Democratic Theory and the ‘Anomaly’ of Leadership

Democratic theory and leadership studies are closely related. Yet, the idea of democratic leadership is inherently paradoxical. Whereas the concept of democracy rests on the idea of popular sovereignty, that is self-government by an autonomous citizenry, and is based on a strong egalitarian ethos, the concept of leadership necessarily encompasses hierarchy and hence inequality. In a truly democratic society, the leader is the odd one out. Thus, at their theoretical extremes, political leadership and democracy are on rather bad terms with each other. This paradox is broadly recognized, both theoretically and empirically (e.g. Kellerman & Webster, 2001; Kane & Patapan, 2008; Ruscio, 2008; Kane, Patapan & 't Hart, 2009a). Political leaders must walk a thin line between offering the necessary guidance and imposing authoritarian rule. Several scholars have provided insightful studies that have shaped our understanding of the leadership-democracy nexus (e.g. Brooker, 2005; Ruscio, 2008; Kane, Patapan & Wong, 2008). However, most of these have not yet incorporated the theoretical diversity of understandings of democracy and the empirical variety in democratic systems. Discussions on the relationship between democracy and leadership tend to be rather one-dimensional because they tend to concentrate on the conflicting aspects of the relationship between leadership and ‘the’ idea of democracy. Consequently, democratic leadership scholars run the risk of overlooking the affinity between particular types of political leadership on the one hand and forms of democracy on the other and how it develops in changing socio-political contexts. In contrast, this chapter, in the tradition of Aaron Wildavsky (1984), aims to elaborate on the theoretical and empirical kinship between different styles of leadership and different models of democracy. The focal question is: what does democratic leadership amount to in different types of democracy? It finds a starting point in Keane’s (2009) three-stage model of democratic transformation (moving from classic ‘assembly democracy’, to modern ‘representative democracy’, to present-day ‘monitory democracy’), which is combined with Hendriks’ (2010) four ideal typical models of democracy (pendulum, consensus, voter and participatory democracy). We argue that political leaders increasingly operate in more hybrid forms of democracy, that is democratic regimes in which characteristics of different forms of democracy are combined, and for that reason are required to develop innovative political repertoires that could be characterized as ‘kaleidoscopic leadership’.