader is a model and a symbol for the followers.
2. Inspiration for the subordinates to put in extra effort to achieve their goals,
and having high expectations of the followers.
3. Intellectual stimulation: creating and encouraging the creation of new ideas
and ways of making sense of things.
4. Individual consideration of the motives and feelings of the followers (Bass,
1960).
In circumstances where radical change is required, such transformational

leadership may be of great importance: we are back with the classic issue of
whether events generate the leaders needed to address them (Carlyle, 1841;
Mintzberg, 1983).
Some psychologists suggest that at least some attributes of charismatic
leadership, including enthusiasm and inspiration, can be learnt through
appropriate training. It is of the greatest importance, however, that charismatic
leadership must be socially directed rather than directed towards the individual
leader’s interests. If it is socially directed, it ‘(A) is based on egalitarian
behaviour; (B) serves collective interests and is not driven by the self-interest
of the leader and (C) develops and empowers others’ (M. Eysenck, 1998: 655).
If it is personalized, however, the result may be a Hitler or a Stalin, with all the
disasters associated with their leadership. Above all, leaders should not be hero-
worshipped.
Although most groups will generate leaders, leadership can be replaced by
substitutes in a wide range of circumstances where a leader will neither be
appointed nor emerge because the leadership role is not required. Such situations
include the following:
leadership in terms of giving direction is not important when the subordinates know
how to do things because they have been trained. Second, on the assembly line much
of what the leader does is actually materialised in the line itself, for example giving
a rhythm to work, making sure that there is always enough work around to be done,
etc. Third, the relationship with the leader is less important when the task is intrinsi-
cally satisfying. (ibid.: 656)
Also leadership may be less needed in a mature group whose members have
worked together for a long time. Task-oriented leadership in particular is less
needed when group members have learnt both how to carry out their tasks and
how to work effectively with one another (Hersey and Blanchard, 1976).
Such leadership substitution is likely to become more important in the future
‘because there will be less direct contact between a manager and his or her sub-
ordinates in future virtual and lean companies’ (ibid.), where co-workers may
have little contact with one another because they work largely from their homes.
Teleworkers no longer have designated office spaces at their organizations’
headquarters; nor do they socialize at and after meetings often, or even at all
(see Handy, 1997: 136f). Therefore, in this respect at least, in the organizations
foreseen by Toffler (1979) and Handy (1997) leadership will be less important
in terms of the relations among employees who mostly work at home than it is
when they are all gathered together in a factory or an office block to collaborate
in a joint enterprise. It will become more important, however, in setting the
objectives for the home workers to achieve and designing the systems by which
they collaborate remotely to achieve those objectives.
Much of this organizational psychology has focused on industrial
management. Hence its relevance to political leadership may be limited by the
same factors concerned with the unpredictable variability of political leaders’

careers as those which constrain the usefulness of managerial analyses.
However, yet other psychological analyses may be more relevant because they
have focused on the effect of the people around them on leaders’ decisions,
notably that of their closest advisers. Therefore the next issue to consider is the
group dynamics which surrounds leaders and how it influences their policy
successes and failures.
THE LEADER AND THE GROUP: AVOIDING

‘GROUPTHINK’
Irving Janis’s Victims of Groupthink (1972), was initially inspired by discussions

with political scientists about contemporary events, together with his reading
of the published accounts of the way in which several major political decisions
were taken. These led him to believe that the concept of ‘groupthink’, which
he had already identified in experiments with groups of students and others,
might at least partly explain why some of the political catastrophes in US history
were not detected and avoided by the political leaders involved in them. He
offers a series of case studies of high-level decisions in foreign policy which
he follows up in medical mode by proposing a diagnosis and possible remedies.
The first such disaster, which he argues may at least in part have been caused
by groupthink, was President Kennedy’s decision, taken shortly after he
assumed office, to allow the ‘Bay of Pigs’ invasion of Cuba by Cuban exile
forces to proceed at half-cock. Second comes President Truman’s decision to
allow General MacArthur to invade North Korea, which resulted in the entry
of China into the Korean War and near-defeat for the US army. The last was
the extraordinary failure by the local commanders to anticipate the Japanese
air attack on Pearl Harbor (Janis, 1972, chs 2–4).
Janis contrasts with these three disasters two major US international
successes. The first is President Kennedy’s outfacing of Nikita Khrushchev in
the Cuban missile crisis, when the world came nearer than ever before or since
to global thermonuclear war. This was avoided when the Soviet leader backed
down just before Soviet merchant ships carrying missiles would have collided
with the US naval blockade of Cuba. The second successful decision was the
preparation of the Marshall Plan, which rescued Western Europe from the
devastation of the Second World War and laid the foundations for its postwar
prosperity (ibid., chs 5 and 6).
Janis argues that the symptoms of groupthink can be clearly identified in the
published accounts of the three policy catastrophes, but that they were suc-
cessfully countered by those involved in the two successful decisions, although
many of the same leaders had been involved in one or more of the catastrophic
decisions too. Groupthink has been defined, in the context of Hans Andersen’s
tales by Charles Handy (1995: 96–7), as ‘a state of affairs in which all around
are of a common mind so that no-one notices that the emperor is actually naked,
or at least would never presume to say so’. The role of the little boy in exposing
the truth about the emperor’s nakedness that no-one else dares to mention is
therefore crucial to the avoidance of policy disasters.
Janis identifies six symptoms of groupthink, all of which he claims were
present during the decision-making processes which led up to the three cata-
strophes (1972: 36–48).
1. The illusion of invincibility: ‘We are the good guys and you are the bad
guys and we will win.’ For example, David S. McLellan wrote that the
invasion of North Korea was ‘a prime example of an American propensity
to take the righteousness of its actions for granted and to ignore the objective
reality which its behaviour represents to others’ (quoted in Janis, 1972: 60).
The decision makers involved failed to realize how hostile Peking would be
to the invasion of North Korea.
2. An illusion of unanimity which is needed for success: in Benjamin Franklin’s
immortal words, ‘we all hang together or we hang separately’. Such
unanimity may be reinforced by stereotypes of the opposition or enemy as
weak, wicked or stupid. In turn, this will cause danger signals to be
neglected: ‘Laughing together about a danger signal is a typical manifesta-
tion of groupthink’ (p. 91). Janis identifies some dramatic examples of such
collective complacency in the social lives of the senior officers at Pearl
Harbor immediately before the Japanese attack, notably a dinner party held
the evening before it at which the senior officers present lightly dismissed
the possibility of an attack.
3. Suppression of personal doubts: members of the group fail to express reser-
vations or opposition because ‘I don’t want to appear to be a nuisance’, or
‘I don’t want to rock the boat’. The next stage is the development of wishful
thinking among the decision-making group which no-one present feels able
to challenge.
4. The group contains self-appointed ‘mindguards’ who prevent unwelcome
information or dissident views from reaching the decision-making group.
Thus when the invasion of North Korea was being considered, George F.
Kennan opposed the proposal, but he was regarded by other members of
the decision-making circle as ‘a floating kidney ... one step removed from
real decisions’. He was therefore ‘relegated to the sidelines: attending the
respective meetings in ... the Secretary of State’s office but not those that
took place at the White House level’ (p. 62). Kennan’s views on the
likelihood of the Chinese entering the war and the Soviet Union’s probable
hostile response were therefore withheld from the group of top decision
makers because they might disturb their established ideas.
5. Docility fostered by suave leadership: if the group includes a charismatic
leader, he or she is likely to sweep away or stifle opposition. Certainly, if
the formal leader and final arbiter – in Janis’s case studies this was usually
the president – expresses a policy preference, that policy is likely to prevail
within the group. Leaders, however, may also themselves be swayed by a
group consensus: ‘Much of the time the group consensus may be shaped
primarily by an authoritarian leader but the leader himself, as a participant
in the group, can be influenced, like anyone else, when the others happen
to arrive at a consensus that differs from his own preferred position’ (p. 73).
Both of these positions may still be wrong.
6. There may be a taboo against antagonizing valued members of the group,
especially new ones. Thus, in the discussion on invading North Korea,
Truman was concerned to prevent his vice-president from damaging General
MacArthur’s prestige: to ‘pull the rug from under the General’ (p. 69) by
criticising MacArthur.
After a detailed consideration of each case study, Janis offers his diagnosis
and remedies. He argues that all these symptoms add up to ‘concurrence-seeking
at the expense of critical thinking’ (1972: 206). He goes on to suggest that
‘groupthink is likely to occur within cohesive small groups of decision-makers
and ... the most corrosive effects of groupthink can be countered by eliminating
group insulation, overly directive leadership practices and other conditions that
foster premature consensus’ (ibid.: 232, emphasis added). The nub of the issue
is that last phrase, because the best way to prevent groupthink is to encourage
all the group’s members to be critical evaluators of one another’s contributions
all the time, so as to prevent a consensus developing too quickly or easily. The
group’s leader must insist that this happens despite the danger that meetings
will become considerably less agreeable if differences of opinion are honestly
and frequently aired.
The fifth symptom of groupthink in particular, docility fostered by suave
leadership, together with Janis’s overall diagnosis of premature consensus,
indicates the crucial importance of making senior decision makers aware of the
dangers of groupthink and the need to prevent it. He prescribes nine procedures
which will help decision makers to avoid the dangers of groupthink, most of
which require the determination by the group’s leader to impose and enforce
them. They can be summarized as follows (ibid.: 209–19):
1. All the group’s members must be independent critical evaluators and their
roles as such must be assigned by the leader.
2. The leader must set a tone of open, mutual criticism within the group.
3. The leader must express himself impartial about the outcome of the process
and not steer the group towards his own strongly expressed preferences.
4. There should be several policy groups contributing to the decision-making
process, not just one, despite the danger that this will give rise to ‘a virulent
form of politicking’ (p. 212) in which the various groups will vie with one
another for attention and influence. Alternatively, the members of the
decision-making group should also work in subgroups which report back to
the main group after they have held their own discussions of the issues they
have been charged to consider independently.
5. Each of the group’s members must discuss the group’s work independently
with trusted associates and report the results of these independent
discussions back to the group.
6. ‘Outside’ members should be brought into meetings so as to expose the
group to a wide variety of perspectives and views on the various aspects of
the problem. Both these last two procedures can be supported and facilitated
by policy or research units who have a remit to prepare and submit
alternative arguments and proposals. They may also play the role in
procedure (7).
7. The group should establish one or more devil’s advocates to put opposing
views before its members. They must be allowed a full and real say in the
discussion, not just be accepted as token dissidents. In the UK the CPRS was
explicitly given the right to do this by issuing collective briefs challenging
proposals submitted to the Cabinet by Whitehall departments (Blackstone
and Plowden, 1988).
8. Warning signals from the opposition or the enemy must be noticed and not
just noted. No-one should be forced into meeting Cassandra’s fate of
repeatedly predicting the fall of Troy but never being heeded. One way of
making sure that warning signals are noticed is to debate alternative
scenarios based on all the information available to the group.
9. Hold a second chance meeting at which group members’ residual doubts
are considered before actions become irrevocable. Janis commends A.P.
Sloan’s practice at General Motors: the company’s board would reach a
decision and then adjourn for an hour to think again about it. Another such
approach might be to take the decision twice, first with the group sober and
then drunk, and only execute the decision if it is the same both times (Janis,
1972: 219).
Above all, premature consensus must be avoided: ‘The realisation that the
desire for unity within the group is not always desirable’ is vital. The
implication is that group members must not be so friendly with one another
that they are reluctant to speak their minds freely or to speak out when they
become convinced that someone is making a mistake. Also creative, non-
conforming individuals must be given a hearing and their views must be

seriously considered.
In ensuring that such a mutually critical ethos prevails within groups, the
leaders’ role is crucial. They must not overbear their colleagues by expressing
preferred outcomes early on, however high their power and prestige relative to
the other members may be. Leaders must therefore avoid acting in an authori-
tarian manner even if they are naturally prone to do so. The chairman or leader
must insist on open and frank discussion as well as encouraging, even insisting
on, the formation of subgroups. They must also ensure that appropriate devil’s
advocates or experts with differing points of view are invited to group meetings
and given a full hearing. Above all, the leader must constantly insist that all
the group’s members offer critical evaluations of one another’s proposals. The
price the leader may pay for this is friction and animosities within the group,
even perhaps the need to maintain order during its debates. This will be a lot
less cosy than holding cordial consensual meetings and friendly dinner parties,
but it is likely to lead to better decisions and to avoid policy disasters. On the
other hand, the example of the Clinton White House in its first year demon-
strates that too great a welter of advice can be confusing (Woodward, 1993;
Stephanopoulos, 1999). Furthermore, leaders’ time is always limited and, if a
major economic, financial or foreign policy crisis is looming, it may be very
limited indeed. There may be little time to debate alternative views or proposals.
Nonetheless, time should be made to do so.
Janis’s work was based on a set of case studies, which might be thought to
limit its validity, both because they are all American and because they mostly
involve critical periods of international relations which may not be typical of
decisions taken in other policy areas or less fateful circumstances. However,
groupthink may affect decision makers in other countries and on other issues.
Janis argued that the errors of Neville Chamberlain and his colleagues in the late
1930s in believing that they could appease Hitler and avoid a second European
war may well have been the product of groupthink (Janis, 1972: 185ff).
Certainly, the circle of British decision makers and their advisers who were
most influential in taking the decisions which led to the Munich agreement to
permit Hitler to dismember Czechoslovakia in September 1938 was both small
and closed. It consisted of middle-class and aristocratic people, mainly ministers
in the Conservative government and members of the higher civil service, who
shared a common hatred of the Soviet Union with a belief that Germany had
been unjustly treated by the makers of the Treaty of Versailles. One influential
member of the group, Sir Horace Wilson, had a background in industrial
relations rather than diplomacy; he had served as the government’s chief
industrial adviser. He may have believed that he and his friends could suc-
cessfully negotiate with Hitler as he had previously negotiated industrial peace
with trade union leaders.
Apart from their official meetings in Whitehall and 10, Downing Street, most
of the group’s members frequently met socially, particularly at Lord Astor’s
country house at Cliveden and at All Souls College, Oxford (Rowse, 1961;
Gilbert and Gott, 1963). A.L. Rowse’s memoir of All Souls at this time is indeed
redolent of Janis’s groupthink diagnosis. He wrote of the appeasers:
They would not listen to warnings because they did not wish to hear. And they did
not think things out, because there was a fatal confusion in their minds between the
interests of their social order and the interests of the country. They did not say much
about it because that would have given the game away and anyway it was a thought
they did not wish to be too explicit about even to themselves, but they were anti-Red
and that hamstrung them in dealing with the greater immediate danger to their country,
Hitler’s Germany. (1961: 116)
The symptoms of groupthink are all there, in particular the cosy social together-
ness, rejection of unwelcome opinions and fixed stereotypes of their enemies.
More recently, Patrick Dunleavy (1995a) has argued that the danger of
groupthink is reinforced in British government by the closed nature of policy
debate in the Cabinet, the civil service culture of secrecy and the reluctance of
civil servants to seek advice from beyond the corridors of the Whitehall
ministries. He unfavourably contrasts Britain’s vulnerability to policy disasters
with the Netherlands’ relative immunity to them. The worst Dutch policy
disasters which his inquiries in that country revealed were the contracting out
of the production of a photo-identity card to a private company which could
not meet the required standard, so the work had to be redone internally at greater
expense, and a botched security system at Schipol Airport. The latter was
designed to permit transfer passengers to go into the city by giving them
temporary passes out of the airport, but its effect was to destroy the effective-
ness of the airport’s security precautions, so it was quickly stopped. These
Dutch policy disasters paled into insignificance beside the British policy
disasters of the late 1980s, including most notably the Poll Tax. Dunleavy
records that ‘When I pressed my Dutch colleagues for something more costly
or heavy-handed, they admitted defeat’(ibid.: 54). He argues that many of
Britain’s trials and tribulations have resulted in large part from the propensity
of her closed decision-making circles to succumb to groupthink and therefore
take bad, even disastrous, decisions.
This tendency may have been accentuated by Margaret Thatcher’s
‘conviction politics’. If ever there was a leader who from the beginning exposed
herself to the danger of groupthink, it was her. She made this evident in her
declaration just before she won office that she would not and could not tolerate
dissension within her Cabinet. Dunleavy’s proposed remedy is a far-reaching
programme of constitutional reform to break down the isolation of Britain’s
top decision makers from alternative sources of advice and conflicting opinions,
which on Janis’s analysis must make the British system of government

peculiarly prone to developing the symptoms of groupthink.
CONCLUSION
Psychological studies of individual political leaders help to explain why they

succeeded or failed in office. An examination of both the personal attributes
of leaders and the nature of the organizations, governments and societies they
govern enables us to indicate ways in which they can maximize their effec-
tiveness by adjusting their own approaches to the circumstances in which they
govern. They must meet ‘the need to make certain that one’s leadership actions
fit the given situation’ (Forsyth, 1990: 215). However, they do not usually offer
the means to select or train leaders in order to improve their ability to make
rational or sensible decisions, especially in politics, where leadership careers
are varied and greatly affected by unpredictable chances. However, the study
of the psychology of groups has some very important lessons to teach about
the need to ensure that leaders remain open to multiple sources of advice,
although these must not be so numerous as to cause confusion. The nature of
the groups whose members advise political leaders requires careful and constant
scrutiny if the dangers of groupthink are to be avoided.
PART II
Leadership Roles
6. The functions of leadership:
governing roles
INTRODUCTION
Studying a wide range of literature about leadership has demonstrated that

political leaders need to exercise a wide range of functions. Identifying these
functions and the roles leaders must play in order to fulfil them will enable us
to consider what advice and support systems leaders may need in order to
improve the quality of their decisions. The next two chapters explore the various
roles which modern political leaders must play. Chapter 8 then develops an
analysis of ways in which they can be helped to play them effectively. Leach
and Wilson (2000: 17ff) define four leadership tasks in local authorities:
maintaining cohesiveness, developing strategic and policy direction, repre-
senting the authority in the external world and ensuring programme
implementation. The first two and the last are concerned primarily with the
internal functioning of the government; the third with its relations with other
agencies. This distinction is fundamental to the following delineation of
leadership roles.
The first set of functions, governing roles, are concerned with controlling
and managing the internal operation of the government of which the leader is
head, whether it is local, regional, national or supranational. Leaders must
determine the ideological and other parameters within which the government’s
managers are required to operate, set the overall policy goals which the
government is to seek to achieve and make clear what is expected of all those
who are working for it. Leaders also need to ensure adequate coordination of
administration, resource use and service provision in order to prevent policy
failures, service duplication and wasted resources.
The second set of functions are governance roles, concerned with the
government’s relations with other governments at its own local, regional,
national or supranational level as well as with governments at the other levels
and with private companies and charitable agencies. Nowadays government
structures are becoming more and more fragmented, especially because so many
governmental functions are contracted out to other agencies. Also governments
can achieve little except in partnership with other organizations. Governments
105
106 Leadership roles
are becoming increasingly interdependent, and so the importance of these

governance roles has increased enormously (see Rhodes, 1995).
Thirdly, political leaders must concern themselves with ensuring their own
continuance in office. Indeed, nowadays, political leaders seem to be concerned
with their political survival above all else. They therefore become preoccupied
with the increasing range of techniques, such as opinion polling, focus groups
and media manipulation, that are now available to help them do so. As a result,
politics has become corrupted by the activities of ‘spin doctors’ working either
to ensure the survival of incumbent leaders or to secure their replacement by
their opponents. Such ‘spin doctors’ are alleged to be concerned exclusively
with the presentation of the leaders who employ them to the mass media and
the public, so ensuring their consequent popularity with their electors to the
exclusion of considerations of principle or the substance of policy. In
consequence, leaders may lose sight of policy or even principles in their pre-
occupation with maintaining the popularity of the government and its leading
figures. Political leaders need to maintain a balance among the conflicting
demands of their governmental, governance and allegiance roles but, as media
pressures on them increase, achieving the right balance is becoming increasingly
difficult (see Stephanopoulos, 1999, for an embittered account of this tendency).
Some academic observers have argued that political leaders are governed above
all by the need to ensure that they retain the loyalty of their supporters. In a
Newtonian framework which assumed that actors in a political system act in
ways that maximize their support, leaders may act as their followers’ agents,
seeking to realize their followers’ preferences in order to retain their support
(Fiorina and Schepsle, 1989). However, leaders also set governments’ agenda
and act as political entrepreneurs. An alternative analysis is based on biological
evolution, which regards leaders as coalition builders, political entrepreneurs
or spokespersons for their governments (Jones, 1989: 11). The question is how
far leaders dare to deviate from satisfying the immediate demands of their
electorates without risking their own survival.
Within each of these three broad functional areas there are a series of specific
tasks with which leaders must concern themselves. They may be assisted in
carrying out their tasks by a wide range of sources of advice, support and
services whose development and usefulness depend on the leader’s personality
as well as on his or her ideological preferences and the policies he or she is
seeking to implement.
THE GOVERNING FUNCTIONS
The governing functions of political leaders, then, are concerned with the
internal management of the government at whatever level it operates – local,
Governing roles 107
regional, national or supranational. It involves determining the specific issues

concerning the functioning of the departments and agencies which make up
governments and ensuring that they produce consistent policies and outcomes.
The issues with which leaders must deal include setting goals and policies,
coordinating the activities of departments, overseeing resource allocation and
seeking to secure the most efficient management possible of the government’s
resources of people, land and money.
Goal and Value Setting: Should Governments Have Goals at All?
Setting goals and values is the most fundamental role of heads of governments:
presidents, prime ministers, Cabinet members, mayors, council leaders and so
on. However, we are at once plunged into the realm of political controversy, for
two reasons. First, there are some political ideologies which entirely reject the
notion that governments should seek to achieve goals or set themselves policy
objectives because the art of government is simply to keep the ship of state
afloat, not to steer it in any particular direction. The second concerns the rivalry
among sets of goals inspired by different ideologies which lies at the heart of
partisan controversies.
Two right-wing ideologies conclude that goal setting is illegitimate in
government. The first is the traditional conservatism so eloquently advocated
for many years by Michael Oakeshott (1962), whose description of this
approach cannot be bettered:
In political activity ... men sail a boundless and bottomless sea: there is neither harbour
for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting place nor appointed destination.
The enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel; the sea is both friend and enemy; and
the seamanship consists in using the resources of a traditional manner of behaviour
in order to make a friend of every hostile occasion. (ibid.: 127).
If politics and government are no more than means of collective survival,

the very setting of goals or objectives is illegitimate. Survival is not only
political leaders’ major preoccupation; it must be their only concern. For
Oakeshott and his followers, setting goals or targets is a form of ‘rationalism’
which will distort the role of government and lead to despotic rule, an argument
also eloquently developed by Friedrich von Hayek in the wake of the Nazi
tyranny (Hayek, 1944).
The second approach which eschews goal setting, at least in the sense of
governments promulgating positive policies, is found among the public choice
theorists who inspired the New Right. They argue that the same principles
should be applied to government as those which operate in the economist’s
ideal of perfect competition: entrepreneurs are assumed to be rational actors,
rationality being defined as behaviour ‘reasonably directed towards the

achievement of conscious goals’ (Downs, 1957: 4). They operate in a market
place in which they do not collude with one another or share common
information because they are in competition with one another. Altruism is more
or less completely discounted: ‘rational behaviour [is] directed primarily
towards selfish ends’ (ibid.: 20), hence altruistic actions must be motivated by
a desire to maximize some benefit. Again Tullock (1976: 26) argues that
bureaucrats, ‘like other men’, will ‘make most of (if not all) their decisions in
terms of what benefits them, not society as a whole’. They will not do anything
that might give their competitors an advantage over them. In this free market
economy, Jeremy Bentham’s hidden hand of competition will produce optimal
outcomes if it is allowed to operate without let or hindrance from the state (see
Parekh, 1973: 40ff). It will ultimately ensure the best possible distribution of
goods and services throughout the economy. Hence ‘the first duty of
government is to ensure that men get in each other’s way as little as possible’
(Plamenatz, 1963, vol. 2: 25). The state’s role is to enable people to provide for
themselves, not to rescue them when things go wrong.
Some economists have carried this argument further, in two directions. The
first, advanced by Niskanen (1973) and others, argues that government
bureaucrats act in their own rational selfish interest to maximize their personal
utility by increasing the size of their bureaux and the size of their budgets,
therefore providing more services than are needed. They are able to do this
because they are monopsonists, the sole suppliers of the services in question.
Bureaucrats ‘maximise the total budget of their bureaux during their tenure,
subject to the constraint that the budget must be equal to or larger than the
minimum total costs of supplying the output expected by the sponsor’ (ibid.:
27). Tullock argues in similar vein that a bureaucrat’s prospects of promotion
and a higher salary will improve ‘if the bureaucracy in which he works expands’
(1976: 29).They will therefore tend to develop more and more regulations and
inspections to ensure that the number of people under their command and the
amount of money they are allocated both increase. In consequence, ‘all bureaus
are too large’ (Niskanen, 1973: 33) and ‘they supply a quantity of services
larger than would maximise the net benefits of the service’ (ibid.: 31).These
bureaucrats will also seek to retain the support of powerful interest groups in
order to support their ambitions and strengthen their hands in negotiations with
leaders and legislators. Hence those bureaucracies which have the support of
the most powerful lobbies will grow rapidly and public provision will exceed
the levels needed. Those bureaucracies which lack lobbyists’ support will see
their staff numbers and budgets stagnate or decline and the needs of their clients
will not be met.
The problem of bureaucrats’ rational self-interest leading to the over-
provision of public services and the employment of too many officials is
Governing roles 109
exacerbated by the electoral cycle. Elections are regarded as a form of ‘demand

articulation ... through which the voters express their demand for publicly
provided goods and services’ (Jackson, 1983). The public choice theorists
assume that ‘citizens act rationally in politics’ (Downs, 1957: 36) – an
assumption, incidentally, which has repeatedly been proved false by studies of
voters’ behaviour. Parties therefore ‘formulate policies in order to win elections,
rather than win elections in order to formulate policies’ (ibid.: 28). In
consequence, politicians increase the level of public service provision, partic-
ularly where services are demanded by influential lobbies, in order to improve
their chances of being returned to office at the next election. Downs tells us
that ‘because the government ... wishes to maximise political support, it carries
out those acts of spending which gain the most votes, by means of those acts
of financing which lose the fewest votes’ (ibid.: 52). Politicians therefore
sanction the provision of more public services and levy ever higher taxes to
pay for them, especially where powerful lobbies press for more services,
because these lobbies act as intermediaries providing a ready means for
governments to determine what the people want. Hence politicians ‘get an
influence over policy formulation greater than their numerical proportion in
the population’ (ibid.: 95).
Political leaders, too, play a part in this process of bureau inflation. Downs
defines political leadership as ‘the ability to influence voters to adopt certain
views as expressing their own will’ (ibid.: 87). Hence leaders are the agents of
the voters who periodically decide their fate (Fiorina and Schepsle, 1989). They
are ‘motivated by the desire to improve their own positions in society’ (Downs,
1957: 88), so altruism is again ruled out. They therefore seek to maximize
support by providing public facilities and services, especially where lobby
groups which appear to express the views of large numbers of voters demand
it. Political scientists somewhat similarly talk of a ‘rule of anticipated reactions’
which postulates that politicians will view every action they are asked to take
in the light of whether or not it will improve their chances of re-election.
However, unlike Downs, they do not argue that the effects of this are necessarily
undesirable in terms of causing misallocation of resources and rising taxation.
Political scientists are concerned with wider issues than the economic ones:
Peter John (1998: 118) tells us that they ‘are not just interested in allocative
efficiency and tendencies towards equilibrium but in solutions to the difficul-
ties of collective action’.
Secondly, for subscribers to the public choice theories, the dangers presented
by ‘bureau-maximization’ and the electoral cycle must be countered by leaders
who insist that the state shall be regarded only as a residual actor. It can legit-
imately undertake only those functions and provide those services which cannot
be provided through private companies and free markets. The state exists to
maintain law and order, defend the country from her external enemies and
ensure the provision of public non-excludable goods like clean air. All its other
functions, including the supply of public and private excludable goods, for
example healthcare, should be left to private suppliers operating in competitive
markets. In such a polity there are no policy goals for government beyond
Diogenes’s command to Alexander the Great: ‘Get out of my sunshine!’ There
is no need to develop policy in any positive sense in terms of laying down
guidelines for administrative action, since the most administrators need to do
is regulate markets in order to ensure their smooth and uninterrupted
functioning. However, there is a need for strong leadership which insists that
managers must feel able to innovate and take risks, as well as insisting that
individuals must bear the responsibility for their own decisions and actions.
They must also meet the need identified by Tullock (1976: 36) for ‘some way
of lowering the bargaining potential of the monopoly bureaux’. Significantly,
among the solutions Niskanen and others offer are several which became
familiar in the 1980s and 1990s. They include performance-related pay and
extension of managers’ discretion, as well as contracting out services, estab-
lishing internal markets and allowing citizens to use vouchers to buy services
from competing providers (Niskanen, 1973: 59–63; Tullock, 1976: 37ff).
Setting the Values
Even if setting policy goals is regarded as illegitimate, traditional and free

market conservatives alike still need to ensure that their preferred values prevail
in the communities over whose government they preside and above all in the
government bureaucracies they have been elected to lead. This is the main
source of controversy about goals and values because the leaders who follow
other political persuasions also demand that their preferred values should
prevail. In order to secure this, leaders must clearly identify and proclaim their
preferred values so that their subordinates are aware of them as they carry out
their administrative and service provision tasks through which values are applied
to the specific issues and services of government.
Christopher Hood’s (1991) three sets of management values constitute policy
agenda which political and administrative leaders may wish to promote in their
governments. The Θ values of the traditional administrator, the maintenance
of probity within the public service coupled with ensuring equity in the
treatment of those who request services or benefits from the state, or who suffer
sanctions or the levying of taxes by it, were increasingly supplanted during the
years of New Right hegemony in Britain and the United States by the Σ values.
The ‘three Es’, economy, efficiency and effectiveness, reigned supreme at the
behest of determined New Right political leaders. Hood’s Λ values concern the
ability of organizations, including governments, to respond to rapid change,
including flexibility, adaptability and responsiveness to changing circumstances
Governing roles 111
or opinions. These values will become more important as the pace of change
increases (Toffler, 1979) and are prominent components of the ‘Third Way’
(Giddens, 1998). Hence a major leadership function is to determine which of
these sets of values should prevail in the administration of the government,
then to ensure that they permeate the organizational structures and office holders
beneath them. Political leaders must find ways of leading people where they
wish them to go, as well as persuading them that they want to go there.
The moves towards creating neo-liberal polities and economies which took
place in Britain and the USA during the 1980s and early 1990s required firm
leadership by charismatic, transformational leaders who were capable of
ensuring that their values were accepted and implemented by bureaucrats and
the public alike. The Thatcher government set a clear agenda which Marsh and
Rhodes (1989, 1992) summarize under five headings:
• economic: reducing the state to its minimal dimensions;

