Charismatic? Ideological? Pragmatic? Leadership Styles in the Hungarian Political Life

The paper outlines a possible answer to the question: how to analyse political leaders. After giving an overview of the relevant literature in political theory, the so called CIP model elaborated by Michael Mumford (2006) and his colleagues for the past fifteen years is presented in details. Then the model is used in the analyses of three outstanding political leaders and their recent successes and failures. The CIP model states that, regarding their mental models and behaviours, the outstanding political leaders may be classified as enacting charismatic, ideological or pragmatic leadership. The political process has three interdependent components: the leadership style, the expectations of the followers and the partly given, partly constructed situation in which the leader should act possibly according to the followers’ expectations. A leader will be successful and outstanding if, in a specific situation, he or she behaves in the style that has usually been favourably received by the followers under similar conditions. The three components are interdependent in the sense that the leader may want to create a situation and/or recreate a situation in the way that suits his or her style; the followers, in turn, may be diverse in their expectations regarding the leader’s acceptable or desirable behaviours in the given or constructed situation. Neither the situation, nor the followers’ requirements, nor the leader’s behaviour is pre-given: they are parts and products of constitutive interactions. In the empirical part, the paper will present fresh research applying the CIP model on three Hungarian leaders: Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, late Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány and the leader of the radical right Gábor Vona.