Volume-XII, Issue-IV, July 2026 |
The Politics of Leadership: A Critical Analysis of core Leadership Theories Dr. Nivedita Saha, Associate Professor, Dept. of Political Science, University of Kalyani, Kalyani, West Bengal, India |
Received: 17.07.2026 | Accepted: 20.07.2026 | Published Online: 31.07.2026 | Page No: 47-58 | ||||
DOI: 10.29032/ijhsss.vol.12.issue.04W.344 | |||||||
ABSTRACT | ||
Leaders and leadership have been viewed with both interest and aversion throughout history. On one hand there are social scientists who holds a pessimistic view of the masses, believe in natural inequality. On the other there are liberals and socialists who advise people never to trust political leaders and sought institutional mechanisms to curtail the powers of the leaders. However, the existence of leaders influences history because they bring ideas and aspirations into the public domain. They instill a sense of ambition, built commonality and harness collective energy for a cause. It functions as a sense of acceptance by the followers. When a large number of people interact in a structured pattern of authority and subordination, leadership a predominantly group function, occurs. The relationship between a leader and his followers is circular; the followers must follow the leader's guidance, and the leader can only be approved after demonstrating his unwavering commitment to the group. Here political mobilization plays an important role. Thus, understanding leadership comes from living with it, it springs from direct political day to day experiences. Major part of it may not be circumvented within theoretical scholarly discourse. For the core of leadership – courage, honesty, judgement, intuition, creativity, morality and empathy are intangible qualities, beyond the grasp of hard-core science. Do leaders possess certain character traits? What is the great man theory of leadership? What is populism? What are the different styles of leadership? These are seminal questions, that needs valid answers. Therefore, this paper aims to analyze different leadership theories with special emphasis on their styles and how it is visualized in the western political thought. | ||
Keywords: Leadership, great man, Ubermensch, charisma, styles of leadership |