Liberalism and leadership: Lockean roots

LIBERALISM AND LEADERSHIP: LOCKEAN ROOTS

David R. Weaver* Saginaw Valley State University

Liberal thought has paid scant attentiqn to leadership as a conceptual issue. Liberalism has emphasized constraint of public authority yet it has expected leaders to rise to its service. What is the meaning of leadership to a political philosophy so individualistic, contingent and egalitarian? This question opens a new perspective to much examined subjects. Students of leadership and students of liberalism have made no attempt to unite their interests. But, leadership, understood in contemporary terms and applied retrospectively to liberalism, can be a fruitful line of investigation. John Locke’s Second Treatise serves as a place to begin. Concern with public power and authority has confused them with leadership to such an extent in the liberal mind that leadership has been largely taken for granted as a function of institutional authority. Liberalism’s focus on limiting public authority has distorted its comprehension of the role of leaders in the polity. Yet, Locke’s discussion of prerogative wrestles with the necessity of leadership which reaches beyond institutional authority to achieve the public good. Locke’s argument may be read to support a view that leadership is necessary, but not sufficient, to the creation, preservation and progress of liberal society.

What are the meanings, purposes and tasks of leadership in a liberal society? What is its meaning in a political philosophy and ideology which has taken on such of individualistic, contingent and egalitarian cant ? If the content and trajectory leadership as a concept can be traced in the evolution of liberal culture and ideology, how can it be done? And, to what end? Such questions may have considerable contemporary import judged simply in the light of the frequent calls around the world for leadership, liberal values, and institutions made evident by events ranging from constant appeals for leadership in American political campaigns to the role played by liberal economic and political models in the dramatic changes sweeping through the *Direct all correspondence to: David R. Weaver, Department University, 2250 Pierce Road, University Center, MI 48710. Leadership Quarterly, 2(3), 157-174. Copyright @ 199 1 by JAI Press Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISSN: 1048-9843

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Communist world. Recognizing this aspect of our contemporary situation should cause us to address the perplexing issues of our poor understandings of both leadership and liberalism in the empirical world, but even more to take some interest in the relationship between the two. It is possible that in so doing, a new and useful perspective on both may be gained. One short essay cannot hope to address all such matters but, rather, must discuss some issues of concern and focus upon some useful subject as a way of entering the process of developing this new perspective. In this essay I propose to discuss some of the reasons for confusion in contemporary (and historical) liberalism about leadership and to show how and why a classic example of liberal political thought contains implications for those concerned with leadership today. I will trace significant roots of liberal understandings, beliefs, and practices regarding leadership by looking at John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government. This work is taken to be appropriate for my purposes more for its historical revelation of the emerging liberalism of its own time and for its impact and influence on the evolution of liberalism in general than for its strict philosophical value. This essay is not, in any strict sense, an exercise in the “history of ideas.“Nor is it directed to specialists in political thought, although their tolerant reading would be welcome. Its purpose is not to engage in yet another exegesis or interpretation of Locke’s work-that has already been well done by others, such as John Dunn (1969, 1980) and Peter Laslett (1960), upon whom I shall rely at important points. Nor is it intended to provide a morphology of leadership as a concept-that has been provided by Ralph Stogdill and Bernard Bass (1981: 516). However, this essay does intend to explore ways in which a classic political thinker, such as Locke, might shed light on current leadership problems and on contemporary thinking about leadership. This is a perspective that has been overlooked by political theorists as well as by practitioners and quantitative social scientists.’ This effort is not undertaken on the assumption that the Lockean text is itself a “selfsufficient object of inquiry and understanding.” (Skinner, 1969: 4) Rather, it is treated as a revelation and source of ideas which have become important in the broad historical, cultural, and intellectual context of liberal society as it has evolved. There is some risk in this approach of appearing to assign meanings to Locke he did not intend to convey or of ‘reading in’ a doctrine which he “Might in principle have meant to state but in fact had no intention to convey.“‘(Skinner: 9) But, in the real historical, empirical world, the meanings that are conveyed, intended or not, are the meanings that count most. Thus, a close reading of textual meaning and logic is here less important than exploring the nature of concepts which have, however correctly or incorrectly, become elements in the cultural parlance of liberalism and thus effect our thinking.2 The fact that Locke did not use the word “leadership” in the Second Treatise at all (and the words “lead” or “led” appear very infrequently in his work) is an irrelevant concern if his ideas, directly or indirectly, contribute to liberal cognitions of leadership. The philosophical consistency and logical coherence (or incoherence) of Locke, liberalism or leadership theory is a secondary matter of interest more to those focused upon abstract consistencies than to one more concerned with the “ordered chaos” of the empirical world. (See Skinner: 19) It is because Locke’s ideas, undeniably, had so great an influence upon the development of liberalism that we may look to his work more for clues to mysteries in the evolution of a political culture and less for eternal, or even consistent, doctrines. Whether Locke intended to impact the future in such

