Political Leadership Essay Example for Free

Political Leadership EssayPolitical Leadership and the Problem of the Charismatic reason Author(s) Carl J. Friedrich Source The Journal of Politics, Vol. 23, No. 1, (Feb. , 1961), pp. 3-24 Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Southern Political erudition Association St open URL http//www. jstor. org/stable/2127069 Accessed 04/08/2008 1734 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTORs impairment and Conditions of Use, available at http//www. jstor. org/page/info/about/policies/terms. jsp.JSTORs Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained preceding permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any promote use of this work. Publisher contact in sortingation may be obtained at http//www. jstor. org/action/showPublisher? publisherCod e=cup. Each retroflex of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a viridity research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more than information about JSTOR, please contact emailprotected org. http//www. jstor. org governmental LEADERSHIP AND THE PROBLEM OF THE CHARISMATIC POWER* CARLJ. FRIEDRICH Harvard University.introduced sociology into and its derivatives, THE TERM charisma many years ago by a Germansociologist, has lately been spreading into political science here and abroad. The intellectuals desire to sound profound by the use of unfamiliar words may have a share in this fad, precisely it would have the appearance _or_ semblance that the term also responds to a very real need. One recent writer goes so out-of-the-way(prenominal) as to define charisma as the right to rule by virtue of what they (the leaders) have been and are. unneeded to say, such vagueness is a far cry from the original usage.1 In position to be able to assess the utility of the concept of charismatic leadership, charismatic authority (and legitimacy) and charismatic reason and rule, it will be necessary to clarify the phenomena of top executive, rule and leadership which are supposed to be qualified by this type of being charismatic. fountain is a central concern of political science. It is a phenomenon which is universally recognized, but problematic to understand. Like all data of the real world, it defies rigorous description. Most famous among the attempts at interpretation is that of Hobbes.He states that origin is the present means to secure approximately future apparent good. (Leviathan Chap. 10) Such a definition ( tempor ary hookup historically important as a challenge to the traditional notion that what is good can be authoritatively known)2 is both too broad and too narrow. Too broad, because it makes it im practical to distinguish power from wealth for what is wealth but a present *Based upon a paper delivered at the 1960 Annual get together of the American Political Science Association, New York, on September 9, 1960.The problems here discussed will be more fully developed within a systematic context in a forthcoming password on this and related issues. Max Weber, Wirtschaft und GeselIschaft, 1922, Part I, Chap. 3, paras. 1014 Part III, Chap. 9, and elsewhere. An abbreviated edition of Talcott Parsons and Henderson was published under the ennoble The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. The discussion of charisma and charismatic leadership is found on pp. 358ff. The command quoted on charisma is found in M. S. Lipsett, Political Man (1959) p. 49.2Hobbes, in consequence, denied the not ion of a summum bonum these Doints were justly stressed in comments by David Spitz. 3 4 THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS Vol. 23 means to secure some future apparent good? Hobbes reply to such an objection would have been, of course, that wealth is a form of power he says as much in the discussion that follows his definition. Whatever may be the aim here on broad philosophical grounds, it is ope rationally important today to draw this distinction, in order to differentiate political from economic concerns and thus politics from economics.Actually so broad a definition as Hobbes really identifies power with the totality of resources available to a man to realize his values or purposes. If power is thus defined, what does it mean to say that life is but a ceaseless search for power after power unto death-the famous claim of Hobbes and recited to this day? It simply says that men take heedk that which they desire, which is little suddenly of tautological. nevertheless Hobbes definition is n ot only too broad it is also too narrow.For it talks of power as if it were a thing, something to have and to hold, and may be to sit upon like a bag of gold. Power at times possesses this quality, but at other times not at all, and it is important to see it in its dual nature, because only this Janusfaced quality gives to power the perplexing dynamic quality which men olfaction but find it difficult to account for. Power is not only a thing, a obstinacy, but it is also a relation, as Locke insists in his Essay on Human Understanding (Bk. II, Chap 21) where he states are (powers relations, not agents. If power is looked at in the dimension of time, it becomes clear that its comparative quality is the more evident, the longer the time span involved. For it is in the rise and the decline of political power, whether of individuals or of larger groups that the relational quality, the fact that power is always power over other men, becomes evident. In a certain sense, therefore, it is possible to say that the stress upon its quality as a thing, a possession to have and to hold, is the result of an illusion. But such a statement is not wholly justified.Due to the institutionalization of power relationships, presently to be discussed, the power attached to a certain top executive is a thing, a possession to have and to hold. To be sure, the office may be lost as a result of the way the power is used, but while the office is held, the power is in the hands of him who holds it. Therefore it is appropriate to say that power is to some uttermost 8It is curious and has been noted occasionallythat Locke in his Essays on Civil Government (I1,4) builds the argument upon Hobbes concept, though the other notion, inherent in his general philosophy, also plays its part.1961 POLITICAL LEADERSHIP AND CHARISMATIC POWER 5 a possession p(l), and to some extent a relation p(2). It is the ratio of the two ingredients which political science must incessantly be concerned with. Th e difference between political phenomena in which the ratio of p(l) and p(2) is greater than one, and those in which the ratio of p(l) to p(2) is smaller than one is familiar to the study of politics. The first is typically a stabilized office, such as that of an hereditary monarch, or of an official of a firmly established republic. The second ratio, p (l)