NO HARD AND FAST DISTINCTIONS Separate political behavior, studied in this volume, from governmental organization, studied in the volume to follow. Generally speaking, however, political behavior consists of (1) a particular area of political activity and (2) kinds of political actions that are common to all politics.
Political behavior is an area of political activity - the activity that occurs outside the formal and legal organizations of government. The chapters of this volume discuss a progression of concerns: first comes the political activity of large and vague groupings like the community and public; then comes that of tighter groups-the electorate, election constituencies, political parties, pressure groups, and conflict groups. Political behavior in this sense is the behavior of individuals and groups outside the government who are striving to influence or take possession of the government. The volume ends as we reach the special organized activities of the state, as exemplified by legislative and administrative institutions.
Political behavior is political activity common to all politics. Certain principles of political science apply both to political behavior and governmental organizations. We find, for instance, that lawyers, soldiers, and professors maintain characteristic habits both in the contest for power and later in the offices of government; or that a person's attitudes will remain in many respects the same be he a voter or a congressman; or that leadership in the Department of Agriculture has a number of qualities in common with leadership in a club or political party. Principles such as these, which are common to politics as a whole, are traditionally and conveniently treated as part of the study of political behavior.
Leadership is a fitting topic with which to begin the study of political behavior. It is a relationship that pervades every association among men. Even Robinson Crusoe became a leader when he took into his life his good man Friday. In the most simple associations and in the most complex ones, leaders exert some directing influence, the nature and extent of which must be known if we are to understand how men get along together. To explain why people choose or follow one kind of behavior rather than another-why they go to war or remain at peace, vote Democratic or Republican, or do a job poorly or well-introduces a search for guiding influences. The study of leadership is therefore most important to political science.
A political leader may be identified as any occupant of an established political position or as any person, in or out of such a position, whose political activity has more influence upon a group's behavior than has the activity of the average member.
How are leaders created? In studying this problem, the political scientist must ask a series of further questions. Are leaders heroes of exceptional powers or pawns of social forces? Have they physical or mental traits in common? Do they develop like abilities through their experience in such typical political activities as organizing, bargaining, or fighting? Does membership in certain social classes increase or decrease a man's chances of becoming a leader? Is it the nature of all great organizations to be led by an active group that tends to monopolize leadership?
In raising these questions we must remember that there are many roles for leaders to play-leaders may be party organizers, legislators, judges, executives, diplomats, or soldiersand we must ask how leadership is molded by the functional demands of each situation. Finally, in order to explain the inadequacies of our answers to all of the foregoing questions, we advance the theory that leadership cannot be fully understood before we examine the reciprocal relationships between the leader and his followers and the relationships of his group with the other groups that operate in the same environment and context.
The discussion of these successive questions provides the structure of this chapter. Taken together, the various answers, in so far as there are any, help one to understand leadership both as an isolated concept and as an integral part of political behavior and political organizations.
Two famous writers have presented us with opposite theories about the influence of leaders. Thomas Carlyle wrote most passionately: "Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here." Heroes teach us right and wrong, he said; heroes give us great inventions and discoveries. It is the great few who transform society; the multitude follows them. Modern democracy, he believed, has produced millions of fools who vote, other men who go to Parliament and palaver, and, inevitably, the few who act.
By contrast, Count Leo Tolstoi asserted that there is no greater fool than he who thinks he makes history and believes others when they assure him he does. Not even a leader like Napoleon Bonaparte, according to Tolstoi, has any part in determining the course of history. Napoleon was the tool of vast social forces beyond his control. "Studying the laws of history," Tolstoi declared, "we must absolutely change the objects of our observation, leaving kings, ministers, and generals out of the account, and select for study the homogenous, infinitesimal elements that regulate the masses."
Both Carlyle and Tolstoi are representative of long rosters of illustrious writers. Those who share Carlyle's view of the role played by men of genius tend also to be aristocratic in political viewpoint. Among the most enthusiastic have been men who believed that they themselves were to be among the great of history and that their indomitable wills could overcome all obstacles-Hitler and Mussolini, for example.
By contrast, those who have agreed with Tolstoi have often been socialists. For socialism, as Marx taught it, was a triumph of the masses over the few, and of irresistible historical tendencies over individual effort-socialism being the irresistible tendency of the modern age. Tolstoi's less specific determinism has also received support from most social and natural scientists, who have hoped that by applying the theory of determinism to all events they may explain history far better than can the biographers of greatness.
Like many other puzzling problems in political science, the conflict between these rival theories dwindles in importance if we ask an appropriate methodological question: Why are we interested in the argument? What do we want to know? First, we want to discover the consequences of the acts of particular men; second, we want to explain the interaction of social forces-economic wants, nationalism, religious beliefs, and so on. If we are to understand the first problem, the peculiar combination of qualities that particular men undeniably possess become objects of serious attention. Men are the actors of politics; some men are more active than others; and the shape and direction of their activities earn them leadership, great or minor. If we are interested in the second problem, the interaction of social forces, the leaders become nameless carriers of influence, instruments of the environment, helpless products of their times. We then select abstractions such as the idea of freedom, or social movements such as the industrial revolution, or indeed any social force in which we are interested, and assess its contribution to the power of the leader. We see the leader as caused, like all things. He becomes an instrument.
Both kinds of information are valuable. Let us take the study of Napoleon as an example. Clearly he was the product of forces outside his own will. He owed his being to his parents, and was conditioned by his family life. He was, we are told, deeply influenced by his inferiority to the upperclass group at his military school. He was certainly deeply affected by the French Revolution. At the same time, only he had his particular parents, was born at that certain time, had that peculiar relationship to his fellow students at military school, and had many other distinct experiences all to himself.
It would seem, then, that Napoleon-a unique characterencountered various deterministic social forces throughout his life. Thus one may study him, like any other event, in his uniqueness, or, also like any other event, as a statistic. But one cannot say that only his uniqueness or only social forces at work upon him are of importance. We must understand both in order to understand Napoleon.
What is true of the "great" leaders is true of the minor. No grand principle distinguishes one from the other in political science. A psychological "halo"-to be treated later-surrounds the "great" leader and seems to distinguish him from others. But there is no more reason for thinking a different principle is at work than for thinking that the sound that bursts an eardrum is different in kind from the sound that brings pleasing harmonies to the ear or even from the sound that is not heard at all.
A common method of investigating the "principles" that explain leadership has been to seek among leaders of all kinds some uniform traits that distinguish them from their followers. Are leaders taller than the average, heavier, more intelligent, more studious, more loyal, more dependable, or more active? We may present an interesting example of a study that seeks to find traits distinguishing leaders from followers.