• electoral: building new issues and voter coalitions;
• ideological: ‘burying socialism’;
• policy style: firm leadership and no arguments;
• policy: recurrent themes, including the paramount managerial themes of
the ‘three Es’.
Securing paradigm shifts in the public’s and bureaucrats’ attitudes in favour

of their values was crucial to the success of the ideology supported by Margaret
Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, both of whom secured profound changes in public
administration in their respective countries. They deployed strong, task-oriented
transformational leadership to procure changes in the values regarded as most
important by their officials. Both had to engage in major confrontations with
public service trade unions early in their terms of office. Thatcher’s major
conflict with the civil service when its unions called a strike in 1981 ended with
the abrupt retirement of the head of the civil service, Sir Ian Bancroft and the
abolition of the Civil Service Department. Likewise, President Reagan
confronted the American air traffic controllers by dismissing them wholesale
when they went on strike the same year. Another symbolic act signalling the
new direction was Thatcher’s prohibition of trade union membership at the
General Communications Headquarters in Cheltenham (GCHQ) in 1984, partly
at the behest of the Reagan administration.
Above all, the Thatcher government, which had declared its determination
to devolve power to individuals and ‘get the state off the backs of the people’,
had to centralize control over much of the state apparatus to an unprecedented
extent in order to ensure that its new values and policies were accepted and
carried out in all public service agencies. This had to include local authorities,
which increasingly fell under Labour control as the 1980s wore on (Elcock,
1994, ch. 2). Thatcher and her ministers strengthened their control over local
government, the National Health Service and other public service agencies in
order to ensure that her government’s policies were implemented, as well as
overcoming centres of resistance to them, notably among local councils which
became increasingly dominated by the ‘New Urban Left’ after 1980 (Gyford,
1985). A climax of Margaret Thatcher’s struggle with local government came
with the introduction of ‘rate capping’ in 1984, under which councillors lost
their discretion to set local tax levels which they had possessed for centuries
(Travers, 1987). Then came the abolition of the councils which governed
England’s seven largest conurbations in 1986, including most famously Ken
Livingstone’s Greater London Council. These authorities became major centres
of opposition to the government’s New Right policies after Labour victories in
the 1981 county council elections, so they had to be removed: they were
‘handbagged’ in 1986. Nonetheless, the impact of ‘Thatcherite’ policies on
local government was limited despite the passage of over 40 pieces of legislation
concerning it between 1979 and 1990 (Marsh and Rhodes, 1992). The
government ‘failed to achieve many of the aims it set itself. In addition ... the
policies pursued sometimes had unintended consequences which undermined
the effect of the policy’ (ibid.: 174). One reason for failure in the financial field
was that local authority treasurers repeatedly found loopholes in the legislation
which enabled them to evade the government’s intention to enforce spending
reductions. In consequence, the government legislated again to close the
loophole (Travers, 1987; Marsh and Rhodes, 1992; Elcock et al., 1989). A
similar story can be told about other policy fields, including industrial relations
(Marsh and Rhodes, 1989, 1992).
Repeated complaints about centralized dictatorship went unheeded, but a
local government issue brought Margaret Thatcher’s rule to an end, because
her hubris over the Poll Tax helped bring about her downfall in 1990. This
massive policy failure vividly illustrated the danger that groupthink can lead to
the downfall of a leader who isolates him or herself unduly from criticism or
sources of alternative advice (Dunleavy, 1995a) – a danger of which Machiavelli
also warned. Nonetheless, one of the main achievements of the Thatcher and
Major administrations was radically to change the values underlying British
public administration in a direction which reduced the importance of public
policies because their objective was the liberation of individuals, especially
entrepreneurs, from government regulation and interference, rather than
developing policies to improve the quality of life or redress growing economic
and social inequalities through government intervention. In the public services,
structural reforms such as creating the Next Steps agencies and introducing an
internal market into the National Health Service were designed to enable public
service managers to behave more entrepreneurially and hence be more like their
colleagues in private firms (Elcock, 1991).
Governing roles 113
Developing Goals
Leaders who seek to develop goals which are appropriate and achievable need
a variety of sources of advice and support. Goals need to be developed into
policies which are capable of implementation. First, the governing party or
coalition of parties needs to spell out its preferred values in manifestoes and
other policy documents which will provide the basis for developing policies
capable of implementation. Hence parties need access to adequate information
and policy advice while they are in opposition in order that they can prepare
realistic policies. This has been a major problem in British central government,
where only the ruling party normally has access to the civil service, although in
recent times some access to civil servants has been granted to leading Opposition
politicians immediately before a General Election to allow them to prepare to
implement their policies if they win. However, in local authorities all council
members have the right of access to the advice of the council’s officers and can
use their advice to prepare policies for present or future implementation.
Secondly, party and national leaders need access to a range of advice,
especially advisers who are capable of ‘thinking the unthinkable’ and warning
them when they are in danger of making avoidable mistakes. One question is
‘how the inherent tension between [politicians’ and bureaucrats’] perspectives
on policy-making can be made more creative’ (Aberbach et al.,1981: 260). This
may not be easy: for very different reasons, British and Italian experience in
particular is ‘not comforting’ (ibid.: 261). In Italy, mutual distrust between
politicians and bureaucrats obstructs collaboration, while in Britain there is a
tradition of mutual respect between politicians and bureaucrats, but ‘the policy
performance of British government in recent decades has hardly been satis-
factory’ (ibid.). Hence leaders need advisers who must be able to play the roles
both of the creative thinker who stimulates leaders’ thinking with new ideas
and that of King Lear’s bitter Fool, who tells the king what he does not want
to hear:
Fool: I marvel what kin thou and thy daughters are. They’ll have me whipp’d for
speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for
holding my peace. I had rather be any kind of thing but a fool: and yet I would not
be thee, nuncle: thou hast pared thy wit o’ both sides and left nothing i’ the middle.
(King Lear, Act 1, scene 4, lines 180–84)
It is a confident and brave king indeed who can tolerate being thus told the truth
when it hurts, but such masochism is essential if groupthink is to be avoided.
Irving Janis recommends devil’s advocates and independent advisers as part
of his preventative remedy for this disease of leadership. Similarly, Colin
Campbell (1983: 17) argues that the absence of diverse and critical advice will
make for a relatively harmonious but unimaginative administration in which a

chief executive accepts non-creativity in most policy sectors, but, in modern
conditions of rapid change, leaders can no longer afford such mediocrity.
To assist leaders in performing these essential but sometimes contradictory
roles, a range of support systems for them have been proposed by various writers
and developed by governments in different countries and localities. The first and
most important in terms of generating new ideas and challenging existing
orthodoxies is the device popularly known as a ‘think tank’. This is a body of
independent advisers who are detached from the established government
machine and given a licence to think independently and challenge the advice
produced by the established bureaucracy. The Israeli policy analyst Yehezkel
Dror (1973) has advocated the establishment of such units and they have been
developed in a number of countries. Dror defined two roles for such units: first,
‘to contribute to better policymaking and decision-making by considering alter-
natives more thoroughly’ and second, ‘imaginatively creating new alternatives’
(ibid.: 266). The first British ‘think tank’ was the Fabian Society, which was
set up by a group of left-wing intellectuals in 1889 to develop a new policy
agenda, first for the Liberal Party and especially its ‘Lib–Lab’ members, then
for the Labour Party after its foundation in 1900 as the Labour Representation
Committee.
A pioneering modern ‘think tank’ was the RAND Corporation, which was
developed as a staff consisting of government and private-sector members to
advise Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara in the early 1960s. Dror said
that ‘Few units are explicitly established for thinking, doing long-range policy-
making, surveying knowledge and handling research and development about
policy-making’ (ibid.: 90). The RAND Corporation was one such unit. Its
members developed the DELPHI technique, under which selected experts
complete questionnaires stating their views on likely future developments. They
do not meet while they are doing this, thus avoiding the risk of groupthink, but
they are then asked to respond to one another’s answers. They therefore develop
a system in which ‘the effects of a group meeting that depress innovations and
opinions are reduced but the advantages of mutual stimulation and of give and
take are largely retained’ (ibid.: 192). Public, private and public–private ‘think
tanks’ have now become common in major capital cities throughout the
developed world.
Another device which may be useful for generating new ideas is to hold
‘brainstorming’ sessions among leading politicians and their senior advisers
where new ideas can be aired and established assumptions challenged. However,
because this approach involves face-to-face meetings of people among whom
a degree of consensus is likely to exist, the members of brainstorming sessions
may succumb to groupthink. In the end, when setting goals and making major
policy choices, political leaders must use their own judgement. Indeed, the pro-
Governing roles 115
liferation of sources of advice may produce adverse consequences because they

will present too many rival and probably conflicting options to leaders and
therefore confuse them. This is a characteristic of the US federal government
in particular. The president has four formal sources of foreign policy advice:
the State Department (‘Foggy bottom’), the Council for National Defense, the
Department of Defense (the Pentagon) and the Central Intelligence Agency.
All four have their own policy agenda and may proffer conflicting or contra-
dictory advice. There are also numerous research agencies and lobbies
attempting to have their say. Economic policy advice is likewise offered by
rival teams inside and outside the White House. Bob Woodward vividly
describes the confusion of advice that beset one president:
the very discord or range of opinion that Clinton craved in making his decisions often
got him bogged down ... The very fact that he wanted debate meant that he could not
contain his own doubt. The lapses of discipline and restraint made it hard for Clinton
to act methodologically, as a President must. The war for Clinton’s soul, that great
struggle over which ideas and approach to use to guide the nation, continued unabated.
(Woodward, 1993: 328)
The result of rivalry and confusion among all these participants was to give
the one actor with a power base independent of the White House, the Republican
chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Alan Greenspan, an increasingly
predominant role in decision making. The basis of his independent power was
that he and he alone controlled a crucial economic variable: the level of short-
term interest rates. The result was the frustration of many of the president’s
economic policies and ensuring that his economic values did not clearly prevail
in actual policy outcomes.
Leading People
Leaders who wish to secure policy or operational change need to persuade both
their political followers and the people who work in the government (the
bureaucracy) to accept and carry out their proposals. This may entail bringing
about more or less radical changes in the opinions, attitudes and habitual work
practices of the staff of the government. Such changes of attitude cannot be
achieved simply by changing the formal structures of the organization, or even
by issuing the appropriate commands. For leaders to succeed in changing
people’s attitudes and behaviour they must generate support, even enthusiasm,
for their projects. Hence political leaders require strong relationship attributes
and skills if they are to be able to generate support for the changes they propose,
as well as the determination to insist that their decisions be complied with.
In this context, the views of the British industrialist Sir John Harvey Jones
about the need to motivate a company’s staff in order to improve the company’s
performance are relevant. In his book, Making it Happen, which significantly

is subtitled Reflections on Leadership (not management), he talks of the need
to switch people on, not switch them off (Harvey Jones, 1988). He warned:
With the best will in the world and the best board in the world and the best strategic
direction in the world, nothing will happen unless everyone down the line understands
what they are trying to achieve and gives of their best to achieve it. In so many cases,
their best is so much more than they themselves think is possible. This is the reward
of industrial leadership: to see people who do not believe they have the capability of
being a winning team gaining confidence and effectiveness and morale and the respect
not only of their peers but also of their competitors and the world outside. (Ibid.: 48)
His receipt for achieving positive motivation includes decentralizing authority

within the organization, reducing the number of its layers of management and
engaging in truthful and open discussion with its employees. Leaders need to
encourage their employees to take part in goal setting. This requires that a leader
‘treats people as he would like to be treated’ (Bennis, 1989: 140). Above all,
talent must be encouraged wherever it is found and talented people, once
identified, must be given responsibility early in their careers to develop their
talents. Furthermore, senior managers must be receptive to new ideas. Crucially,
once an objective is agreed, ‘the problem really lies ... in the ownership of the
plan and this ownership must be transferred methodically and skilfully from
the leader to his team’ (Harvey Jones, 1988: 75). Warren Bennis similarly
argued that ‘you have to be capable of inspiring people to do things without
actually sitting on top of them with a check list – which is management, not
leadership’ (1989: 139). Leaders must be capable of trusting their subordinates
and winning their trust in return: ‘leadership without mutual trust is a contra-
diction in terms’ (ibid.: 140).
Harvey Jones applied his theories to a wide range of public- and private-
sector organizations in a series of television programmes entitled Troubleshooter
which were subsequently published in book form (Harvey Jones and Massey,
1990; Harvey Jones,1992). To give one example, when comparing two
managers of the Bradford Hospitals Trust, he wrote:
I was left with the feeling that as always in public sector activities, everything
depended on David [Jackson]’s ability as manager to ensure that the various parties
involved pulled in the same direction – something that Mark Baker had singularly
failed to achieve. Organisations need people like Mark Baker to shake up their
thinking and to create new ideas but ultimately management is about clarity of
intention, realism and getting people moving in the same direction for the same
common aims. (Harvey Jones, 1992: 98).
Jackson had to possess the ability, which his predecessor Baker lacked, to secure
support throughout the Trust for improving its overall performance, but Baker
Governing roles 117
was needed first in order to challenge its established attitudes and work
practices. He was a transformational leader but he needed to be followed by a
transactional leader who could restore confidence and morale among the staff.
Thus organizations need different leadership styles at different stages of their
development.
All of these prescriptions require much from leaders because they must lead
by example. They must be prepared to accept the dispersal of formerly
centralized authority, which may entail weakening their own formal powers,
hence they must trust their subordinates. The leader must be receptive to new
ideas from wherever they originate. Such leaders must also encourage risk
taking. In consequence, they must be prepared to accept that mistakes will occur
and encourage staff members who have made mistakes to learn from them,
rather than penalizing them for making inevitable and understandable mistakes.
Many of these themes also emerge in the writings of other commentators on
leadership in business, notably those of Warren Bennis.
In government, this switching on process is particularly difficult to achieve,
chiefly for reasons related to the accountability of government officials to
elected politicians and legislatures. Max Weber argued that the creation of
bureaucratic hierarchies was the inevitable concomitant of democratic
government because accountability to politicians requires a clear command
structure of offices, each with its set of defined powers and duties in order to
ensure that they meet the demands of legislators and, through them, electorates.
If the structure is correctly defined, it will ensure that the political head’s orders
and requests are clearly transmitted down through the hierarchy for imple-
mentation. Equally, whatever information and actions the political head requests
or requires will be transmitted up through the same chain of official being.
Furthermore, the appropriate values of probity, political detachment and equity
will be enforced by the senior members of the hierarchy, who are in
consequence likely to adopt relatively authoritarian, task-oriented leadership
styles. This preoccupation with hierarchical order has much in common with
the principles of ‘scientific management’ as propounded by Taylor (1911)
and the many others who argue that the main focus of management should be
on the organization chart, together with each employee’s location upon it. Again
the assumption is made that, if the structure is correct, the organization will
work – an assumption that has long inspired the British addiction to organiza-
tional restructuring in the mistaken belief that it will improve the performance
of the organization’s members (Elcock, 1991, ch. 3).
Thus Harvey Jones’s and Bennis’s view that effective leadership requires
motivating employees and decentralizing control runs strongly counter to the
bureaucratic tradition of government because it advocates the decentralization
of authority and the development of flexible structures which will permit
relatively junior members of the government’s staff to behave entrepreneurially.
Adopting a risk culture in which mistakes can be accepted is also particularly

difficult because of the demands of accountability to legislators. It must also
encourage relatively junior staff members to take part in policy making. This
relational approach to management had its roots in the Hawthorne Experiments
of the 1930s (Rechtlisberger and Dickinson, 1939) and the human relations school
of management that they ushered in. Such relationship-motivated leadership is
opposed to task-oriented leadership because its supporters argue that, if an orga-
nization’s performance is to improve, its workers must be appropriately motivated
and their enthusiasm must be harnessed to the successful completion of the orga-
nization’s tasks.
From all this it follows that political leaders must develop ways of trans-
mitting their managerial values through the structures and the personnel of the
governments they head. Margaret Thatcher and John Major established units
within the Cabinet Office dedicated to driving specific management initiatives
throughout the civil service. This demonstrated the importance that these prime
ministers attached to securing cultural as well as organizational change in the
civil service. The units included the Financial Management Unit, established
in 1982, The Next Steps Project Team established in 1988 and the Citizen’s
Charter Unit set up in 1992. The first two were concerned with decentralizing
management authority within the civil service. They constituted major structural
reforms designed to devolve decision making to managers throughout the
service and encourage them to behave entrepreneurially. The third was
concerned to change civil servants’ attitudes and approach to service users
because the latter must henceforth be regarded as customers rather than as
supplicants for services or benefits. Significantly, Tony Blair has established
a Better Government Task Force and a Better Regulation Unit to spread his
government’s values and views about public administration and management
throughout the government machine.
Coordinating the Departments
One of the hardiest perennial issues with which both political leaders and
students of government have to deal is what Tony Blair has christened ‘Depart-
mentalitis’. The many departments and agencies which are responsible for
delivering public services and discharging the functions of government all
develop their own policy agenda, as well as possessing distinctive approaches
to the problems they face and the policy communities with which they have to
deal. They also tend to neglect, indeed they often affect to despise, the contri-
butions of colleagues in other departments in the government because they
doubt the extent or validity of their professional knowledge.
This problem tends to be particularly acute in the public services, where the
professional status of many of those employed is contested. This in turn
Governing roles 119
generates feelings of insecurity among public service workers because many

work in a world of doubt as to whether they are professionals or only ‘semi-pro-
fessionals’ (Etzioni, 1969) who do not possess all the attributes of full-blown
professionals. Social workers, for example often see their professional status
challenged on the ground that any caring individual could do their job, and
because they are said not to have undergone professional training of a rigour
comparable to that necessary to gain entry to other professions such as medicine,
architecture or the law. In consequence, social workers’ views may not be given
their full weight by colleagues such as lawyers or doctors, who may regard
themselves as more truly professional than the social workers who are
attempting to advise them on particular cases (Elcock, 1982, ch. 11). However,
social workers are also attacked for arrogance when they make decisions about
such matters as the disposal of children by fostering or adoption which are
regarded as authoritarian and unfeeling.
Departmental isolationism is often reinforced by two further influences. The
first, which is especially powerful in local government, is the professional
training and background of many public servants such as lawyers, doctors, town
planners, social workers and other professionals. Thorough but narrow pro-
fessional training is reinforced by the expectation that they will observe the
codes of conduct and the models of professional practice that are favoured by
the professional institutes that award them their qualifications and hence assure
their professional status. However, such adherence to professional codes may
lead them to pay less heed to the requests and actions of colleagues in other
departments.
The second influence towards departmentalism is the clientele of each
department: the people who use its services, who in combination with the lobby
groups representing them, and the trades unions representing the staff
responsible for providing the service, constitute policy communities each of
which pursues its own agenda. Thus a government department together with its
clientele, including local authorities, professional groups, service users and
many others, constitutes a policy community. Its members regard policy making
in, say, education, social care, healthcare or crime as their own particular
concern with which others, including other departments and even political
leaders, meddle at their peril (Richardson and Jordan, 1979; Jordan, 1982;
Rhodes, 1987).
This last is one of the main arguments put forward by those who argue that
incrementalism is the best way of making public policies because it is the only
realistic way. Only by confining change to marginal incremental adjustments
can unacceptable challenges to the policy communities, and consequent defeat
for the leader who proposes such changes, be avoided. Therefore leaders must
engage in partisan mutual adjustment in order to maintain the government’s
coalition of support, which inhibits them from making more than marginal
changes to existing policies and their associated administrative processes

(Lindblom, 1959). It will also inhibit them from pressing changes upon their
policy communities which are proposed by other departments or by a central
policy unit.
Some observers have argued that coordination is best achieved through
informal relations among senior officials, most of whom have been educated
at the same schools and universities, who rose to senior posts through the same
career structures. The result is the creation of informal channels of communi-
cation among them, including telephone calls, informal meetings, lunches and
aperitifs at their clubs. This argument has been made with great force in relation
to British senior civil servants (Sisson, 1959; Heclo and Wildavsky, 1973). The
Whitehall ‘village’ of between three and four thousand senior civil servants
coordinates policy through such informal channels of communication, as well
as in formal meetings in their offices. Such informal networking was one of
the central acts in the Whitehall dramas so humorously portrayed in the
television series Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister (Lynn and Jay, 1981,
1982). It was extensively described in the evidence to the Fulton Committee on
the civil service. Many of those submitting evidence on the basis of their
experience in the Whitehall ‘village’ warned of its dangers. Denys Munby told
the Committee that the chief weakness of civil service policy making was ‘the
pressure to agree. This means that at crucial stages issues are fudged and dis-
agreements are ironed out in terms of smooth formulae, so that those at the top
are prevented from knowing the real issues’ (Fulton Committee, 1968, vol. V
(2) memo no. 136). Peter Jay similarly warned of the dangers of poor policy
making in ‘the land of unanimity [where] the lowest common factor is king’
(memo no. 132). The pressure to agree stifles the creative and the unorthodox,
as well as increasing the danger that policy makers will succumb to groupthink.
Others, however, emphasize the difficulty of coordinating these large bureau-
cratic machines, most of which are reinforced in maintaining their established
ways of providing public services through policy communities many of whose
members have a stake in policy and administrative continuity. Thus the
departments are ‘the key policy-makers for the majority of policies in British
central government’ (Smith et al., 1995: 41).
There has therefore been much discussion among academics and practition-
ers alike about the best ways to improve coordination among the departments
which carry out most of the government’s work. In July 1998, the British prime
minister acknowledged this problem by appointing a minister specifically
charged with improving the coherence of the government. In relatively small
American and German local governments, the role of coordinator falls chiefly
on individual political and administrative office holders, notably elected mayors
or appointed chief executives (Elcock, 1995b; 1998a). The same phenomenon
can be observed in British local authorities, where the leader of the council and
Governing roles 121
the chief executive officer often jointly provide a focal point for policy control
and coordination. Others advocate the use of central policy units to coordinate
the departments’ work, although there is a danger that too great an absorption
in such coordination may drive out the creative thinking that should be such
units’ primary role. What is clear is that political and administrative leaders are
at the focal points of efforts at interdepartmental coordination and that they
will inevitably have to resolve interdepartmental disputes. In trying to strengthen
their ability to coordinate policy and implementation they are likely to build
central units to assist them but there may be dangers for them in doing this:
The growth of central agencies and the consolidation of executive authority appear
to be inextricably linked. This phenomenon has given rise ... to recurrent concerns that
improved central agency resources will concentrate power in the hands of the chief
executive or an inner circle of the cabinet. While we should consider carefully the
evidence supporting such assertions, one must also caution against alarmist views of
increased resources which would deny the executive leadership the capacity required
to give direction to government. (Campbell, 1983: 4)
Such fears among ministers and senior civil servants restricted the size of the
prime minister’s personal staff between Lloyd George’s fall in 1922 and the
1980s, but recent prime ministers have asserted their need for substantial units
to give them policy advice and ensure the implementation of their wishes.
However, Tony Blair’s expansion of the No. 10 staff partly to perform this role
has been widely criticized in the press and elsewhere.
Changing Structures
One temptation to which political and administrative leaders frequently succumb

is to believe that reorganizing the structures of government will produce
improved performance in desired directions. The biggest mistakes have been
expensive structural reorganizations which have left the leaders who carried
them out facing the same problems as they had before (Elcock, 1991, ch. 3;
Leach, 1996). This has been a peculiarly British disease. Reorganizations of
the internal structures of governments, inspired by new managerial ideas like
the corporate management movement which influenced British local authorities’
internal structures in the 1960s and 1970s, also fail unless they are accompanied
by the appropriate changes in attitudes among the staff. These may be brought
about by leadership from council members and leading officers such as the
chief executives appointed by most British local authorities after the publication
of the Bains report (Bains Committee, 1972), as well as by appropriate training.
Structural reorganizations are often exercises in dramaturgy, one of whose
objectives may be to stimulate the required changes in attitudes and work
practices, as well as to convince others that they are trying to tackle their
problems but the result may merely be an expensive disruption of the organi-
zation’s work. At worst, reorganization as an exercise in dramaturgy fully
warrants Aaron Wildavsky’s charge that structural reorganization is futile
because it is ‘like looking for a lost button, not where it was lost but in the
kitchen because the light is better there’ (1980: 79).
Structural reorganizations of departments, agencies or entire governments
may also be a symptom of what Dunleavy (1995a) calls ‘Ministerial hyperac-
tivism’. Each new head of a department will want to launch an initiative with
whose putative success he or she will be identified, which will in the meantime
substantiate his or her claim to be a dynamic reformer. Since in Britain new
ministers tend to be appointed every two years or so, this is an excellent receipt
for repeated expensive, time-wasting disruption of the department’s work.
Furthermore, restructuring is addictive because the participants whose interests
and careers are damaged by the reorganization currently in hand will begin at
once to campaign for a further reorganization which will restore their fortunes,
so producing a struggle rather like the intermittent wars between the Guelphs
and the Ghibelines in mediaeval Genoa (Elcock, 1991, ch. 3). The rewards that
accrue from reorganization seldom if ever justify the costs involved in terms
of expense, delay and staff demoralization which are inevitably incurred
through it.
Leaders should rather concentrate on changing organizational cultures and
practices in order to ensure that they come to reflect their preferred political
and managerial values, but changing people’s values and behaviour is far more
difficult than changing the formal structures of governments and it takes much
longer to achieve. It may be helpful to superimpose new structures, such as
policy committees or policy units, to drive change through the organization
and proselytize on behalf of the new ways of working, as well as providing
training courses for the staff, but all this is both time-consuming and expensive.
There may be occasions when structural change may be appropriate, as with
the numerous experiments in decentralizing the provision of services and advice
which were carried out by British local authorities in the 1980s (Hoggett and
Hambleton, 1987; Burns et al., 1993). Decentralization was perceived as a
remedy for some of the persistent ills affecting British local government, notably
the poor relations that often exist between local government staff and the users
of the services they provide, which have been characterized as ‘bureaucratic
paternalism’ (Hoggett and Hambleton, 1987: 15). This problem is exacerbated
by the relatively large size of British local authorities by international standards,
which means that the council’s headquarters can be both physically and
emotionally miles away from its citizens and their communities. Its staff are
therefore unable to be adequately sensitive to the citizenry’s needs, wants and
purposes because they are physically too remote from them, unless offices can
be decentralized.
Governing roles 123
In consequence, many councils have developed schemes of departmental,

