The Leadership Capital Index: A New Perspective on Political Leadership

The Leadership Capital Index develops a conceptual framework of leadership capital and a diagnostic tool – the Leadership Capital Index (LCI) – to measure and evaluate the fluctuating nature of the leadership capital of leaders. Differing amounts of leadership capital, a combination of skills, relations and reputation, allow leaders to succeed or bring about their failure. This book brings together leading international scholars in the field to engage with the concept of ‘leadership capital’ and use and apply the LCI to a variety of comparative case studies. The book provides an important, timely, and innovative contribution to the now flourishing academic discipline of political leadership studies.

The LCI offers a comprehensive yet parsimonious and easily applicable 10 point matrix to examine leadership authority over time and in different political contexts. In each case, leaders ‘spend’ and put their ‘stock’ of authority and support at risk. United States president Lyndon Johnson arm-twisting Congress to put into effect civil rights legislation; Tony Blair taking the United Kingdom into the invasion of Iraq; Angela Merkel committing Germany to a generous reception of refugees: all ‘spent capital’ to forge public policy they believed in. The volume examines how office-holders acquire, consolidate, risk, and lose such capital, and concentrates predominantly on elected ‘chief executives’ at the national level, including majoritarian and consensus systems, multiple and singular cases, and also examines some presidential and sub-national cases. The Leadership Capital Index is an exploratory volume, with chapters providing a series of plausibility probes to see how the LCI framework ‘performs’ as a descriptive and analytical tool.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Understanding Political Leadership: The Leadership Capital Approach
Chapter 2: Turning Structural Weakness into Personal Strength: Angela Merkel and the Politics of Leadership Capital in Germany
Chapter 3: “No Loans for Ladies´´: Julia Gillard and Capital Denied
Chapter 4: From Triumph to Tragedy: The Leadership Paradox of Lyndon Baines Johnson
Chapter 5: A “Meteoric´´ Career in Hungarian Politics
Chapter 6: Jerry Brown and the Triumph of Leadership: Leadership Capital and the Financial Rescue of California
Chapter 7: Limits to Dominance?: Comparing the Leadership Capital of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair
Chapter 8: (Mis)Managing Leadership Capital: Canadian Prime Ministers
Chapter 9: Modern Prime-Ministerial Leadership in the Netherlands: Consensus or Confrontation?
Chapter 10: Swedish Coalition Governments and the Quest for Re-election
Chapter 11: Leadership Capital in a Protracted Crisis: Spanish Prime Ministers Compared
Chapter 12: The Leadership Capital of Italian Presidents: The Politics of Constraint and Moral Suasion
Chapter 13: Measuring and Using Leadership Capital: Issues and Extension
Chapter 14: Leadership Capital: A Bourdieuian Reinterpretation
Chapter 15: Conclusions: LCI Revisited