In 1950, Dr. John B. McConaughy reported a study of eighteen members of the South Carolina General Assembly. The politicians took standard tests that had been used throughout the country. The results, writes Professor McConaughy, indicate that the political leaders were decidedly less neurotic than the general male population; that they were more selfsufficient; that they were decidedly more extroverted; but that they were only slightly more dominant. Furthermore, "they are, to a large degree, more self-confident than the average person and have fewer feelings of inferiority; and . . they are less irritable and tense than the average person." Finally, they appeared not to have "fascist ideas" and to be not much more conservative than the average South Carolinian. Many more studies of this character must be made, however, before one is entitled to generalize about politicians as a group. And, since there are many differences in the degree of power possessed among politicians, it is possible that this group typifies the "subelite," rather than the most dominant group within the community, state, or nation.
Less definite conclusions were reached by Dr. Ralph M. Stogdill, who surveyed 124 studies of leadership and found only a small amount of agreement concerning the traits of most leaders. He reports that over fifteen studies provided evidence that leaders were more intelligent than the average of their group, more studious, more dependable, more active and sociable and from a higher social and economic class. Ten or more of the studies indicated that leaders had unusual persistence and initiative, knew how to get things done, were co-operative, and possessed self-confidence, insight, popularity, adaptability, and verbal facility. There seemed to be vague indications in a number of studies that leaders topped their group average in such characteristics as age, height, weight, physique, appearance, and dominance. But the outstanding fact, as Dr. Stogdill discovered, is quite plain: It is at present impossible to say that any single trait distinguishes most leaders from followers in all groups taken together. Political situations vary so greatly that they require very different types of leaders at different times and places.
Dissatisfied with the search for isolated traits that distinguish leaders, some modern political psychologists have suggested that we must study in greater depth the psychological motivation of leaders in order to explain how they developed. For instance, Napoleon was short; perhaps he compensated by furious energy for what is commonly considered a defect in would-be leaders.
One of the most outstanding of these political psychologists, Harold D. Lasswell, suggests that the most dynamic type of political leader compensates for personal inadequacies. If an individual feels deprived, consciously or not, of characteristics or possessions that he is trained by his environment to regard as valuable-good looks, family affection, money, social respect, a certain upper-class occupation, an education-his feelings of deprivation create a high tension that seeks outlets. There are many outlets, but those men destined to become politically active choose power or prestige as a compensation. Since power has always to be justified in terms of the public good, they repress their private motives and acquire a set of beliefs truly political-a notion of the "public interest." They may or may not in fact serve the public interest in the light of history, but the spark to their interest in public activity comes from tensions originally private. Of course, the intense motivation of such a man only partly explains his power; he must also acquire political skills - military, organizational or demagogic.
This type of exceptionally forceful leader, however, includes only a fraction of all those who satisfy our definition of a leader. Many political leaders "fall" into office; they may be born to it; they may get office with little effort because of family connections. Others may serve in high political posts simply because of technical skills; such, for instance, are many army leaders, undersecretaries and bureau chiefs of government departments. These men may have special characteristics typical of those who do their kind of work, but they would not be men of "pure power" such as we have just described. Most political leaders are subject to a variety of motives; they may wish to earn money, acquire leisure, help their careers, defeat personal enemies, and so on. Taking all political leaders into consideration, those who are compensating for intense feelings of deprivation are an important but unknown fraction of the total number.
This man of "pure power" is one of the types that sometimes provides us with a special kind of political leader, the charismatic leader, who gains dictatorial powers during periods of widespread social distress. He seeks to incite as large a mass of people as possible. Unstable times, the twentieth century, for instance, provide him an immense audience that, to another age or land, seems unbelievably suggestible and stupid.
Max Weber first defined the nature of charisma. Charisma is the quality that enables one man, without measurable traits far exceeding those of his followers, without coming from any ruling group or holding any office, to exercise surpassing magnetism and to gather a tremendous following. Charisma is "nornrational," nontraditional, and nonbureaucratic.
It is a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These are such as are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader ....
Pure charisma is specifically foreign to economic considerations. Whenever it appears, it constitutes a "call" in the most emphatic sense of the word, a "mission" of a "spiritual duty."
Charismatic leadership, evidenced in a man originally by some remarkable or "miraculous" accomplishments, can be maintained only by the continuous demonstration of those abilities-prophecy, heroism, striking successes-or by a "routinizing of charisma." Charisma becomes institutionalized or routinized when the initial contempt of a charismatic leader and his followers for organization, positions, money, and laws diminishes in fact, if not in theory, and regularized ways of achieving the sinews of permanence, such as bureaucracies and taxation, are established.
Inasmuch as a charismatic leader challenges the existing political leadership, the offices of the state, and many of the existing laws, he cannot be expected to gain support from the status quo for his mission, be he conservative or radical in relation to the ideas of the existing political leaders. He therefore prospers on mass support and only belatedly receives adherents from among the established leaders. Such was the experience of men like the Gracchi of ancient Rome, Cola de Rienzi of medieval Rome, Savonarola of Renaissance Florence, St. Francis, Cromwell of the English Commonwealth, Robespierre of Revolutionary France, Napoleon I, Mussolini of Fascist Italy, Gandhi of India, and Hitler of Nazi Germany.
Caution is necessary, for charisma may be used to explain too much. Max Weber was careful to state that charisma is often mixed with the traditional kinds of authority, and that charismatic leaders, for all their contempt of rules and regulations, frequently utilized existing channels of ascent. Despite his messianic pretensions, for example, Hitler revered "legality" and sought to cloak many of his most radical acts in the garments of pre-existing law and political order. Jawaharlal Nehru, leader of India after Gandhi, is, by his own words, of uncertain character; though at one moment rational, skeptical, and impatient of the adulation he receives as a "miracle man," he is at another swept into telling himself: "I drew these tides of men into my hands and wrote my will across the sky in stars."
Furthermore, essentially noncharismatic offices may acquire charismatic occupants. For example, thousands of Americans stood in the rain to pay their last respects to the cortege of Abraham Lincoln. Obviously, the meaning of Lincoln to his followers transcended the meaning of his office. He was much more than the President.