corporate or political decentralization over the last 20 years (Elcock, 1988).
Significantly, individual leading councillors have often been instrumental in
bringing about the development of such decentralization schemes. For example,
when he was chairman of the Social Services Committee, Sir Jeremy Beecham
was instrumental in developing Newcastle upon Tyne’s Priority Area Teams and
he continued to support them when he became leader of the council (Elcock,
1986, 1990). Again, Michael Wheaton, leader of Humberside County Council
in the early 1980s, who had previously served as vice-chairman of the Social
Services Committee, was instrumental in bringing about a restructuring of the
council’s Social Services Department under which 17 area offices were replaced
by 48 multidisciplinary Neighbourhood Teams covering much smaller areas
and therefore more easily accessible to members of the public. Significantly,
Wheaton and other leading members of the council were supported in this
venture by a newly appointed director of social services who had already
implemented such a decentralization scheme in East Sussex (Elcock, 1986,
1990). Among the most radical of all such decentralization schemes were
Islington Council’s neighbourhood offices and neighbourhood fora, which were
also originally promoted by a single councillor, Maurice Barnes, and were
supported for pragmatic reasons by the council’s leader, Margaret Hodge (Burns
et al., 1993: 60ff).
Local authorities are at present seeking to increase public interest in and
support for their activities and to stimulate higher turnout in local elections as
part of the modernizing process demanded by the Blair government. They may
need to consider reviving and extending such decentralization schemes as part
of their effort to improve their relations with the people who live in the large
areas they govern and involve them more closely in decision making about
community needs and issues. Leading councillors, including possibly elected
mayors, may therefore need to introduce a decentralization scheme and, if they
do so, they must insist on its full implementation. Opposition is inevitable,
especially from staff members who do not want to change their work venues
and practices, and therefore from their trade unions. It will come also from
middle managers who stand to lose control over the junior-grade staff who will
work in the neighbourhood offices and for the neighbourhood committees,
which will be given significant discretion and perhaps their own budgets. The
staff concerned will no longer be as subject to middle managers’ control as
they would be in a traditional bureaucracy, hence middle managers will lose
both power and status. Some middle managers may even be made redundant.
The costs and benefits of such decentralization proposals need to be carefully
assessed before they are implemented because they are not cost-free (Elcock,
1988), but once the decision to decentralize has been made, the authority’s
leaders must demonstrate their enthusiasm for the scheme, as well as their
determination to ensure the successful establishment and development of the

neighbourhood teams and offices.
Exercising the Authority of Office
Political leaders, if they are to succeed on their own terms, must ensure that
their policies are carried out and their preferred values transmitted through the
governments or departments of which they have been elected or appointed to
take charge. Weber regarded the domination over elected politicians by pro-
fessional bureaucrats as inevitable. In British government, complaints about
the extent to which civil servants have been able to force moderation upon their
ministerial masters range from the paranoid to the hilariously humorous. Many
a minister must have taken up office with tales of civil service domination
ringing in his or her ears, like Reginald Bevins’s warning that ‘Every Ministry
has a policy and Ministers don’t influence it much’ (Bevins, 1965: 58). Tony
Benn argued that civil service opposition thwarted many of the 1974–9 Labour
government’s policies:
Civil Service policy – and there is no other way to describe it – is an amalgam of

views that have been developed over a long period of time and in the development
of which the Civil Service itself has played a notable role. It draws some of its force
from a deep commitment to the benefits of continuity and a fear that adversary politics
may lead to sharp reversals by incoming governments of policies devised by their
predecessors which the Civil Service played a great part in developing. To that extent,
the Permanent Secretaries could be held to prefer consensus politics and hope they
would remain the basis for all policy and administration. (RIPA, 1980: 62)
Benn’s fears about the inevitability of bureaucratic domination were

decisively proved wrong by Margaret Thatcher, who outdated the nonetheless
wonderful comedy series, Yes, Minister, almost as soon as it appeared (Lynn
and Jay, 1981, 1982) by successfully imposing her policies on civil servants
by sheer force of will. It is often forgotten that she first applied the term ‘wet’,
not to her less ideologically committed Cabinet colleagues, but to a group of
permanent secretaries. She insisted, against much resistance, that her views
must prevail. In consequence, by the mid-1980s most civil servants had accepted
the prime minister’s determination to get her way and by then managerial
change was sweeping through Whitehall at her behest (Gray and Jenkins, 1985).
Nonetheless, much ink has been spilt over the need for politicians to be able
and be enabled to ensure that the bureaucracies they have been elected to lead
carry out their policies. Devices for redressing the balance of influence between
politicians and officials fall into two general categories. The first is the
provision of alternative sources of advice for political heads through the
appointment of special advisers and the creation of ‘think tanks’ and policy
Governing roles 125
units to advise them, so that they are not dependent solely on their civil servants
for advice. In the past, British ministers have notoriously been discouraged by
senior civil servants from seeking alternative sources of advice. A notable
example was the reprimand Richard Crossman received from his redoubtable
permanent secretary, Dame Evelyn Sharpe, for seeking Lord Goodman’s advice
on drafting the bill which became the 1965 Rent Act (Crossman, 1975: 45).
In 1963, Jo Grimond proposed the introduction of the French cabinet du
ministre into British government, which permits a minister to appoint a
personal staff of politically sympathetic advisers who both offer advice and
oversee the execution of the minister’s policies by the department. In Britain,
this was somewhat tentatively tried by the Labour government of 1974–9,
several of whose leading members were permitted to take with them into their
government posts research assistants whom they had appointed in Opposition
as special advisers on temporary civil service contracts. Since then, special
advisers have become an established feature of the Whitehall scene, although
periodic doubts are expressed about the propriety of ministers appointing their
cronies to such offices, as well as about contacts between special advisers and
parliamentary lobbyists. However, the function of special advisers requires
that they be supportive of the minister’s policies and his or her ambitions, so
they will need to be people who are both personally and politically sympathetic
to the minister.
Such reforms may be regarded with distaste as leading to the politicization
of senior bureaucrats who are expected to be non-partisan in their professional
activities, including advising political leaders. Campbell and Peters (1988: 370)
suggest that political pressures have led to ‘an intensification of top officials’
– appointive or career – conscious involvement in executive–bureaucratic
gamesmanship’, as ‘chief executives and cabinets all seek to some degree to
seize control of and direct towards their own purposes the ongoing bureau-
cratic establishment’ (ibid.). He goes on to identify four styles of political
leadership, and to propose appropriate roles for the central bodies appointed to
advise such leaders.
1. Priorities and planning, where the leader ‘simultaneously entrusts central

agencies with the task of developing overarching strategies and ensuring
that substantive decisions adhere to them’ (p. 372). Central units such as
cabinet secretariats therefore need to be strengthened both to develop
strategic planning capabilities and to monitor the work of the government.
Campbell and Peters favours this approach but remark that its achievement
can be ‘somewhat elusive’ (p. 373).
2. Broker politics, where ‘countervailing views abound but central agencies
play only restrained roles in the integration of policies’ (ibid.). Here
leadership consists largely of negotiating bargains among competing

interests, the role ascribed to local political leaders by Banfield (1961).
3. Administration and politics, where leaders neither seek to reduce diversity
of views nor give strong central guidance, when the government’s
departments are likely largely to go their own ways.
4. Survival politics, which develop ‘when control agencies draw issues into
their orbit and expressly seek to dampen competition between advisers’
(ibid.), because what matters is maintaining unity in solving the problems
that threaten the leaders’ continuance in office. There is a danger in this
case that policy units will degenerate into ‘fire-fighting’ agencies dealing
with crises as they arise.
Although Campbell advocates the adoption of the planning and priorities

leadership role and the development of strategic capability, he acknowledges
that it is not easy to overcome the institutional and personnel-related obstruc-
tions to achieving it. The former include the need to develop coherent policies
but also to ensure the consideration of competing opinions. Another danger is
that the cabinet has too many members, which prevents it being an effective
decision-making body; rather it will become ‘a surrogate legislature’ (Campbell,
1988: 373). The personnel criticisms include disputes about the legitimacy of
appointing partisan advisers to leaders – an objection particularly virulent in
Britain – as well as the danger that established civil servants will focus too
much on procedures rather than likely policy outcomes. Hence the task of
achieving the right balance between partisan policy advice and the benefit of
career bureaucrats’ experience is extremely delicate.
The other reform which it is often argued would strengthen ministers in
relation to their civil service advisers is more open processes of decision making.
More opportunities for outsiders to comment on policy proposals and make
suggestions before they reach their final form have been created through the
publication of consultation papers before policies are finalized. Less official
secrecy would permit more access to and comment upon the policy papers
drafted by officials and hence the opening up of a wider range of policy advice
and options for ministers to consider. However, in Britain particularly, such
openness has been discouraged in the past by civil servants’ claim to the
exclusive right to advise their ministers (Kingdom, 1966), coupled with wholly
excessive protection for the secrecy of official policy documents (Williams,
1965). The dismissal of open government’s chief advocate, David Clark, from
the Cabinet in 1998 gave rise to pessimism about the likelihood of such reform
being effectively implemented.
Governing roles 127
CONCLUSION
All the issues discussed in this chapter have been essentially concerned with the
ways in which political leaders must seek to influence and if possible control
the working of the government organizations over which they have been elected
or appointed to take charge. They impose a wide range of tasks on their leaders
and require the exercise of a wide range of talents by them. Ultimately, the
need is for bureaucrats and politicians to ‘augment one another’s diverse
strengths and share a mutual appreciation for their separate perspectives ...
Politicians articulate society’s dreams and bureaucrats help bring them gingerly
to earth’ (Aberbach et al., 1981: 262). The devices discussed here are intended
to help in that process. Because no individual can succeed in doing all this
alone, appropriate ways in which leaders may be assisted in performing their
governing roles need to be identified.
However, political leaders need also to concern themselves with their or-
ganization’s relations with other governments, other departments or agencies,
as well as with private companies and voluntary agencies. Hence to the already
heavy catalogue of duties outlined above must be added a second set of roles
and responsibilities which are concerned with dealing with the world outside
the leader’s own government: the governance roles.
7. The functions of leadership:
governance and allegiance roles
LEADERS AND THE ORGANIZATION’S ENVIRONMENT
Governing roles concern how political leaders influence or control the

departments and agencies which make up the government of which they have
been given charge. They involve the leader’s relations with his or her political
colleagues and the paid members of the government’s staff, especially those
in senior posts. The second set of roles focuses upon managing the government’s
relationships with its external environment, which includes other governments,
government agencies, private firms and not-for-profit organizations, as well as
lobby groups and citizens. We may regard the relationship between a
government and its leaders with the other actors which make up its environment
as like a tennis match in which other organizations ‘serve’ their demands into
the government’s court. The government’s leaders must then respond with a
new policy or decision, which will in its turn generate a further response from
the environment. From time to time, leaders will take the initiative by ‘serving’
their own new ideas or policies to the environment’s court and awaiting the
response from other governments and agencies, as well as from interest groups
and the wider public (Friend and Jessop, 1969).
This complex set of relations among organizations is known as governance:
R.A.W. Rhodes (1995) describes it as ‘Governing without government’.
Government has become increasingly fragmented in a process dubbed
‘hollowing out the state’ by the creation of increasing numbers of single-purpose
agencies to carry out specific government functions, as well as by the transfer
of public service functions to private or not-for-profit agencies by privatiza-
tion or contracting out. John and Cole (2000: 99) argue that, in local
communities, ‘the stable institutional structures that governed western localities
have been replaced by more changeable and shifting frameworks’, but ‘effective
problem solving still rests on the ability of the one person at the centre’. Thus
the need for political and administrative leaders to develop the abilities required
to manage interorganizational relations has increased enormously as governance
has become more fragmented.
The third set of roles is concerned with the way leaders maintain their support
among their political colleagues, both within the government and outside it,
128
Governance and allegiance roles 129
but especially in the legislature, as well as gaining and retaining the support of
their ultimate judges: the electorate. It also includes maintaining support among
the interest groups who support leaders by giving them helpful advice, support
for the implementation of their policies, or other help such as contributions to
campaign funds. This last factor has become so important, especially in the
United States because of the high cost of modern television electioneering, that
there is mounting concern that wealthy campaign funders gain undue influence
over political leaders. In the USA, campaign contributions were the subject of
a seemingly endless partisan controversy in Congress in the late 1990s. In
Britain concern about improper campaign contributions to the Labour Party’s
1997 campaign led to the holding of an official inquiry into the funding of
political parties which reported in 1998. It recommended severe restraints on
such funding, as well as greater openness about the source of the donations
made to the political parties.
THE GOVERNANCE ROLES
Although the second set of leadership functions, those of governance, are fewer
in number than the governing functions, they are just as important and certainly
just as demanding for leaders themselves. They concern leaders’ need to
influence the relationships between the government which they are leading and
the many other agencies, including other governments, with which they must
cooperate in order to secure the achievement of their objectives and the imple-
mentation of their policies. The importance of maintaining these relationships
has greatly increased in modern times because of the variety of functions and
duties which governments now discharge, coupled with the increasing frag-
mentation of government structures (Rhodes, 1995, 1996). These mean that
any one government, let alone its committees, departments or agencies, seldom
if ever has the power to implement its policies alone. Its leaders must therefore
secure the cooperation of an increasing number and variety of other actors.
Diplomats and Networks
The nature and scope of the governance roles varies with the level of government
involved. Nation states carry on their relations with other nation states through
the long-established mechanisms of diplomacy, but at least since the Paris Peace
Conference of 1919, when the Treaty of Versailles was essentially written by
the four leading statesmen present at the Paris Peace Conference (Elcock, 1972),
the roles of nations’ individual leaders have become increasingly important in
conducting their foreign relations. Of the Treaty of Versailles, Keynes famously
declared, ‘The President, the Tiger and the Welsh Witch were shut up in a room
together for six months and the Treaty was what came out’ (1961: 35–6). The
trend towards personal diplomacy at or near the head of government level has
increased ever since, with the frequent use of ‘summit diplomacy’ to resolve
major sticking points in international negotiations or to bring about fundamental
shifts in international relations. Notable examples included the meetings of the
‘Big Three’, Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt, which
defined the political map of Europe that endured until 1989, through the deals
struck among the three leaders at the Teheran and Yalta conferences. Again the
summit meetings between Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev in the early 1980s
led directly to the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Communist
Empire in Eastern Europe.
Manus Midlarsky argued, on the basis of a study of Bismarck, Washington
and Nixon, that to succeed in international relations leaders need to be able to
respond quickly and flexibly to opportunities as they arise. Thus Bismarck
persuaded Austria to join him in a war against Denmark in 1863, when the
Danish king declared a unitary constitution which was an ‘affront’ to German
nationalism (Midlarsky, 1989: 193). Soon afterwards, he went to war against
Austria herself. Equally, Nixon’s opening to China was ‘a classic illustration of
the random shifting of alliances, even among former combatants’ (ibid.: 202).
Successful international leaders must be able to take ‘immediate and effective
advantage of opportunities the system offered’, even if this requires a radical
change of attitude to the country concerned, whereas at home consistency and
loyalty may be expected of them. The Italian statesman Cavour once said, ‘If
we did for ourselves what we do for our country, what rascals we should be!’
Richard Nixon had a long history of fierce anti-Communism, yet he opened
the way for détente with Communist China. Thus ‘the random universe of the
international system is a generator of opportunities for the astute national leader’
(ibid.: 204). Nixon’s presidency failed because he was unable to measure up to
‘existing domestic norms’, not because of his opportunistic foreign policy
successes (ibid.: 205). While pursuing an opportunistic foreign policy, leaders
must be careful nonetheless to maintain their image as principled, honest leaders
at home.
Nowadays, as supranational organizations are becoming increasingly
important, summit meetings have become routine. Major European Union (EU)
policy issues have to be agreed and disputes resolved at the six-monthly
meetings of the Council of Ministers at the head of government level, the EU’s
ultimate decision-making body. Although many of its decisions are now taken
by qualified majority voting, major issues still require unanimous consent. The
negotiating skills required by the participants at these meetings are consider-
able, especially for the rotating president of the Union. The need for the
presidents, prime ministers and other ministers attending such Council sessions
to be able to survive without sleep is notorious.
Leaders of regional and local governments do not need to engage in

diplomacy at this level of sophistication but they nonetheless need to manage
an increasingly wide range of relationships with other local and regional
governments, as well as with national governments and, increasingly, with
supranational organizations too (Loughlin and Keating, 1998). They may be
assisted in doing so by national governments, or regions may develop their own
networks operating across national frontiers which operate independently of
national governments. Such regional networks are becoming increasingly
common and influential in the EU.
From Contract State to Hollowed-out State
The fragmentation of government at all levels has in any case been a long-term
trend, one manifestation of which has been the development of a contract state
in which public services are provided through networks of contracts among
autonomous organizations. This in turn has generated new patters of account-
ability and control through contracts which have concerned students of public
administration for at least the last 30 years (see Smith and Hague, 1971; Rhodes,
1995; Elcock, 1998c). The importance of government by contract has further
increased with the ‘hollowing out of the state’ and the consequent need for
autonomous public- and private-sector agencies to agree the terms on which
they will cooperate with or provide services for one another.
Another indication of the fragmented nature of modern government is the
development of increasingly sophisticated analyses of the structures of local
and national government systems in terms of the relationships of governments
and their departments with other agencies, interest and cause groups. Richardson
and Jordan (1979) identified a series of policy communities each of which
includes government departments, local authorities and interest groups which
are involved in a particular policy field, such as education, social work or
policing. Grant Jordan (1982) analysed them in terms of a continuum in which
they range between ‘iron triangles’ and ‘woolly nets’. Where the number of
actors in a policy community is small, the principal actors are agreed on most
of the issues most of the time and those issues are not matters of political
controversy, the policy community is relatively closed. Its principal actors
operate in concert most of the time by consensus in an ‘iron triangle’ from
which dissenters may be excluded. Fire protection services provide a good
example of such an ‘iron triangle’ (Elcock, 1994: 188ff). However, where there
are large numbers of actors together with many sources of dispute and partisan
controversy, the relationships within the policy community will be much looser
and disagreements within it will be common. Here the policy community is a
‘woolly net’ and decisions will be reached only after much argument. The
education policy community in most countries tends to be such a fragmented

and fissiparous policy community (see Baumgartner, 1989: 124ff).
R.A.W. Rhodes (1981, 1996) and others have developed theories of power
and dependence which analyse the influences which governments, companies,
interest groups and voluntary agencies have on one another by using their
resources, which other actors in the policy field need in order to implement
their policies, as well as to defend and if possible expand their action space. In
central–local government relations, for example, both sets of actors – central
departments and local authorities – possess four kinds of resources (Rhodes,
1981, 1987).
1. Constitutional legal resources: the powers, rights and duties assigned and
guaranteed to each participant by legislation and the constitution.
2. Financial resources, including the right to levy taxes, impose income
charges, hold reserves and vire funds from one budget head to another.
3. Political resources: ministers, presidents, legislators and local councillors
alike have legitimacy accorded to them by popular election and are therefore
entitled to lay claim to the right to implement the policies for which the
electorate voted by supporting them.
4. Information: both the central government and local authorities need
information which another participant possesses. The Greater London
Council and the metropolitan county councils tried to impede their abolition
by denying the Thatcher government the information it needed to establish
the arrangements for their replacement. However, councillors’ efforts to
deny information to the Department of the Environment were thwarted by
collusion among civil servants and senior officers of the doomed councils
(personal information).
The central issue concerning the validity of this ‘tug-of-war’ analysis is the
extent to which the central government has the ability to override the process
of exchange of resources through its possession of the fifth resource.
5. The hierarchical resource: the possession by the central government of

powers to override the proposals and actions of local authorities. In Britain,
the centre’s powers are ultimately absolute because Parliament is sovereign.
It can therefore alter the status and powers of local authorities or even abolish
them entirely. Local authorities are thus stewards governing in effect on
behalf of the central government (Chandler, 1991, ch. 6). In the USA the
existence of state and local governments is, by contrast, guaranteed by the
federal and state constitutions; therefore structural reorganization is next to
impossible, but there are many claims that the federal government has been
able by various means considerably to restrict the states’ and local

governments’ autonomy through ‘coercive federalism’ (Zimmermann, 1992).
A major issue for political leaders in this context is how they can influence
these patterns of interdependence. The qualities and skills leaders need if they
are to be able to influence intergovernmental or interorganizational relations,
as well as what institutions and processes are required to make such influence
possible, need to be identified. The need to develop a wide range of commu-
nication and coordination links has led to the development of increasingly
complicated systems of interorganizational relations, whose complexity has
been further increased in recent times by the ‘hollowing out’ of the local state
through contracting out services. Another widespread and growing trend is for
local and regional government functions to be exercised by single purpose
agencies rather than being entrusted to multifunctional local authorities. In
Britain, this trend has been dubbed the ‘quango state’, which has grown rapidly
since 1979 (Rhodes, 1996). The ministerial appointees who are the members
of their governing boards constitute a ‘New Magistracy’ (Stewart, 1993). A
similar tendency towards the creation of single-purpose bodies also exists in
the USA, where the number of special purpose districts increased from 21 264
in 1967 to 31 555 in 1992. However, most American special district authorities
are governed by elected members, rather than by appointed boards as in Britain
(Davis and Hall, 1996). Nonetheless, the effect of rendering the government
of local communities more complex is the same.
In consequence, governments have increasingly had to endeavour to
coordinate the policies and actions of other public bodies and private companies
in the collective interests of the communities they govern. Coordinating the
activities of a wide range of bodies is necessary to protect the environment of
their areas and promote developments which will bring new employment oppor-
tunities to their inhabitants. Before the 1960s, most British local councils saw
their role as being primarily to carry out the functions allocated to them by
Parliament, but, since the 1970s, this traditional view of their role has given
way to a ‘governmental’ role under which they accept a general responsibility
for the welfare of the communities they govern (Greenwood and Stewart, 1974).
This in turn has required councillors and their senior officers to develop an
awareness of and a willingness to intervene in the wider affairs of their
communities.
The Redcliffe–Maud Commission declared in 1969 that local authorities
must accept ‘an all-round responsibility for the safety, health and well-being,
both cultural and material, of people in different localities’ (quoted in
Greenwood and Stewart, 1974: 2). A survey taken in Northern England in 1992
found that all the nine council leaders and 14 out of the 17 chief executives
who responded accepted such a wide-ranging definition of their councils’
responsibilities. Only one chief executive opted for the traditional view that a
local authority should concentrate on carrying out its statutory duties (Elcock,
1996a: 32). Hence the governance roles of local authority leaders and their
principal advisers have become increasingly important over the last three
decades. This trend will be reinforced by the Blair government’s intention to
confer on councils an explicit duty to promote the economic, social and en-
vironmental well-being of their communities (DETR, 1998, para. 8:8: 80).
The fragmentation of local governance has been particularly acute in Britain
because of the growth of the ‘quango state’. Nonetheless, because of the range
and variety of their functions, local authorities remain the agencies best suited
to coordinate the activities of local and subregional agencies and act as network
managers. Local councils can adopt one of several approaches to policy
networks: ‘They may choose not to participate in networks; claiming special
status they may seek to impose ideas onto the network. Or, alternatively they
may take on the role of network manager’ (Clarence and Painter, 1998: 12).
The last is the most attractive option in today’s fragmented system of local
governance, in which the primacy of local authorities has been reduced by the
creation of many new public, private and not-for-profit agencies. It ‘is a facil-
itative role, one that mediates and brokers between network members’ (ibid.).
If local governments are to be network managers, their leaders need to have
the ability to develop and manipulate increasingly varied and complex systems
of interorganizational relations when they deem it desirable or necessary to
influence the activities of the other organizations operating in their territories
(Friend et al., 1974). Hence governance roles are becoming an increasingly
significant part of their leaders’ functions, but their ability to play them varies.
John and Cole (2000: 111) record that a traditional city boss in Leeds was
‘unable to forge an effective learning coalition’ but his successor’s ‘vision and
belief in partnership’ made him much more successful in this role.
We now consider the roles which leaders need to play in their relations with
other governments and external bodies under three headings: ambassadorial
roles, network management roles and implementation roles.
Ambassadorial Roles
Here the leader acts as a representative and spokesperson for his or her
government in its dealings with the other actors whose support or cooperation
it needs. This may include taking part in ceremonial events which have no direct
influence on policy or its implementation but which enable leaders to improve
their relationships with their fellows in other governments or agencies. British
mayors or council chairmen spend most of their time carrying out such
ceremonial duties. They must also act as clearly identifiable symbols of the
government of their communities. One of the arguments advanced by both
Michael Heseltine (DoE, 1991) and the Blair government (DETR, 1998) in
favour of establishing directly elected executive mayors in British local
government is that they will be publicly identifiable symbols of local government
who will be in a position to stimulate greater public interest in local issues.
Leaders also need to act as advocates for their communities. Nowadays many
local politicians, especially elected mayors, see the encouragement of people
to move into and invest in their communities as a major responsibility, especially
in ‘rust belt’ areas which are in need of new sources of employment and en-
vironmental regeneration (Elcock, 1995b). Local political leadership also
involves cultivating good relations with other levels of government in order to
secure the passage of the legislation and regulations, as well as the awarding
of grants needed for the accomplishment of their policies and projects. Leaders
of major American cities attach great importance to their links with the state
governor, senior members of Congress and the president because these rela-
tionships are ways to ensure that these other actors grant the city the legislation
and resources it needs. Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago set great store by
his links with the governor of Illinois and the current occupant of the White
House (Banfield, 1961). Mayor of Buffalo James D. Griffin likewise stressed
the importance of his links with Presidents Carter and Reagan in securing
development resources for his city and the passage of legislation favourable to
Buffalo and the wider Western New York region, during his 12 years in office
(Elcock, 1995b). The Buergermeister and Gemeindedirektoren in the Muen-
sterland area of Nordrhein-Westfalen likewise stressed their need for good
relations with the Social Democratic Land government and legislature in Dues-
seldorff, although they frequently belonged to the party in opposition at the
Land level, the Christian Democratic Union (Elcock, 1998a). Lastly, Olivier
Borraz describes French maires as being at the centre of ‘a vast system of actors’
(1994: 16–17). Multiple networking is thus common practice for local political
leaders everywhere.
In continental European countries, the development and smooth functioning
of these relations between levels of government are assisted by leaders who
hold elected offices at more than one level. In France the cumul des mandats
has long meant that even the most senior figures in the national government
also hold local offices. Such national figures as Jacques Chaban-Delmas, Gaston
Deferre and Giscard d’Estaing all retained the mairies of their home towns and
cities while holding national ministerial posts or occupying the Elysee Palace.
Although the extent to which politicians may hold multiple offices was restricted
as part of François Mitterrand’s decentralization reforms in the early 1980s,
the cumul des mandats continues to be a significant feature of French
government which assists the coordination of policies between the national,
region and local levels (Borraz, 1994: 20). There is a similar practice in
Germany (Gunlicks, 1986) but it is less influential. In Britain, by contrast, local
councillors who are elected to Parliament are expected not only to resign any
local leadership offices they hold but also usually to resign their council seats.
There is therefore little overlap between local and national political elites
(Ranney, 1965), although an increasing proportion of MPs have previously
served as councillors. This separation of local from national political elites in
part explains the fractious relations between central and local government in
Britain in recent years. Within local government, the holding of elected or
appointed offices on more than one council has been actively discouraged since
the mid-1980s (Widdicombe Committee, 1986).
Apart from securing the cooperation or at least the acquiescence of regional,
national and supranational governments, local political leaders must also
maintain good relations with the business communities whose members provide
investment and employment in their areas. They therefore hold frequent
meetings with business groups at which they seek to encourage local businesses,
especially small and medium-sized enterprises, to expand locally. Many mayors
and chief executives in several countries report the importance for them of
frequent meetings with local business people (Elcock, 1995b, 1998a, 1988b).
They may also undertake extensive journeys in order to trawl for outside
investors for their communities: for example, the mayor of one small city in
New York State travelled to Canada and China seeking inward investments
(Elcock, 1995b: 45).
In north-east England, leading local politicians on Tyne and Wear County
Council and Sunderland Borough Council had to play leading roles in the nego-
tiations that attracted the Japanese car-making firm Nissan to the area in the
1980s (Garrahan and Stewart, 1992, ch. 2). First, the parcel of land Nissan
needed had to be assembled in great secrecy, but this ‘required a collaborative
venture between the Borough [of Sunderland], Washington New Town
Development Corporation and the former Tyne and Wear County Council.
Given that such a large tract of land was involved, there were multiple owners
who had to be approached to bring the land under the control of the Borough
of Sunderland’ (ibid.: 41). Planning permissions also had to be secured and
grants for the development obtained. At another level, trade union cooperation
with a new style of management had to be negotiated, although this was
primarily a matter for the company itself, but the union officials concerned had
mutually influential links with the local political leaders. In all these negotia-
tions local political and industrial leaders had to become extensively involved
in the task of putting together the package of benefits needed to persuade Nissan
to locate in the Sunderland area and providing the facilities and guarantees the
company required. The ambassadorial roles required of local leaders therefore
included negotiation with other local actors, mediating in disputes among them
and negotiating with the central government and the European Commission.
Such ambassadorial roles are becoming increasingly important because of

