The Myth of the Strong Leader Political Leadership in the Modern Age (Audible Audio Edition) Archie Brown Jonathan Cowley Random House Audio Books
Download As PDF : The Myth of the Strong Leader Political Leadership in the Modern Age (Audible Audio Edition) Archie Brown Jonathan Cowley Random House Audio Books
Selected as one of the Best Books of 2016 by Bill Gates
All too frequently, leadership is reduced to a simple dichotomy the strong versus the weak. Yet, there are myriad ways to exercise effective political leadership - as well as different ways to fail. We blame our leaders for economic downfalls and praise them for vital social reforms, but rarely do we question what makes some leaders successful while others falter. In this magisterial and wide-ranging survey of political leadership over the past hundred years, renowned Oxford politics professor Archie Brown challenges the widespread belief that strong leaders - meaning those who dominate their colleagues and the policy-making process - are the most successful and admirable.
In reality, only a minority of political leaders will truly make a lasting difference. Though we tend to dismiss more collegial styles of leadership as weak, it is often the most cooperative leaders who have the greatest impact. Drawing on extensive research and decades of political analysis and experience, Brown illuminates the achievements, failures, and foibles of a broad array of 20th century politicians. Whether speaking of redefining leaders like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Margaret Thatcher, who expanded the limits of what was politically possible during their time in power, or the even rarer transformational leaders who played a decisive role in bringing about systemic change - Charles de Gaulle, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Nelson Mandela, among them - Brown challenges our commonly held beliefs about political efficacy and strength.
Overturning many of our assumptions about the 20th century's most important figures, Brown's conclusions are both original and enlightening. The Myth of the Strong Leader compels us to reassess the leaders who have shaped our world - and to reconsider how we should choose and evaluate those who will lead us into the future.
The Myth of the Strong Leader Political Leadership in the Modern Age (Audible Audio Edition) Archie Brown Jonathan Cowley Random House Audio Books
The idea that the more power one individual leader wields, the more we should be impressed by that leader is an illusion. Where corners are cut because one leader is sure he knows best, problems follow, and they can be on a disastrous scale, according to Archie Brown in this book. The book examines the leadership styles of a large range of political leaders including dictators and democratic leaders.The author’s essential thesis is that it is unhelpful to rate political leaders on a single strong-weak scale given that there are so many different dimensions to effective leadership, and indeed leaders who are unconstrained by others in making their decisions tend to make significantly poorer decisions. Mao Zedong was a better leader in the early days of the Chinese Communist Party than when he acquired a position of absolute power. Tony Blair made his poorest decisions when he made them without adequate discussion with others.
The book tells interesting stories about a very large number of political leaders from the past century. The author has a great deal of personal knowledge of many of those leaders, and the book is an excellent history book. However, it is hard to read the book without observing that the best leaders are rarely the ones who float to the top of the political process, whether in democracies or in dictatorships. The author has provided extensive material to demonstrate the dangers of the “strong” political leader, but the stories do not coalesce into a neat description of the characteristics of a “good” political leader.
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The Myth of the Strong Leader Political Leadership in the Modern Age (Audible Audio Edition) Archie Brown Jonathan Cowley Random House Audio Books Reviews
Good book. Leadership at its core.
Required reading to understand the use of history.
I like this book because I'm such a fan of collaborative leadership. This book shows why authoritarian leadership is not helpful and not even strong.
Its a good book for understanding the type of political leadership that can be found in history and what are actions were the ones that made presidents o prime ministers successful. I wish it addressed a bit more on the personalities of the leaders describe more how they were and how they handled they’re position in government.
Autocratic leaders almost always fail at some point with disastrous consequences for themselves as well as the people they lead. Consensus builders achieve lasting results. The book is a history lesson on how leaders of 20th and 21st century shaped the world that we live in today.
Finally an analysis of what really works in leadership! A strong leader is fine if they have the bandwidth and perfect intelligence to make the correct decision every time. This is folly. The better way is to get all the intelligent, diverse input then lead to a decision. Fascinating!
The book starts with a simple statement which to me was only obvious after I had read it concentrating power in a “strong leader” means allocating it arbitrarily to the leader’s personal assistants.
Because no single human can cope with the increased volume of information and decisions - despite the myths these “strong leaders” like to perpetuate about themselves - the decisions get made by the close staff of these leaders.
This leaves out the other people who should have led on these decisions, eg cabinet members who are of higher calibre and expertise and experience than the advisers.
Furthermore, more discussion with more people gets better decisions. This is obvious with the likes of Hitler, Mussolini, Mao and Stalin as leaders who accumulated power. But the book is full of examples of other leaders to make the case.
I wish history at schools was taught about these leaders and events, the 20th century is about more than Hitler but sadly that’s too often all children are taught about.
I don’t know that the author’s case is conclusively proven - it’s hard to make this into a scientific argument. But it’s fascinating to read and - especially as the author dislikes Tony Blair greatly - to read it in light of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership style. A really enjoyable and thoughtful book.
The idea that the more power one individual leader wields, the more we should be impressed by that leader is an illusion. Where corners are cut because one leader is sure he knows best, problems follow, and they can be on a disastrous scale, according to Archie Brown in this book. The book examines the leadership styles of a large range of political leaders including dictators and democratic leaders.
The author’s essential thesis is that it is unhelpful to rate political leaders on a single strong-weak scale given that there are so many different dimensions to effective leadership, and indeed leaders who are unconstrained by others in making their decisions tend to make significantly poorer decisions. Mao Zedong was a better leader in the early days of the Chinese Communist Party than when he acquired a position of absolute power. Tony Blair made his poorest decisions when he made them without adequate discussion with others.
The book tells interesting stories about a very large number of political leaders from the past century. The author has a great deal of personal knowledge of many of those leaders, and the book is an excellent history book. However, it is hard to read the book without observing that the best leaders are rarely the ones who float to the top of the political process, whether in democracies or in dictatorships. The author has provided extensive material to demonstrate the dangers of the “strong” political leader, but the stories do not coalesce into a neat description of the characteristics of a “good” political leader.
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