Besides, purely charismatic leaders cannot arise anywhere at any time. Charisma, which convinces followers of the leader's miraculous gifts, depends on the followers' receptivity. The mission of the leader must have psychological meaning to the follower. The French Revolution had to precede Napoleon, the Versailles Treaty and the depression, Hitler. Sebastian de Grazia has gathered a variety of evidence on the permanent, lurking, immanent, and transcendent character of charisma in his book on the Political Community. Both in tranquility and crisis, he writes, religious and political rulers fulfill a role identical in significant respects with that of the parents and attendants of infancy and childhood. In crisis we find exclamations such as the following about Hitler from the pen of Peter Drucker:
It was not Hitler who made himself a demi-god; it was the masses who pushed him on this pedestal. For only a demon, a superman and magician who can never err and who is always right can resolve the contradiction between the need for a miracle and the impossibility of producing one. Only unquestioning belief in the Fuhrer can give the security of conviction which the masses crave in order to be spared from despair . . . . Hitler must be right because otherwise nothing is.
According to De Grazia, charisma is more often present in subdued form. The death of a ruler may reveal that he had charisma for many of his subjects. Thus when George V of England died, a psychoanalyst, Dr. W. R. D. Fairbairn, reported that one patient dreamed that he had shot a man resembling his father, another was exceedingly depressed by memories of his father's death, and a third dreamed that her own father was dead. All three showed aggravated nervous symptoms. Even for the week of crisis before the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936, Professor De Grazia reports signs of public turmoil. "An increase in absenteeism and a spectacular fall in trade were apparent. People seemed to have left off buying, going to the theaters, or attending meetings."
De Grazia has also made a study of how thirty patients under psychoanalysis behaved when Franklin D. Roosevelt died in 1945. The findings are not surprising to those who recall the event, but they are rendered impressive by the objective nature of the materials.
All persons expressed great initial incredulity that the event had actually occurred and some related the unusual measures they had taken to verify the news. Once belief was defined, all persons felt for a time that "the world" had changed. Absence of direction in the environment was a dominant fear. "What will we do?" Another remark was, "What is there to live for now?" Or, "Now we're all alone." The environment was pictured as potentially hostile. "Who will save us now?" Or, "Who's going to save the world? Everything's stopped."
All persons reported abdominally-located sensations and most of them had gastric disturbances. At the news, they said, their stomach knotted or tensed, or their stomach seemed to drop, or they had a sinking feeling. The gastric disturbances were mainly of a diarrhoetic character. [3]
Indeed, leadership in the larger political community seems to have a simmering charisma about it at all times. Rulers, no matter how they have acquired their positions, are expected to produce results in excess of those expected of normal men. On occasion, grave crises produce leaders whose primary rather than secondary character is charismatic. They stand or fall by their performance unless, before their skill or luck runs out, they are able to routinize or consolidate their positions.
The statement of what we know about the traits of leaders, the psychological development of leaders, and the special case of the charismatic leaders (a small minority of all leaders), gives us some idea of the general psychology of leadership. We may now inquire whether there are certain persistent political activities that demand certain leadership skills.
We have said that the instruments of authority are education and propaganda, force and violence, and economic measures and economic manipulation, depending upon whether or not acts are considered legitimate. Political leadership (whatever may be true of other kinds of leadership) in part depends upon skill in working with these instruments of authority. Priests, teachers, lawyers, orators, writers, and journalists; policemen and soldiers; the organizers, the managers, the "bosses," and the mechanical and human engineers; these are the people that become political leaders.
Different cultural and political patterns tend to produce different kinds of leaders. In the United States the military man must "civilianize" himself before he can acquire political power in local or national politics, whereas in Nicaragua or China, for instance, he can move directly from the army into politics. The largest number of American politicians are lawyers. A study of twelve American state senates and thirteen lower chambers from 1925 to 1935 showed that 28 per cent of all members were lawyers. Another count in 1937, this time of all state legislatures, revealed eighteen hundred lawyers in the total of seventy-five hundred legislators. A study of five successive national congresses found the percentage of lawyers in the Senate to vary between 61 and 76 and in the House to vary between 56 and 65. No other occupation, save, in the more rural states, that of farming, competes seriously with the law. The inference we may draw is that American political conditions favor lawyers as politicians, and that the particular political requirements with which lawyers are equipped are the ability to bargain among diverse groups and interests, the freedom to engage in politics while earning money at the law, skill in handling people, and facility in dealing with the legal procedures so prominent in the American apparatus of government.
Yet in early colonial times, in Massachusetts and nearby places, theological status gave political preference. Religious leaders like John Winthrop, John Cotton, and Roger Williams were politicians. In certain Southern colonies, on the other hand, the owners of large plantations were active in politics. Nor ought we to forget that the American Revolution was led in good part by businessmen and merchants. Even today a background as businessman or military leader may help a particular candidate.
Furthermore, European political leaders are not preponderantly lawyers. Down to 1945, England produced a leadership of birth and wealth. Of 306 cabinet ministers from 1801 to 1924, 213 lived off accumulated wealth and only 93 had to earn their own living; since 1945 a high proportion of British leaders have depended upon financial support and jobs supplied by trades unions. French and Italian legislatures have possessed more teachers and intellectuals than other national legislatures; the Third French Republic was sometimes referred to as the "Government of Professors." The German Reichstag before Hitler had some lawyers and a noticeable number of representatives of special economic interests such as trades unions and landholders, together with a considerable number of professional civil servants. In the Soviet Union, an increasing number of Communist party leaders have come from the managerial group-those who control and operate the state-owned factories, farms, and transportation system. The bona fide factory worker is becoming a scarce person in official circles. In India intellectuals and businessmen, most of them from high castes, rule the masses, whereas in Japan's postwar House of Representatives, business owners and executives are prominent, and bureaucrats, educators, and farmers fall considerably behind. Militarists have abounded in Chinese politics of the last century, but early modern China saw the domination of politics by literati, a group of scholarly civil servants. On the whole, only American legislatures may be said to be lawyer-dominated. Other legislatures have had more representatives from a larger number of occupations.
This information about the background and training of political leaders suggests that certain skills give their possessors perennial or recurrent advantages in the struggle for political power. Ceremonial and rhetorical skills, soldierliness, and organizing ability have always characterized the office holders and office seekers of societies everywhere. Furthermore, particular environments seem each to favor particular skills. Pareto called Prussia of a half century ago the habitat of the lions, Paris of the foxes. Prussians were prone to gain political advantage by force, the French elite by guile.
Revolutions accelerate changes in the skills demanded of politicians, but they do not transform them. The Nazis weakened the grip of the bureaucrats and Junkers, but did not destroy them; indeed, they worked out an uneasy co-operation with them. In America, the New Deal replaced conservative lawyers with liberal ones. Fascism, although claiming to destroy political bargains and "deals," replaced the politicians of democratic Italy with the untitled "fixers" of despotic Italy. The Italian political milieu had not changed overnight because of the Fascist revolution.