two general trends. The first, encapsulated in the much over-used word ‘glo-
balization’, is the increasingly international nature of markets and the businesses
that operate in them. Hence attracting new businesses to a locality in the north
of England or South Wales may well involve trying to influence decisions that
will be taken, not just in London and Brussels, but also in New York, Chicago,
Tokyo or Seoul. Secondly, the number and range of governments and inter-
governmental agencies that have to be influenced are increasing. This is most
clearly evident in the EU, where the Commission is becoming an ever more
important source of legislation and resources to support national, regional and
local industries and developments.
However, the development of the EU’s powers relative to those of its member
states has also had a second, and paradoxical, effect. It has generated an
increasing tendency for the nations and regions within each of the EU’s member
states to assert their cultural identities and functional interests and demand
greater autonomy from their states (Elcock and Parks, 1998; Parks and Elcock,
2000). The development of this ‘Europe of the Regions’ has led to the creation
of regional government structures with elected legislatures in Italy, Spain and
France over the last 20 years or so (Loughlin and Keating, 1998). Its latest man-
ifestations are occurring in Britain with the granting of devolution to Scotland
and Wales as well as Northern Ireland (Elcock and Keating, 1998). There are
also tentative moves to establish stronger governmental structures in the English
regions, but at present these are confined to the integrated government offices
established by the Major government in 1994 and the regional development
agencies established by the Labour government in 1999. Possible moves towards
the creation of elected assemblies in some regions, notably the north of England,
may follow (Elcock, 1996b). In consequence, still further new structures of
government have been created and new leaders have emerged at their heads, all
of whom must become involved in increasingly complicated networks of inter-
governmental relations. These include participation in the Committee of the
Regions and transnational regional consortia.
Such developments have not been confined to Europe, as the pressure for
Québécois independence from the rest of Canada demonstrates. A proposal for
the separation of Quebec from the rest of Canada was defeated by a very narrow
margin in 1995 and the issue is likely to be raised again by the Bloc québécois
before long, especially since it was returned to power in the 1998 provincial
elections. The credibility of the Québécois demand for independence has been
increased by the creation of the North American Free Trade Area because it
has made it possible to argue that an independent Quebec could survive and
function within the Area. Similarly, the Scottish National Party has argued for
‘Independence within Europe’ for Scotland increasingly convincingly because
European integration makes it easier for small countries to survive and prosper
within the Union, while diluting the powers of the member states. Long-standing
demands for regional or national autonomy become more credible when the
powers of existing national and multinational states are declining relative to
those of supranational bodies or networks.
From the point of view of political leaders at any level of government, all
these developments mean that leaders need to establish and maintain relations
with an increasing range of central, regional and local governments in the home
country. They have also to develop links with supranational governments such
as the EU Commission in Brussels and local, regional or national leaders in
other countries. Thus political leaders and their senior officials alike must all
become parts of more or less extensive communication and lobbying networks
in order to coordinate action on matters of common interest at the same level
of government. They need also to try and influence such networks at other
levels of government whose consent or resources they need to further their
goals and promote the interests of the communities they govern.
Such activities involve a great deal more than ‘civic boosterism’. Political
leaders need to be supported by agencies which are charged to promote the area
as a desirable place to locate new plants, live in, work in or develop as tourist
destinations. The leaders of such initiatives must negotiate with their fellows
at the various levels of government and will need to be supported in their efforts
by the officials in their own organizations. New skills may be needed too. For
instance, if leading politicians do not speak foreign languages, they may need
to employ members of staff who do speak them, as well as learning at least a
few basic words and phrases themselves so that they can be polite to their
foreign equivalents. They may also need advice on how to behave appropri-
ately and respect the conventions and manners of other societies.
The ambassadorial role thus includes occasions when leaders appear as
figureheads symbolizing the local, regional or national communities they
govern. For some leading office holders, such as British mayors or council
chairmen, this may constitute almost their entire role. However, frequently
leading politicians who play such symbolic roles also enjoy substantial
executive responsibilities which mean that they must become personally
involved in negotiations with the heads of other governments and other or-
ganizations, including business leaders. They therefore need both the personal
abilities and the support systems to enable them to discharge these varied
responsibilities effectively.
The Arts of Network Management: Reticulist Roles and Skills
The skills required to manage increasingly numerous and varied networks of

interorganizational relations must now be discussed. One issue is whether policy
is best made through the interaction of governments and interest groups, with
outcomes emerging from negotiations among them, or whether political leaders

should try to determine or at least influence the outcomes of such interorgani-
zational negotiations. Assuming that political leaders wish to do the latter,
Friend et al., (1974, p. 221) have offered a useful analysis of interorganiza-
tional relations leading to a suggestion of what is required to improve and
influence them.
They argued that any government or agency has a defined area of action
space, which is determined by the constitution and the law as well as by its own
efforts and resources. It will seek to expand its action space but in doing so it
will encroach on the action space of other governments or agencies. They are
likely in their turn to resist such encroachments and seek to extend their own
action space, unless they can be persuaded to accept the legitimacy or desir-
ability of the first actor’s behaviour (ibid., 1974: 38, Figure 12). To put it
another way, organizations may use the constitutional–legal, financial, political
and information resources at their disposal to advance their interests and
policies and thwart the inimical intentions of others (Rhodes, 1981, 1987).
The result will either lead to Lindblom’s (1959) partisan mutual adjustment
through negotiations among the contending organizations, which may in turn
lead to the establishment of mutually acceptable programmes of action, or to
the development of an increasingly acrimonious conflict among them, which
may produce mutual paralysis. The latter will cause problems because
governments cannot usually act without the assistance or at least the acquies-
cence of other actors, which may not be forthcoming unless steps are taken to
ensure that communication, coordination and cooperation develop and continue
among them. If any individual or organization assumes the role of facilitating
such communication, negotiation and coordination by acting as a network
manager, its members will be well placed to implement their own preferred
policies or promote their values through the interactive processes they
encourage and facilitate.
In order to develop such cooperative relations and avoid conflict, Friend et
al. propose the identification of a reticulist individual, group or organization
which is situated at the points where different channels of communication meet
and cross. This reticulist must possess the ability to encourage communication
and coordination through those channels and be well located to develop further
networks of communication and cooperation, as well as mediating in potential
or actual conflicts. Friend and his colleagues state:
Whether the organisational context for an inter-agency exploratory process is one of

contextual control, of contractual obligation or simply of a perception of mutual gain
by independent parties, it is the recognition of complexities in the relationships
between present and anticipated problems that creates the essential support to actors
to engage in any form of connective planning activity. (Friend et al., 1974: 352,
original emphasis)
Clearly, governments, with their wide range of functions and the variety of
expertise available among their staffs, are well placed to engage in this kind of
mediation and to encourage cooperation among other agencies. In local
government, for example, this means that ‘rather than directly controlling policy
outcomes local authorities will have to focus on consultation and negotiation
in policy development. As a result of this shift senior officers will have the task
of “managing the interface” between various networks and the local authority,
while the role of the elected member will be focussed increasingly on influence’
(Clarence and Painter, 1998: 12). This means that a council’s leading officers
and members need to possess or acquire the attributes needed to do this: they
need to possess or acquire reticulist skills. John and Cole record that Alan
Whitehead, when leader of Southampton City Council, was ‘the classic
networking and adaptive politician’, who ‘tried to involve many partners in
local decision-making and responded to events rather than imposing a firm
stamp upon them’ (2000: 111). He was therefore a definitive reticulist.
In order thus to be able to negotiate and mediate effectively, the reticulist
must possess certain capabilities, which have direct implications for political
leaders:
the making of reticulist judgements – in other words, the mobilisation of decision

networks in an intelligently selective way – depends on a capacity to appreciate both
the structure of problem situations and the structure of organisational and political
relations that surround them. The actor concerned, whatever his (or her) formal status,
must first be able to appreciate the patterns of interdependence between those present
and future problems which may impinge significantly on his own current field of
concern, so that he can weigh up the alternative ways in which the focus of exploration
might be extended. At the same time, he must be able to appreciate the structure of
relationships, formal and informal, between roles in the decision process, so as to
understand the political costs and benefits of activating alternative forms of com-
munication with other relevant actors, both in his own and in other organisations.
(Friend et al., 1973: 364)
Thus the reticulist must be in the right location to secure communication and
cooperation and have the appropriate skills to bring them about.
The attributes needed for successful reticulist activity or network management
include both factors concerning the reticulists’ location and the resources
available to them, as well as the reticulist’s own attributes. The location factors
include the following.
• The ability to offer encouragement to others to engage in communica-

tion and cooperation. This may include inducements including offering
to share information useful to other actors such as demographic analyses,
powers to make grants or powers which require other actors to obtain the
reticulist’s consent for their own proposals. They may also include
sanctions, for example the power to grant or refuse planning applications,

or control over resources such as grants or loans, which can be applied
or offered to induce others to cooperate wherever possible.
• Access to the decision-making processes of other actors, including the
right to attend their meetings and receive reports of their decisions. This
may be assisted by an actor’s formal position of authority, for example
election to an office such as executive mayor, leader of the council,
president or prime minister.
• A central location in his or her own government, so that the reticulist has
easy access to information about its departments’ policies, needs and
resources. A reticulist is therefore likely to be either a member of a
government’s core executive or a member of a department with an overall
coordination function, such as the unit charged with strategic planning
or the preparation of the budget.
• The technological and other ability to encourage communication. Both the
opportunities and the resources available to do this have been vastly
increased by modern information and communications technologies.
The reticulist must also possess the appropriate knowledge and skills,
including the following.
• Understanding who are the various actors in the community and the policy
field involved, including gaining knowledge of their powers, functions
and resources, as well as who their leaders are.
• Acquiring knowledge and understanding of the other organizations in the
relevant networks and the relationships among them, including
recognition of their political and other objectives, their needs and the
nature of the inducements or threats to which their members, especially
their leaders, are most likely to respond appropriately.
• The personal and organizational attributes which will enable communi-
cation and coordination to take place, given that resources, especially
time, are likely to be limited. This must include ‘a sure grasp of modes
of behaviour relevant to different types of relationships between agencies
and between actors’ (Friend et al., 1974: 367). Appropriate behaviour
towards other actors may be critical in securing their cooperation.
Although leaders’ ability in these areas varies, they may be helped to develop
the relevant skills by the provision of appropriate training and by the provision
of appropriate support services for leaders who need to engage in reticulist
activities. These include briefing agencies to provide information to increase
reticulists’ knowledge and understanding of other actors, as well as enabling
them to provide information or assistance which is likely to be of value to them

and provide advice and analysis about their intentions and likely behaviour.
Implementation Roles
Closely related to this reticulist analysis is the problem that leaders face in
securing the execution of their policy decisions: the process of implementation
(Pressman and Wildavsky, 1973). Again they need to secure the right
combination of inducements and sanctions in order to secure effective imple-
mentation, because almost invariably the individuals and agencies responsible
for policy implementation are at the very least not wholly within the control of
the initial policy maker. Marsh and Rhodes (1989, 1992) demonstrated that the
impact of Margaret Thatcher’s determined, relatively united government and
of her dominant, transformational leadership on policy outcomes was less than
might have been expected: ‘even in those areas in which they concentrated their
efforts, less was achieved than they hoped or than many observers have claimed.
Elsewhere they attempted less and achieved little’ (1992: 176). Even in two
policy fields which attracted much ministerial attention, industrial relations and
local government, the impact of their policies was limited. Marsh and Rhodes
argued that only in one policy field, housing, did the Thatcher administrations
achieve as many as four of their five declared aims. In local government they
achieved only one aim out of four. In industrial relations they achieved two out
of three aims, but they did not succeed in ‘transforming shopfloor industrial
relations in a way which significantly favours management’ (ibid.: 175). The
authors concluded that, in industrial relations, the effect of ‘Thatcherism’ was
confined ‘in all probability to [exacerbating] the effects of recession and
[increasing] unemployment’. Hence ‘it is remarkably difficult to identify a
major independent effect of Thatcherism’ (Marsh and Rhodes, 1989: 40). Again,
despite all the pressure ministers exerted to reduce local authorities’ powers
and activities, ‘the minimum state is a long time being born’ (ibid.).
The implementation of the Thatcher government’s policies was obstructed
by three factors: (a) exogenous events, including globalization, deindustrial-
ization and a worldwide recession, which especially affected foreign and
defence policy; (b) policy networks: the coalitions of intermediary groups which
seek to maintain the status quo which serves their interests, hence generating
‘the politics of inertia’ (ibid.: 18) and their ability to ‘mount sustained rearguard
actions’ (ibid.: 41); and (c) the unclear relations that exist between ideas, parties
and policies: not enough thought has been given to how to translate ideas into
practicable policies, or how to render innovations effective. Marsh and Rhodes
(1992: 181) thus identify an implementation gap caused by conflicting
objectives, inadequate information, limited resources and the government’s
refusal to consult or negotiate.
The likely extent of this implementation gap is well illustrated by Hogwood

and Gunn’s (1984) account of the conditions required to secure complete imple-
mentation, which lead them to argue that this is usually unattainable because
the conditions are never fully met (ibid.: 198ff). Problems likely to thwart a
policy’s full implementation include the following:
• external circumstances over which the policy maker has no control, for
instance a hostile court judgment;
• the lack of sufficient time and resources to carry out the policy;
• the policy does not produce the results expected from it;
• there are too many dependency relationships, especially as government
structures have become increasingly fragmented;
• failure to agree on objectives and the sequence of tasks needed to achieve
them;
• failures of communication and coordination;
• the inability to secure perfect compliance, which seldom initially exists
in reality because the acquiescence of a more or less wide and varied
policy community is needed. This may be easier to achieve in an ‘iron
triangle’ with relatively few actors than in ‘woolly networks’ whose co-
ordination is impossible because of the large number of actors involved,
as well as their conflicting interests and objectives (Jordan, 1982).
Such a catalogue of the ‘pathologies of implementation’ (Schon, 1975) suggests

that it is surprising that leaders’ policies are ever implemented at all, rather than
that anything like perfect implementation is at the very least extremely rare.
As Dr Johnson put it, ‘It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done
at all.’
Overcoming at least some of the obstacles to implementation has to be a
constant preoccupation of political leaders. They will need reticulist abilities in
order to do so effectively or at all. Policy units should be asked to identify the
actors involved in the policy arenas where leaders need to achieve change and
propose means by which their cooperation can be secured. Leaders must also
be as sure as possible that their own supporters will maintain them in office
while more or less lengthly negotiations are carried on with the many other
actors whose support or at least compliance may be required before major
policies can be executed. During this time, their supporters may become
frustrated at the apparent lack of progress in achieving the aims for which they
campaigned to secure the leader’s election or re-election and therefore become
increasingly critical of what they believe to be backsliding or inertia on their
leaders’ part. Hence the exercising of allegiance roles is crucially important to
ensure that leaders have sufficient time to secure at least the partial imple-
mentation of their policies. Significantly, both Bill Clinton and Tony Blair
recognized this and were therefore determined that the first concern of their
first terms in office must be securing a second term (see Stephanopoulos, 1999).
THE ALLEGIANCE ROLES
Above all, then, leaders must be able to ensure their own political survival, at
least for a period sufficient to ensure that their values influence all who work
in the government and secure the implementation of the policies that they have
developed from them. This may mean taking steps soon after a leader wins
office to ensure that he or she will win the next election too. Bill Clinton’s
advisers quickly turned their attention to winning the presidential election of
1996 after he had won the office for the first time in 1992. Bob Woodward
declared that for Clinton’s chief of staff, George Stephanopoulos, ‘The admin-
istration ... had to find a way of measuring a successful presidency ... it all came
down to one thing: winning re-election’ (1993: 329). Tony Blair and his staff
acted similarly after New Labour’s massive General Election victory in May
1997. Both men developed ambitious policy agenda which require at least two
terms of office to implement fully. Therefore the first task is to secure so far as
possible the re-election of the president or the government for a full second
term – something the British Labour Party has never achieved and which no
Democratic President between Franklin Roosevelt and William Clinton had
achieved either. Hence a third set of leadership roles are concerned with
maintaining the coalition of support which will enable the leader to retain office
and secure more or less willing collaboration in implementing his or her policies.
These are the allegiance roles. The winning and retention of allegiance was the
supreme preoccupation of Machiavelli’s Prince. There is still much valuable
guidance for leaders in his work; indeed Donelson Forsyth describes
Machiavelli as ‘perhaps the first management consultant’ (1990: 215).
Allegiance to leaders is always conditional, especially in democratic systems
of government. It is a Lockeian rather than a Hobbesian social contract in which
the allegiance of the electorate will be sustained only so long as the interests
and opinions of the voters are protected and furthered by the leaders. Today,
such allegiance roles have become a heavy preoccupation for leaders and those
who advise them: hence the excessive importance that political leaders now
attach to the efforts of their ‘spin doctors’ to put the most favourable gloss
possible on their decisions, actions and personal attributes. Such a preoccupa-
tion with ‘spin’ accentuates the distance between leaders and their followers
of which Michels warned. Spin doctors are arguably the most recent manifes-
tation of ‘the source from which conservative currents flow over the plain of
democracy, occasioning there disastrous floods and rendering the plain unrecog-
nisable’ (Michels, 1915: 22), because they reduce the extent to which elections
involve debating the merits of substantial rival policy programmes by concen-

trating the electorate’s attention on personalities.
The danger of the modern preoccupation with style and image is that pres-
entation becomes all and, as a result, leaders lose sight of the more fundamental
values that they are seeking to turn into reality. George Stephanopoulos (1999:
326) attacked Dick Morris’s preoccupation with the ‘60 per cent rule’ which
stated that the president’s policies should above all command the support of
60 per cent of voters: ‘if six out of ten Americans said they were for something,
the President had to be for it too’. The leader leads, so he must follow. Public
choice theory postulates that leadership consists in acting as a rational
maximizer, where the good to be maximized is electoral support and whose
supporters will act in ways that are most likely to ensure that their interests are
protected and advanced (Fiorina and Schepsle, 1989). The leader therefore acts
as the followers’ agent. However, leaders are also expected to act as agenda
setters. Thus ‘individuals act to maximise their expected utilities in terms of
objectively verifiable magnitudes. These may be either material wealth or
altruistic goals’ (Hargrove, 1989: 59). The question is what roles the leader
needs to play successfully in order to gain and retain support among the
electorate.
The allegiance roles include the following:
• Securing the maximum favourable publicity and monitoring the effects

of the administration’s policies on the electorate. Unpopular or disruptive
policies should, where possible, be executed early in the term of office.
Modern politicians have long used opinion polls to monitor their electoral
standing, but these are now supplemented by quicker, less expensive but
possibly less reliable techniques such as focus groups (Gould, 1998).
Leaders and their advisers may become heavily, perhaps excessively,
preoccupied with securing good publicity. For example, policies
favouring public transport in cities may be blocked by political leaders
concerned not to offend the car-owning members of their electorates
despite increasing evidence that the indiscriminate use of cars is causing
unacceptable damage to the urban environment. The question then arises
of how far the government and its leaders should compromise their
principles and modify their election pledges in order to maintain their
electoral support. In doing this they may come into conflict with the
party’s activists, hence the playing of this role may not be compatible
with the next.
• Maintaining the enthusiasm and support of the party workers who must
staff the party’s election campaigns. Leaders ‘are at the apex of lines of
command and traditions in their parties and have to negotiate and respond
to the strategies of other parties’ (John and Cole, 2000: 100). This requires
both the passage of measures that enthuse party workers and the need to
ensure that they feel involved in the development of party policy. William
Hague’s ‘Listening to Britain’ campaign in the summer of 1998 was an
attempt to revitalize Conservative Party members’ enthusiasm, as well
as trying to restore the party’s lost support in the wider electorate after the
party’s disastrous 1997 defeat.
• Maintaining the support of a majority in the legislature or council. Here
the role of the party whips as a two-way channel of communication is
important (Morrison, 1954). They must convey back-bench discontent
to leaders, who need to heed it, as well as conveying the leaders’ instruc-
tions to the backbenchers. A series of interviews with British council
leaders in 1997 revealed that one of their main concerns was the need to
maintain the support of their party groups. One even cautioned against
making a distinction between leading and back-bench councillors because
the latter tend to resent this distinction when, formally, all councillors
enjoy equal status in terms of voting and access to their officers’ advice.
For him and several other respondents, therefore, all the members of the
Labour Group had to be involved in policy making and their policies must
be supported by the Group (Elcock, 1998b).
• Where party discipline is less tight than it usually is in Britain, as in the
US Congress and its state and local governments, the leader, especially
the president, has to ‘log roll’ coalitions of support among legislators
which are sufficient to secure the passage of the administration’s
legislation. This becomes a continuous and time-consuming process of
negotiation and cajolery (Sorensen, 1966; Neustadt, 1980; Stephanopou-
los, 1999). The president therefore needs great negotiating skills, together
with access to effective inducements and sanctions to use when he is
seeking to secure the votes of members of Congress. State governors and
local mayors must deploy the same skills, using the appropriate
inducements and threats skilfully to build their own coalitions of support
at the state and local levels. Even in Britain the prime minister and his or
her colleagues must be kept constantly aware of the extent to which their
back-bench MPs will accept their less palatable policies without rebelling
against the party whips. Such dissent has become more frequent in the
British Parliament in recent decades (Norton, 1985). Possible or actual
dissent is increasingly used as a warning shot fired across the leadership’s
bows by legislators in majority parties.
• Acting as a symbol of authority who is respected, and if possible admired,
unless the executive leader is partly relieved of this responsibility by a
symbolic head of state such as a constitutional monarch, as in several
European states, or by a ceremonial mayor or chairman, as in British local
government. Where the executive leader is also the symbolic head of the
community, as in the case of the US president, personal peccadilloes may

have especially severe consequences, not only for the incumbent’s
personal authority but also for the authority of the office itself. Hence the
weakening of presidential authority which followed the Watergate
scandal, as well as the distractions for President Clinton of the Paula Jones
and Monica Lewinsky cases, have reduced the respect with which the
presidency is regarded by the people, with possible adverse long term
effects for the US Constitution itself.
• Liaising and negotiating with more or less influential interests within and
outside the community, including other governments. Much of the time
such negotiations will be carried out by subordinates, but agreements will
often need to be sealed by political leaders, whose actions may be largely
symbolic because the substance of the negotiations has already been
completed mainly by officials or more junior politicians. However, some
disputes can only be resolved by the leaders of the contending
governments themselves. In any case, they are often needed to legitimate
the policy through public signing ceremonies or press conferences.
CONCLUSION
Leaders need the ability to play a wide range of governing, governance and
allegiance roles. No individual can hope to have the time, the energy or the
breadth of knowledge and abilities needed to play them all alone, except in
small local communities. Hence much of the modern debate about leadership
in government has concerned the various devices which are available and
needed to support political leaders. These include policy units and ‘think tanks’,
special advisers, public relations officers, secretariats and many others. These
form the subject of the next chapter.
There is a delicate balance to be struck between offering too much advice and
leaving a leader inadequately supported as he or she takes decisions. A leader
with too many sources of advice is likely to face a confused and confusing
Babel of options (Woodward, 1993). Leaders’ colleagues may fear the conse-
quences of giving them too much power to make policy independent of their
colleagues and their departments if they have too large a briefing agency. This
has been an enduring source of paranoia in British central government since
the dismantling of Lloyd George’s ‘Garden Suburb’ in 1922, because many
ministers and civil servants felt that the existence of the ‘Suburb’, with its staff
of bright young men and women who were there to do the prime minister’s
bidding, gave Lloyd George too much freedom to act independently of his
colleagues and their departments. Therefore, for many years thereafter, the
prime minister was confined to only a small personal staff. This paranoia has
emerged afresh with Margaret Thatcher’s and Tony Blair’s attempts to

strengthen the Cabinet Office in order to secure better coordination of and
control over their governments’ policies. In the early 1980s, Thatcher’s
increasing use of personal advisers led some observers to wonder whether she
was creating a prime minister’s department (Jones, 1983). The strengthening
of the Number 10 Policy Unit under Tony Blair and the inclusion in it of several
of his personal friends, has brought a revival of paranoia about the prime
minister’s power in the rest of the Labour government and the party.
Thus the number and the range of the support systems used by political
leaders to assist them in making policy, overseeing the management of their
governments and conducting their external relations have increased greatly
since the Second World War. Leaders are often supported by substantial units,
apart from the departments and committees which make up the traditional hier-
archical structures of government, whose existence has implications for leaders,
their colleagues, their officials and the general public.
8. The apparatus of leadership
INTRODUCTION
Having identified the various roles leaders play, we next consider a series of
devices intended to improve the decisions leaders make. They have in common
the assumptions underlying Handy’s style and contingency theories (1993:
100ff) because they change the contexts within which leaders function. Political
leaders need access to appropriate sources of advice and support if they are to
be able to ensure that their chosen sets of values prevail and that they can
implement their election pledges. They also need information and advice to
deal with the unexpected problems and crises which constantly beset them.
Many leaders also aspire to improve the performance of the government
machines of which they have been given charge, especially because the oppor-
tunities to do so that are offered by developments in personnel and financial
management, as well as in information and communications technologies, have
increased enormously.
At the same time, and partly because of rapid technological innovation, the
problems with which leaders need to deal have also increased in their number
and variety. They now include global warming, over-population, fossil fuel
depletion and increasing pollution. Hence both the problems facing political
leaders and the means available for them to address them have increased faster
than leaders’ ability either to cope with the problems or to take advantage of
the opportunities offered by new technologies and scientific discoveries (see
Dror, 1973:10). Thus Dror argues that attempts to improve the quality of
leaders’ decisions will involve ‘rather substantial departures from present
working methods, assumptions and cultural biases’ (ibid.: 9).
As a result of repeated policy failures and the increasing acceptance of the
advice of Dror, Wildavsky and many other policy analysts, the last 30 years
or so have seen the introduction of a wide range of support devices for political
leaders in the hope of improving the quality of the decisions they take. We
shall consider them under three headings: reducing uncertainty, developing
creativity and ensuring collective learning (Schon, 1975). Examples illustrat-
ing the usefulness or otherwise of various support mechanisms will be drawn
from those levels of government where either the problem being addressed is
most in evidence or innovations to address those problems have been partic-
ularly successful.
149
REDUCING UNCERTAINTY
Uncertainty constantly dogs political leaders. They cannot be sure when events
will conspire to blow their plans off course, or what obstacles may obstruct the
implementation of their policies. However, they may be able to reduce this
uncertainty by engaging in systematic thinking about the types of uncertainty
involved and how to reduce it. For example, population projections based on
census data indicate the likely pattern of demand for education, housing and
healthcare provision for many years ahead. They offer sufficient certainty for
governments to undertake capital developments such as building new schools,
universities, houses or hospitals in the locations where concentrations of people
in particular age groups are likely to develop. Unless some totally unexpected
factor such as a war or an epidemic intervenes, demographic forecasts are
reliable for many years ahead. For example, the number of babies born this year
indicates the likely demand for primary school places in five years’ time, that
for secondary school places in eleven years and for university places eighteen
years hence. Thorough demographic analysis should therefore normally provide
a relatively secure basis for long-term education policy planning.
John Friend and various colleagues (Friend and Jessop, 1969; Friend and
Hickling, 1987) have offered a model for thinking through the problems that
uncertainty poses for policy makers which postulates that uncertainty is of three
kinds, so enabling them to propose the appropriate means to address each of
them. The types of uncertainty and their remedies are presented in Figure 8.1
(see Friend and Hickling, 1987: 12).
Reducing Uncertainty about the Environment (UE)
Here the appropriate response is ‘We need more research’, because the quantity
and quality of the information available to the decision maker is inadequate to
give a clear indication of the appropriate policy. Hence policy makers may
establish research units to collect and analyse relevant information for them
and offer them options from among which to choose their preferred policy or
action. Alternatively, they may commission consultants or academics to collect
the data and advise them accordingly. However, collecting information is
expensive and time-consuming. There comes a point at which achieving a
marginal decrease in uncertainty of information is not worth the cost of
acquiring the necessary additional information. Thus a sample survey offers at
least a 95 per cent probability of accurately reflecting the views and attributes
of the population concerned but it can be carried out at a fraction of the cost of
a census, which alone would offer 100 per cent certainty. The point at which
uncertainty of information has been reduced as far as is realistically possible
must be judged by leaders and their advisers.
The apparatus of leadership 151
Uncertainties about the working

