| ID | 143137 |
| Title Proper | Is democratic leadership possible? |
| Language | ENG |
| Author | BEERBOHM, ERIC |
| Summary / Abstract (Note) | Leadership can baffle our ideal of democracy. If representatives track our preferences, actual or ideal, what room is left for them to pushback against a constituency? This has led some political theorists to conclude that the concept of democratic leadership is paradoxical. I challenge this view by constructing a theory that takes shared commitment as its principal ingredient. The Commitment Theory brings out what is morally distinctive about leadership in a representative democracy. In principle, democratic leadership recruits citizens as genuine partners in shared political activity. The account explains why leadership is taken to be a core property of a functioning democracy and, at the same time, a potential threat to the practice. It is then tested against cases of opinion formation, cue-taking, and frame manipulation. I conclude that the theory avoids dual objections: that it either overcounts or undercounts instances of democratic leadership. |
| `In' analytical Note | American Political Science Review Vol. 109, No.4; Nov 2015: p.639-652 |
| Journal Source | American Political Science Review 2015-12 109, 4 |
| Key Words | Political activity ; Democratic Leadership ; Potential Threat |