Political Leadership Styles and Communication

As a consequence of the personalization of politics and the crisis of partisanship contemporary democracies are characterized by an increasing emphasis on the relationship between leaders and citizens. Modern political communication tends to present leaders as the key actors in projecting a political vision and offering solutions. In answer to such developments, scholars have returned to studying the role of leaders in a systematic way. The subject of political leadership style, however, in particular in conjunction with the leader’s way of communicating with followers and citizens, is under-researched. The literature on leadership styles has been long dominated by studies from the organization theory. Accounts on what skills and traits enable an individual to exercise political leadership can also be found in diverse fields such as political psychology, decision-making analysis, gender studies, communication studies. This workshop aims at establishing a dialogue between such different disciplinary and methodological approaches in order to develop a new and original research agenda on political leadership style and communication. We welcome contributions based on different methods and dealing with different topics. We invite the participants to focus on one or more of the following issues: a) what skills and personal traits can be regarded as key components of the leadership style; what is the influence of styles of leadership on the relationship with followers, collaborators and citizens; b) how leaders use rhetoric to interpret their role and how leaders’ styles are represented by media; c) how gender relates with the leadership style and how gender stereotypes influence the media coverage and the public perception of female leaders; d)how leaders are guided by a set of ideological beliefs and orientations and how those values condition leadership styles; e) how institutional roles shape the style of leadership and how institutional factors contribute to influence the communication of leaders.