Although different cultures tend to favor different skills, no one of the general political skills is ever quite absent. The modern state, especially, is based on a complex division of labor, in government as elsewhere. Military skills, for instance, have always had a place in politics, though the success of military men in making the most important decisions may go up and down sharply. Similarly, educators and journalists succeed in maintaining, even in the most anti-intellectual of political environments, a share of political power disproportionate to their numbers in the population as a whole. Whatever the form of society or its temporary condition, someone must educate and justify it, administer it, and fight for it. To the specialists in these tasks goes some return in the way of power.
In addition to possessing useful political skills the successful leader often belongs to the proper social class. In all societies of which we have knowledge, at least a slight boost on the ladder to political leadership comes from belonging to that group in the society that is held in highest respect. Very often there is a close connection between the possession of, or the right to learn, political skills and membership in the group of highest respect. Thus in the England of the last century, top administrative posts-that is, the offices that demanded skill in handling men and procedures in the systematic execution of legislative policy-were occupied by members of the more fortunate social classes. A study by Harold Laski showed that the British foreign office was staffed in its higher posts almost exclusively by men of high birth and expensive education.
On the other hand - and this example shows why skill may be analyzed separately from class - the administrators of the ancien regime in France before the French Revolution were not members of the aristocracy. In fact, their skills, by helping to make the aristocracy useless, contributed to the revolutionary abolition of aristocratic privilege.
A social class is a group of persons with similar chances in life of gaining recognized goals-education, property, honors, leisure, and political office. An upper class person is one who belongs to a social group highly privileged in its chances. Societies range from rigid caste societies-where all the scarce and desirable values obtainable on earth are rationed at birth to the persons of different classes and cannot be much modified in the struggles of life-to the almost classless society in which men move readily up and down in the class scale according to their abilities and the accidents of life.
The contrast between a caste society and a relatively classless society is very striking and of course produces two contrasting kinds of politics. One caste society about which we know a fair amount is that of India. There, in the census of 1901, twenty-three hundred castes and subcastes were reported, and no Indian was entirely outside the system. Each caste was an exclusive and hereditary group with its own governing organization. Its members generally pursued a common occupation, celebrated their own festivals, and disciplined offending members through the caste council. Members of one caste could not marry into another caste, eat food prepared by a lower caste, or dine with anyone but their caste fellows. The whole caste system was supported by Hinduism, and caste obligations were decided by the Hindu priests-the Brahmin caste. The leaders of the caste system were hereditary: the princely castes, the Brahmin caste, and the conciliar leaders within each caste. However, the present rulers of India dislike the caste system, and it is crumbling perceptibly.
Twentieth-century American society is, in many respects, the extreme opposite of the Indian caste society. Yet even in America one tenth of the people is divided from the other nine tenths by racial barriers that are, in fact, caste lines, even though lacking the religious and legal sanctions so prominent in the Indian caste system. In practice, the essentials of a caste system - bars against intermarriage and social intercourse - operate to segregate whites and Negroes. Whatever the legal theory, the Negro is effectively restrained from political leadership over whites in most parts of the country, though there are numerous exceptions.
Nevertheless, with the striking and important exception of the Negro-white caste system, the significance of social class as a factor in political leadership in America is slight. In this respect, America is much like most countries of Europe today, although before the two world wars it could be said that the United States was much closer to a classless society than were the countries of Europe. The present similarity of America and Europe in this respect is due both to a certain increase of class stratification in the United States and to a decline of such stratification in Europe as a result of wars, reforms, and violent economic fluctuations.
What categories of life chances can we find in America today that indicate the existence here of social classes? And if we find such categories, how do they affect an individual's chances of becoming a political leader-ignoring for the moment the effect of individual traits, skills, and other factors upon the chances of attaining political leadership?
Two of the most important attempts to ascertain whether and to what extent social classes exist in America are found in the work of the social anthropologist Lloyd Warner, and in that of the social psychologist Richard Centers. Dr. Warner, after making a number of intensive studies of small Eastern and Midwestern cities, came to the conclusion that six "social classes" could be said to exist in America: the upper-upper, lower-upper, upper-middle, lower-middle, upper-lower, and lower-lower. By ascertaining the kind of occupation pursued by a person, the source of a person's income, the type of house inhabited by the person, and the kind of neighborhood in which his dwelling was situated, one could assign to the person a composite index that would place him in one of the six classes. The observer could then make certain predictions about the probable behavior of such a person on the basis of the known behavior of persons on the same level or on different class levels.
According to Dr. Warner and his associates, the composite index of status characteristics just described tells in most cases what groups of people a person associates with, what general possibilities such a person has of obtaining wealth, excellent marriage arrangements, and social honors, and-most important for us-the Warner studies confirm the fact that political influence does not always depend upon office. In America, as in western European civilizations, it is often divorced from office. Those who actually hold political office may have economic and social characteristics quite different from the people who have the most political influence. There exists in a certain sense a "behind the scenes" government that is closer to "class" government than a study confined to the characteristics of the elected and appointive office holders would give one to believe. For example, John Gunther in his book Inside U.S.A. concluded that the United States is essentially "run by the propertied class."
Richard Centers, in his study The Psychology of Social Classes, pursued the search for classes in American life by means of opinion polls. He found that when a representative sample of the American population were asked to identify themselves as upper, middle, working, or lower class, the results were: 3 per cent, upper; 43 per cent, middle; 51 per cent, working; 1 per cent, lower; and 1 per cent, "don't know"; 1 per cent did not believe in classes. When asked what was most important in determining the class to which a person belongs, these people answered: 47.4 per cent, the person's beliefs and attitudes; 29.4 per cent, the person's education; 20.1 per cent, the person's family; 17.1 per cent, the person's money; 5.6 per cent, other reasons; and 9.1 per cent, "don't know." Dr. Centers believes that this last tabulation, showing that "beliefs and attitudes" ranked highest in deter mining why people assigned a person to a particular class, is significant as showing class consciousness to be the most important unifying element of a class.
What do studies of the kind just cited reveal about an individual's chances of becoming a political leader? They show that many Americans have a vague belief that social and economic classes exist. They show that a person of wealth, skilled occupation, good home, and respected family can ordinarily exercise more political influence, if he wishes to, than can persons of lower standing. But more than this can hardly be concluded from the existing studies of class in America. The American population is still very mobile, socially and physically. Men move up and down the social, economic, and political ladder with bewildering and sometimes distressing rapidity. They move in space, from city to city and state to state, more than the men of any other society in history. This rapid turnover in life-chances or classchances means that "class" in the United States tends to change in each generation, that is, it tends to become what has usually been termed "freedom of opportunity." Up to the present time at least, the road to political leadership has been more dependent upon individual opportunities or chances for political mobility than upon fixed, graded, and handicapped starting positions.
One need only compare the powerful influences working for political mobility in the United States with the feeble influences working toward class stability to see why it is that the American political scene as a whole, despite little islands of class dominance, gives a profound impression of classlessness. Intermarriage, for instance, between men and women of different social and economic groups, a frequent event in America, extends the chances for general and political success to a new group of relatives. Successful politicians may marry into wealthy families and acquire new political resources. Historians often emphasize how Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, of fairly humble origins, married off his relatives into the royal families of Europe; but they find nothing remarkable in such behavior in America where it occurs so frequently.
The financial power that brings political influence, and vice versa, the business opportunities that open up for those who have political training or power, also create political and social mobility. Poor but bright lawyers move from government employment into the employ of wealthy corporations. Privately accumulated wealth helps win political influence through campaign contributions, contracts, and the purchase of the private-time services of politicians. Political leaders of immigrant groups move through politics into contracting, thence to real estate, thence to community activities such as the Community Chest drive. Sometimes this change occurs in one generation, sometimes in two or more.
The growth of new functions in government increases political mobility by raising clerks to prominence in political policy-making. Poorly paid bookkeepers in government offices rose to executive positions when the federal government moved into the field of social security insurance. Shifts in economic chances give a lift to many more people. Land on the frontier doubles and trebles in value as the country fills up. Fortunes and political power go to the first landholders, provided that they cling to their possessions-such opportunities present themselves in places as widely separated as Manhattan Island and California. As the financial and banking systems come to be regulated and dominated by the government, administrative officers shift readily from positions of power to positions of wealth and vice versa.
The rise of new types of organizations produces new types of political leaders. When John Gunther came to name sixtyfour men "who run America," he named labor leaders among them, remarking that their emergence was a recent phenomenon in American politics. Whereas, for example, the automobile workers were scarcely organized twenty years ago, today they are tightly organized, and the President of the United Automobile Workers, Walter Reuther, is a powerful political leader. Another new kind of political leader in twentieth-century America has been created by the voluntary association for lobbying and agitating-for example, the trade associations and the reform groups such as the League of Women Voters. Because the membership is voluntary and usually not very active, the executive secretaries of such associations have come to wield a good deal of influence in politics.
Certain genetic considerations also operate constantly to increase mobility. The families whose indices fall into Dr. Warner's upper and middle classes have fewer children than those with lower class indices. Thus, especially in periods when the number of political positions is increasing, politics, no matter how strong the class system, must draw a large proportion of its leaders from the lower social and economic levels.
Finally, the easy availability of educational opportunities, which makes parental sacrifice for the young remunerative within one generation, is a great influence. It is not too difficult to help one's sons to obtain a legal education, for example. Of the vast number of lawyers in American legislatures and politics generally, a considerable number are using politics to make connections with clients-to-be, to enhance their prestige-in short, to attain success more quickly than they could in private legal practice. An American farm boy faces a social and political structure offering him chances for a wide variety of adult careers. Social mobility is so great that an individual can rise as far in one generation as a European family traditionally could in several. America's constitutions, laws, education, and ideology tend to speed the individual upward. He has chances for education in state universities, chances to move freely in space, and chances to enter politics. That the vast majority of men do not follow these routes is due to choice and circumstances. A hornyhanded farmer or mechanic in his forties, it is true, is an implausible prospect for political leadership in competition with others who have specialized in acquiring political skills; but by his time of life it is unlikely that be would wish to compete. The fact that most men count themselves out of the race does not mean that the race is not open to most. It would be useless to define "class influence" as any and every influence and habit in a man's life that inclines him not to seek advancement in money, skill, respect, and political power, or that prevents him from attaining such things.
The conclusion one reaches, after surveying both the influences making for class stratification of chances and the influences making for classlessness, or social and political mobility, is that the groupings of Americans according to occupation, income, education, kind of house, and respectability are mainly "statistical" categories rather than social entities; that is they are categories of individuals, who occupy acquired, tenuous ratings on scales of occupation, wealth, housing, education, and respect. When we move into the study of men who are active in politics we find even less indication that the present position or office of a politician could have been predicted on the basis of the life-chances foreseen for him at birth.
To a lesser extent this same mobility exists in twentiethcentury Europe. There, of course, limited resources, a more inflexible tradition, and remnants of aristocracy slow down social and political circulation, so that a man's political behavior and political prospects can be predicted to a considerable extent once his family history is known. But wars, revolutions, economic changes, and political reforms (such as the extension of the vote to the whole people) have profoundly modified the class character of politics, changing "class" from its ancient meaning of "those who possess special birthrights" to something more like "a convenient statistical category for classifying the population."
A number of writers, including Roberto Michels, T. S. Eliot, and Ortega y Gasset, have challenged the belief that increasingly rapid class mobility improves the quality of leadership. They assert that self-made men are likely to be poor rulers. Michels declares, for example, that the new men of power lack the respect for culture, the humaneness, and the relaxed sense of security that are possessed by men who achieve power without undergoing dehumanizing tensions and conflict. We should bear these criticisms in mind when evaluating the consequences of rapid political mobility as against a slowly changing ruling class.
As we have learned from the foregoing discussion, a man's social class may not be the most important influence upon his chances of attaining political leadership. Nevertheless, with or without a strong system, there is to be found in every community, large or small, and in every organization, large or small (save the most minute), a group of individuals, howsoever selected, who constitute the active political element. This element, constituting always a small fraction of the total community or organization, has been called by some writers the "elite," by others the "oligarchy," by some "the ruling class," and by others, especially in America, the "active citizenry." We shall call this group the politists, that is, those who differ from the rest of the population in that they are particularly occupied with the political process-with varying success, out of varying motives, and in different ways. [4]
If rank and privilege are strongly entrenched in a society, such influence will, of course, be manifest in the character of the politists. In England, until very recently, the aristocracy and upper middle class of company owners and merchants were the most powerful group among the politists. In Germany, even after the Empire was replaced by a republic following World War I, the Prussian junkers and the high career officers of the bureaucracy were among the most influential policy makers. In America, certain genuine class influences can aid political careers in a few places-certain districts, for example, in New York, Maryland, Virginia, or Massachusetts, where old, wealthy families maintain their political activity. But with or without such class influences, a group composed of politically active persons may be said to exist everywhere.