Environment
UE
possibilities for
investigation?
‘we need research?
Uncertainties MORE survey?
about guiding INFORMATION’ analysis?
Values forecasting?
UV
OUR
‘we need CURRENT
CLEARER DECISION
OBJECTIVES’ PROBLEM
possibilities for
policy guidance? ‘we need
clarifying aims? MORE
setting priorities? COORDINATION’
involving others? UR
Uncertainties about
Related decisions
possibilities for
liaison?
planning?
negotiation?
broader agenda?
Source: Friend and Hickling, 1987, Fig. 3, p. 10.
Figure 8.1 Three types of uncertainty in decision making
Research units have been created by many British local authorities,

especially the larger ones, to provide information and advice for leading
members of the council. British local authorities are very large by interna-
tional standards. They are often the biggest spenders, landowners and
employers in their areas, so their leading members need sophisticated advice
and monitoring mechanisms to keep track of the council’s myriad activities.
Many local authorities are too large for their leaders or groups of leading
councillors to make policy unaided by officials and other advisers. Hence an
increasing number have established central policy or research units to support
their leading members in determining the council’s policies, setting its priorities
and coordinating its management (Norris, 1989). In 1992, 14 out of 17 local
authorities studied in northern England had established chief executive’s
departments or similar to coordinate policy and management (Elcock,
1995b: 559). Seven also had central research units.
Such units may also be needed at the departmental level. In 1998, a survey
by Local Government Management Board researchers revealed that 75 per cent
of English county and metropolitan borough councils had established depart-
mental research units, although only 25 per cent of the generally smaller
non-metropolitan district councils had done so (LGMB, 1998). Larger size both
creates greater uncertainty and provides greater scope for developing means to
cope with it. Hence the small local governments common in the United States
and in continental Europe have less need for formal research units, although
they may use other sources to carry out research for them, such as a local
university, where local governments may help to fund specialist research units
to provide information for them.
In local authorities the role of the research unit is often principally to carry
out studies of specific policy areas or problems and present their findings to
their political leaders, who can then make the necessary policy choices on the
basis of the options offered to them, based in turn on the research unit’s findings.
Such units can also bring together the information held by the different
departments in administrative systems which are notoriously prone to failures
of communication and coordination across departmental boundaries. Such
failures have been repeatedly criticized by boards of inquiry into social policy
disasters such as deaths of children at the hands of their parents or failures to
detect malpractice in residential care homes. The role of a research unit is, then,
to collect and present information both from the authority’s own departments
and from outside sources, rather than explicitly to challenge established policies
or devise new ones. The political leaders make these choices for themselves,
although the research unit may offer its own views about the desirability of
existing policies and offer suggestions for new or revised ones.
In the end, the main problem that arises with the establishment of any kind
of policy or research unit within a government is to determine what its role is,
then making sure that the unit actually plays that role and does not get diverted
into another one. Policy or research units are usually established to play one or
more of three roles. The first is to prepare long-term strategic policies, including
budget strategies, often supporting leaders who adopt Campbell and Peters’
(1988) ‘priorities-and-planning’ style. To do this they need to maintain a degree
of detachment from the day-to-day work of the government while at the same
time not becoming an arrogant and irrelevant ‘high priesthood’ (Wildavsky,
1973: 173). If they are to remain effective, they must attract and retain the
support of the political leaders they are there to advise, but this may become
difficult if they offer advice which is unwelcome to them, although this may be
necessary to avert groupthink.
The second role is to ‘think the unthinkable’, providing alternative policies
to challenge current orthodoxies. Here we anticipate the discussion of creativity
because a unit which plays this role must be able to develop its ideas indepen-
dently of the rest of the government and present them to its leaders without let
or hindrance.
The third role of policy or research units is to co-ordinate the activities of
the authority’s departments in developing and implementing their policies,
especially in the economic and fiscal areas, thus engaging in Campbell’s (1983)
administrative politics. This may in part be a secretarial role, involving the
collation of papers and the preparation of the agenda for a cabinet or similar
body, as well as monitoring the implementation of the decisions taken by the
government and especially its leaders. Campbell advises that secretariats ‘help
manage the case-load, distill advice to the chief executive and/or the cabinet and
monitor departments’ adherence to decisions’ (ibid.: 343). A central unit may
therefore pull together the contributions that the government’s departments and
other organizations can make to addressing a major crisis facing the government,
such as the collapse of an industry on which large numbers of the area’s
inhabitants depend for employment. It may also become involved in bargaining
among conflicting interests, thus engaging in Campbell and Peters’ (1988)
broker politics. However, the unit should also play a more general role of
ensuring that departments communicate and cooperate with one another to
avoid duplication of services and mistakes caused by poor communication, as
well as implementing the leaders’ decisions. Here the role of the central unit may
be in part to change the culture of the organization and the attitudes of its staff,
especially those who possess professional qualifications and therefore tend to
ignore those with other qualifications or none.
The first two roles entail the research or policy unit being to some extent
detached from the council’s day-to-day administration and problem solving.
Aaron Wildavsky said that they must be able to think about long-term issues
and challenge established orthodoxies ‘by getting out of the fire house of day
to day administration’, in order to ‘seek knowledge and opportunities for dealing
with an uncertain future’ (1969: 190). Thinking the unthinkable requires a
degree of detachment from the routine work of the government.
All too often, however, the policy unit’s main preoccupation becomes its
fourth role, ‘fire fighting’: advising on how to deal with immediate problems
or crises as they arise (Elcock et al., 1988; Elcock, 1991: 83). Here the unit is
repeatedly asked to prepare reports on immediate problems or crises based on
whatever information happens to be available to them at the time. It therefore
plays its part in ‘survival politics’ (Campbell, 1983: 342) but, in consequence,
its members do not have the time to engage in systematic information collection
or long-term thinking about policy. Hence most of the point of establishing the
unit in the first place is lost because the data collected by the unit will be
restricted to those needed to deal with the immediate problem or crisis. Longer-
term thinking and planning will go by default. Also dissenting opinions may be
suppressed by the need to maintain unity in the face of a crisis (Campbell and
Peters 1988: 373).
Leaders must therefore ensure that the policy or research unit is given time
to carry out research and analyse the results, by imposing a self-denying
ordinance on themselves and all the other members of the government not to
shout for the unit’s help in dealing with day-to-day problems or crises except
in the most exceptional circumstances.
Reducing Uncertainty about Values (UV)
Decision makers need policy guidance as to the goals they are expected to
pursue and the values which political leaders wish to promote. One of the
reasons for strengthening the core executive in British central government under
Margaret Thatcher and John Major, which gave rise to a debate about whether
the former was creating a prime minister’s department (Jones, 1983, 1987),
was their desire to change the civil service’s culture. The service was expected
to decentralize its management decision making, expose public services to
competition and ensure that service users were treated as customers rather than
supplicants. Hence central units were created to press civil servants radically
to change their work practices and accept the extensive organizational changes
which resulted from the business management values which they regarded as
paramount. To bring these changes about, Thatcher and Major established a
series of special units within the Cabinet Office whose mission was to ensure
that their demand for reform permeated the entire civil service. The first such
unit was the Prime Minister’s Efficiency Unit, which was established in 1979
and was initially led by Sir Derek, later Lord, Rayner, a managing director of
the Marks and Spencer store chain who became Thatcher’s first efficiency
adviser. He initiated a programme of efficiency scrutinies whose objective was
to detect and reduce waste within the civil service. This was followed by the
creation of the Financial Management Unit (FMU) in 1982 to oversee a
programme of devolution of management responsibilities to cost centre
managers throughout the service and to encourage their managers to become
entrepreneurs seeking greater efficiency and effectiveness.
The next unit’s remit was much more radical. The Next Steps Project Team
was created in 1988 to oversee the devolution of most civil service work to
executive agencies led by chief executives whose task was to manage their
‘businesses’ within the parameters of general policies laid down by ministers.
Lastly, under John Major came the Citizen’s Charter Unit in 1991, which sought
to change the relationship between government officials and the people for
whom they provide benefits and services, or from whom they collect taxes and
other charges to becoming customers rather than subjects.
These units were therefore all charged with changing civil servants’
entrenched approaches and ways of working, in various ways. The Efficiency
Unit’s role was to detect and root out inefficiency. The FMU, which later
became the Joint Management Unit (JMU), was expected to encourage entre-
preneurial management among civil servants. Ministers wanted to ensure that
the managers of the cost centres defined within government departments by
the Financial Management Initiative behaved as business executives, developing
new means of improving their performance and making better use of the
resources entrusted to them. No longer were they to hesitate to take the entre-
preneurial initiative because they feared a Treasury rebuke or worse (Metcalfe
and Richards, 1990; Thorpe-Tracey, 1987).
The Next Steps Project Team, headed in its first four years by the ebullient
Sir Peter Kemp, who himself became a prominent administrative leader, was
charged with persuading civil servants at all levels to accept their redeploy-
ment into over 100 executive agencies, each headed by a chief executive who
is expected to manage the agency’s ‘business’ in accordance with the entre-
preneurial values of the Thatcher era – the ‘three Es’. The notion initially
promoted by the FMU that civil service managers should behave entrepre-
neurially was now greatly reinforced. This was also the era when the virtues of
the ‘principles of excellence’, with their emphasis on decentralized
management, were being widely stressed (Peters and Waterman, 1982; see
Elcock, 1991: 40–41). Hence the Efficiency Unit’s report, Improving
management in government: the Next Steps (Cabinet Office, 1988), was a
response to ‘the need to release managerial energy latent in the Civil Service
by the progressive devolution of managerial freedom to freestanding agencies’
(Hennessy, 1990: 623).
The Citizen’s Charter Unit established by John Major in 1991 was charged
with persuading civil servants and other public servants to treat the people they
deal with as if they were customers in a shop, rather than petitioners for state
assistance or subjects required to meet their obligations like paying taxes,
following the publication of the Citizen’s Charter in July 1991 (Chandler, 1996).
Again, therefore, civil servants’ attitudes to their work and particularly towards
the people with whom they deal has had to be changed in order to replace the
old ‘bureaucratic paternalism’ (Hoggett and Hambleton, 1987) with more
responsive, user-friendly approaches to benefit claimants, taxpayers and public
service users.
In all these cases, then, the way civil servants approach their work had to
change, as well as the structures in which they work being radically altered.
The method adopted was to give a lead to the civil service from a central unit
composed of enthusiastic promoters of the reforms involved. Lord Rayner, Sir
Roy Griffiths and Sir Peter Kemp were the best known of these advocates. The
Labour government elected in 1997 created similar units – the Better
Government Unit and the Better Regulation Task Force – to bring about the
further changes in officials’ attitudes and work practices which are consonant
with the new government’s thinking, although the Labour government has left
most of its predecessors’ reforms in place, notably the 109 executive agencies
which now employ close to three-quarters of civil servants.
Reducing Uncertainty about Related Decisions (UR):

Improving Coordination in Local Government
The response to the problems posed by uncertainty about the actions of other
organizations is ‘We need more coordination.’ Poor coordination has been an
acute problem in British local government, whose departments were tradition-
ally only weakly controlled centrally by the passage of the committee minutes
approving their actions through the full council. In reality, such coordination
as took place was carried out by the majority party group of councillors
(Wiseman, 1963). Also local authorities are preoccupied with the routine
provision of the public services for which they have been given responsibility
by Parliament, which are provided by professional staff who expect that their
expertise will be respected by both politicians and colleagues in other
departments. Furthermore, many of them have significant powers of discretion
by virtue of the nature of their work as ‘street-level bureaucrats’. There can be
no direct control over what a teacher does in the classroom, a police officer
does on the beat, or what a social worker says in a client’s sitting room (Lipsky,
1980). Their work can only be controlled ex post facto when they return to their
offices and report to their colleagues and superiors. In consequence, they can
only be influenced by their authorities’ wider policies if these are promulgated
and conveyed to them before they go out in pursuit of their professional duties.
In consequence, much of the pressure for reform in local government
management during the 1960s and 1970s involved strengthening interdepart-
mental coordination by establishing a series of new mechanisms. These included
policy and resources committees of elected members, with resource subcom-
mittees charged with the management of the authority’s money, manpower and
land. Coordination at officer level was to be improved by appointing chief
executive officers (CEOs) with a remit to control the overall management of the
authority and establish management teams of chief officers (Stewart, 1971; see
Elcock, 1994, ch. 9). The chief objective of these devices, known collectively
as corporate management, was to strengthen the control of the core executive
of leading councillors together with the CEO and the management team over
the policies and work of the local authority’s departments. Significantly, most
British local authorities now possess at least some of the offices and mechanisms
recommended by the advocates of corporate management, notably the Bains
report (1972) and the Institute of Local Government Studies (INLOGOV) at

the University of Birmingham (Elcock, 1994, 1996a).
A further pressure towards closer control over local government departments
by the authority’s political and administrative leaders has been financial
stringency. The pressure on budgets caused by increasingly severe grant cuts
and other controls on expenditure and local taxation imposed during the 1980s
and 1990s has forced leading councillors and senior officers to act more
assertively in the role of Wildavsky’s (1979) ‘Guardians’. They need to be able
to control the overall size and priorities of the council’s budget, by developing
and enforcing budgetary strategies designed to cope with increasing central
government demands for economy and citizens’ increasing unwillingness to
pay higher marginal rates of taxation. In consequence, informal groups of
leading politicians and officers set and enforce budget strategies within which
the spending departments – Wildavsky’s advocates – are required to prepare
their estimates for the next year’s spending (Greenwood, 1983; Wolman 1984;
Elcock et al., 1989). The effect of such strategies has been to make budgets
more resource-led. Spending plans must now be prepared by the departments
with at least some regard to the resources likely to be available in the next
budget year, rather than being led by the demands of the spending departments
and their policy communities of service providers and service users for more
and better services (Elcock and Jordan, 1987).
In other countries the same problems of coordination and control exist,
although the means to their resolution vary. American small town mayors stress
the importance of their maintaining constant formal and, especially, informal
communication with their department heads in order to ensure that they are
carrying out the mayor’s policies and that their actions do not conflict with one
another (Elcock, 1995b). In small local governments, executive mayors are
able on their own to secure the necessary coordination to implement their
policies through telephone conversations and face-to-face meetings with the
department heads, thus acting as one-person core executives. This may even
be the case in quite large cities. Thus a former mayor of Buffalo declared, ‘I was
both mayor and city manager’ (ibid.: 557). Similarly, George Mudie, leader of
Leeds City Council in the 1980s, ‘dispensed with the post of chief executive as
he largely carried out this function himself’ (John and Cole, 2000: 106).
In some American cities, however, a council–manager form was introduced
to reduce the extent of political interference and corruption which characterizes
some mayor–council cities (see Banfield and Wilson, 1963). The elected
executive mayor was replaced by a professional manager appointed by the
council to control its administration. The council can dismiss the manager.
However, some of these cities have found that this results in unduly weak policy
leadership, so they have encouraged their mayors, who are in principle confined
to chairing the council and carrying out ceremonial functions, to give stronger
political guidance to the council’s department heads and staff than the profes-
sional city manager alone can provide. James Svara argues that, in these local
governments, ‘Mayors ... can be an important source of policy guidance and co-
ordination of participants, although they rarely exercise any administrative
authority’ (Svara, 1990: 51).
In postwar Germany, several political and administrative local government
leadership structures were developed. Interdepartmental coordination has been
carried out either through an appointed chief executive – the Gemeindedirek-
tor – or by a directly elected Buergermeister with executive responsibilities
(Clements, 1978; Gunlicks, 1986; Elcock, 1998a). After the Second World
War, directly elected Buergermeister were re-established to lead local
governments in southern Germany. However, in much of the north, control was
split. The council elected a political leader, the Buergermeister, who was
intended to have mainly ceremonial duties, although these were never as purely
ceremonial as those of British mayors and council chairmen. Executive direction
was the responsibility of a Gemeindedirektor appointed by the council to head
its paid service. The intention was to copy the British division between political
and administrative roles formalized in the offices of leader and clerk (Gunlicks,
1986). However, this Doppelspitze system is being replaced by the introduction
of directly elected executive Buergermeister: this change was completed in
Nordrhein-Westfalen’s local governments by the end of 1999 (Elcock, 1998b).
The elected Buergermeister provides an unambiguous focal point for policy
coordination, as well as constituting the focus of municipal leadership. However,
the need for stronger centralized control of the departments of German local
governments’ activities was less acute than in Britain because, until recently,
German local governments enjoyed relative financial abundance. When the
costs of German reunification began to make themselves felt in the mid-1990s,
local governments’ leaders had to begin to develop strategies for controlling
expenditure in order to meet the federal and Land governments’ demands for
greater economy (Elcock, 1998a).
Departmental isolationism is not uncommon in national governments either.
In Britain its prevalence has been increased by the relative weakness of the
‘core executive’ surrounding the prime minister since Lloyd George’s fall in
1922 (G.W. Jones, 1987). Many participants in Cabinet government have
attested to the ease with which ministers in charge of large, busy departments
become so absorbed in the work of their departments that they lose interest in
strategic or cross-departmental issues. Hence they take only marginal parts in
collective Cabinet decision making on issues that do not affect their
departments. Richard Crossman said of the Labour Cabinet of the 1960s, ‘Of
course, it isn’t a coherent, effective policy-making body; it’s a collection of
departmental ministers who are in practice divided into groups and with all of
whom Harold [Wilson] maintains bilateral relations’ (1975: 201). He admitted
to falling asleep during Cabinet discussions of the Vietnam War because it was
of no interest to him as minister of housing and local government.
The body responsible for coordinating the actions of the Whitehall
departments is the Cabinet Secretariat. Significantly, this was only created under
the pressure of the First World War, in December 1916. Before that the only
record kept of Cabinet decisions was the prime minister’s letter to the sovereign
conveying the decisions of each Cabinet meeting (Lloyd George, 1938: 643).
With the assistance of Sir Maurice Hankey, Lloyd George established a Cabinet
Secretariat whose task was not only to record the decisions of the Cabinet but
also to set the agenda, collect papers from departments and ensure that the
departments carried out the Cabinet’s decisions. Lloyd George recorded:
I ... thought it not only desirable but imperative ... to charge the Secretary with the
duty of keeping in touch with further developments and of reporting to me from time
to time what action had been taken in the various Departments concerned on these
Cabinet orders. I subsequently found that these enquiries addressed from the Cabinet
Office and the reports which had to be made in response, were very helpful in keeping
the Departments alert and well up to the mark. (ibid.)
The Cabinet Secretariat has essentially retained the same functions to this
day (Mackintosh, 1962; Hennessy, 1986), although the role of the Cabinet
Office has expanded considerably. Its existence has strengthened the ability of
the Cabinet to coordinate the policies and activities of the departments, although
a recent observer still described departmental ministers as ‘the new barons’
(Norton, 1998).
DEVELOPING CREATIVITY
Governments face an increasing range of problems, as well as the opportuni-

ties afforded by rapid scientific advance, particularly in such fields as
biotechnology and information and communications technologies (ICTs). They
therefore need to consider and evaluate the new opportunities available to them,
as well as seeking solutions to the growing number and range of problems they
face. In consequence, they have increasingly sought advice from autonomous
units or ‘think tanks’ appointed by themselves or commissioned from outside.
Yehezkel Dror and others have advocated ‘think tanks’ as means to improve
policy making, which ‘requires systematic thinking that is based on knowledge
and oriented towards innovation on medium and long range policy issues’
(1973: 260). His advice has been quite widely taken, in various ways and with
a variety of results.
One of the most important experiments with a government ‘think tank’ was
the Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS) established by Edward Heath in
November 1970. This small group of around 18 people was recruited roughly
half from within the civil service and half from outside sources, including
academia and industry, notably the oil industry, which had a representative in
the CPRS throughout its lifetime (Blackstone and Plowden, 1988). Its original
function was to advise the government both on the success or otherwise of its
overall strategy – Christopher Pollitt’s (1974) ‘programme advice’ – and also
on specific issues (‘process advice’). Its founding White Paper defined the
CPRS’s role as follows:
This Staff will form an integral element of the Cabinet Office and ... will be at the
disposal of the Government as a whole. Under the supervision of the Prime Minister,
it will work with Ministers collectively; and its task will be to enable them to take
better policy decisions by assisting them to work out the implications of their basic
strategy in terms of policies in specific areas, to establish relative priorities to be
given to the different sectors of their programme as a whole, to identify those areas
of policy in which new choices can be exercised and to ensure that the underlying
implications of alternative courses of action are fully analysed and considered. (Prime
Minister, 1970, para. 47)
The staff also had the right to issue a collective brief opposing any policy
proposed by the Whitehall machine whose wisdom its members doubted. The
staff was therefore charged to think creatively and to be prepared to ‘think the
unthinkable’ and was given the authority to challenge Whitehall orthodoxies by
preparing collective briefs as and when its members thought this was desirable.
However, its acceptance within Whitehall was ensured by the appointment of
civil servants to about half the posts on the staff (Campbell, 1983: 343).
After Heath’s fall from office, the staff concentrated increasingly on giving
process advice on specific issues because overall strategic advice was not
required by Heath’s successors. Nonetheless, its existence caused Colin
Campbell (1983: 349) to assert that British government ‘receives very high
points for imagination in providing the Prime Minister and the Cabinet with
countervailing views’. However, Margaret Thatcher abolished the staff in June
1983, after it had given her Cabinet unwelcome advice about social policy,
which was leaked to the press. She failed to see the point of maintaining
diversity of advice, and thus laid her administration open to groupthink. Tony
Blair has established a Performance and Innovation Unit to report on ‘selected
issues that cross departmental boundaries’ and propose ‘policy innovations to
improve the delivery of the Government’s objectives’ (Cabinet Office, 1999:
18). It has produced a series of reports on issues such as regional government
and social exclusion.
One of the CPRS’s problems in gaining attention and support was that its
members were not necessarily political friends of the incumbent prime minister,
and therefore could not rely on political patronage. Their role was to provide
advice alternative to that offered by the civil service, not to assist in the imple-
mentation of the government’s political values and manifesto commitments.
In consequence, Heath’s successor, Harold Wilson, established a Prime
Minister’s Policy Unit, initially led by Bernard Donoughue of the London
School of Economics and Political Science, when he resumed office in 1974.
Significantly, this unit has survived under all Wilson’s successors; indeed, it has
since grown in size and complexity. It has been a home for some trusted prime
ministerial advisers, including in Thatcher’s time Sir Charles Powell, her long-
time adviser on foreign policy, and, much more controversially, her favoured
economic policy adviser, Professor Sir Alan Walters.
Previous prime ministers had leaned on individual advisers, but these had
usually been established civil servants, notably successive Cabinet secretaries.
Sir Maurice (later Lord) Hankey, the first Cabinet secretary, was a long-standing
confidant of Lloyd George. More recently, Harold Wilson is known to have
relied heavily on the advice of Sir Burke Trend, and Margaret Thatcher
famously relied on Sir Robert Armstrong in a great many ways. The estab-
lishment of the Number 10 Policy Unit formalized the position and influence
of a politically friendly group of advisers who might previously have been
present more informally as a ‘kitchen Cabinet’ (Haines, 1977). It has given
successive prime ministers access to politically supportive but expert advice
when developing their programmes and setting their policies. Such politically
friendly advisers are, however, courtiers rather than dispassionate advisers, so
Policy Unit and prime minister alike run the risk of succumbing to groupthink.
Under Margaret Thatcher and John Major the Policy Unit was supplemented
by the creation of the special units established to carry forward policy initiatives
dear to the prime minister’s heart, notably efforts to improve the management
of the civil service. The importance of this chain of special units established
under the immediate aegis of the prime minister is that they were all intended
to bring about radical changes in the way the civil service and the wider
government machine operate. They were to inculcate the importance of
efficiency, accountable management, devolved executive work and increased
awareness of the needs and wishes of the users of government services. They
have therefore all been responsible for generating the culture changes demanded
by the prime minister in office, which were energetically pursued by the
members of these various units. Their cumulative achievement has been massive
changes in the structure, processes and attitudes of civil servants and the
acceptance of administrative norms more in line with the values of the New
Public Management. All this was ultimately the consequence of prime
ministerial determination to achieve such change, but although prime ministers
prescribe the direction of change, the Cabinet Office units’ role is to make their
administrative visions come true.
In the 1970s and 1980s, several ‘think tanks’ were created outside the
government machine which have contributed significantly to the development
of policy by offering political leaders new ideas or challenging established
orthodoxies. On the Right, Margaret Thatcher and Lord Joseph established the
Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) in 1975 to generate new policies for the Con-
servative Party after Thatcher became leader. As the New Right gained in
influence, especially after the Conservative election victory in 1979, two older
right-wing ‘think tanks’ joined the CPS in providing ideas and analysis for
Conservative governments: the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and the
Adam Smith Institute (ASI). They had both kept the flame of free market
economics alive during the years of Keynesian ascendancy and government
interventionism after the Second World War. Now they came into their own.
The policy ideas generated by these ‘think tanks’ included the establishment of
privately run prisons, as well as the Poll Tax which helped bring about
Thatcher’s downfall. On the Left, the efforts of the oldest British ‘think tank’
of all, the Fabian Society, have been supplemented by the Institute for Public
Policy Research (IPPR), which was established to develop policies for the ‘new’
Labour Party created by Neil Kinnock, John Smith and Tony Blair in the early
1990s. Significantly, a leading light in its establishment was a former CPRS
member, Tessa Blackstone, who became a Labour life peer and subsequently
minister of state for higher education.
As ‘think tanks’ and other sources of advice proliferate, leaders need to
exercise their judgement about which advice to heed and which to reject or
ignore, but as they and other sources of advice become more numerous, this
judgement becomes more and more difficult to make. American presidents now
face a positive Babel of advice from the departments of government,
autonomous agencies, ‘think tanks’ and lobby groups. They constitute a highly
fragmented community of actual or potential sources of policy advice. The
same problem increasingly faces British prime ministers and their Cabinet
colleagues as ‘think tanks’ and professional lobbyists proliferate in London.
COLLECTIVE LEARNING
The third stream of advice and support services for political leaders has been
the development of systematic methods of monitoring the effects of policies
once they are implemented. The importance of the feedback loop (Easton, 1965;
Deutsch, 1966) has been recognized by the establishment of a welter of
performance measures and performance indicators, many of which have
themselves been devised by audit agencies like the National Audit Office
(NAO) and the Audit Commission. This is part of the wider role both organi-
zations have developed since 1979. They carry out or supervise scrutinies of
government organizations’ achievements in terms of their efficiency and effec-

tiveness, as well as performing the more traditional audit functions in
government departments and agencies, local government and the NHS of
ensuring that funds have not been wasted, have been spent properly, and that
malpractice has not occurred. The development of such systematic monitoring
and performance measurement is an important component of the ‘new man-
agerialism’ (Pollitt, 1990) and has itself been described as an ‘audit explosion’.
Until relatively recently, politicians received their feedback largely through
the traditional means for citizens to seek redress, by assessing how many
complaints a policy gives rise to, how many parliamentary questions,
adjournment debates or letters to The Times it generates. However, during the
1980s the rapid development of more systematic indicators occurred in order
to monitor the performance of public-sector organizations in central and local
government, as well as that of other agencies such as health authorities. These
developments have been widely replicated in other countries. They formed an
important element of Vice-President Gore’s National Performance Review,
which was inspired directly by Osborne and Gaebler’s (1993) receipts for
improving the performance of government, which include systematic
performance evaluation. In Britain, this process was headed by the JMU, which
prepared and published an evaluation handbook for managers in public services
(JMU, 1985). It also developed batteries of performance indicators for
government departments and agencies, which sought to measure achievement
in terms of effectiveness – the achievement of goals – as well as offering input
or economy indicators and efficiency indicators (Elcock, 1991: 86). The unit
also carried out a series of evaluation studies of existing policies, sometimes
with the assistance of outside academics.
With the establishment of executive agencies under the Next Steps
programme, such evaluation was more strongly built into administrative
processes through the Policy and Resource Framework documents which have
to be agreed by the minister, the agency’s chief executive and the department’s
permanent secretary. They include statements of targets to be met by the agency,
together with statements as to how their achievement or otherwise will be
measured. In their annual reports, the chief executives must record how far they
have met or failed to meet these targets according to the indicators prescribed.
Their salaries, and possibly their continuance in office, may depend on the
extent to which their agencies have achieved their targets.
This is not the place to explore in detail the advantages and problems of
executive agencies, or to examine fully the value and dangers of performance
measurement and performance indicators. Two points need to be made,
however. First, the development of performance measurement throughout the
public services was partly the result of the strategy developed by Margaret
Thatcher and her senior colleagues to revolutionize public service management,
which has continued under Tony Blair. They have therefore had the public
endorsement of the country’s most senior leaders. Secondly, performance
measurement was developed through the central agencies which were charged
with disseminating the message about the importance of performance
measurement throughout the public services. These organizations include the
NAO, which is responsible for developing systematic performance measurement
in central government, and the Audit Commission, which has similarly
stimulated performance measurement in local government and the NHS.
Nonetheless, political leaders need to be aware of the dangers inherent in
these systematic monitoring and review processes, the most fundamental of
which is that the measures devised may produce unwanted and undesirable
side-effects. These need to be detected and if possible corrected lest they detract
from the success and popularity of the policy itself. For example, reducing
patients’ hospital stays after surgical procedures may save money and be
welcomed by patients, but it may also produce increased rates of readmission
to hospital because of post-operative infections. Secondly, the managers charged
with improving the performance of their departments, agencies or companies
will change their behaviour by seeking to ensure that their performance is
optimal in terms of the performance indicators they have been set (Pollitt, 1989).
This may cause them to act in ways contrary to the public interest. Thus Not-
tinghamshire Police Force has encouraged its officers not to record crimes, as
well as persuading convicted criminals to confess falsely to other offences in
order to generate spurious indications of a falling crime rate and an improving
detection rate.
This raises in a new form one of the oldest questions of public administra-
tion, quis custodiet ipsos custodes? To take another example, increasing
student–staff ratios in schools or universities may appear to bring greater
economy and efficiency, but at some point the inability of teachers to give their
students adequate personal attention leads to poorer performance by the
students, higher drop-out rates and perhaps even higher suicide rates. The
problem is that no-one can be sure at precisely what point these adverse results
will become a serious problem or when the cost of dealing with them will
outweigh the efficiency gains resulting from the higher student–staff ratios.
Political leaders need to be aware of the managerial consequences of their
policies and be prepared to correct them if it becomes apparent that the results
are not those which they desire.
CONCLUSION
Political leaders cannot expect to control personally the policy making, imple-
mentation processes and management of their governments, except in the
smallest local governments that exist in the rural areas of the USA and most
continental European countries. However, an increasing range of devices has
been developed to assist and support them in generating ideas and policies,
securing their implementation and monitoring their success or failure.
Nonetheless, it is up to the individual leader to ensure that his or her policies
are understood and accepted, as well as to promote their implementation and
identify their effects. These processes then lead on to a further cycle of policy
making, implementation and review which continues as long as the leader
stays in office and probably for a long time after he or she is defeated at the
polls or stands down. Old problems and policies seldom die; they re-emerge
again and again.
9. Case study: leadership in British local
government
INTRODUCTION: PROPOSALS FOR EXECUTIVE
MAYORS
The importance of developing stronger political leadership and designing better

support agencies for leaders has led to a major debate about structures of
leadership in local government in Britain, Germany, the United States and
elsewhere. It offers a useful case study for testing the analysis of leadership
roles offered here. Its study provides both a contribution to a major current
debate about leadership in local government and an attempt to apply the
framework of roles outlined in Chapters 6 and 7 to see whether it enables us to
make a useful contribution to the debate.
In 1991, the then secretary of state for the environment, Michael Heseltine,
published a consultation paper on the internal management of local authorities
in which he reiterated the long-standing complaint that they suffer from weak
coordination and poor overall control of their policies and management. He
suggested that one way to improve the situation might be to introduce directly
elected executive mayors like those who run many American cities (DoE, 1991).
This proposal is widely disliked within local government itself (see Beecham,
1996; Doyle, 1996; Elcock 1998b; Leach and Wilson, 2000: 200). When
Heseltine was replaced the following year by John Gummer, the idea largely
faded from view, although it stimulated an academic discussion based on
previous and new research about whether the American executive mayor could
be transplanted to Britain and what the effects of doing so might be (Hambleton,
1991; Stoker and Wolman, 1992; Lavery, 1992; Borraz et al., 1994). This
proposal has now reappeared as one of three models of executive leadership
which the Labour government has pressed on local authorities in its White
Paper on modernizing local government (DETR, 1998).
The first moded has a directly elected mayor who, following his or her
election, would choose a cabinet from among the elected members of the
council, who would probably be given their portfolios by the mayor. ‘The mayor
would be the political leader of the community, proposing policy for approval
by the council and steering implementation by the cabinet through council
officers. The chief executive and senior officers would be appointed by the
166
Leadership in British local government 167
council as at present’ (ibid., paras 3:19 and 3:20). This is similar but not
precisely akin to the American mayor–council form because US mayors do not
usually have formal cabinets chosen from the council members. Rather, their
cabinets consist mainly of appointed officers. In the USA, the constitutional
doctrine of the separation of powers means that legislative and executive roles
must be kept distinct from one another. Hence the mayor’s relations with the
department heads must be close, but they are mainly appointed officers,
although there may be one or two other elected officials among them, usually
the treasurer and the controller. Political and administrative roles must be kept
separate. As one senior administrator in an American village government put
it: ‘The mayor is the political head; I am the fiscal head’ (Elcock, 1995b).
In the second model there is a cabinet with a leader elected by the council
and its other members either appointed by the leader or elected by the council
(DETR, 1998, para. 3:21). This plan would require relatively little adjustment
from the present common practice of party-controlled local authorities,
especially those controlled by the Labour Party, where the leader and the
committee chairmen have in effect formed informal cabinets, usually in the
guise of the party Group Executive Committee (see Elcock, 1994: 79ff;
Widdicombe Committee, 1986). Significantly, a number of Labour-controlled
councils in the north of England have moved to develop this leader and cabinet
model, but some of them, including Newcastle upon Tyne and Liverpool, may
be moving again, towards elected mayors.
In the third model there is a mayor, with the appointment of a council
manager as head of the council’s paid service. The mayor would be elected by
the people of the area and the council would appoint the manager. Control of
strategic policies and day-to-day management would be delegated to the
manager, while the mayor’s role would be ‘primarily one of influence, guidance
and leadership rather than decision taking’ (DETR, 1998, para. 3:22). Signifi-
cantly, the government suggests that the relationship between mayor and
manager might be akin to that between the chairman of the board and the
powerful chief executive of a private company.
Ministers and others may regard the last model as being appropriate to the
new public management values, with their stress on learning from private-sector
practice, which were pressed on local authorities by their predecessors and
which have been largely espoused by the Blair government in its turn. Clearly,
a manager here would have a stronger role than the most senior appointed
officer in either of the other two models. This proposal is roughly akin to the
American council-manager with mayor form (Svara, 1990; Elcock, 1995b).
However, if implemented, it would be a very radical departure from present
British local government practice because of the fundamental belief, firmly
held by councillors and officers alike, that policy and strategic decisions are
matters for elected politicians, not paid officials who advise but do not at any
rate formally decide them. Hence it would entail a considerable expansion of

the administrator’s field as defined by Svara (see Figure 2.1 above).
The Blair government regards the present management arrangements in local
government as unsatisfactory because they are too fragmented. It has made it
clear that it expects local authorities to adopt one of its three proposed models
if they are to secure a return of some of the powers and functions they lost
during the Thatcher and Major administrations (DETR, 1998, para. 2:17). The
Local Government Bill laid before Parliament in 1999 will oblige most of them
to adopt one of these models (Leach and Wilson, 2000: 194). The Thatcher
government’s three-pronged attack on local government, coupled with public
apathy, brought it to a crisis (Elcock, 1993a). The Labour government has
promised to restore some of councils’ autonomy, but only if councils reform
themselves in a variety of ways, including adopting new executive structures
on the basis of one of their three models. The government’s proposals are the
latest contribution to a long-standing debate about what the nature and function
of the core executive in British local government should be.
Similar debates and changes are occurring elsewhere too. In the German
Land Nordrhein-Westfalen, concerns about the public’s ability to identify local
leaders and the need for stronger coordination of local governments’ policies
have produced the shift from the Doppelspitze model, where an elected mayor
and an appointed Buergermeister shared policy control over local authorities,
to the elected mayor and council model (Elcock, 1998a). Directly elected
mayors have long existed in southern Germany but, in much of the north, the
British occupation administration encouraged the adoption of a divided form
of leadership modelled upon the British tradition that political activity must be
clearly distinguished from administration.
However, by the early 1990s it was being alleged that the Doppelspitze was
confusing the public, who were unsure whether decisions were made by the
mayor (the Buergermeister) or by the chief executive (the Gemeindedirektor).
Also, unlike their British equivalents, these Direktoren became increasingly
politicized, so that the distinction between partisan politician and professional
administrator became increasingly blurred (Gunlicks, 1986; Elcock, 1998b).
This was a consequence of the domination of local councils by the major
political parties, who demanded the implementation of their policies by the
council’s officials. An attempt by Nordrhein-Westfalen’s minister of the interior
to introduce a mayoral system failed in 1991, but in 1994 the Landtag passed
a law requiring all local governments in the Land to introduce directly elected
mayors by 1999 (Elcock and Schwegmann, 1992; Elcock, 1998a).
Whether leadership should be vested in an elected mayor or collectively in
the council has also been widely debated in the new democracies of Eastern
Europe, which have had to develop new local government structures since the
collapse of communism in 1989. Some countries, including Slovakia and
Russia, have opted for directly elected mayors modelled on the example of the
American mayor–council form. In Russia, some city mayors have become major
national political leaders, notably Mayor Yuri Luzhkov of Moscow and the late
Mayor Sobchak of St Petersburg. Other countries, however, including Bulgaria,
Hungary and the Czech Republic, have vested political control either in the
council or in a mayor elected by the council, who is in a position similar to that
of British council leaders in that he or she is dependent for continuance in office
on the council’s support. These countries have not provided for the separate
popular election of a political chief executive (Coulson, 1995).
However, there are major difficulties in instituting directly elected mayors,
as well as significant advantages to be gained, some of which can be illustrated
from the German experience of the transition from the Doppelspitze to the ‘One
at the Top’ system of a directly elected executive mayor (Elcock, 1998a). There
are many variants on the elected mayor theme, which have been analysed in
detail by Gerry Stoker for the Commission on Local Democracy (Stoker, 1996).
The analysis offered elsewhere in this book can now be deployed to explore
these issues in terms of the leader’s governing, governance and allegiance roles
in order to consider the likely effects of the government’s models. First,
however, we must further explore the problem of coordination in British local
authorities because arguably the quest for an effective core executive dates
back at least to the mid-1960s.
THE PROBLEM: THE SEARCH FOR A CORE EXECUTIVE

IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT
Most British local authorities are very fragmented organizations in which the
council’s committees and their supporting departments tend to go their own
way largely regardless of the decisions of the council’s other committees or
the activities of its other departments. The consequences include conflicting
decisions and duplication of facilities, as well as the provision of conflicting
services and advice to the public (see Donnison, 1961, for some examples).
There are both political and professional reasons for this fragmentation. One is
the wide range of services local authorities provide, which entailed the estab-
lishment of a large number of departments, together with committees of
councillors to supervise their work. A committee was established to supervise
each individual department, so that the councillors on these committees tended
to become as narrowly specialized as the professional staff in the departments
(Rees and Smith, 1964). Before 1973, a large urban council might have 20 or
30 such committees. Fragmentation was reinforced by the professional training
of most local government staff, which tends to be thorough but narrow in scope.
Little attention is paid to the views or work of other professions, or to the wider
issues with which the council must deal (Poole, 1975; Elcock, 1993b). This
fragmentation is further reinforced by the decision-making process itself, which
gives most power to the committees because the large amount of business with
which the council has to deal compels it in practice to delegate the exercise of
most of its powers to its committees. Although meetings of the full council
must confirm the committees’ decisions, most committee minutes go through
‘on the nod’ because the pressure of business at full council meetings permits
debate only on a small number of the most contentious issues. Also the council
may formally delegate some routine decisions to its committees. Furthermore,
the most important issues to be decided are not necessarily the ones which
attract the loudest political controversy and hence get to be debated at council
meetings. It is notoriously easier to gain a committee’s approval to spend
£500 000 on a major development than to get it to spend £100 on sending an
officer to a conference.
However, one feature of British local government which in part explains the
tendency to fragmentation but which is often given insufficient attention by its
critics is the formal status of the councillor. All councillors have an equal say
– one vote – in the decisions of the council. Decisions are thus all formally
those of the full council, not solely of the majority of its members, although
decisions are usually taken by majority vote. If a division is called, every
member’s vote is recorded and published, so that they can be held to account
for it by their colleagues and constituents. Hence all councillors must accept
responsibility for the decisions they vote on, in a way that MPs who are not in
the governing party are not required to do. Furthermore, unlike members of
Parliament, who have access to the civil service only if they are members of the
government, all councillors are equally entitled to access to the council’s officers
and to inspect all documents, enter any council premises, or to seek information
and advice from the officers, although a councillor may exercise these rights
‘for the purpose of his duty as such member but not otherwise’ (Humberside
County Council, Standing Order 21, see also Green, 1981: 150). In consequence,
no councillor can be excluded from access to the officers and documents of the
authority. In this respect, not only is there no distinction between members of
the ruling and opposition parties; there is also none between those members
who serve in executive offices such as leader of the council or as a committee
chairman or vice-chairman and those who do not hold such offices. Indeed,
implications that the status of some councillors is reduced by their back-bench
status are actively resented (Elcock, 1998b: 17).
Councillors value their formal equality. A 1994 survey demonstrated that 84
per cent of councillors wanted formal responsibility for decisions to remain
with the full council. Only 2 per cent supported giving such responsibilities to
a separately elected mayor (Rao, 1994: 85, Table 1). Councillors are reluctant
to divest themselves of their fundamental equality as decision makers in favour

of concentrating executive responsibility in the hands of a smaller group of
leading councillors with executive responsibilities (ibid.: Table 2). These
findings constitute powerful arguments in favour of the retention of the collegial
responsibility of all councillors for the decisions taken by the council and its
committees. Proposals such as that made by the Maud Committee (1967) that
policy decisions should be removed to a management board composed of a few
leading councillors were given short shrift by councillors themselves. The
suggestion that executive and assembly roles should be separated is still widely
disliked by councillors (Leach and Wilson, 2000: 195).
However, this assertion of formal equality among councillors is not the full
story. There is also a vast amount of research evidence that demonstrates that
only between a fifth and a quarter of councillors are primarily interested in
determining matters of general policy. The rest are content to concentrate on
dealing with the problems and complaints brought to them by their constituents
and discussing the matters brought before the committees they sit on (see
Elcock, 1994: 68ff). Kenneth Newton found that only 26 per cent of the
members of Birmingham City Council were primarily interested in broad policy
matters, while 41 per cent were chiefly interested in dealing with their electors’
individual problems. A further 32 per cent said they were equally interested in
both. Among committee chairmen the percentage who were more interested in
policy rose to 39 per cent (Newton, 1976: 128, Table 6.5). More recently, Barron
et al. (1991) declared that ‘one major distinction is ... between those councillors
who see themselves as policy-makers and those who see themselves as primarily
concerned with casework’ (ibid.: 156). Most councillors attach considerable
importance to their casework because it helps to ensure their political survival:
it is thus an important allegiance role (ibid.: 159f). For the majority it is their
main interest in political life.
Those councillors interested in matters of general policy are likely to be
elected by their colleagues to the formal leadership positions within the
authority, such as leader or deputy leader of the council, or chairman of a major
committee. Such policy-oriented members are also likely to be elected to those
offices which carry overall, policy responsibilities which confer on them
Wildavsky’s (1979) ‘Guardian’ roles, such as the chairmen of the planning,
finance and personnel committees or subcommittees, as well as leader and
deputy leader of the council. In reality, the majority of councillors are prepared
informally to surrender much of their control over policy most of the time to
small groups of leading, policy-oriented councillors who work closely with the
authority’s senior officers to determine the council’s overall policies, provided
that they have the opportunity to approve or disapprove of them before they
are finally promulgated. This usually occurs at the majority party group’s
meetings, whose decisions are formally promulgated at the full council, usually
with little debate.
The nature of this process is particularly evident in the budgetary process
(Elcock et al., 1989, ch. 4). Small groups of leading councillors and senior
officers, usually meeting outside the published schedule of committee and
council meetings, become ‘guardians’ who in reality set the overall priorities
and policies on which the council spends its resources. A series of interviews
with council leaders carried out in the summer of 1996 revealed a general
consensus among them that the distinction between leading and back-bench
councillors is becoming greater, but that this requires tactful handling. All the
respondents stressed the need to keep their party groups fully informed and to
maintain their support for their policies, especially for major decisions such as
the budget. They thus demonstrated their acute consciousness of the importance
of their allegiance roles. This is, of course, reinforced by the usual requirement
for council leaders and other officers to submit to annual re-election (Elcock,
1998b).
Such leadership structures have largely been founded on the officer structures
of party groups. Until relatively recently, the tenure of these offices has
generally been both secure and lengthy (Jones and Norton, 1979), confirming
Michels’ ‘iron law of oligarchy’. In the past, party groups have produced
autocratic power structures dominated by the leader of the majority group, who
almost invariably becomes leader of the council when one party is in overall
control. Such dominant leaders became widely regarded as ‘city bosses’. The
reputations of Harold Watton in Birmingham, Sir Leo Schultz in Hull, T. Dan
Smith in Newcastle and Sir Ron Iremonger in Sheffield spring to mind as
examples of leaders who were reputed to have autocratic control over their
councils, although none was as all-powerful as they may have appeared (Jones
and Norton, 1979; Briers, 1970; Elcock, 1981).
The leader of the council may become a one-person core executive with
whom committee chairmen need to clear proposals before putting them through
their committees (Baxter, 1969, 1972; Dearlove, 1973; Saunders, 1976; Jones
and Norton, 1979; John and Cole, 2000). This tradition of the ‘city boss’ was
particularly powerful in the almost permanently Labour-controlled cities of the
north of England, where working-class councillors were prepared to surrender
control over policy to the leader and a small group of his colleagues in return
for support with their casework or preferment to minor offices. Such leaders
were often elected because they had the ability to dominate debate within the
party, especially its council group, convincing their colleagues of their superior
ability to lead the council and prepare its policies (T.D. Smith, 1965; Baxter,
1969, 1972; Jones and Norton, 1979). In other cities the Labour Party’s decision-
making processes were more collective; nonetheless, they delivered coherent
policies and decisions for implementation by the council’s officers and staff
(Wiseman, 1963). Sometimes such dominance led to charges of autocracy, as

well as corruption, which remained undetected for substantial periods because
of the weakness of the Opposition in councils which are permanently dominated
by one party.
However, the old-style city bosses faced increasing challenges to their
positions as more articulate and better informed councillors were elected to
Labour groups during the 1970s and 1980s, particularly where the former
prohibition on teachers and lecturers from being members of local authorities
because they were employed by the only councils in their areas – the county
boroughs – ended with the introduction of two-tier local government throughout
the country in 1973 and 1974 (Elcock, 1981). Later, many of these new
councillors were to form the core of the ‘new urban Left’ in the 1980s, which
threw up some dominant leaders of its own, notably Ken Livingstone at the
Greater London Council, Graham Stringer in Manchester and David Blunkett
in Sheffield (Lansley et al., 1989). The Conservative Party has its own enduring
tradition of dominant leadership (Dearlove, 1973; Saunders, 1976; Leach and
Wilson, 2000: 209).
The legitimacy of party politics in local government has always been
contested. There are still significant numbers of people, including some
councillors, who argue that disciplined party politics should have no place in
local authorities, because their members ought to make their decisions as
individuals acting in the common interests of their electors. However, the
Widdicombe Committee (1986) reported that party politics improved local
authorities’ decision-making processes by making the outcomes of councillors’
debates more consistent and predictable. Certainly, party government provides
the best guarantee of strong and coherent leadership and policies.
THE RISE AND RISE OF CORPORATE MANAGEMENT
By the late 1960s it was widely recognized that the informal processes of
leadership and coordination provided by the party system were not sufficient
to secure consistent policies and the efficient management of the council’s
resources. Consequently, corporate management developed during the 1960s
and 1970s. Also the demise of the supposed city bosses led to increasing
recognition of a need for other means of securing coordination of policies and
management, which led to the creation of formal core executives in many local
authorities under the general banner of introducing corporate management
(Elcock, 1994, 1996a). This development was stimulated by official reports,
notably the Bains report of 1972 and the reports of management consultants
called in by individual councils (see Greenwood and Stewart, 1974). Some
councils initiated their own experiments, such as Newcastle upon Tyne’s city
manager (Elliott, 1971) and Leeds City Council’s creation of a ‘troika’ of the
clerk, the treasurer and the city engineer to coordinate policy advice in the late
1960s. A further source of inspiration was academic treatises advocating
stronger control over policy and administration alike, the most influential of
which was Stewart’s Management in local government: a viewpoint (1971).
He stated the nub of the problem as follows:
Process must be sustained by structure. Recent changes in the internal structure of the
authority have often been limited because they have been seen almost as an end in
itself. A process of local authority policy planning, if it is to develop, must be sustained
by an appropriate structure. The need to develop local authority policy planning gives
a new purpose to structural change. The role of policy committees, of the chief
executive officer, of the chief officers’ group, of special central units and of depart-
mental change can be defined in the light of the requirements of local authority policy
planning. (Ibid.: xi)
This paragraph neatly summarizes the need for corporate management to

produce coherent plans, as well as naming the principal recommendations of
the corporate management movement.
Since 1970, formal and informal core executives (Elcock, 1996a, 1998b: 17),
together with policy or research units, have become important in formulating
coherent policies and coordinating the activities of committees and departments.
Leading and back-bench councillor roles have in consequence become increas-
ingly differentiated, but this is often not acknowledged, partly because of
lingering suspicions of the malign influence of political partisanship in local
government and partly because many councillors are reluctant openly to accept
it. Hence most local government leaders now have a considerably wider range
of formal and informal structures to support them in controlling and coordi-
nating their councils’ committees and departments than was the case 20 years
or so ago (Elcock, 1996a). The mechanisms helping them to perform their
governing roles have therefore been considerably strengthened.
All these developments have been further stimulated by changes in local
government leaders’ governance and allegiance roles. The creation of two-tier
local government throughout the country in the early 1970s, then the estab-
lishment of increasing numbers of special-purpose bodies in the 1980s (Stewart,
1993) have increased the need for someone to coordinate the activities of all
these bodies. Local authorities are best placed to do this (Clarence and Painter,
1998). Appointed boards now control many local and regional facilities and
services, so there is an increasing need for local authorities or other reticulist
agencies to act as focal points for coordinating their policies and activities with
the widening range of other public and private bodies. This fragmentation of
local governance has increased further because of government and other
demands for councils to develop partnerships with the private sector, combined
with the pressure to contract out services to private suppliers through compulsory
competitive tendering during the 1990s. Yet more fragmentation of service
provision has resulted from local authorities being compelled to sell facilities
such as residential care homes and day care centres to private companies or
voluntary agencies under the Community Care legislation, then contracting
with their new owners to provide the services the council’s clients need.
Also local authorities have developed a wider definition of their own respon-
sibilities, increasingly rejecting the traditional view that their task is to discharge
the duties laid on them by Parliament and provide the services for which
Parliament has made them responsible. By the late 1960s, councillors and
officers accepted a ‘governmental’ view, under which the local authority is
expected, in the words of the Redcliffe–Maud Royal Commission, to discharge
‘an all-round responsibility for the safety, health and well-being ... of people in
different localities’ (1969; see Greenwood and Stewart, 1974: 2). In the 1990s,
local authorities were further pressed by the government to become community
governments and accept a wide definition of their responsibilities. The 1998
White Paper declares that councils ‘have a unique role to interpret the priorities
and aspirations of local people and translate them into action’ (DETR, 1998,
para. 6:1). This entails fulfilling three functions: (a) developing a vision for
their locality, (b) taking action to deliver that vision in partnership with others,
and (c) guaranteeing quality services for all. These community government
functions (Clarke and Stewart, 1999; Stewart, 2000) entail the development of
cooperation with a wide variety of other local agencies.
These trends towards the fragmentation of local governance, coupled with
acceptance by councillors and officers of the community government role, have
meant that local authorities’ leading members and senior officers have needed
increasingly to develop their reticulist roles, so as to be able to communicate,
negotiate with and coordinate the activities of an ever-widening number and
range of other local and regional agencies. Inevitably, this responsibility has
been concentrated in the hands of council leaders and chief executive officers,
together with a small number of other leading councillors and senior officers
such as clerks, treasurers and planning directors operating together as more or
less informal core executives. Another external pressure, the unremitting
financial pressure imposed on local authorities for more than 20 years, has
caused local authorities to concentrate control over their budgets in the hands
of small informal groups of political and official leaders known by such
soubriquets as ‘The Big Three’, ‘The Gang of Four’ or ‘The Magnificent Seven’
(Elcock et al., 1989). Nonetheless, the support of a majority of councillors for
the strategies and decisions produced by such groups must be carefully
maintained (Elcock, 1998c).
Allegiance roles have also become both more significant and more
demanding during a period of rapid and radical changes in the powers and status
of local authorities. The need to maintain the support of colleagues has become
more acute, particularly for council leaders. The election to office of younger,
more articulate and better educated councillors during the 1980s increased the
need for leaders to take care to maintain the support of their followers (Gyford,
1989; Forrester et al., 1985; Lansley et al., 1989). A combination of changes
within the Labour Party, a collapse of the Labour vote in local elections in the
late 1970s which removed many long-serving incumbents and the effects of
the local government reorganization in the 1970s, which allowed many
previously disbarred people to stand for a council, produced a new breed of
Labour councillor. They had stronger socialist convictions and more ability
than many of their predecessors (Gyford, 1985). Lansley et al. quoted one of
this new breed:
May 1982 is likely to see the departure of nearly all the deadbeats and most of the
younger reactionaries ... The newcomers replacing them will, after the election, be
facing almost intractable problems. They will probably disagree – sometimes bitterly
– about the best ways of coping with inadequate finance from central government
and increasingly restrictive legislation ... but in Southwark we will have people who
are prepared to grapple with the day-to-day difficulties of dealing with a Government
which is acting with unparalleled fanaticism. (Lansley et al., 1989: 21)
An early indication of the arrival of this new breed of councillors was the
replacement of Andrew Mackintosh by Ken Livingstone as leader of the Labour
Group on the Greater London Council after Labour’s victory in the 1981 GLC
elections. This event was portrayed in the tabloid press and a popular spy novel
as a takeover by the ‘looney Left’ (Forsyth, 1984). It was soon followed by
two major nationwide confrontations between local councils and the Thatcher
government, first over the imposition of ‘rate-capping’ in 1984 and then over
the abolition of the GLC and the metropolitan county councils in 1986 (Gyford,
1985; Lansley et al., 1989). However, the Thatcher government’s rejection of
these protests and the consequent reduction in the powers of local authorities
may now have discouraged able recruits from standing for election as
councillors because they appear to be powerless pawns controlled by Whitehall
(Elcock, 1998b: 16).
These new councillors were bound to subject their leaders to much closer
and more critical scrutiny than had often been the case in the past. One Labour
council leader firmly declared in interview that ‘I am elected annually and if
I’m found wanting I won’t be re-elected’ (Elcock, 1998b: 17): 20 or 30 years
ago their re-election could almost always be taken for granted, but not any more.
John and Cole (2000: 111–12) argue that British leaders’ security of tenure is
weaker than that enjoyed by their French contemporaries. Most respondents to
this study regarded their annual re-election, plus the majority group’s right to
approve or reject its leader’s policies, as ‘an important protection against
excessive executive power which would be lost if elected mayors were

introduced’ (Elcock, 1998b: 17–18). For this and other reasons, hostility towards
the elected mayor proposal is widespread in local government. Hence it may
be useful to consider the likely consequences of introducing each of the Labour
government’s three proposals for creating formal executive positions at the head
of local authorities, in the light of the analysis of leadership roles offered here.
MAYORS OR NIGHTMARES?
In the remainder of this chapter, therefore, we turn our attention to the impli-
cations of the three models proposed by the government in 1998, addressing
each in turn.
The Elected Mayor and Appointed Cabinet
The inspiration of this proposal is clearly the American mayor–council form of

government, but three essential differences must be acknowledged between
American and British practice. The first is the strength of the British party
system with its high level of discipline, which means that the office of mayor
will reflect the features of Stoker’s partisan or leadership models rather than his
open model. This is because party discipline will ensure that powers of
appointment and policy-making will be concentrated in the mayor’s hands,
especially where the mayoralty and the council are controlled by members of
the same party, which is likely often to be the case in Britain (Stoker, 1996:
31, Table 1). By contrast, American mayors tend to face relatively weak party
systems in their councils, in part because many elections are non-partisan but
also because party discipline among councilmen is usually weak compared to
that prevailing in Britain. The mayor cannot be sure, therefore, that his or her
policies and budget will be approved even if his or her party has a council
majority. Also their patronage powers are limited, especially in the ‘weak
mayor–strong council’ form, where the other senior officers of the local
government are either also popularly elected or appointed as professionals on
civil service terms. American mayors tend therefore to be nearer Stoker’s open
model, in which there is ‘a substantial splitting or sharing of a range of powers
between the executive and the assembly’ (Stoker, 1996: 30). Furthermore, the
small size of many American councils means that a single dissident vote may
be enough to change the council’s decision, whereas this is less likely to happen
in the larger councils common in Europe. The American experience may be
more helpful in deciding what to do where mayor and council are members of
different parties, or where no one party has overall control of the council, so that
it is less able to deliver a disciplined and supportive response to the mayor’s

policy proposals.
The second point of difference is that in British local government there has
been no formal separation of executive from legislative powers, an essential
feature of the American mayor–council systems. Stoker (1996) stresses the
need to distinguish between executive and legislative roles, but British
councillors are not accustomed to doing this (Stoker, 1996: 30–34). A third
difference is the absence of a tradition in Britain of vesting formal executive
authority in a single individual and the importance of the constitutional
convention of collective responsibility, which in local government ultimately
extends to the entire council. Thus one critic of the elected mayor proposal
responded, when asked about it, that you could not have directly elected mayors
‘because the Prime Minister isn’t!’ (Elcock, 1998b: 17). Leach and Wilson
(2000) regard the approach adopted by party groups to the new leadership
structures as being crucial to determining how they will work in practice.
The roles identified in Chapters 6 and 7 enable us to suggest the following
consequences if the directly elected mayor with an appointed cabinet is
introduced. Beginning with the governing functions, the first major issue is
what would happen if the mayor and the council majority were controlled by
different parties, especially as partisan political systems are ‘built ... around
forging allegiances between executive and assembly based on shared partisan
loyalties and interests’ (Stoker, 1996: 30). This might well be a receipt for
gridlock, with the council obstructing the mayor at every turn and possibly
rendering the latter ineffective. However, some American mayors are able to
overcome hostile councils and remain effective city governors. Mayor Jimmy
Griffin of Buffalo, NY was frequently in conflict with his Common Council
but he stressed the importance of his links with outside actors, especially the
business community and labour unions, to secure action. He could also call in
aid his links with leaders in the state and federal governments as sources of
executive power independent of the Common Council (Elcock, 1995b: 561).
Mayor Griffin thus stressed the importance of his governance roles as a counter
to the frequent use by the council of its majority to block his decisions in his
governmental role. Similarly, the Bavarian city of Wuerzburg was governed
for many years by an SPD Oberbuergermeister, who repeatedly won re-election
in a city whose usual right-wing affiliations were reflected in CSU domination
of the council, because he was personally highly regarded by the people of the
city. Nonetheless, Oberbuergermeister and council cooperated to ensure
effective city government (Clements, 1978).
The second governmental issue is how the mayor would maintain policy and
administrative coordination. American mayors stress their frequent formal and
informal contacts with the department heads (Elcock, 1995b) but in Britain the
position of an elected mayor would be rather different, for several reasons.
First, the divide between politics and administration is particularly powerful in

