Title: Two Current Challenges to Public Leadership: Individual Autonomy and Group Polarization
Abstract: The new millennium is now almost seven years old. These years have been difficult ones for many in leadership positions in our country. The business world was rocked by the Enron and Worldcom scandals. The Catholic Church was stunned by the revelations of clergy abuse of minors. Local governments have seen police and judges indicted for criminal behavior. And, nationally citizens have been repeatedly jabbed by the news of apparently deceptive communications by numerous government officials. In this collective wake, citizens are understandably growing more and more reluctant to trust leaders of any stripe. How have we come to this social malaise? It is certainly true that poor ethical decision-making by leaders who have ended up jailed, disbarred, defrocked, dismissed, or otherwise reprimanded has contributed significantly to this situation. Numerous studies have offered analyses focused on leaders and their characterological and/or behavioral failings. However, it is important to recall that the notion of leadership is a relational concept that involves not only the leader, but also those whom the leader strives to lead. In the context of government, these are the citizens. Society is always changing in small, almost unnoticeable ways. By stepping back and looking at developments in society over a longer time-span, one can identify trends that manifest themselves more visibly. In my scanning of societal developments over the past forty to fifty years, two such trends come to the surface. My hypothesis is that (1) an intensification of the importance of the principle of autonomy and (2) the radicalization of the process of group polarization have contributed significantly to a shift in the self-understanding of citizens today. This awareness that citizens have of themselves and their values today is markedly different from that of fifty years ago. Changes in society impact the dynamic between leader and citizens. This changed dynamic challenges not only the very understanding of what a leader is and leadership is practiced in our society today, but also the way citizens respond to their leaders' decisions. By exploring these two shifts in society, I will show that the relationship between leader and citizens has been morphing toward a new reality which current political leaders have been slow to grasp, if they have grasped it at all. Part I: Individualism and the Principle of Autonomy The 1985 publication Habits of the Heart (HH) persuasively argued that individualism has been a distinctive character-trait of American life, seemingly from the very beginning of our country's existence. The authors of HH also show that this strong American tendency to pursue one's individual good has traditionally been moderated by the counterbalancing emphasis on the common good as seen in the dual practices of biblical religion and civic republicanism (see HH, 36-39). A concern raised by HH is that the social glue provided by the commonly accepted values of biblical religion and civic republicanism has been drying out, cracking, and falling away--i.e., the two major expressions of American concern for the common good have been steadily declining in importance in our society. What has emerged in the past two or three decades is an increasingly unfettered and untempered ascendancy of the principle of individualism, or autonomy, in our society. One of the consequences of this increasing emphasis on individualism is the steady fragmentation of our society into smaller and smaller social units (e.g., the nuclear family, and ultimately, a solitary individual person). These units often find themselves competing rather than collaborating as various individual goods, each defined by the separate units, are pursued. The progressive deterioration of the sense of a common good has impacted significantly on the political arena. The authors of HH note how suspicious Americans are of politics as an area in which arbitrary differences of opinion and interest can be resolved only by power and manipulation. …
Publication Year: 2007
Publication Date: 2007-06-22
Language: en
Type: article
Access and Citation
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot