The Democratic Leader: How Democracy Defines, Empowers, and Limits its Leaders

Abstract

The Democratic Leader argues that leaders occupy an anomalous place in democracies. The foundational principle of democracy -- popular sovereignty -- implies that the people must rule, yet the people can rule only by granting a trust of authority to individual leaders. This produces a tension that results in a unique type of leadership. The democratic leader must perpetually navigate powerful and contending forces of public cynicism, founded on the suspicion that all leaders are self-interested power-seekers, and of public idealism, founded on the perennial hope that good leaders will act nobly in serving the people. The Democratic Leader suggests that the inherent difficulty of this form of leadership cannot be resolved, and indeed is necessary for securing the strength and stability of democracy.