British local government, which would have considerable implications for the
relations between mayors and their senior advisers. Local government officers
are not usually expected to become involved in offering advice to partisan
groups; indeed, they may be forbidden to do so (Widdicombe Committee, 1986,
para. 2:60). Some British political leaders regard unduly informal relations
between members and officers as improper. One council leader declared that
he would not address officers by their forenames or visit them in their homes
(Elcock, 1998b: 17). A leading Liberal Democrat politician said that his council
was ‘member-led but officer-driven’, while another Labour leader declared
bluntly that ‘No-one makes policy but politicians’ (ibid.).
On the other hand, local government officers, like civil servants, are required
to be apolitical in their provision of information and advice to all councillors.
They are subject to severe restrictions on the extent to which they can become
involved in political activities of any kind. Hence elected members and senior
officials may try to maintain a degree of distance as they develop policies,
although such role distinctions have tended to disappear in informal strategy
groups (Elcock et al., 1989).
If a partisan mayor, probably working with the support of a majority of his
or her party in the council, is to work closely with the council’s senior officers,
the distinction between their roles may have to become blurred because the
officers will need to work closely with the mayor and each will have to learn
to trust the other. In reality, leading members of councils already work closely
with their senior officials on major policies such as the annual budget, although
this will mostly be done outside the formal meetings of the council and its
committees. The need for such informal groups is all the greater in Britain
because of the large size of its local authority areas, which means that the one-
person control over policy and administration to which many American and
continental European mayors can lay claim is not practicable in the much larger
British local government units.
Although informally the distinction between political and officer roles may
have become increasingly blurred, general acceptance of German practice,
where senior officials are openly partisan and may therefore be dismissed when
a different party wins a council majority (Gunlicks, 1986; Elcock, 1998a), is
unthinkable in Britain. Nonetheless, informal links between an executive mayor
and the most senior paid officers of the authority would have to become
frequent, close and informal. As in Germany, the effectiveness of the mayor
will depend greatly on developing mutual trust between the mayor and the chief
executive and other senior officers (Elcock, 1998a).
In terms of the governance roles, elected executive mayors will have to
assume a reticulist role, especially in the fragmented local state. American and
German mayors reported that they devote a great deal of their time to developing
and maintaining their contacts with individuals and organizations outside the
council, both in other public authorities and in the non-governmental institu-
tions of their communities, especially local business organizations, voluntary
agencies and trade unions. The importance that Mayor Griffin of Buffalo
attached to his links with such bodies is widely shared by others. German Buerg-
ermeister and Gemeindedirektoren stressed the frequency of their meetings
with local businessmen to persuade them that they should invest in and develop
their businesses in their communities (Elcock, 1998a: 54ff). British council
leaders now also play this role but direct election might make executive mayors
more visible sources of local government cooperation and resources, thereby
encouraging businessmen to be more active in contacting the local authority
when they are facing difficulties or considering new developments. Local
government leaders need increasingly to be able to encourage such contacts
and negotiate with business leaders (John and Cole, 2000).
Last come the allegiance roles. Here a major issue is whether instituting a
directly elected mayor would increase public interest in local government and
raise turnout at local elections, which ministers regard as unacceptably low at
present, by creating a visible focus for public attention. Ministers appear to
believe that this would be the case. At first sight it is a persuasive argument,
especially if the candidates for the mayoral office are people with established
local or national reputations. The canvassing of famous names, such as novelist
Lord Archer, businessman Richard Branson and Oscar-winning actress Glenda
Jackson, for election as the first directly elected mayor of London indicated a
belief that nominating famous candidates will increase public interest in the
contest. However, the evidence from abroad is, to say the very least, inconclu-
sive. Many American city mayors are highly conspicuous; Robin Hambleton
describes Mayor Schmoke of Baltimore as ‘a highly visible public figure’.
However, the electoral turnout in American local elections is no higher than in
Britain (Hambleton, 1994: 57); in Mayor Schmoke’s Baltimore, turnout is less
than 20 per cent (ibid.: 68). Electoral turnout is much higher in Germany, but
this is not related to the presence or absence of elected mayors (Bullmann and
Page, 1994; Elcock, 1998a). At the very least the case for introducing a directly
elected executive mayor as a means of increasing public interest and electoral
turnout must be regarded as ‘not proven’.
In the British context, elected mayors will need to be acutely aware of the
need to maintain the support of their parties and councils, not only to ensure the
availability of an effective electoral machine when they seek re-election but
also to secure the cooperation of the council in supporting their policies and
adopting their budgets. This will be especially the case when the council is
‘hung’, when the mayor might well be compelled to offer cabinet posts to
members of more than one party in order to secure the passage of his or her
policies through the council. Such balancing acts are already familiar to council
leaders in ‘hung’ authorities, although the sharing of committee chairmen and

vice-chairmen is rare (Barlow, 1987; Clements, 1987; Leach and Stewart, 1988).
The Leader and Cabinet Form
The government’s second model would require making less radical changes to
the present system. Significantly, many councils are opting for it (Leach and
Wilson, 2000: 202). It is intended to replace the executive role of committees
and reduce the number of senior politicians who would be appointed to the
cabinet by the leader or elected to it by the council. The cabinet would be limited
to 10 or 15 per cent of the council (ibid.: 194). It would undeniably improve
coordination, at least in one-party controlled local authorities, by creating a
stronger and more visible focus of political authority within the council. The
leader and the cabinet members would also be able to develop close working
relationships with the council’s senior officers, as occurs at present where strong
council leaders work closely with their chief executives and other senior
officials. Hence, in terms of the governing roles, a leader and cabinet system
should improve policy coordination and bring about stronger control of the
overall management of the authority. However, the extent to which it will bring
about changes to the existing decision-making processes of local authorities
will in part depend on the extent to which the cabinet is built into the cycle of
committee and council meetings and how many policies are determined by the
cabinet without the need for council approval (ibid.: 205f). One indication of
the extent to which the cabinet’s role is to be different from that of the committee
system it replaces may be whether it meets once during each cycle of meetings
or more frequently to play a continuing policy oversight role.*
The cabinet will also provide a clear focal point for governance because the
leader and cabinet members will become an obvious point of contact and
negotiation for business organizations, trades unions and voluntary agencies.
However, it may be difficult or impossible for ‘hung’ councils to agree on the
appointment of a leader and cabinet. At present some such authorities elect the
chairmen of their committees for each meeting and regard this practice as
commendably democratic (Elcock, 1998b: 17; Leach and Wilson, 2000: 198).
Politicians accustomed to such practices and regarding them as desirable are
unlikely easily to agree to concentrate power in the hands of a cabinet. In any
case, there is plenty of evidence that councillors are unlikely tamely to accept
the formal elevation of some of their number to positions of superiority in the
decision-making process. Many of them are wary, even hostile, about accepting
that they are backbenchers even if for many of them policy is not the main sat-
isfaction gained from their council work (Elcock, 1998b).
* I am indebted to Professor Steve Leach of de Montfort University, Leicester for this point.
The allegiance aspect may be more of a problem precisely because the leader
and cabinet system represents only a relatively marginal change from the present
system and the leader will not have the authority conferred by election. It is
not, therefore, likely to change public attitudes towards local politics. Already
newspapers have denounced the formation of cabinets by some local authorities
in the north of England because they believe that they will permit the continu-
ation of secret decision making in party group meetings over which the majority
of councillors, let alone the wider public, have no influence (see Young, 1998;
Hetherington, 1999). Councillors who are not cabinet members may fear that
their rights of access to officers and documents may be reduced because some
such access will be confined to cabinet members. Colin Copus (1999) regards
this as a ‘worst case scenario’.
Because creating a cabinet represents only a relatively marginal change from
the present practices of many councils, it is also unlikely to raise the level of
public interest in local government or turnout in local elections. Nonetheless,
it is the only one of the government’s three proposed models which is finding
relatively easy acceptance among councillors. However, if it produces more
coherent policies and better coordinated services, it may improve local
authorities’ public image and hence eventually increase public interest in and
support for their activities.
The Elected Mayor and Council–Manager Model
However attractive this third model may appear to those who approach the
subject of local government management from a perspective grounded in private
business practice, it is highly improbable that councillors or the parties will be
willing to surrender their control over policy and administration to the extent that
its implementation would require. Back-bench councillors will reject it because
they fear that it will reduce their ability to seek redress for their constituents’
grievances. Leading politicians, including many of those who are likely to stand
for the mayoral office, will reject it because they will feel that it requires a
radical shift in the established balance of influence between elected politicians
and paid officials in favour of the latter. In terms of governance, it might also
confuse business people and others who need to work with the council, as well
as the general public about whom they should contact as the principal power
holder in the local authority, as was the experience with the Doppelspitze in
Nordrhein-Westfalen (Elcock and Schwegmann, 1992; Elcock, 1998a).
Perhaps the most serious problem is that this model must inevitably lead to
at least the informal or covert politicization of the chief executive’s office if
its incumbent becomes a council manager with substantial policy-making
responsibilities. At present, the British tradition that officials must be apolitical
remains fundamental to ensuring good government in local as in national
government because it is axiomatic that officers must not be involved in taking

political decisions (Widdicombe Committee, 1986). These are and must be
reserved for elected politicians. Indeed, restrictions on the extent to which senior
local government officers are permitted to participate in the activities of political
parties were considerably strengthened in the late 1980s as a result of the
Widdicombe report, precisely in order to preserve their political detachment.
Furthermore, if council managers were to be appointed for a limited term of
office rather than until retirement age, they would almost inevitably seek to
curry favour with the political majority in order to secure their reappointment
when the time came. Also German experience suggests that a change in control
of the council would probably be followed in short order by the replacement of
the manager because he or she would be the other party’s appointee and
therefore suspect as a supporter of its policies (Elcock, 1998a).
Because the political impartiality of officials, and hence their ability to advise
councillors of all political hues, is so much valued in Britain, dismissals of even
the most senior officers for political reasons such as a new party assuming
control are rare, although it does occasionally happen. In Birmingham in 1976,
a newly elected Conservative administration dismissed the chief executive and
dismantled the corporate structure of which he was the head because, in the
Conservative Group’s opinion, it ‘has not been conducive to the best adminis-
tration of the council’s affairs’ (Haynes, 1980: 178). In summer 1982,
Humberside County Council’s chief executive, who had been appointed during
a period of Conservative control, was abruptly dismissed by leading members
of the Labour Group after it had regained control of the council. However, these
dismissals were rare exceptions to the general rule that British chief executives
can expect to retain their offices until they retire, whatever happens to the
control of their employing councils.
In Germany, by contrast, the dismissal of chief executives because of their
political allegiance when control of the council changes hands is accepted as
part of the normal course of events. Gemeindedirektoren in Nordrhein-
Westfalen who were openly declared members of the CDU were dismissed by
SPD majorities when they gained control of councils at elections despite the
council’s expensive obligation to pay the former chief executives’ salaries and
pension contributions for the unexpired portions of their periods of office
(Gunlicks, 1986; Elcock, 1998a: 48). One council dismissed three chief
executives in a relatively short time (Elcock and Schwegmann, 1992).
Furthermore, these officers had considerable influence over policy (Elcock,
1998a: 49f). In Britain a change to this mayor–manager model would render the
dismissal of senior officials for partisan reasons more frequent, which would
be a radical change of practice. It would also be resisted by the many people
who hold firm to the belief that a career, apolitical bureaucracy with security
of tenure is the best way to ensure the honest and dispassionate discharge of the
council’s functions and duties, as well as the consistent administration of its

policies. Thus the case against this model in terms of some of the governmen-
tal roles is particularly strong.
Problems can be identified in terms of the governance and allegiance roles
of the mayor and council manager too. They might become rivals competing
for the attention of business and other groups, who might well become confused
as to which of them they should approach when seeking negotiations with the
council. Above all, the introduction of a partisan council manager would be
widely regarded by business people and other outsiders as likely to endanger
the proper administration of the council’s business. Hence the administrative
leader’s authority as a dispassionate public servant whose role is in part to
ensure the community’s good government would be damaged by putting him
or her in a situation in which the office would inevitably become politicized,
or at least come to be regarded as having been corrupted by political bias.
CONCLUSION
This analysis of the government’s three proposals in terms of whether any of

them will change the allegedly unsatisfactory nature of local councils’ standing
with the public demonstrates that none of them is likely to do so in the ways
the government hopes. True, the elected mayor and the leader and cabinet
models would enable local authorities to develop stronger core executives and
promote greater policy cohesiveness, more effective coordination of their
services and stronger managerial oversight of the council’s departments. They
would also create new leadership offices which would provide a more visible
point of reference for the wider governance of the local community and the
maintenance of allegiance for the council’s leading political figures. Both of
these proposals therefore merit consideration. The third proposal requires such
a fundamental break with the British tradition of impartial administration by
career professional officers that it should only be pursued after careful review
of its likely consequences, not only for the present apolitical administration
but also because it may encourage corrupt links between senior politicians
and managers appointed by them as their overtly or covertly partisan
supporters. It seems unlikely to be at all widely adopted (Leach and
Wilson, 2000: 197f).
Above all, present and future ministers who seek to increase low local
election turnouts and improve the public’s interest in and relations with local
authorities are strongly encouraged to look elsewhere for the means most likely
to achieve these goals. Suggesting what these might be falls outside the purview
of this book, but they might include developing decentralized forms of decision
making and service provision in Britain’s large local authorities in order to

make it easier and more attractive for the citizenry to become involved in local
decision making and management (Elcock, 1988). What is clear is that effective
leaders who are required to entertain a wide range of ideas are required in both
central and local government if citizens’ participation in the government of
their local communities is to be increased (Elcock, 2000).
10. Setting the course:
leadership, not management
MANAGERIALISM IS NOT ENOUGH
For the last 20 years management issues have dominated the governmental
agenda, but now other issues are either being brought to the forefront of political
leaders’ attention or are forcing their way onto their agenda, which require a
very different approach. In 1990 Christopher Pollitt defined managerialism as
‘a set of beliefs and practices at the core of which burns the seldom-tested
assumption that better management will prove an effective solvent for a wide
range of economic and social ills’ (1990: 1). He criticized managerialism in a
detailed and scholarly examination of the application of the so-called ‘New
Public Management’ in Britain and the United States. He proposed a remedy
for the limitations of managerialism ‘by deliberately extending the range of
actors involved in the running of the public services’. This should provide
politicians and service providers alike with ‘a new, informed and highly
legitimate source of opinion on “what should be done”’. (ibid.: 183). What is
required is more extensive citizen participation, not just consumerism; he thus
anticipated the critics of the Citizen’s Charter who argued that being treated
like a consumer in a shop is no substitute for citizens actively participating in
community decision making (see Chandler, 1996).
Pollitt went on to argue as follows:
In theory, rising levels of general education combined with the possibilities of modern
information technology should make a radical extension of public participation less
difficult but there are still many obstacles – political, practical and ideological – in
its way. Certainly it would not be an attractive strategy for neo-Taylorists or the New
Right. It would represent uncertainty rather than control ... It would expand the
‘political’ sphere rather than diminishing it ... New forms of direct democracy offer
the possibility of resolving some of the most deep-rooted problems currently facing
public service managers – and the near certainty of generating a set of new ones.
(Pollitt, 1990: 184)
Hence consumerism needs to be replaced by participation, but the question of

how citizens are to be enabled and encouraged to participate cannot be answered
by any managerialist prescription.
186
Leadership, not management 187
The British Labour government has set out to address this question with
particular energy, but in local democracy it faces a peculiarly difficult task.
The British citizenry has always been apathetic about local affairs. Turnout in
local elections has long been at best 40 per cent, roughly half that achieved in
a General Election but somewhat higher than the turnout in recent European
Parliament elections. In local bye-elections turnout has fallen as low as 6 per
cent. Exercises in participation in the preparation of local plans have done well
to achieve a 5 per cent response rate. Explanations for this lack of interest
abound (see Elcock, 2000) but prominent among them is a belief among citizens
that local authorities have no real freedom of action because their elected
members must either conform to the dictates of Whitehall or slavishly follow
the advice given them by their professional officers. The attacks mounted on
local authorities’ powers during the Thatcher years have made them appear still
more powerless, appearing as they did as patients being operated on by a par-
ticularly knife-happy surgeon. Now the question is how to persuade the patients’
relatives to take an interest once more by demonstrating that they are being
allowed to recover.
Significantly, the government has in part addressed this problem by proposing
the new leadership structures for local authorities discussed in Chapter 9.
Ministers hope that the new executive mayors will become focal points for
public interest both because they will be charismatic personalities able to enthuse
the people of their communities and because they will have the powers and the
ability to deliver coherent policies to address local problems such as pollution,
traffic congestion, social exclusion and low levels of educational achievement.
The government’s three proposed leadership structures will strengthen the core
executives of local authorities. Hence they should be better able than the present
fragmented departmental structures to deliver ‘joined-up’ government.
However, the government’s central aim for local government is ‘that councils
everywhere should embrace the new culture of openness and ready account-
ability. We want to see any culture of indifference about local democracy
dispersed and local people taking a lively interest in their council and its affairs’
(DETR, 1998, para. 1:21). Achieving this objective requires changes which go
far beyond the compass of management reform. The government needs to
encourage the establishment of decentralized structures within local authorities
which permit citizens to become involved in the government of the communities
– villages, towns, streets, housing estates – with which they identify most
strongly. They need leadership at both the central and local government levels
as well as at the community level, which encourages citizens to become
involved continuously – not just at election times – in local decision making and
service provision (see Elcock, 1988; Burns et al., 1993). This not only entails
strong local leadership, possibly by directly elected mayors; a strong
commitment by ministers to restoring real powers to local authorities is also
required to encourage popular participation. To do this they need to overrule

negative attitudes to local government among civil servants in Whitehall (Jones
and Travers, 1994). Above all, the government needs to restore meaningful
autonomy to local councils so that their electors believe that local elections
involve their making meaningful local choices. This is a massive political
agenda which has little to do with management. Indeed, it is inimical to one of
the main preoccupations of managers: control, especially ‘the fixing of effort
levels that were to be expressed in quantitative terms’ (Pollitt, 1990: 177),
because under the new agenda control, including performance measurement, has
to be relaxed in order that citizens in local communities can see that they have
the chance to make real local choices and therefore become motivated to
become involved in making them.
Revitalizing local democracy is only one of a wide range of issues which the
social-democratic governments of the 2000s need to address, which require
their leaders to focus on issues much wider than the managerialism of the 1980s.
The Blair government has declared that focusing on management meant that
‘little attention was paid to the policy process and the way it affects government’s
ability to meet the needs of the people’ (Cabinet Office, 1999: 15). Improving
educational attainment so that young people are equipped for the information
society, and able to do the jobs it offers, demands increasing the commitment
of pupils and parents to learning, as well as restoring the morale of the teaching
professions, who were generally treated with contempt by the governments of
the New Right. Reforming the welfare state means changing claimants’ and
officials’ attitudes so that the culture of dependency is reduced and claimants
become motivated to seek work. At the same time, those in genuine need must
be decently treated, not excluded from contemporary social opportunities and
facilities. Business people need to be persuaded that governments of the Left are
not their sworn enemies and that they should cooperate with them in developing
industry and the infrastructure in order to improve growth prospects. All this
requires leadership of a kind which cannot be encompassed by new public
management or the proposed remedies of the public choice theorists. The roles
that leaders seeking to achieve such changes can and should play can be explored
using our threefold categorization of leadership roles.
LEADERSHIP IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM
The Governing Roles
The governing functions are concerned with leaders’ impact on the governments
they have been elected to head. They include determining goals and policies,
leading the government, coordinating departments, changing structures and

exercising the authority of office.
Determining goals and policies

Here rapid technological change, coupled with the desire to promote new values
such as increased citizen participation in government and greater commitment
to their responsibilities as members of communities, require that leaders be
supported by advisers who are in general supportive of their programmes.
However, advisers must be able and prepared to warn them of dangers or
potential mistakes: they may be able to predict policy disasters before they
happen. They must be able to challenge leaders and their entourages when they
are being affected by groupthink. Leaders need to receive and listen to such
advice from more than one source. It should come from ‘think tanks’ and
university and other researchers, as well as the government’s own policy units.
Governments need to be able and willing to involve outsiders in policy making,
something which Campbell (1983: 340) has pointed out that the British, with
their non-political and closed civil service, find especially hard to do: for him,
the ‘appointment of partisan personnel constitutes one of the greatest challenges
confronting priorities-and-planning Prime Ministers’. They must persist even
in the face of allegations of cronyism and complaints that they are politicizing
the bureaucracy.
Leading the government

Relatively young leaders, like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, both of whom
possess considerable charisma and energy, should be well equipped to secure
the acceptance of their values throughout their government machines. They
need to be planning-and-priorities leaders (Campbell, 1983 and Campbell and
Peters 1988) with coherent agenda which they must both be and appear to be
determined to pursue. However, the problems they face, plus their own new
initiatives, impose great dangers of overload, hence they need to be willing to
leave implementation to others and not seek to control them too closely.
Furthermore, governments bent on increasing popular participation must accept
that their leaders will not get their way all the time. They should set and clearly
express their overall goals and the ethos they wish to prevail, as well as
enthusing their subordinates to carry out their policies, but they should permit,
even encourage, dissent and the election or appointment of leaders who will
challenge those policies.
Governments need to maintain their personal authority while resisting the
temptation to prevent criticism of or opposition to their policies developing or
being heeded. They need to create agencies dedicated to the implementation
of major initiatives which are close to the centre of power, such as the Blair
government’s Social Exclusion Unit. Such units must adopt a problem-solving
approach to the issues with which they are dealing, involving the various
departments, authorities and agencies which have something to contribute in
integrated, ‘joined-up’ projects to address the problems. Other units, such as
Blair’s Better Government Unit, may concentrate on changing attitudes within
the government. This model could usefully be copied in large local authorities,
especially by executive mayors.
Coordinating departments
Coordinating the work of governments is notoriously difficult and must be
addressed by strengthening core executives at all levels of government. It should
not be assumed that a single change, such as electing executive mayors, will
alone solve the problem. Executive mayors can coordinate small American
local governments, but in large local governments they need research and
briefing agencies if they are to keep track of what is going on in the departments
and persuade them to implement the mayor’s programme.
Changing structures
Reorganization should be avoided at almost all costs as an expensive and
ineffective distraction. Rather, members and staff in existing government
structures need to be persuaded to comply with leaders’ programmes by
conditional offers of enhanced powers or larger budgets, in a ‘something for
something’ strategy. This should aim to change attitudes and behaviour without
disrupting administrative processes by changing organizational structures unless
this is absolutely necessary.
Exercising the authority of office

If there is one lesson that leaders should learn from the Thatcher and Reagan
incumbencies, it is that entrenched bureaucratic opposition can be overcome
by vigour and firmness on the leaders’ part. In Britain, much of an ambitious
constitutional reform agenda, including granting devolution to Scotland and
Wales and incorporating the European Convention on Human Rights into
British law, has been carried out in the face of substantial opposition, but the
pace of change seems to be slowing, especially with the watering down of
freedom of information legislation by the home secretary. This may indicate that
civil service and other opposition may be slowing the rate of change.
The Governance Roles
These roles must assume ever greater importance in today’s fragmented

structures of government at the international, national and local levels, together
with the desire to involve private businesses and not-for-profit agencies in
partnership agreements.
Ambassadorial roles
Summit diplomacy continues to be important in international affairs. Tony Blair
and his colleagues have developed a more constructive relationship with the
other members of the EU than existed before 1997, although they face criticism
from time to time for appearing to give too much away to Britain’s EU partners.
Equally, the leaders participating in other international agreements such as
NAFTA must learn to work together to coordinate their policies, as well as
agreeing and achieving common goals. Mayors and other local government
leaders have to learn to work together with other actors in their communities.
For example, there is an increasing recognition in many regions in the USA
that local governments need to form strategic alliances not only with one another
but also with special-purpose agencies, private businesses and not-for-profit
organizations in order to seek such benefits as increased tourism, industrial
regeneration and the reversal of environmental degradation. They are therefore
increasingly using any available fora for regional debate and negotiation to
agree common strategies for dealing with these and other issues.
Reticulist roles
Political leaders need to be able to encourage organizations to communicate
and cooperate with one another and resolve disputes among them. This must
be done on the basis of what the reticulist leader has to offer other organizations,
as well as the use of their government’s powers to encourage desirable devel-
opments or prevent undesirable ones. They may be able to seek the assistance
of other agencies, such as local universities or colleges, to develop such regional
networks and sources of information which all the agencies which are or should
become involved find helpful and therefore take part in. Not least, such
information should include accounts of the agencies that are actually or
potentially involved and what each has to offer its partners in the network.
Hence the reticulist can offer access to useful information as a motive to
participate in joint networks with other agencies in the field.
The reticulist roles are much more important now than they were when John
Friend and his colleagues coined the term (Friend et al., 1974) because com-
munication and mediation are required constantly to maintain cooperation
among increasing numbers and varieties of autonomous governments and
agencies. Fortunately, information and communications technologies now offer
huge opportunities of speedy access to information and communication with
other agencies. Leaders must promote their values and policies persistently and
persuasively by all the means available to them in order to gain support for
them. Hence they need to expound the principles at stake regardless of criticisms
that they are concentrating on generalities rather than taking specific actions
to benefit their supporters. Secondly, reticulist staff or network managers must
be recruited and trained to assist the day-to-day processes of communication,
coordination and negotiation that are needed to ensure that all the network’s
members continue working towards the goals set by their leaders. Such training
needs to include teaching knowledge of the relevant government and other insti-
tutions and actors, instilling appropriate communication skills and developing
the ability to use ICTs with confidence.
Implementation roles
Perfect implementation is as elusive now as it has ever been, but leaders must
persist in promoting their values and secure execution of their decisions. They
must maintain progress towards the achievement of their objectives even when
specific policies fail or are subject to short term criticism. This may cause real
conflict with the leaders’ allegiance roles.
The Allegiance Roles
Both Bill Clinton and Tony Blair attached enormous importance to securing
second terms in office because many of their values and policies can be even
partially achieved only over a relatively long period of persuasion, negotiation
and pressure on the willing and unwilling contributors to their achievement.
The British Labour Party’s leaders are conscious that their party has never won
two full successive terms in office, although their 1997 House of Commons
majority looks impregnable. However, this has led to repeated criticisms that
both men are unduly influenced by their ‘spin doctors’, who persuade them to
do what is immediately popular or eschew what is unpopular at the expense of
their longer-term policy projects. Their preoccupation with maintaining their
support has been widely seen to be squeezing out the delivery of substantive
policies which might be unpopular either with the general public or with
powerful interests, but which would benefit the collective public interest. The
British Labour Government is being continually accused of reneging on its
transport policy commitments because its members fear that they will alienate
car-owning voters. There is also a wider dilemma between implementing
policies that will benefit the poor and excluded members of the population and
not alienating the ‘contented’ 40 per cent of the electorate, at least some of
whom must be persuaded to continue to vote for left-of-centre parties to enable
their leaders to secure their second terms.
However, the consequences of losing public support may be still worse for
the leader’s projects than caution in the face of public opposition. President
Clinton was impeded in achieving many of his policy goals by the Republicans’
success in securing control of both Houses of Congress in 1994 and retaining
it thereafter. Not only were the new leaders of both the Senate and the House
of Representatives hostile to Clinton’s ‘New Democrat’ policies; they had their
own agenda in the form of the ‘Contract with America’ promoted by former
House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Many of the measures proposed in the

