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81772 - Leadership in Contemporary Democracies

Academic Year 2016/2017

  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
  • Campus: Forli
  • Corso: Second cycle degree programme (LM) in International relations and diplomatic affairs (cod. 8783)

    Also valid for Campus of Bologna
    Second cycle degree programme (LM) in Politics Administration and Organization (cod. 8784)

Learning outcomes

The aim of the course is to analyse the phenomenon of political leadership, both from a general and theoretical point of view and from the perspective of its role in contemporary and presidentialized democracies. At the end of the course students are supposed to be able to describe and analyse the relationships among political institutions, political parties and political leaders and their transformations, as well as to evaluate how these transformations influence the working of democratic political systems.

Course contents

  • Leaders and political leadership
  • The leader and the followers: charisma and soft power, transactional and transformative leadership
  • Styles and psychology of political leaders
  • The presidentialization of politics and the “audience democracy”
  • Leadership and populism
  • Leadership and the mediatisation of politics

 

  • Charles de Gaulle: a charismatic leader
  • Leaders and the presidentialisation of political institutions: United Kingdom, France and Italy
  • Leaders and the presidentialization of political parties: the Left and the Right in Italy and France
  • The «État spectacle»: Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy
  • U. S. A. and the presidential leadership
  • Leadership in the European Union

Seminar: discussion about Christian Salmon La Cérémonie Cannibale. De la performance politique

Readings/Bibliography

1) B. Manin, The principles of Representative government, Oxford University Press, 1997.

2) C.-P. David, Au sein de la Maison-Blanche, Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, chapters 1 and  3 (pages 206-229).

3) C. Salmon, La Cérémonie Cannibale. De la performance politique, Paris, Fayard, 2013.

Other readings will be distributed in class

Teaching methods

Teaching lessons and seminars

Assessment methods

All students will be evaluated on the basis of participation in class discussions (20 per cent) and the elaboration of a written work at the end of the course (80%).

Teaching tools

Power point, video

Office hours

See the website of Sofia Ventura