Democratic Political Leadership in the New Media Age: A Farewell to Excellence?

Abstract

This article looks into the ambiguous effects that 'mediatisation' in its various forms has had, or may have, on the conditions for good democratic political leadership by prime ministers and presidents in established western democracies. For the purposes of this article, good democratic political leadership is defined in terms of three fundamental criteria: authenticity, effectiveness and responsibility. Whereas the 'new media age' offers political chief executives some distinct opportunities with regard to all three criteria, these tend to be outweighed by a wealth of media-related constraints which in sum make good democratic political leadership considerably more difficult and demanding than ever. Understood as a publicly responsible profession, contemporary political science, and comparative executive leadership research more specifically, faces two inter-related tasks: to penetrate empirically the notorious smokescreens of executive politics, and to provide the public with reasonable standards for evaluating the performance of executive leaders.

Putting a Face on It

“…The personalities of politicians have become a key part of mediated stories and narratives crucial for voter identification, emotional connection and interest (Alexander, 2011;Langer, 2010;Stanyer, 2013). Political leaders also apply personalization strategies themselves, creating an appealing image based on attractive personal traits and characteristics in order to seize media attention and market their policies (Campus, 2010;Helms, 2012). Personalization has been further triggered by social media, which allow politicians to bypass journalists and to communicate directly with the public, and in so doing more freely create the desired image.…”

A paedophile scan to prevent child sexual abuse in child care? A thought experiment to problematize the notion of alignment in Responsible Research and Innovation

“…This is a far cry from the potential positive contribution the media could have. Rather than providing a forum for public dialogue, it appears to increase the risk for hasty or bad decisions (Helms 2012 , Kitzinger 2002 ). Moreover, media coverage on (child) sex offenders has been observed as a source of political capital.…”

Political leaders and the media. Can we measure political leadership images in newspapers using computer-assisted content analysis?

“…Despite the scholarly attention for leaders’ character traits, current literature is still ambiguous about the amount and nature of the character dimensions that matter for political leaders, which results in the absence of a widely accepted framework or coherent conceptualization of leadership characteristics (e.g. Blondel 1987 ; Helms 2012 ). 4 Although there is disagreement about the number of dimensions and their specific content, most scholars accept the notion that the number of dimensions is limited, usually no more than six (Garzia 2011 ; Bittner 2011 ).…”

“…The different perspectives on leadership characteristics are insufficiently integrated, which results in the absence of a widely accepted framework or coherent conceptualization of leader character dimensions (e.g. Blondel 1987 ; Helms 2012 ). The second aim of this paper is, therefore, to provide a conceptualization of leadership character dimensions that is on the one hand comprehensive enough to integrate the different perspectives in the field and sufficiently extensive to differentiate between different dimensions and on the other hand is parsimonious enough to be feasible in empirical studies.…”