Editing Leadership (section)

==Critical thought==

The ideas of [[Edmund Burke]] (1729–1797) on [[representative democracy|representative]] (as opposed to delegate-based) [[democracy]] have echoes in the attitudes of elected representatives who regard themselves - and even portray themselves -  as "leaders".<ref>
{{cite book
 |last1                = Parrish
 |first1               = John M.
 |editor-last1         = Couto
 |editor-first1        = Richard A.
 |editor-link1         = Richard A. Couto
 |date                 = 14 September 2010
 |chapter              = Philosophical Foundations of Political Leadership
 |title                = Political and Civic Leadership: A Reference Handbook
 |url                  = https://books.google.com/books?id=EgNzAwAAQBAJ
 |volume               = 1
 |publication-place    = Thousand Oaks, California
 |publisher            = SAGE Publications
 |page                 = 76
 |isbn                 = 9781452266343
 |access-date          = 4 November 2024
 |quote                = This leader-know-best justification for representative government may be best captured in the thought of Edmund Burke [...], whose celebrated "Speech to the Electors at Bristol" admirably sums up the normative underpinnings of the theory of elite leadership justifying representative democracy.
}}
</ref>

[[Thomas Carlyle|Carlyle]]'s 1840 "[[Great Man theory]]", which emphasized the role of leading individuals, met opposition (from [[Herbert Spencer]], [[Leo Tolstoy]], and others) in the 19th and 20th centuries.

[[Karl Popper]] noted in 1945 that leaders can [[mislead]] and make mistakes—he warns against deferring to "great men".<ref>
{{cite book
| last1 = Popper
| first1 = Karl
| author-link1 = Karl Popper
| year = 1945
| chapter = Preface to the First Edition
| title = The Open Society and Its Enemies
| chapter-url = https://books.google.com/books?id=Gw9wV2Unpe8C
| edition = 7
| location = London
| publisher = Routledge
| publication-date = 2012
| page = xxxiii
| isbn = 9781136749773
| access-date = 2017-08-20
| quote = [...] if our civilisation is to survive, we must break with the habit of deference to great men. Great men may make great mistakes; and [...] some of the greatest leaders of the past supported the perennial attack on freedom and reason. Their influence, too rarely challenged, continues to mislead [...]
}}
</ref>

[[Noam Chomsky]]<ref>{{multiref2
|1={{cite book |title=Profit over People: neoliberalism and global order|first=Noam|last=Chomsky|year=1999|chapter=Consent without Consent|page=53
}}
|2={{cite book
 | last1 = Chomsky
 | first1 = Noam
 | author-link1 = Noam Chomsky
 | year = 1999
 | chapter = Consent without Consent: Regimenting the Public Mind
 | title = Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order
 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=eX4DAQAAQBAJ
 | location = New York
 | publisher = Seven Stories Press
 | publication-date = 2011
 | isbn = 9781609802912
 | access-date = 7 September 2020
}}
}}
</ref>
and others<ref>{{cite thesis|degree=PhD|title=The Relationship between Servant Leadership, Follower Trust, Team Commitment and Unit Effectiveness|first=Zani|last=Dannhauser|institution=Stellenbosch University|year=2007}}</ref> have subjected the concept of leadership to [[critical thinking]] and assert that people abrogate their responsibility to think and will actions for themselves. While the conventional view of leadership may satisfy people who "want to be told what to do", these critics say that one should question subjection to a will or intellect other than one's own if the leader is not a [[subject-matter expert]].

Concepts such as [[Workers' self-management|autogestion]], [[employeeship]], and common [[civic virtue]] challenge the fundamentally [[anti-democratic]] nature of the [[leadership principle]] by stressing [[individual responsibility]] and/or group authority in the workplace and elsewhere and by focusing on the skills and attitudes that a person needs in general rather than separating out "leadership" as the basis of a special class of individuals.

