Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice

12

POWER AND LEADERSHIP

Joseph S. Nye, Jr.

LEADERSHIP AND power are changing, but political scientists are not always clear about the relationship between the two.¹A few decades ago, political scientists such as Robert C. Tucker contrasted a power approach with a leadership approach.² In his classic Leadership, James MacGregor Burns famously introduced a normative dimension that distinguished leaders from power wielders. More recently, Barbara Kellerman has argued for a positivist definition and written about bad leadership.³ Moreover, many political scientists in recent years have left the field of leadership studies to psychologists and organizational behavior theorists whose research usually occurs within the narrow boundaries of the laboratory ...