‘Contract’ were passed by Congress but vetoed by Clinton. Equally, many pres-
idential policies have been blocked by the legislature. The resultant gridlock is
not a receipt for effective government. Clinton’s authority was further weakened
by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, especially his persistent but eventually unsuc-
cessful attempts to avoid admitting that he had had a relationship with her.
Ironically, Gingrich’s authority was also destroyed by press revelations of his
personal failings. This illustrates the wider problem that, since Watergate, inves-
tigative journalists leave no stone unturned to discover anything which may
discredit leaders in high national or local offices. This is discouraging able
individuals from seeking such offices in the first place, as well as weakening
the authority of incumbent leaders whose personal peccadilloes are ruthlessly
revealed for all to see.
WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
Leadership is more vital than ever, because of the increasing pace of techno-
logical and social change and because the leaders of both the New Right and
the Third Way seek to bring about radical changes in their societies’ values and
collective priorities, as well as implementing specific measures to achieve their
declared aims. However, leadership is becoming ever more difficult because of
today’s fragmented and interlocking structures of government, as well as the
threats to leaders’ authority from mass media whose reporters and editors no
longer recognize the need for restraint in order to maintain the legitimacy of the
state and its leaders.
Political leaders are sui generis. The ways in which they rise to power are
varied and unpredictable, so they cannot either prepare themselves or be
prepared for leadership, except perhaps in the very short term immediately
before they gain office. Equally, their talents vary, as does their ability to play
their diverse and sometimes contradictory roles (John and Cole, 2000: 98).
However, a certain amount can be done. For example, in Britain since at least
1964, opposition leaders have been permitted access to senior civil servants in
the months leading up to an election so that they can discuss the realities of
implementing their policies with the men and women whose responsibility this
will be if they win. The Labour Party organized a series of training seminars
for potential ministers during the year leading up to the 1997 General Election
to compensate for its leaders’ almost total lack of experience in government
(Kaufman, 1997). Another valuable means of preparation may be to establish
‘think tanks’, as Margaret Thatcher did after becoming Conservative leader in
1975 to prepare new and realistic policies for a future Conservative government.
In consequence, the policies of the ‘Thatcher Revolution’ were relatively
thoroughly prepared before she won office in 1979. Similarly, New Labour had
the advice of the Institute for Public Policy Research at its disposal before 1997.
In most developed countries the practice of supporting ministers and prime
ministers with special advisers has become general (Campbell, 1983, and
Campbell and Peters 1988) even if it still gives rise to allegations of ‘cronyism’.
Leaders and the public alike must realize that non-political bureaucracies cannot
hope to provide the range of advice and support services that modern leaders
need, especially if they are to avoid the dangers of groupthink.
At all levels of government, interdependence is legion. Whether we like it or
not, sovereignty is now a relative, not an absolute, concept. Hence the need for
reticulists has never been more urgent: fortunately, they can be recruited and
trained. Above all, however, leaders need to balance the demands of their
allegiance roles and the ‘spin doctors’ who seem to be essential to them, with
maintaining consistent policy programmes in order to maintain the loyalty of
their core supporters. George Stephanopoulos became acutely alarmed at the
effect that one ‘spin doctor’, Dick Morris, was having on President Clinton’s
commitment to his ‘New Democrat’ policies and values:
How can Clinton ever listen to this guy? He wants us to abandon our promises and
piss on our friends. Why don’t we just go all the way and switch parties? ‘Neutrali-
sation’ sounded to me like capitulation (to the Republican Congress) and
‘triangulation’ was just a fancy word for betrayal. I also thought the strategy wouldn’t
work. The Morris approach might have polled well but adopting in its pure form
would eviscerate the President’s political character and validate the critique that made
him most furious – that he lacked core convictions, that he bent too quickly to political
pressure and always tried to have it both ways. (Stephanopoulos, 1999: 336, original
emphasis)
Such people threaten both the coherence of leaders’ policies and citizens’
respect for the political process. Tony Blair warned that the press needs to
concentrate on the substantial issues of policy rather than salacious tittle-tattle
about individuals, in the wake of an exposure of his foreign secretary’s personal
life by his ex-wife. Leaders must retain their planning-and-priorities stance if
they are to achieve the long-term changes in government policies and social
attitudes that supporters of both the New Right and the Third Way demand. To
achieve this, they must not be distracted unduly by short term criticisms and
problems because ‘in the actions of all men and especially princes ... one judges
by results’ (Machiavelli, 1513: 100). By their works ye shall know them.
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Index
Aberbach, J.D. 37, 113, 127 Baxter, R. 172
Acland-Hood, Sir A. 56 Beaverbrook, Lord 53
action, and management 70 Beecham, Sir J. 123, 166
Adair, J. 80 Benn, T. 25
Adam Smith Institute 162 Bennis, W. 16, 18, 65, 69, 70, 71, 81,
Adorno, T.W. 85 116, 117
advice 113–15, 125–6, 147 On Becoming a Leader 82
uses of 25–8 Bentham, Jeremy 108
advisers, and prime ministers 161, 194 Berlin, Sir Isaiah 12, 47, 48
Algeria 76–7 Bernstein, C. 15, 51
allegiance roles 144–7, 192–3 Berrington, H. 85
and local government 175–6, 180, 182 Bevin, Ernest 33
ambassadorial roles 134–8, 191 Bevins, A. 25, 53, 124
antagonism, in groups 97 Bichard, M. 69, 82
‘anticipated reactions’ 109 biological evaluation 106
anticipatory government 74 Bismarck 130
apparatus of leadership 149–65 Blackstone, Tessa 26, 98, 160, 162
aristocracy 39 Blair, Tony 11, 55, 62, 118, 143, 148,
Atlanta 60–61 160, 189, 192
Attlee, Clement 33–4, 55 Blanchard, K.H. 94
audit agencies 162–3 Blondel, J. 63
Audit Commission 75 Borraz, O. 135, 166
authority ‘brainstorming’ 114–15
charismatic 30, 44 Bridges, Lord 35
legal-rational 29–30, 48 Portrait of a Profession 66
traditional 29 Briers, A.P. 172
authority of office, exercising 124–6, Britain 120–21
190 central government 113
autonomy, and entrepreneurship 70–71 General Elections 81
government 99–100
Bains report 121, 156, 173 party structure 54
Bancroft, Sir Ian 111 prime ministers 52–6, 85–6
Banfield, E.C. 17, 22, 29, 60, 62, 84, see also civil servants
126, 135, 157 British local government 66, 120–21,
Barber, James D. 16, 49, 51, 77, 86, 88, 133–4, 135, 136, 166–85, 187–8
90 autocratic control 172–3
matrix of presidential character 57 compared to US system 177–8
The Presidential Character 57 core executive 169–73
Barlow, J. 181 decentralization 122–3
Barron, J. 171 elected mayor and council manager
Bass, B.M. 93 model 182–4
Baumgartner, F.R. 132 leader and cabinet form 181–2
209
210 Index
research units 151–2 Chicago, political influence 60, 62

responsibilities 175 chief executive officers 156
service orientation 71–2 Christian Democratic party 8
status of councillors 170–72 Citizen’s Charter 118, 154, 155, 186
under the Thatcher administration 6–7, civil servants 24, 65–8, 118, 120, 124–5,
111–12 126, 155, 161, 188
White Paper on modernizing 166–7 influence 25
British Private Financial Initiative 12 Civil Service Department, abolition 111
BSE 9 Clarence, E. 134, 140, 174
Bukharin 46 Clarke, M. 71, 175
Bullitt, William C. 87–8, 89–90 class system 3–4
Bullman, U. 180 Clemenceau, Georges 88
Bullock, Lord A. 3, 17, 33, 43 Clements, R. 158, 178, 181
on Adolf Hitler 44–5 Clinton, Bill 11, 12, 13, 21–2, 51, 58, 99,
on Stalin 45–7 143, 144, 189, 192–3
bureaucracy 68, 108–9, 124 economic plan 50
and democratic government 35 Cole, A. 16, 85, 128, 134, 140, 145, 157,
and Max Weber 34–8 176, 180, 193
Burns, D. 123, 187 collective learning 162–4
business leaders, areas of competence 81 collective responsibility 12, 13
business–government partnership 12 communication, and business leaders 81
Butler, D.E. et al 27, 53 Communist party 17
Butler, Sir Robin 67 Communist Party of the Soviet Union
(CPSU) 45, 46
Cabinet Office 154, 160, 188
‘communities of the left behind’ 7
Improving Management in
Community Charge 27
Government: the Next Steps 155
community owned government 73
Cabinet Secretariat 159
Campbell, C. 51, 67, 113, 121, 125, 126, community power theory 60–61
152, 153, 154, 160, 189, 194 competitive government 73
Canada, separation of Quebec 137 Conservative Party 145
Carlyle, Thomas 3, 94 leader’s role in local government 56
and hero-worship 30–33 leadership 55–6
Lectures on Heroes and Hero-worship constitutional legal resources 132
30, 43 contingency theory 78–9, 92, 149
catalytic government 73 contracting out 133
Cater, D. 61 control 69
Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS) coordination, of government departments
25–6, 159–61 190
centralized control 7 Copus, C. 182
Centre for Policy Studies 162 core executives 174
Chamberlain, Austen 53 corporate management 173–7
Chamberlain, Neville 99 Coulson, A. 169
Chanak territorial dispute 52 CPRS, UK 98
Chandler, J.A. 132, 155, 186 Cromwell, Oliver 31
change 121–4, 193 Crossman, R.H.S. 35, 52, 125, 158
Chapman, R.A. 6, 8, 24, 65, 66, 67, 68 Curzon, Lord 53
character, of presidents 57–9 customer-driven government 70, 71, 73
charismatic leadership 30, 32–4, 76–7, Czechoslovakia 99
78
and training 94 Dahl, R.A. 60, 61
Index 211
Daley, Richard J. 17, 60, 135 Elcock, H. 5, 6, 8, 16, 24, 51, 56, 64, 67,
Daley, Richard M. 17 69, 83, 87, 88, 111, 112, 117, 119,
Davis, H. 7, 133 120, 121, 122, 123, 129, 131, 134,
Dawes Plan 44 135, 136, 137, 146, 151, 153, 155,
de Gaulle, Charles 32, 76–7 157, 158, 162, 166, 167, 168, 169,
Dearlove, J. 56, 172, 173 170, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177,
decentralization 74, 116, 117 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 185,
in British local government 122–3 187
Delors, Jacques 8 elected mayor and council manager
DELPHI technique 114 model, British local government
democratic government, and bureaucracy 182–4
35 elections 109
departmental isolationism Britain 81
in local government 119 elitism 39, 61
in national government 158 Elliott, J. 174
DETR (Department of the Environment, Ellis, William Webb 44
Transport and Regions) 134, 135, energy tax, USA 13
167, 168, 175, 187 enterprising government 74
Deutsch, K. 162 entrepreneurial management 155
devolution 12, 137 environment, reducing uncertainty
Dickinson, W.J. 118 150–54
dictators 45–8 environmental sustainability 13
equality 12
diplomats, and networks 129–31
Eton 86
divided society, and New Right policies
Etzioni, A. 11, 119
7–8
Europe 8
docility, in groups 97
European Community 54
DoE (Department of the Environment)
European integration 14
135, 166 European Union 130–31, 137, 191
Donnison, D. 169 Evans, G. 63
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, Crime and executive agencies 156, 163
Punishment 32 Eysenck, H. 85
Dow, Graham 7 Eysenck, M. 92, 93, 94
Downs, A. 5, 108, 109
Dowse, R. 85 Fabian Society 114, 162
Doyle, P. 166 feedback loop 162
Dror, Y. 114, 149, 159 Fiedler 92, 93
Dunleavy, P. 16, 27, 53, 100, 112, 122 Financial Management Initiative 68, 75
Financial Management Unit 118, 154,
early life 155
of presidents 90–91 financial resources 132
of prime ministers 85–6 Fiorina, M.P. 5, 20, 63, 106, 109, 145
of Woodrow Wilson 89 Fisher, Sir W. 66
Eastern Europe 168–9 followers, and leaders 92–5
Easton, D. 162 foreign policy advice, US government
Eden, Sir Anthony 53 115
education 12 formative influences, on leaders 87–92
Efficiency Unit 154, 155 Forrester, A. 176
Eisenhower, General Dwight D. 49, 50, Forsyth, D. 77, 85, 93, 144
57 Forsyth, F. 176
212 Index
fragmentation government departments, coordinating

of government 131 118–21
of local government 134, 168, 169–70 governments, goal setting 107–10
France Gray, A. 68, 124
cumul des mandats 135 Great Depression 44
Fourth Republic 76–7 Green, D. 170
Franklin, Benjamin 96 ‘Green’ parties 41
freedom as autonomy 12 Green, P.M. 17
French Revolution 31, 39 Greenwood, R. 133, 157, 173, 175
Freud, Sigmund 89–90 Griffin, James D. 135
on Woodrow Wilson 87–8 Grimond, Jo 125
Friend, J. 128, 134, 139, 141, 150, 191 group dynamics 92–4
Fulton Committee 120 groupthink 16, 19, 27, 41, 86
functions of leadership 105–27, 128–48 avoiding 95–101
funding, of political parties 129 defined 96
and Margaret Thatcher 54, 112
Gaebler, T. 12, 13, 163 procedures to avoid 97–8
Reinventing Government 72–5 symptoms 96–7
Galbraith, J.K. 7, 8 Gunlicks, A. 135, 158, 168, 179, 183
Garrahan, P. 136 Gunn, L. 23, 143
General Communications Headquarters Gyford, J. 112, 176
(GCHQ), Cheltenham 111
General Motors 98 Hague, D.C. 131
generic management 64 Hague, William 146
German Workers’ Party (later NSPAD) Haines, J. 161
44 Haldane Committee 66
Germany 135, 169 Hall, D. 7, 133
local government 158, 168, 179–80, Hambleton, R. 16, 122, 155, 166, 180
182, 183 ‘hands on’, value driven approach 71, 72
public servants 24 Handy, C. 14, 18, 68, 69, 77, 78, 80, 82,
Giddens, A. 9, 13, 65, 111 94, 96, 149
Gilbert, M. 100 Hargrave, C. 145
globalization 14, 137 Harmel, R. 41
goals Harris, K. 34
determining 189 Harrison, W. 77
developing 113–15 Harvey Jones, Sir John 16, 18, 71, 115
setting 107–10 Making it Happen 116
Gore, Albert 73 Troubleshooter 116
Gott, G. 100 Hattersley, R. 11
Gould, P. 9, 145 Hawthorne Experiments 118
governance and allegiance roles 128–48 Hayek, F. von 107
in local government 174–5 Haynes, R. 183
governance roles 105–6, 129–31, 190 Hayward, J.E.S. 31
governing functions 106–26 Haywood, S. 70
governing roles 105–27, 188–9 Heath, Edward 25, 159
government Heclo, H. 120
fragmentation 131 Hegel, G.F. 3
goals 64 ‘helicopter factor’ 78
leading 189–90 Hennessy, P. 66, 155, 159
and management gurus 70–75 Hersey, P. 94
Index 213
Heseltine, Michael 53, 135, 166 John, P. 16, 85, 109, 128, 134, 140, 145,
Hetherington, P. 182 157, 176, 180, 193
Hickling, A. 150 Johnson, Lyndon B. 51, 58
hierarchical resource 132–3 ‘joined-up’ government 13
Hitler, Adolf 3, 17, 44–5, 99 Jones, B.D. 63, 106
Hoggett, P. 122, 155 Jones, G.W. 148, 154, 158, 172, 188
Hogwood, B. 23, 143 Jones, Paula 21, 147
Hohfeld, W.M. 12 Jordan, A.G. 119, 131, 143, 157
Holli, M.G. 17 Jospin, Lionel 8
hollowed-out state 131, 133
Hood, C. 65, 67, 75, 110 Kaufman, G. 80, 193
House of Commons 52, 54 Keating, M. 131, 137
Howe, Sir Geoffrey 54 Kemp, Sir Peter 155
Hughes, J.A. 85 Kennan, George F. 96–7
Hunter, Floyd 60–61 Kennedy, John F. 51, 91
Hutton, W. 7, 9 and ‘Bay of Pigs’ 95
early life 58
Ignatieff, M. 47 Kennedy, Joseph P. 91
implementation roles 142–4, 192 Keynes, J.M. 11, 87, 88, 129
incrementalism 119 Khrushchev, Nikita 33, 95
individualism 8 Kingdom, T.D. 126
influence 22–3 Kinnock, Neil 55
Kissinger, Henry 70, 83
defined 29, 84
Korean War 96, 97
influences, on political leaders 62–3
and Truman 95
information 132, 150–52
Kraemer, K.L. 64
Institute of Economic Affairs 162
Institute of Local Government Studies
Labour Party 176
(INLOGOV) 157 leadership 54–5, 56
Institute for Public Policy Research 162 Lansbury, George 55
institutions Lansley, S. 173, 176
and leadership 49–52 Lao-Tzu 33, 82
Britain 52–6 Lavery, K. 166
interdependence 194 Law, Andrew Bonar 53
interest groups 108, 129 Leach, S. 43, 105, 121, 166, 168, 171,
interorganizational relations 139 173, 178, 181, 184
invincibility, illusion of 96 leader
Italy 88–9, 113 in contingency theory 78–9
role in local government 56
Jackson, P. 109 leaders, and their followers 92–5
Janis, I. 16, 19, 27, 41, 86, 96, 97, 98, 99, leadership
113 defined 85
Victims of Groupthink 95 and management 69
Jay, A. 24, 25, 120, 124 leading government 189–90
Jay, Peter 120 League of Nations 87
Jenkins, David 7 least preferred co-worker (LPC) 92–3
Jenkins, S. 7 Lenin, V.I. 17
Jenkins, W. 68, 124 on Stalin 46
Jessop, N. 128, 150 Lewinsky, Monica 21, 147, 193
JMU (Joint Management Unit) 163 Lewis, D. 8, 68
214 Index
LGMB (Local Government Management Marshall Plan 95

Board) 152 Marxism 3, 4
Liberal Party 55 Massey, A. 116
Lilley, Kathleen 21 Maud Committee 171
Lindblom, C. 120, 139 mayors 157–8, 190
Lipsky, M. 156 elected mayors 177–81
literature executive mayors, proposed 166–9
on management leadership 16 in the United States 177–8
on political leadership 16, 18 Metcalfe, L. 155
Little Rock 50, 58 Michels, R. 4–5, 18, 32, 48, 144
Livingstone, Ken 112, 173, 176 and oligarchy 38–42
Lloyd George, David 52–3, 88, 147, 158, Midlarsky, M. 130
159 ‘mindguards’, in groups 96–7
local government ‘Ministerial hyperactivism’ 122
departmental isolationism 119 Mintzberg, Henry 16, 18
fragmentation 134 Power in and around Organisations
holistic studies of leadership 59–62 76
improving coordination 156–9 mission-driven government 73
see also British local government mistakes 22
in the US 7, 36, 59–62, 157 Morrison, H. 33, 146
Local Government bill (1999) 168 Mosca, Gaetano 4, 38, 39
Loughlin, J. 131, 137 Munby, Denys 120
Lucas, J.R. 65 Mussolini, Benito 89
The Principles of Politics 28–9
Lugar, Richard 75 Nanus, B. 81
Lynn, J. 24, 25, 120, 124 Napoleon Bonaparte 31
National Consumer Council 72
MacArthur, General D. 50, 95, 97 Nazi Party 44–5
MacDonald, Ramsay 55 neo-liberalism 111
Machiavelli, Niccolo 16, 18, 144, 194 Netherlands, policy disasters 100
The Prince 20–28 network management 138–42
McKenzie, R.T. 48, 53, 54–6, 79 networks, and diplomats 129–31
Mackintosh, J. 52, 159 Neustadt, R. 15, 22, 30, 48, 49–52, 79,
Macmillan, Harold 53 146
MacNamara, Robert 114 new communitarianism 11
Major, John 118, 154 ‘New Deal’ 11
management 116 New Democrat Party 9, 12
defining 69 New Haven, Connecticut 60, 61
and leadership 69, 83 New Jersey 74
rival values 64–70 New Labour Party 9, 144, 162
management gurus, and government New magistracy 7, 133
70–75 new managerialist approach 9
management leadership, literature 16 New Public Management 64, 65, 75,
management values 110 161, 186
managerial analysis, of leadership 76–84 New Right 5–13, 14, 107, 110
managerialism 186–8 policies 7–8
defined 186 policy disasters 10–11
Mantoux, E. 88 and public management 64
market-oriented government 74 and scandals 9
Marsh, D. 111, 112, 142 values 67
Index 215
Newton, K. 171 Peters, T.J. 70, 155

Newtonian framework 106 Plamenatz, J. 3, 108
Newtonian view 63 Plowden, W. 26, 98, 160
Next Steps Project 9, 68, 112, 118, 154, police 10, 164
155, 163 policy communities 119, 131–2
NHS (National Health Service) 26, 75, Politburo 45
112 political biography 43–4
beds crisis 10 political leaders, governing functions
foundation 55 106–26
Nicolson, H. 87 political leadership, defined 109
Niskanen, W.A. 108, 110 political power 3
Nissan, in Sunderland 136 political resources 132
Nixon, Richard 15, 51, 58, 130 political structures, influence on leader’s
achievements 59 role 48
institutional constraints 91–2 political survival 106, 144
Norris, G.M. 151 Poll Tax 10, 16, 27, 53, 100, 112
Norton, A. 172 Pollitt, C. 26, 75, 160, 163, 164, 186,
Norton, Lord 159 188
Norton, P. 146 Pompidou, Georges 77
Notar, C. 17 Poole, K. 170
poor classes 8–9
Oakeshott, M. 107 Potter, A.M. 49
oligarchy 4 power
and Robert Michels 38–42 defined 28–9
oratory 17, 32–3 of political leaders 17
organization’s environment, and leaders Power elite thesis 61
128–9 prejudices 47
Orlando, Vittorio 89 premature consensus 97, 98–9
Orwell, George, Animal Farm 41 presidential character 57–9
Osborne, D. 12, 13, 163 presidential power 50–52
Reinventing Government 72–5 presidents, early life 90–91
O’Toole, B. 8, 24, 68 Pressman, J. 142
prime ministers
Page, E. 180 and advisers 161, 194
Painter, C. 134, 140, 174 Britain 52–6, 85–6
Parekh, B.C. 108 Prime Minister’s Policy Unit 161
Pareto, Vilfredo 4 The Prince, Machiavelli 20–28
The Mind and Society 39 ‘principles of excellence’ 70, 71
Paris Peace conference 87, 129 and local government 72
Parks, J. 137 private contractors, and services 11
Parry, Geraint 4, 38 productivity through people 71
party structure, Britain 54 profit margins 8
Pearl Harbor 95, 96 Profumo scandal 53
people, leading 115–18 psychology 85–101
performance measurement 163–4 public administrators, values 65
Perry, J.L. 64 public choice theory 5, 24, 107, 109
personal doubts, suppression 96 public interest 24–5
personality of leaders 48, 57–9, 77, 85 public management 9
persuasion 63 Public Management Foundation 70
Peters, B.G. 125, 152, 153, 154, 189, 194 public services 118–19
216 Index
qualities of leadership ‘scientific management’ 117

creativity 152 Scotland 137
developing 159–62 Scott Report 9
curiosity 82 Shakespeare, William 30, 113
daring 83 Sharpe, Dame Evelyn 125
enthusiasm 82 Shaw, K. 6
integrity 82 Sheppard, David 7
judgement 22–3 simultaneous loose-tight properties 71
passion 82 Sisson 24, 120
self knowledge 81, 82 Sloan, A.P. 98
vision 3, 81, 82 Smith, B.L.R. 131
quangos 133, 134 Smith, John 55
Smith, T.A. 169
railway privatization 10 Smith, T.D. 172
RAND corporation 114 Social Democrats 8
Ranney, A. 136 social exclusion 1, 13
‘rate capping’ 112, 176 social workers 119
Reagan, Ronald 5–6, 57, 58, 111 Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, on Stalin 46–7
Rechtlisberger, P.J. 118 Sorensen, T.C. 146
Redcliffe–Maud Commission 133, 175 Soviet Union 3
Rees, A.M. 169 ‘spin doctors’ 106, 144–5, 192, 194
relationship-motivated leadership 93, stakeholder groups 83–4
118 Stalin, Joseph 3, 17, 33
religion, and social policy 7 Lord Bullock on 45–7
Rent Act (1965) 125 state regulation 13
research units 152–3 Stephanopoulos, George 13, 15, 50, 99,
results-oriented government 73 106, 144, 145, 146, 194
reticulist roles 191–2, 194 Stewart, J.D. 7, 71, 72, 133, 156, 173,
reticulist skills 140–41, 143 175, 181
Rhodes, R.A.W. 84, 106, 111, 112, 119, Management in Local Government:
128, 129, 131, 132, 133, 139, 142 a Viewpoint 174
Richards, S. 70, 155 Stewart, P. 136
Richardson, J.J. 119, 131 Stoker, G. 16, 166, 169, 177, 178
RIPA (Royal Institute of Public Admin- structures, changing 121–4, 190
istration) 35, 66, 124 style theory 78, 149
risk 118 subordinates, in contingency theory
Rooseveldt, Franklin D. 51, 58, 62 78–9, 80
Rothschild, Lord Victor 26 summit meetings 130
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, on the adminis- support, and leaders 20
trator’s role 65 supranational organizations 130–31
Rowse, A.L. 100 Svara, J. 158, 167, 168
Royko, M. 17 matrix of spheres of influence in
Rusk, D. 7 American local government 36
Rywick, Thomas 16 systematic monitoring 163–4
Saunders, P. 56, 172, 173 task, in contingency theory 78–80

Schepsle, K.A. 5, 20, 63, 106, 109, 145 task oriented leadership 93, 94, 118
Schon, D. 143, 149 taxation 26
Schroder, Gerhardt 8 Taylor, A.J.P. 43
Schumacher, F. 70 Taylor, F.W. 117
Schwegmann, F. 168, 182, 183 Thaelmann, Ernst 45
Index 217
Thatcher administration 6, 27, 111, 142 presidential power 50–52

Thatcher, Margaret 5–6, 53, 82, 118, presidents, early life 86
124, 148, 154, 160, 162
‘conviction politics’ 100 values
and groupthink 54, 112 and public administrators 65
local government under 111–12 reducing uncertainty 154–6
on society 8 setting 110–12
‘think tanks’ 114, 159–60, 162, 193–4 Vassal scandal 53
‘Third Way’ 9, 11–13, 65, 111 Vickers, Sir Geoffrey 23, 83
Thorpe-Tracey, S. 155
‘three Es’ (economy, efficiency and Waldegrave, W. 6, 64
effectiveness) 6, 7, 8–9, 67, 68, 110, Washington Post 15
155 Watergate affair 15, 51, 91, 147
Toffler, A. 14, 68, 94, 111 Waterman, R.H. 70, 155
Tomlin Royal Commission 66 Weber, Max 16, 18, 28, 68
Tonge, J. 27, 53 and authority 28–30
trade unions 111 and bureaucracy 34–8
training 83, 86 welfare to work policies 11
and charismatic leadership 94 Westland affair 53
trait theory 77–8, 85 White, T.H. 41
transformational leadership 93–4, 111 Widdicombe Committee 66, 136, 167,
Travers, T. 112, 188 173, 179, 183
Treaty of Versailles 87–8, 99, 129 Wildavsky, A.V. 43, 120, 122, 142, 152,
Trotsky 46 153, 157, 171
Troubleshooter 116 Williams, D. 126
Truman, Harry 49, 85 Williams, P.M. 77
and General MacArthur 50 Wilson, D. 43, 105, 166, 168, 171, 173,
and the Korean War 95, 97 178, 181, 184
trust 116 Wilson, Harold 158, 161
and leaders 81, 82 Wilson, J.Q. 157
Tullock, G. 5, 108, 110 Wilson, Sir Horace 99
Wilson, Woodrow 49, 57
unanimity, illusion of 96 character 58–9
uncertainty 14–16 early life 91
in decision making 151 ‘Fourteen Points’ speech 87, 88, 89
reducing 150–59 psychological study 87–90
unemployment 11, 14 Wiseman, H.V. 156, 173
United States Wolman, H. 157, 166
bureaucracy 37 Woodward, B. 15, 51, 99, 115, 144, 147
Congress 49–51 Wright Mills, C. 61
Constitution 49–50
energy tax 13 Young, Hugo 26
government, foreign policy advice 115 Young, P. 182
local government, compared to British
system 177–8 Zimmermann, J.F. 133

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(New Horizons in Public Policy Series) Howard J. Elcock - Political Leadership (2001, Edward Elgar Pub) PDF

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Political Leadership

Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc.

General Editor: Wayne Parsons

Beyond the New Public Management

Economic Decentralization and Public Management Reform

Public Policy in the New Europe

Politics, Governance and Technology

Public Policy and Political Institutions

Public Policy and Local Governance

Implementing European Union Public Policy

The Internationalization of Public Management

NEW HORIZONS IN PUBLIC POLICY SERIES

Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

JC330.3 .E43 2001

ISBN 1 84064 059 6

PART I THEORIES OF LEADERSHIP

1 Why is leadership important? 3

PART II LEADERSHIP ROLES

6 The functions of leadership: governing roles 105

Fearless iconoclast and true friend

Leadership is central to politics and government but its definition is elusive.

aristocracy is displaced by the bourgeoisie as society moves from feudalism to

LEADERSHIP IN THE NEW RIGHT DECADES

increasingly regarded as undeserving, regardless of the reasons for their poverty

BOX 1.1 POLICY DISASTERS OF THE NEW RIGHT

• Railway privatization was carried out with excessive haste

before the 1997 General Election, resulting in a deteriorating

quality of railway services and possibly poorer safety protection

for passengers as a result of the fragmentation of the industry.

system was sold off too cheaply.

the second biggest New Right policy disaster. The government

obstinately implemented its Community Charge in the face of

repeated warnings that it was unworkable. It subsequently

persevered in the face of rising public anger and disorder which

developed as the injustices of the new tax became evident. Its

failure was the result of ideological blinkering because

dissenters were excluded from the policy-making process

during Thatcher’s third term of office.

• The elimination of redundancy to increase efficiency has

involved ending the provision of extra facilities or resources

which are not normally needed but whose availability may

become vital in exceptional circumstances. One adverse

consequence has been the annual hospital beds crisis in the

NHS, because the slack in the system that formerly absorbed

exceptional demands is no longer available.

• Increased vandalism has resulted from de-manning because

vandals can now usually deface buildings and vehicles without

fear of detection. The response has been to introduce closed-

circuit television (CCTV) cameras, with attendant threats to

privacy and civil liberties.

• The loss of community policing, partly through misdirected

enthusiasm for efficiency and economy and partly through

misguided faith in the ability of new technology to substitute for

police officers patrolling and living in the communities whose

members they should be protecting. As a result, the nature of

the relationship between police and public has been funda-

mentally changed. The Macpherson inquiry into the bungled

Metropolitan Police investigation of the racialist murder of

Stephen Lawrence demonstrated the extent to which the police

have lost contact with local communities.

• Failures by private contractors to deliver adequate levels of

services. For example, Wandsworth London Borough Council