Just as the politists are not to be confused with a ruling social class, so they are not to be confused with an oligarchy, with rule by the few. The politists may be a certain social class, or they may be an oligarchy, but this is not necessarily so. Perhaps the best description of how the politists can evolve into an oligarchy in most large groups, no matter how classless in theory and origins, is that presented by Roberto Michels in his book Political Parties. From the study of a wide variety of European political parties he concludes that in all organizations, no matter how democratically conceived and organized, there arises a trend towards actual domination and rule by a few. He writes: "The appearance of oligarchical phenomena in the very bosom of revolutionary parties (workers, socialists, social democrats, communists) is a conclusive proof of the existence of immanent oligarchical tendencies in every kind of human organization which strives for the attainment of definite ends." Case after case shows how organizational leadership develops out of the complexity of work, how leaders become specialized and managerial, how well-trained leaders, recruited from intellectuals as well as from workers, take over union leadership, party administration, the party news organs, and the party's representation in parliament. Leadership becomes technical and indispensable. It is reinforced by routine, extended experience, acquisition of parliamentary skills, and the renown that accrues to actual leaders.
Sidney and Beatrice Webb pointed out the same tendency toward professional leadership in the history of British trades unions in the nineteenth century, but they furnished a somewhat different interpretation. British trades unions started as direct democracies, using the town-meeting form of government and emphasizing direct participation of all members in all union matters. Tardily and incompletely, the workers adopted representative institutions.
The workman has been slow to recognize the special function of the representative in a democracy. In the early constitutional ideals of trades-unionism the representative finds . . . absolutely no place. The committeemen elected by rotation of office or the delegate deputed to take part in a revision of rules was habitually regarded only as a vehicle by which "the voices" could be mechanically conveyed. His task required, therefore, no special qualifications beyond intelligence to comprehend his instructions and a spirit of obedience in carrying them out. [5]
Power, the Webbs found, leaked into the hands of executive secretaries. Elected leaders become more specialized and powerful in the process of controlling the secretaries. Finally expert and trained leadership was demanded. The disagreement in evidence and findings between Michels and the Webbs is negligible. Their interpretations differ in that Michels speaks of the observed trends as "inevitable," whereas, the Webbs speak of them as "rational adjustments" of the workers themselves.
The trend, here observed in trades unions, exists in all large organizations that are not subject to constant check. Most detailed studies of group structure and leadership, from infant play-groups to national legislative bodies, reveal tendencies toward the crystallization of a leading group of individuals from the politists. Traditions, habits, expertness, prestige, and the possession of chances to stay in office combine to convert politists into oligarchs.
The politics of a large nation, when they are not dominated by a single social class or oligarchy or by a single party (in which the "iron law of oligarchy" holds sway), show a great deal of flux and change. The politists are not a uniform group, a single elite, but area mixture of leaders from many different organizations and associations. A brief table of the American political occupations will show how heterogeneous are the origins of the people who have something to say about political decisions in this country. There are several large categories of individuals who find themselves in government. They may be listed as follows:
| I. | OCCUPATIONS OF THE POLITICAL FORUM |
| a. | National elective offices (President, senators, etc.) |
| b. | State elective offices (governor, state legislators, etc.) |
| c. | County and township elective offices (county board member, etc.) |
| d. | City and town elective offices (mayor, town clerk, etc.) |
| e. | National party offices, elective or appointed (national chairman of the Republican Party, etc.) |
| f. | State party offices, elective or appointed (member of the state central committee of the Illinois Republican Party, etc.) |
| g. | Local party offices, elected or appointed (chairman of the county central committee of the Democratic Party, etc.) |
| h. | National appointive offices (department heads, am bassadors, various committees, commissions, etc.) |
| i. | State appointive offices (liquor control board, state commerce commissions, department heads, etc.) |
| j. |
Local appointive offices (chief of police, commissioner of streets and sewers, civil service commissioners, etc.) |
| k. | Precinct captains or committeemen, holding minor state and local government jobs and paid from public funds for part-time party work. |
| II. | PUBLIC CAREERS IN POLITICAL ADMINISTRATION |
| a. | National foreign service offices (ministers, consuls, clerks, etc.) |
| b. |
National civil service offices (clerk in Bureau of Mines of Department of the Interior, personnel officer in Department of Justice, national forest ranger, etc.) |
| c. | The armed forces (general, pilot, infantryman, etc.) |
| d. |
State civil service offices (engineer in highway de partment, warden of state penitentiary, etc.) |
| e. | Local civil service offices (principal of high school, sewers engineer, etc.) |
| f. |
International organization offices (translator in Secretariat of the United Nations, statistical clerk in the World Labor Organization, consultant to United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, etc.) |
| III. | THE PRIVATE (I.E. NOT DIRECTLY GOVERNMENTAL) CAREER VOCATIONS IN POLITICS |
| a. | Executive secretaries and other offices of national, state, and local civic organizations (League of Women Voters, Taxpayers' League, Parent-Teacher Association, etc.) |
| b. | Executive secretaries, research positions, and other offices in philanthropic and political study foundations (Russell Sage Foundation, Brookings Institution, Ford Foundation, etc.) |
| c. | Interest group offices (research worker for the American Medical Association, labor economist for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, director of political action for a union, etc.) |
| d. | Research, consultant and advisory positions (Public Administration Service, consultant on political and industrial problems for industrial concerns and other private associations, etc.) |
| e. | Journalists, lecturers, commentators, and writers on political affairs. |
| f. | Educational positions, administrative and teaching positions in the political science areas in secondary schools, junior colleges, and universities. |
| g. | Special interest representatives before policy-making governmental bodies (lobbyists for Farm Bureau Federation, American Manufacturers Association, Congress of Industrial Organizations, etc.) |
| IV. | AVOCATIONS IN POLITICS |
| a. | Appointments on special political affairs ("dollar-ayear" men, investigating commissions, national and state jurors, advisory committees, etc.) |
| b. | Membership of specialized associations with publicprivate membership (public health associations, associations of social workers, American Political Science Association, American Psychological Association, etc.) |
| c. | Reformers and other part-time politically active persons and groups, ordinarily activated only by the existence of a special combination of political conditions (Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, independent citizens' committees to defeat the political machine, Audubon League, fourth-ward committee to save the old water tower, etc.) |
| d. | Officials of labor unions and large corporations, with their public relations staffs; trade associations officers; church leaders; and other socio-economic group officers. |
| e. | Political lawyers, political real estate and insurance brokers, and others specializing in political-private arrangements. |
| f. | Contractors, sellers, and buyers for governmental services and goods. |
A few of the people concerned with government may well have escaped our classification: no doubt there are a number of politically trained ditch-diggers and bartenders, as well as industrial tycoons and Hollywood screen writers. For two facts stand out even in a preliminary listing of political occupations in America and in most Western or Westernized nations: governmental activity is widely distributed throughout the population; and in consequence, individuals move readily into and out of the politist group and up and down the various levels of the political hierarchy. America was for a long time not typical of the western European nations. But since the beginning of the twentieth century, with the advent of socialist and labor parties and with the succession of internal and foreign crises, the class of politically active individuals has become as large proportionally in many other nations as it is in America.