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a way is, from this point of view, irrelevant if the impact is there, nonetheless. (See Skinner: 29) Any philosophical value found in this discussion is, therefore, coincidental. My concern is with learning more about the evolving empirical reality of concepts and their uses. In common usage and in scholarship both liberalism and leadership are labels representing conceptual universes which are much abused and about which there is much confusion. They are ubiquitous, ambiguous and controversial. They became both pejorative epithet and claim to merit. In the United States, the word liberal has come to be widely misused as a partisan label with, for some, strongly negative connotations. In the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe, liberalism stands for a positive and hopeful growth in freedom. Everywhere, it seems, “strong leadership” is to be admired, if not understood. Both terms carry powerful negative and positive ideological implications. The relation between these two illusive conceptual universes has yet meaningfully to be addressed.

SOME THOUGHTS

ABOUT LEADERSHIP,

LIBERALISM AND POLITICS

As concepts, liberalism, leadership and politics are elusively abstract. Any one of them is fertile ground for dispute and confusion. Any attempt to take them together must challenge conventional thinking. Those reared in a liberal culture may be hard pressed to explain it to ourselves, let alone to others. The understandings of the student of political thought are not readily conveyed to laypeople. The same may be said of scholars of leadership. Yet, undeniably, both likely share a common cultural and cognitive heritage. The principal audience to whom this essay is addressed may be much more comfortable with leadership, as a concept, than with “liberalism.“So, a brief explanation is in order. Here liberalism should be understood in a broad historical and philosophical sense to encompass a diverse body of political and social thought, mixed with evolving practice, with deep roots in classic Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian history and tradition. For the most part, however, it may be best to comprehend liberalism as a trend in thought which pushed to the forefront of western thought during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and became dominant (especially) in the AngloAmerican world of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In a very general way, liberalism is a more or less cohesive pattern of political and social thought which stresses the importance of the individual in and to society and justifies political order and institutions on the fundamental philosophical premise of rational individual consent. Thus, in a most basic way, liberalism sees society and government as authorized by, and accountable to, its members. It is in this fashion that the notion of social contract, constitutionalism (limited, responsible government), private property and the idea that secular authority is derived from the ‘will of the people’can be identified as fundamental to liberalism. In the wake of the American and French Revolutions ideas of democracy had grafted onto liberalism by the mid-nineteenth century. Along the way, liberalism became an ideology in the sense that many of its philosophical tenets, political, social, and economic prescriptions became embedded in popular belief systems. The economic individualism of many contemporary American conservatives shares a common rootstock with contemporary American “liberals” who are apt to stress individual social

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and political rights. In a broad historic, philosophical and ideological sense and, perhaps most important, in a cultural sense, both are liberals. It may be helpful, therefore, to caution the reader not to confuse modern partisan rhetoric within a liberal polity with its generic characteristics. An attempt to assess the meaning and usage of the word “1eadership”in contemporary (or historical) usage is likely to find that it is a concept at least as ubiquitous, ambiguous, abused and controversial as the concept “liberal.” The word itself was little used until the 1830s and was not commonly used until several decades later. (See Stogdill; in Bass: 7) What we would recognize as significant discussions relevant to the notion of leadership, however, were undertaken by many notable thinkers of earlier times, including Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Plutarch, Machiavelli, Locke, the Federalists, and J. S. Mill, among others. Interestingly, most of these were important to the evolution of liberal thought, as well.3 Also, as Wildavsky has richly demonstrated, the Mosaic tradition provides a manifold source of ideas and imagery, and even, as will be discussed below, a bifurcated vision of leadership. Looking back to Locke will add to this framework by discerning in his work a similarly bifurcated vision of leadership based upon the Christian theological tradition so central to his argument. In each case can be found a delineation of concerns with a fundamental struggle between authority, and the claimed need for it, on the one hand, and, to use Wildavsky’s term, “equity,” on the other, which seem to identify a fundamental issue in liberalism, and in liberal thinking about leadership. While Locke did not use the word, he employed many words implying concern about “leadership.” He seems to have taken much for granted about the implications of leadership in his argument and in the use of such words as “authority,” “executive,” and “magistrate,“(To this day, perhaps especially in liberal societies, it is common usage to imply that leadership is subsumed in the possession and exercise of authority or in the holding of position or “title.r’)5 Yet, his discussion of the role of the “father” in the society reveals a sensitivity to the “nursing father” imagery drawn from the Biblical story of Moses’ struggles as a leader. Most particularly his attempt to deal with the notion of “prerogative” suggests an awareness of a necessity for leadership and of the peculiarly prudential ethics encountered with the demand that a leader might be required to violate the law or wishes of society in order to serve God and/ or to serve the greater good (hopefully, both at the same time). As will be seen below, Locke’s discussion of prerogative draws our attention to the question of how people’s expectations of leaders may require action which threatens to transmute the obligation to obey authority into an obligation to transform it. In brief contemporary terms the issue might be phrased this way: ‘If a leader is given the right to exercise power over others (authority) in order to meet the needs of a community, that right is contingent upon its proper exercise.’ But what constitutes “proper exercise’? This must be one reason why liberal societies continue to be unsure about leadership in both practice and concept. The unwillingness to perceive, or the inability to resolve, such dilemmas may explain why so many people have come to use the word leadership as an abstract catch-all. It is often used simply to identify status or position while for many it speaks to a felt imperative. Despite numerous attempts an accepted, empirically operational, definition of leadership has not been developed.

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Interestingly, most modern attempts to formulate a conceptual basis for the scholarly/scientific study of leadership have been undertaken by scholars rooted in liberal cultures. But scholars of liberalism (and democratic theory) have paid scant attention to leadership theory or research and students of the latter have returned the favor.6 Given the emergent significance of rationalistic individualism in liberal thought and culture during the last three centuries it should not be surprising to find such ambivalence. For Locke, individual autonomy was necessary to allow each person to choose to serve the will of God; that is, “rational action was tied logically to the strenuous discharge of a series of duties to God,” (See Dunn, 1969: 266) whereas later, with the fallen from philosophical grace of the natural law thesis, individual autonomy became necessary mainly to serve the material self-interest of the individual and the community. In this way the notion of a higher moral law outside of human determination, but available to human discovery, was replaced by a more ambiguous set of prescriptions based upon uncertainty, rationality and prudential self-interest as guide to social and political life. Leadership may be needed to realize self-interest through a society or polity, and thus allowed on prudential grounds, but it carries with it a persistent threat to individual autonomy. So, built into liberal thought and culture there is both a marked desire for leadership and distrust of it. The perplexing nature of autonomy in a liberal polity is revealed by the query ‘if the rational individual may delegate authority; and only that delegation can make it legitimate, why, or to what extent, would he allow himself to be led beyond the explicitly Locke had three main elements to his understood purview of that delegation?” multifaceted answer to the question: (1) it might be necessary to execute the purposes of God, (2) prudence; and, (3) many people would respond to authority thoughtlessly and impulsively. The presumption that individual autonomy is sacrificed in the delegation of authority seems to deny to liberal thinking the perception that some kinds of leadership might actually increase autonomy. But such denial easily springs from the thesis that the individual is the original repository of autonomy in the natural state. The implication is clear and powerful: leadership involves a social relationship in which the individual exchanges some degree of autonomy for the satisfaction of some other need.7 Liberal difficulty with leadership is further illustrated by an old and persistent issue: if leaders acquire legitimate power (authority) do they also acquire the right to exercise initiative and/or prerogative which can be legitimized only after the fact? Clearly, leadership must be understood as more than the exercise of authority once gained. It must also be understood as a critical element in the process by which authority is created and sustained. In this way we can catch a glimpse of the nature of leadership in a liberal polity as necessary, but insufficient, to the service of its moral imperatives. Liberalism has contributed to confusion about the meaning of leadership and a growing concern about its role and significance in human society. Some of the confusion may be derived from a tradition which, perhaps due to the concern for individual autonomy, dichotomizes social life into the “public” (read “political”) and “private” (read “non-political”). The tendency seems to be to see politics only in the public arena but leadership in both-even, perhaps, among more than a few, to see ‘true’ leadership as non-political. However logically or empirically absurd the perception may be it has had its cultural uses, at least insofar as it has helped to simplify and order social life.

