Edward Rothstein: Conference at Yale Explores the Complicated Dance Between Strong Leadership and the Popular Will
Be careful what you wish for, particularly when it comes to politics. Wish for democratic elections, and you may get duly elected tyranny and terror. Wish for democratic debate, and you may get polarized parties and a divided electorate. Wish for democratic responsiveness and you may get opinion-poll leadership. Wish for statesmanship and you may get demagoguery. One temptation might be to wish for nothing in particular, but then who knows what might happen?
The difficulty seems to congeal around the very nature of political leadership in a democratic state. A democratic leader is, at least in part, an oxymoron. A leader is ahead of those being led, but a democratic leader is also supposed to be a follower, obeying the will of the people.
Neither position is without dangers. Given examples of perverse expressions of popular will — the terrors of the French Revolution, Nazism, Hamas — who can simply rely on democratic sentiment? And given similar examples of demagoguery, who can believe in an enlightened tyranny? We desire strong leaders and justly fear them. We desire widespread democracy and justly worry about the consequences.
Such issues — as relevant in the United States and Europe as in Iraq — inspired a conference at Yale University earlier this month, organized by the political scientist Steven Smith with a colleague, Bryan Garsten: "Statesmen and Demagogues: Democratic Leadership in Political Thought." The conference was also a reflection of Mr. Smith's belief that in the academic world questions about the nature of political leadership are not as fully explored as they should be.
This is partly a result of a long trend, he said, in which politics has been treated as the reflection of supposedly more profound economic or historical forces. But understanding the nature of statesmanship, he suggested, also requires thinking about the powers of remarkable individuals. This subject, often treated in popular biography, is much neglected in recent political science, in Mr. Smith's view.
So the conference came at the subject from differing perspectives, bringing together historians, students of contemporary politics and political philosophers. The speakers ranged from the French political scientist Pierre Hassner to Carnes Lord, who teaches military strategy at the United States Naval War College. . . .
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The difficulty seems to congeal around the very nature of political leadership in a democratic state. A democratic leader is, at least in part, an oxymoron. A leader is ahead of those being led, but a democratic leader is also supposed to be a follower, obeying the will of the people.
Neither position is without dangers. Given examples of perverse expressions of popular will — the terrors of the French Revolution, Nazism, Hamas — who can simply rely on democratic sentiment? And given similar examples of demagoguery, who can believe in an enlightened tyranny? We desire strong leaders and justly fear them. We desire widespread democracy and justly worry about the consequences.
Such issues — as relevant in the United States and Europe as in Iraq — inspired a conference at Yale University earlier this month, organized by the political scientist Steven Smith with a colleague, Bryan Garsten: "Statesmen and Demagogues: Democratic Leadership in Political Thought." The conference was also a reflection of Mr. Smith's belief that in the academic world questions about the nature of political leadership are not as fully explored as they should be.
This is partly a result of a long trend, he said, in which politics has been treated as the reflection of supposedly more profound economic or historical forces. But understanding the nature of statesmanship, he suggested, also requires thinking about the powers of remarkable individuals. This subject, often treated in popular biography, is much neglected in recent political science, in Mr. Smith's view.
So the conference came at the subject from differing perspectives, bringing together historians, students of contemporary politics and political philosophers. The speakers ranged from the French political scientist Pierre Hassner to Carnes Lord, who teaches military strategy at the United States Naval War College. . . .