The number of American politists has never been accurately measured. Both De Tocqueville and Bryce in their famous commentaries on the American system of government remarked at the astonishing number of politically active citizens. Lord Bryce estimated at about 200,000 the "persons whose chief occupation and livelihood lies in politics." This was in 1891, and his definition included roughly the members of our Class I (above) with a considerable number from our Class II who were at that time political appointees. In contrast, Bryce estimated the politically active class in England, then at the height of her prestige and influence in the world, at about 3,500. De Tocqueville, writing some fifty years earlier, had ventured no numerical account, probably because all America seemed to him to be political.
No sooner do you set foot upon American ground than you are stunned by a kind of tumult; a confused clamor is beard on every side, and a thousand simultaneous voices demand the satisfaction of their social wants. Everything is in motion around you; here the people of one quarter of a town are met to decide upon the building of a church; there the election of a representative is going on; a little farther, the delegates of a district are hastening to the town in order to consult upon some local improvements; in an other place, the laborers of a village quit their plows to deliberate upon the project of a road or a public school. Meetings are called for the sole purpose of declaring their disapprobation of the conduct of the government; while in other assemblies citizens salute the authorities of the day as the fathers of their country. [6]
Fifty years after Bryce, and a hundred after de Tocqueville, the population had increased enormously, the machine age had concentrated half the population in large cities, and the governments of nation, state, and locality had increased their scope and function. In 1949, Merriam and Gosnell estimated the total of party workers over the whole nation at 800,000 in normal times and as many as 1,500,000 in an exciting campaign. Probably no more than 300,000 of these are regularly engaged in politics unless they hold, or hope to hold, office. But to these "grass roots" workers, mostly of our Class 1, k (above), must be added the elective office-holders, usually several apiece from the some 155,000 units of government estimated by the Census Bureau to be operating in 1942. Of these, let us say, there are 500,000-a conservative figure. Then, from some 1,529,000 school teachers and school employees must be added perhaps 250,000 who are active in politics, civic activities, and reform groups. Perhaps 250,000 of the 638,000 appointive state administrators are important either by virtue of their office duties or because they are political workers as well as state employees. There are 1,622,000 local government employees of whom perhaps 1,000,000 are politists by virtue of their duties and political interests or because of their civic and political activities beyond the demands of their formal duties. Of the 2,000,000 employees of the federal civil service, no more than 30,000 can be reckoned as "activists." And of the 3,000,000 individuals of the armed forces, perhaps only 5,000 exert political influence beyond their immediate tasks. All the foregoing would be classified by us in Classes I and 11. There may be about 15,000 persons in Class lIl, and perhaps some 75,000 persons in Class IV. Therefore, the total number of people, very roughly calculated, whose occupations concern the governments of the United States lies in the neighborhood of 9,879,000 persons. The number of these who are unusually active in political affairs is roughly 2,425,000 persons.
These 2,425,000 are the persons, then, who during a good portion of their adult, productive years are preoccupied with politics more than most people. Beyond them lie millions of persons occupied with government and many millions more whose interest in politics is intellectual and passive; they may vote, read the political columns of the newspapers, talk occasionally about their opinions with friends, and have some taste of political activity at long intervals. But the bulk of law sponsorship, political decision-making, and the other tasks of the political process remains with these 2,425,000 out of the 9,879,000; they form only about 1/62 of the total population and the whole 150,000,000 depend to a considerable extent for their fortunes and misfortunes upon the leadership of this group.
A study by Drs. J. L. Woodward and Elmo Roper, published in December, 1950, approaches our problem differently. They polled a representative sample of the adult population of the United States on six types of political activity and scored the responses as shown in Figure 3.
It will be noted that, even though the authors generously classify as "very active" a person who scores as little as six points out of a possible twelve, only 10.3 per cent of the adult population achieved this classification. This would be about ten out of every one hundred American adults. And if the minimum score for this classification were raised (justifiably, we think) to nine points out of twelve, only two out of every hundred adult Americans would qualify as "very active" politically. Our own politist ratio of one in sixty-two, if applied only to adults instead of the whole population, would come to about the same figure, that is, something like two politists for every one hundred adults. Research is badly needed on this whole question and can readily supply a more valid and reliable estimate of the number of politists in the population. These preliminary estimates, however, are probably not so greatly in error as to be useless for our purposes.
Although this large group of politically inclined persons that we call the politists-a group that we find in every state -has no sharp form or character, it does provide the milieu from which the more prominent and influential leaders arise.
| % OF TOTAL SAMPLE QUALIFYING | SCORE POINTS CREDITED | TOTAL POSSIBLE SCORE FOR CHANNEL | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Voting | |||
| Once or more in last four years | 75 | 1 | |
| Three times or more | 47 | 1 | 3 |
| Five times or more | 21 | 1 | |
| Discussing Public Issues with Others | |||
| Discusses frequently and takes an equal share in the conversation | 21 | 1 | 2 |
| Discusses frequently and usually tries to convince others he is right | 6 | 1 | |
| Belonging to Organizations That Take Stands on Public Issues | |||
| Belongs to one or more such organizations | 31 | 1 | 2 |
| Belongs to two or more | 7 | 1 | |
| Written or Talked to Congressman or Other Public Official to Give Own Opinion on a Public Issue | |||
| One or more times in the past year | 13 | 1 | 2 |
| Two or more times in the past year | 7 | 1 | |
| Worked for Election of a Political Candidate | |||
| in Last Four Years | 11 | 2 | 2 |
| Contributed Money to a Party or Candidate in Last Four Years | |||
| 7 | 1 | 1 | |
| TOTAL POSSIBLE SCORE | 12 | ||
| SCORE OF RESPONDENT | % OF TOTAL SAMPLE WHO MAKE THE SCORE | CUMULATIVE % |
|---|---|---|
| Very Active | 10.3% | |
| 12 | 0.1 | 0.1 |
| 11 | 0.3 | 0.4 |
| 10 | 0.7 | 1.1 |
| 9 | 1.2 | 2.3 |
| 8 | 1.6 | 3.9 |
| 7 | 2.4 | 6.3 |
| 6 | 4.0 | 10.3 |
| Active | 16.8% | |
| 5 | 6.5 | 16.8 |
| 4 | 10.3 | 27.1 |
| Inactive | 34.6% | |
| 3 | 15.6 | 42.7 |
| 2 | 19.0 | 61.7 |
| Very Inactive | 38.3 | |
| 1 | 19.1 | 80.8 |
| 0 | 19.2 | 100.0 |
| 100.0 | ||
Obviously, not all of these 2,500,000 persons in America are equal in influence. They all are leaders in a sense, but few are powerful leaders. Many acquire their "political" roles through skills not very different from the skills a person not employed by the government might possess. Obviously, too, a great number of these millions are political foot soldiers, even if they are party workers. They work, obey, and receive modest emoluments-honor, favors, money, and perhaps the excitement of the "game" of politics. The top ranks of the politists, who set the pace for the rest to follow, may number no more than a few hundred in each state of the Union and perhaps no more than 2,500 at Washington, D. C.
