The purpose of the last few blog postings is a discussion of how culture influences the rise of U.S. political leaders.
While this writer, in a previous blog posting stated, “the United States is not Europe,” let’s borrow two concepts or political constructs that, indeed, have European origin, namely,
The Rise of the “Entrepreneurial Leader”
The term, “political entrepreneur,” alive and well in Europe, may provide insight, however.
According to the World Economic Forum,
“Political entrepreneurs are people who create ideas and innovations, and act as new leaders in the field of politics. They are individuals and groups who seek to improve the science and art of politics through disruption. . . (by coming) up with new ways to solve political problems in terms of political philosophy, political technology, political campaigns, and governance.”
Admittedly, entrepreneurship is associated the Zuckerbergs, Musks, Wangs who develop and provide “products and services that fix other people’s problems” through disruption.
The WEF states,
“Political entrepreneurs are a combination of the two: people who build something from nothing to address societal problems. . . global society must figure out how it deals with: the automation of jobs; the shifting of power towards global tech companies – the new industrialists of our day; fake news distorting democratic debate; threats to net neutrality and cyber security; the ownership of citizens’ data, and new forms of labor typified by the gig economy.” (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/11/the-rise-of-the-political-entrepreneur-and-why-we-need-more-of-them/)
In simpler terms, a United States “entrepreneurial leader,” addressing both historical and emergent concerns of a U.S. electorate struggling to make sense of social and cultural “change-rapidity” deemed as “up-ending” cherished norms and conventions – changes emergent after 9/11, the circa 2008 economic downturn, the aftermath of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the latter ending ignobly – all enwrapped within the milieu of the COVID-19 pandemic, protests regarding the death of George Floyd and the October 2023 Hamas incursion into Israel, respectively.
Ascribed Meaning: is entrepreneurial ‘New’?
Entrepreneurial politics provides the political leader the ability to ascribe meaning and to bring inferred order, in both broad-brush and granular detail, often as personified through accessible and “cut to the chase” messaging to address or even vanquish complex social issues or problems traditional politicians embrace through use of incremental, traditional, contradictory or nuanced approaches.
Aspects of entrepreneurial politics, especially the ubiquity of social media, permeates U.S. politics.
Yet is entrepreneurial politics new?
All The King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren’s novel largely considered to be based on Depression Era Louisiana Governor Huey Long, depicts Long as “a man of contradictions” rather than demagogue, authoritarian, populist, socialist, fascist or other label used to describe his political approach. (https://greatbooksguy.com/2021/04/03/the-dangers-of-populism-in-all-the-kings-men/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_views_of_Huey_Long)
Ubiquitous ‘Authoritarianism’
Given ubiquitous usage in U.S. news and social media, we must deal with the term “authoritarianism.”
Of course, definitions vary.
The Oxford Review Encyclopedia of Terms:
“Authoritarian leadership refers to any situation where a leader keeps hold of as much power and authority as possible. Also known as coercive or dictatorial leadership, authoritarian leaders tend to keep all the decision-making authority to themselves and make the decisions about policies, procedures, tasks, structures, rewards and punishment themselves. The intention behind most authoritarian leaders is to retain control and they usually require unquestioning obedience and compliance. (https://oxford-review.com/oxford-review-encyclopaedia-terms/authoritarian-leadership/)
Indeed, the origins of “authoritarian” developed in 1939 when a group of researchers, led by psychologist Kurt Lewin, identified different styles of leadership, positing leadership fell into three neat categories:
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- Authoritarian Leadership (Autocratic)
- Participative Leadership (Democratic)
- Delegative Leadership (Laissez-Faire) / https://leadershipandperformance.com.au/leadership-development/lewins-leadership-theory-explained/
Research generations later gave rise to the behavioral leadership theory,’ focusing on Leaders’ actions rather than their inherent traits and newer twists, including situational leadership and coach or “manager-less” leadership.
Back to the Europeans
An additional European study, “The New State That We Are Building”: Authoritarianism and System-Justification in an Illiberal Democracy,” concludes much of what is blamed on social media of which this writer is fond of citing, political base disregard for fact-checking political rhetoric –an oxymoron – and the very fact that politicians need supporters, especially funders, and supporters and funders need politicians who may be as much a product of the culture at the time or as the electorate projects upon the political leader.