Various historical calamities (such as [[World War II]]) can be attributed<ref>{{multiref2
|1={{cite book |last=Arendt |first=Hannah |author-link=Hannah Arendt |title-link=Eichmann in Jerusalem |title=Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil |location=New York |publisher=Viking |year=1963}}{{page needed|date=November 2024}}
|2={{cite book
| last1 = Wheatcroft
| first1 = Andrew
| last2 = Overy
| first2 = Richard
| author-link2 = Richard Overy
| title = The Road to War: The Origins of World War II
| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=m8t4Xi2Ljt4C
| edition = Revised
| year = 1989
| location = London
| publisher = Random House
| publication-date = 2012
| isbn = 9781448112395
| access-date = 2017-08-20
}}{{request quotation|date=November 2024}} }}</ref>
to a misplaced reliance on the [[Führerprinzip|principle of leadership]] ({{langx | de | Führerprinzip}}) as exhibited in [[dictatorship]].

[[David John Farmer]] writes critically of the [[leader principle]] and of the cult in which elements throughout society - even in democratic countries - pay deference to the idea of leadership.<ref>
{{cite book
 |last1                = Farmer
 |first1               = David John
 |author-link1         = David John Farmer
 |date                 = 18 December 2014
 |orig-date            = 2005
 |chapter              = Start with Michelangelo: What I, a Bureaucrat, Expect
 |title                = To Kill the King: Post-Traditional Governance and Bureaucracy
 |url                  = https://books.google.com/books?id=XDLfBQAAQBAJ
 |edition              = reprint
 |publication-place    = Abingdon
 |publisher            = Routledge
 |doi                  = 10.4324/9781315698670
 |isbn                 = 9781317453550
 |access-date          = 4 November 2024
 |quote                = [...] practice as art should embrace elimination of society's dependence on the idea of leader. [...] [A]s long as society demands leaders, the post-traditional practitioner should adopt the model of just leadership [...]. The post traditional practitioner should engage her day-to-day activities with consciousness of opposition to an ethic of power-down. [...] The violence of the cult of the leader is ill-understood, [...] oddly, in many democratic countries that pride themselves on the practice of democracy. The cult is so ingrained psychologically and socially that most cannot imagine a society without hierarchy. [...] There is a systematic character in the urge for the cult of leadership, and it extends throughout governance. It is crystallized in the deference to leadership in public bureaucracy and in thinking about bureaucracy [...]. The leader principle pervades bureaucratic thinking, just as it pervades economic theory and practice, politics, and personal lives. [...] Practice as art should refuse the one-dimensionality of the thinking that regards the leadership cult as mere common sense.
}}
</ref>

The idea of [[leaderism]] paints leadership and its excesses in a negative light.<ref>{{multiref2
|1={{cite book
 | title = Issues in Culture, Rights, and Governance Research
 |date = 10 January 2013| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=h5rSoAfLODEC
 | location = Atlanta, Georgia
 | publisher = ScholarlyEditions
 | publication-date = 2013
 | isbn = 9781481649261
 | access-date = 7 September 2020
 | quote = '[...] "leaderism" - as an emerging set of beliefs that frames and justifies certain innovatory changes in contemporary organizational and managerial practice - is a development of managerialism that has been utilized and applied within the policy discourse of public service reform in the UK [...]'
 |editor-first=Q. Ashton|editor-last=Acton
}}
|2={{cite book
 | last1 = Nageshwar
 | first1 = K.
 | author-link1 = K. Nageshwar
 | title = Interpreting Contemporary India
 | date = 3 November 2016
 | publisher = AuthorHouse
 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=JW55DQAAQBAJ
 | publication-date = 2016
 | isbn = 9781524665319
 | access-date = 7 September 2020
 | quote = Thus like the 'Animalism' of Orwell, democracy is gradually slipping into a quagmire to be equated with 'Leaderism'. The leader frequently closets with a select band of confidants, aka coterie, and evolves the principles of leaderism. Thus the gospel of leaderism is then flown down to the party rank and file. Loyalty to the master is perpetuated in the name of Leaderism.
}} }}</ref>