Membership in these top ranks requires, besides the traits, general skills, and the class background sometimes needed, the ability to perform specialized functions-to play the role of elected executive, legislator, member of the Department of Agriculture; to influence legislation, lead reform groups, manage a political campaign, and so forth. Hence, each type of leadership in politics-executive, legislative, judicial, military, and so on-has its peculiar requirements. Success in one situation does not imply equal ability for success in the others; sometimes, in fact, it may imply quite the opposite. A successful legislator may prove to be an unsuccessful governor. A conscientious reformer may prove to be a bad politician. A good soldier may make a ludicrous President. Even if political science were to prepare ideal "job analyses" for all political offices, the accidents and fortunes of politics are such that those who hold or aspire to political office will, as often as not, lack a good part of the qualities called for. Political scientists, like ordinary mortals, are often struck by great disparities between the assumed demands of a position of political leadership and the character of the leaders who successively occupy it.
How does it happen that such great differences of character are apparent in the men who hold the same office? How does it happen, for example, that a reticent, cautious, conservative man like Calvin Coolidge can hold the same office as an extroverted, daring, tradition-breaking man like Franklin D. Roosevelt? Or-to put the question on a lower level, showing thereby the universal nature of this problem of leadership -how does it happen that a fussy, petty bureau chief may be succeeded by a flamboyant, impatient chief who appears for all the world to be a politician fresh from the campaign stump? Or, on still another level, why are there genial, babykissing city bosses, and taciturn, shy bosses, both of whom may come from the same community? Does not this incessant chain of contradictions deny the essential thesis of the study of leadership: that there is a pattern of leadership? Does it not deny the assertion of this chapter in toto? We have, it is true, been extremely cautious in asserting that there are universal physical and mental traits of leaders; and we have been careful to show that only most general statements can be made about the extent to which certain political skills bring political leadership. We have declared that certain kinds of class structures promote certain kinds of leaders who have the qualities favored by the class structure, but we were also careful to point out that describing the class conditions of a community could still not adequately explain the rise of individual leaders, especially when those leaders are "outsiders" as were Edmund Burke, Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler, or Disraeli.
We cannot adequately explain leadership through trait, skill, class, or functional analysis-individually or all together-because leadership is a relationship to a particular political group situation that is itself determined by all related group situations. The leader operates somewhat like a communications control-system. He is a set of acts and signals that are prearranged by his personal history and that communicate to his group and related groups. A study of only one part of this communications system cannot help but result in the disconcerting number of contradictions and exceptions that have up to now characterized the study of leadership.
Leadership is a function of the group and cannot be understood by merely studying the leader. Leaders who occupy identical positions will seem to possess inexplicably diverse qualities when they are studied in isolation from their followers. Thus, according to our theory, an attempt to find uniformities in the traits of American Presidents would be doomed to failure unless it also studied the "men around the President." A satisfactory comparative study of wartime leadership in America, England, and Germany would have to include not only Roosevelt, Churchill, and Hitler, but also Hull, Hopkins, Marshall, Morgenthau, and Byrnes, as against Attlee, Eden, and Bevin, as against Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, and Schacht, in order to observe how the collective qualities in each group add up.
Moreover, the supply of qualities of leadership appropriate to a given situation may be a function of more than one group. A classic example of this theory is found in Polybius' discussion of the separation of powers in his history of the Roman Republic. He wrote that Rome had become great largely because of its balanced constitution, which contained elements of monarchy (the consuls), aristocracy (the Senate), and the people (assemblies of plebs). Governance in accordance with the best interests of the nation was guaranteed by a combination of the strength of the three branches of government: weak consuls could be buttressed by strong Senates, harsh Senates modified by popular protest. A study of consular leadership alone, ignoring the Senate and plebs, would show a puzzling succession of men of very different traits and backgrounds.
Similarly, in regard to the United States, a study of the Presidents alone, or of the Presidents with their cabinets and kitchen cabinets, will not reveal any intelligible pattern of presidential leadership qualities. To the study of the President's group must be added the study of the other leadership groups of the United States that influence the decisions of the President. Within these groups we should study the top men, their immediate cliques, and their relation to their followers. We should have to add up their leadership qualities, add to them the qualities that come from the President's group, and determine from that sum the leadership equilibrium of such a structure. We should expect this final sum to be the same for equivalent situations. One may constantly expect, however, differences in the leadership qualities of, say, the President's group, or any other subgroup, at different times.
The empirical work required in studying any leadership situation by the method implied in this theory is, of course, very great. Some may say that we are shutting out an elephant in order to admit a whale. To this the reply may be that difficulties are never avoided in science. It is as difficult to make painstaking studies of foolish things as of important things. Another answer is that the best biographical studies do proceed in the manner we have outlined. Sandburg's biography of Abraham Lincoln is an example. Seeming contradictions in the behavior of the leader can be resolved often only by unraveling a difficult knot of circumstances that contains ultimately all the contending influences in a given situation.
Finally, we may argue that we claim no certainty in our studies of leadership. Absolute certainty, so far as the future can be foreseen, is not going to be achieved by social science. Problems concerning leadership will remain indefinitely a puzzle to political science; the conceptions and materials of this chapter can only add some understanding and clarify the important features of the picture presented by politics. Certain "mysterious" phenomena, such as the charismatic leader, can be made to seem not so awesome and incredible. It is not impossible that some knowledge of such leadership, even if not total knowledge, will increase the possibility of braking, modifying, or otherwise controlling the circumstances under which leadership operates.