Elites and Political Leadership: Moving Ahead

Building on the success of the inaugural Section organized by the Standing Group on Elites and Political Leadership at ECPR 2015 in Montreal we propose to extend the avenues for research and collaboration in the fields of elite and leadership studies with a series of Panels that address the continuing theoretical and empirical developments in these areas. Interest to hold Panels in the following areas has been expressed to the Standing Group: Elite political communication; law, courts and elites; roles and functions of ministerial elites; elite careers in multilevel states; elite-mass relations; theoretical and empirical developments in leadership studies and leadership in times of crisis. Some of these Panel topics (e.g. multilevel careers, leadership in times of crisis, law, courts and elites) are designed to extend and consolidate research that is currently in development and which has been addressed in previous ECPR settings. Others on the other hand are new additions proposed by the diverse and expanding membership of the Standing Group and reflects cross pollination and collaboration across standing group boundaries - something that we think is a positive development: for example, elite political communication appeals to members who also research media and politics, while the roles and functions of elites is inspired by comparative work on the roles of parliamentarians. By combining the "old" with the "new" this Section not only respects and appeals to those whose work progresses at a slow but steady burn but is also designed to attract contributions from new members who work on elites and leadership resides on the periphery in other research habitats.