The research concludes, as especially apropos for the U.S. non-parliamentarian system of multi-party governance what Americans, especially political leaders, already count on:
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- “. . . (A) large body of research (suggests) that the populace tends to adjust its attitudes to leadership cues.” [i]
- “Nevertheless, we believe that it is, as in the West the behavior of the political elite that changes people’s attitudes, not media communication per se.” (Author’s emphasis.)
- “Those who identify with a party tend to modify their issue stances to conform to their party.”
Is the news media or social media in particular responsible for shaping public opinion?
The researchers conclude:
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- “(Online) partisan communities of like-minded individuals could be exciting themselves into adopting more and more extreme positions…”
- “However, recent results challenge this narrative; at least in Western contexts, exposure to political disagreement on social media is high and social media does not polarize people’s views.” (Writer’s comment – this study was conducted about seven years ago.)
- “(The authors say the effects of online propaganda on attitudes) “are, naturally, difficult to completely disentangle from the effects of political leadership. This is especially true if the political leadership is responsible for much of the propaganda.” (https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.703280/full Writer’s note: Quotes are embedded in the study, based on cited works.)
Moreover, politicians often combine rhetoric, speechcraft, social media with the additive of what poet T.S. Eliot’s “all truths are private truths,” to tell it “like it is.,” posturing themselves as the “one individual who can or will navigate, minimize or displace bureaucratic, regulatory or process governance – that is, encapsulated as upholding offensive political, social and cultural norms antithetic to both leader and, increasingly, adherents.
Finally, successful politicians claim they can and will be judged by results, which requires message simplification. (There are exceptions, politicians rarely campaign for the need for additional bureaucracy to reach their goals. Those accusations are left to political opponents.)
Trait theory
What we know is that politicians are, well, politicians, speaking primarily to bases that this reader contends the politician creates hoards to himself or herself – that is, loose shifting coalitions of supporters who come to believe in the politician’s “read” of things. Variances occur in messaging and communications.
Is there a difference between those politicians who may be entrepreneurial politicians and those politicians who are labelled autocratic or traditionalist politicians?
What of rhetoric that, in the least, is strident, demeaning, negative, scurrilous or considered ad hominem?
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- Voters decide the short- and long-term calculus and utility of these leaders’ political rhetoric, based on scales and degrees of engagement or non-engagement.
- Judicial bodies parse how behaviors relating to elections, including whether campaign rhetoric is a trope or whether campaign rhetoric becomes a prompt for unsettling – even violent – actions when spewed into a larger frame than political campaigning to political bases.
Self-investment
What about these dimensional considerations:
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- Do entrepreneurial or traditionalist leaders transcend ‘self’ or persona to a greater extent than authoritarian leaders – that is, once elected, the key consideration?
- Can it be said the entrepreneurial or traditionalist political leader, admittedly heavy invested in self or persona, may invest equally if not more in problems-solving as a means to transcend self or persona, providing the entrepreneur capacity to use political leverage to facilitate innovation or creativity to solve policy problems?
- Can it be said be said the autocratic leader becomes, especially to her or his base, the one or sole individual who embodies the capacity, largely through the politician’s self, to both identify and readily deal with policy issues more so than the entrepreneurial or traditionalist leader?
- In that the entrepreneurial leader, the traditionalist leader and the authoritarian leader invests themselves or personas in the political process, is the prevailing variant one of degrees of commitment regarding the politician’s projection of – rather than policy or governing process to achieve objectives – self as epitome of the process?
That the electorate struggles with these questions, making broad, jagged and delimiting conclusions as voters, may ensure the health of the U.S. Republic in a time of unprecedented change.
Moreover, pollsters conclude undecided voters in toss-up states largely will determine the outcome of federal elections, given the U.S. Electoral College process.
The voter as a political consumer, however, can invest her or his vote to ensure the entirety of the elected executive and legislative branches of government at all levels are beholden to voters rather than politicians who invest in voters.