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Why are some political leaders stronger than others? How do we make sense of the interaction between the leader's personality and the context that the leader faces? This book provides a unique way of approaching these questions, identifying the very different philosophical foundations that underpin the contemporary study of political leadership.

This book provides a philosophically informed, institutionalist account of political leadership. It is rooted in a certain version of the American pragmatist philosophical tradition and privileges the study of institutions as a cause of leadership outcomes. The book adopts a multi-method approach. It includes a laboratory experiment identifying the psychological effects of presidentialism and parliamentarism on leader behavior; a large-n statistical study of the impact of semi-presidentialism on voter choice; an expert survey of president/cabinet conflict in Europe; an analysis of presidential control over cabinet composition in France; and two in-depth case studies of the circumstances surrounding constitutional choice in France and Romania. This book is aimed at scholars and students of political leadership, political institutions, the philosophy of the social sciences, and research methods. Overall, it shows that an institutional account has the potential to generate well-settled beliefs about the causes of leadership outcomes.

Robert Elgie examines the relationship between semi-presidentialism and democratic performance. There are over 50 countries with a semi-presidential constitution. The book shows that the president-parliamentary sub-type is more likely to be associated with a poorer democratic performance than its premier-presidential counterpart.

This book is a study of power. In particular, it is a study of governmental power in Britain and France. Its focus is the changing relationship between the government and the central bank in the two countries, and it examines the politics of this relationship since the time when the Bank of England and the Bank of France were first created. The book begins by considering the issue of governmental control generally. It then focuses on monetary policy making, and asks what has been the role of governments in this area and what freedom have central banks enjoyed? After a detailed historical analysis of this issue in Britain and France, the authors conclude by considering the likely role of the European Central Bank.

This text examines the resources of and constraints on political leaders in contemporary political systems since 1945. It compares six countries to assess the effectiveness of political leadership and its relationship to the nature of institutional structures and political environments.

The institution of the Prime Minister in France remains remarkably understudied. There are many personalised accounts of the work of individual Prime Ministers and their relations with Presidents and government ministers. However, there has been no rigorous attempt to analyse the Prime Minister's overall influence in the decision-making process. The aim of this book is to examine the contemporary role of the Prime Minister in the French political system. By so doing, it provides a systematic analysis of the Prime Minister's influence over the policy-making process from 1981 to 1991. In particular, it examines the Prime Minister's ability to influence the content of budgetary policy and broadcasting policy. It also examines his capacity to react to crisis situations, notably during France's decision to stay in the European Monetary System in 1983 and during the wave of student unrest in 1986. The extent to which the Prime Minister is able to exercise political leadership and the conditions under which such leadership occurs are the main issues the book addresses. As such, it breaks new ground in the study of the French Prime Minister and provides a commentary on the French socialist experiment as conducted by Francois Mitterrand after 1981.

"The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll - Volume X" from Robert Green Ingersoll. Lawyer, a Civil War veteran, political leader, and orator of United States during the Golden Age of Freethought (1833-1899).