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This article argues that the concept of prudence can provide valuable insights into the problems of the New Public Management. Prudence, or practical wisdom, is the ability to make sound decisions under complex, ever‐changeable conditions. Old‐style bureaucracy severely limited the discretion of most administrators but preserved a site of true prudential judgment at the peak where discreet “mandarins” policed the boundary between politics and administration. The reforms that inaugurated New Public Management dismantled this site of prudence while simultaneously attempting, in effect, to disperse prudential judgment and action throughout the service. Though raising the problem of prudence, these reforms misconceived it as the problem of how to balance new freedoms with new controls to prevent abuse or folly. This essay argues that the introduction of market mechanisms, risk‐management and cost‐benefit techniques, ethics training, performance accountability, and calls to leadership were destined to fail because they misapprehended the problem of prudence.

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Political decision-making is not only the sole responsibility of constituted government but it is the concern of various individuals and organizations involved in its interests and influence. This chapter emphasizes these interests and influence when taking into account the ability of liberal democracies to foster political pluralism, as freedom of speech and association and the legitimacy of democratic dissent make such pluralism inevitable. An ancient and non-democratic form of leadership is curiously preserved by constitutional monarchies and although this is assumed to be harmlessly ceremonial the chapter asks if this is more significant than the role of the monarch. A variety of contemporary leadership avenues in liberal democracies have resulted in the creation of a complex and opaque political system. An inquiry is made in this chapter on the necessity of a dispersed leadership as it has become inevitable in a democracy.

Persuasion is vital to the practice of democratic leadership, making speech and communication of fundamental importance. Yet democratic citizens habitually suspect political rhetoric as being either deceitfully empty or dangerously subversive. Rhetoric is thus central in democracy while paradoxically appearing either useless or pernicious. A consequence of this paradox for democratic leaders is that they are forced to avoid fine oratory in favour of a rhetorical style that sounds un-rhetorical, seeming to be plain factually-informative speech. This unique democratic form of rhetoric, that we have called an artless art, seeks to instil trust and to avoid appearing to talk down to the sovereign people. It is both helped and rendered problematic by the media, the essential communicative means in modern society, whose current dominance presents ever-new challenges and opportunities to democratic leaders.