Feminist, Anthropological And Psychological Approaches To Political Leadership

APPROACHES

Political leadership is understood differently by scholars from different traditions. The modern view of political leadership is also not uniform one. There are different approaches to leadership in different disciplines. This section is an attempt to show some of the approach to political leadership by different schools of thought. How each school identifies the role of leadership in politics? This section looks into feminist, rationalist, anthropological and political psychological approaches to political leadership. The purpose of this section is to show the varying understanding of political leadership in different schools of thought. It is not meant to give an account of all approaches to political leadership. Feminists reading of leadership have looked to correct a number of the of flaws that feminists critiqued in both (purportedly) gender-neutral and sex-specific theoretical approaches of leadership. Feminists have problematised traditional approaches to the study of leadership for assuming leaders are representative of, or randomly selected from, the citizenry of sates or political organizations, solely on the basis of

First, feminists have established that general concept of good leaders are masculinised, and that masculinised conceptions of leadership have been naturalised in our understanding of leadership. Second, feminist work suggests that the way that we traditionally leadership need to be seriously rethought, including gendered conception about representation, autonomy, and power. Feminists approaches demonstrate the importance of inclusive analysis, searching for silences, understanding interdependence, and holding a broad view of power. These contributions, taken together, suggest that it is not only that our understanding of what a leader is and how to study leadership that are gendered, but the concept of leadership