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It has encouraged and reinforced artificial cognitive, and conceptually limiting, orientations. Principal among the latter is the commonplace notion that politics, as a distinctive pattern of behavior, is only part of public affairs and not of the private, or, perhaps at a slightly more sophisticated level, is legitimate only in public affairs. (See Ricci: 212-215, 217-220) So, too, is public authority, power, and leadership somehow conceived as fundamentally different from the private. A delusion that has often seduced the student of leadership (especially those from a liberal culture) is that executive, administrative or otherwise authoritative decisions taken in “private” organizations, despite the fact that they necessarily represent collective action, are not, or should not be considered, political. That which is defined by cultural practice as “private” need not be understood logically or empirically to be non-political nor should that which we call “public” be considered the sole arena of politics, yet liberal culture does SO.~ Just as a generic conception of politics is hindered by such biases so to is a conception of leadership cognitively separated into many conveniently self-limiting categories: e.g., “business leadership,” “political leadership,” “moral leadership,” and the like. Failure to deal with the meaning of leadership left a general usage in which the word became little more than a convenient adjectival modifier. Arguably, such notions may have their historical roots in the liberal stress on individual autonomy as a function of freedom from interference by public authority and thus inhibits clear perception of basic political behaviors common to all kinds of leadership irrespective of situation. Sharpening such perceptions may be therapeutic. Although it is easy to see, many choose to ignore the possibility (perhaps even a high order of probability) that the “office” or the office-holder may not be the locus of leadership in any social structure. After all, if formal authority is a creature of the community will, how can its holder not also be the leader? The concern with power and authority in Government effectively diverts attention in liberal cultures from the power and authority in other social organizations, and, more importantly, from the fact that power arises from many varied sources lying within the complex reciprocities of social life. There has been a near traditional overemphasis on the role of formal, institutional authority as the source of legitimate power and a reluctance to accept the behavioral observation that, as Etzioni put it “powers differ in the likelihood that they will be considered legitimate by those subjected to them.” (14, 15) Clearly, one might officially represent, delegate or exercise executive authority without leading. Still, people have been, in an important sense, acculturated to expect that those who, by appropriate procedure, come to hold public authority will also, perforce, exercise “leadership.” Again, it is as if the contingent obligation to obey duly constituted authority also carries a counterpart obligation on the part of the office holder to perform beyond specified functions. Clearly, a leader does more than perform an office; she/ he defines it, and is defined by it, by virtue of intricate reciprocities of behaviors and perceptions. Certainly, leadership is an abstract label for a socio-political process of significance in all human social activity. Government is one arena for it and the “private” group another and, in both, politics must be its medium. It is useful to borrow from David Easton’s and Harold Lasswell’s classic definitions of politics to suggest that leadership is a generically political role that has something important to do with initiative in the definition, articulation, and/ or authoritative allocation of values in any social construct (Lasswell:

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13; Easton: 143-144; Hah and Bartol: 119-120; Weaver: 83-90). Thus, we may operate from the premise that leadership is a social and political process more than a personal or institutional property. As such, it is to be found in any human group. This view of the empirical nature of leadership can provide some light in the ideological and cultural thicket of liberalism. Liberalism is a system of thought and practice in which value constructs are intricately, and often inconsistently, interwoven and sometimes confused with procedural constructs. Means are easily confused with ends. A good example, as noted above, is the notion that individual autonomy varies positively, possibly directly, with the limitation of governmental power. Hence, by inference, leaders of any kind must inhibit autonomy. Indeed, Liberalism accepts that politics involves leadership, in the Aristotlean sense of ‘helmsmanship,‘but it is confused by the observation that the reverse is also true because it challenges the public-private, political-non-political dichotomies so central to its imagery and motivation and because it undermines the myth that is it possible (and desirable!) for the individual to be outside politics and for a leader to be above it. Not only is politics leadership, as Tucker (1981) put it, but leadership is always political. A common liberal assumption is that, that which is political is that which necessarily is assigned to the community and its authority. While liberalism, in varying degree, accepts that government is requisite to society (and thus there must be leaders of sorts to hold public office) there is a strong antipathy towards “public” authority or power while there is substantial tolerance of “private” power. The rational citizen should need direction only in extraordinary circumstance. Thus, much of liberal thinking is negatively focused on issues of defining and restricting authority roles in public affairs. It is negative, of course, because it concentrates upon limiting or preventing the abuse of public authority rather than upon its constructive use. This reveals itself as an inherent bias against governmental initiative and leadership by any governmental office-holder. What was, in Locke, a primary concern with the limits in the obligation to obey public authority has become a general concern with limiting the scope of (legitimate) authority itself. As established interests may be protected or promoted by the latter, the initiative available to holders of public authority (leadership capacity), whether it be by persuasion or preemption, is likely to be reduced. Many contemporary liberals, from a wide variety of issues perspectives, would insist that such restraints on leadership are essential to “preserve” individual freedom. More cynically, and perhaps more accurately, however, leadership initiative is desirable or not depending upon whose interest is served. If there is a general interest to be served, is leadership, not merely authority, necessary therefore? Locke’s thinking may serve as a useful foil to begin addressing this issue and to help sort out the meaning of leadership in a liberal polity.

REFLECTIONS

ON LOCKE AND LEADERSHIP

The several images of leadership found in the Second Treatise reflect Locke’s consideration of the origins of the polity, and the functional demands to be placed upon the state, government and holders of authority. In turn, these reflect his central concern with the nature and extent of limits upon political obligation. More basic yet, it must be recalled, is Locke’s controlling belief that human obligation to obey God and respect

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the Law of Nature-a fundamentally theological concern-was unlimited. (Dunn, 1969: 15, 36) The latter obligation necessarily made the worldly obligations of this life, however important to the polity, quite dependent upon the former. For Locke, “it is God who constitutes the order of law which instructs men in their duties at all points in the world. But the duties are made actual...by the institutions of political communities.” (Dunn, 1969: 15) Clearly, he accepted Aristotle’s dictum “that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary but expedient.” (Jowett: 58) But for the individu~, the necessity of the polity and its rulers, and obedience to their authority, is found in the human person’s need to make the correct religious choices, or, put another way, to possess rectitude. For Locke, this may be the essence of human freedom. All other choices, be they economic or political, are prudential in nature and made expedient by the nature of life whereas religious choices are made absolute by eternity. Making the correct moral choices is the ultimate duty and obligation of all people, leaders included. Only the existence of God (universal moral duty) brings order to Locke’s state of nature. (Dunn, 1969: 24) It is peopled by autonomous individuals governed only by the law of nature and independent of the “will of any other man.” (4)9 Thus, at first, it appears as if men in the state of nature would be leaderless, subject to none whether by volition or force. But such a conclusion would be to make the mistake of assuming that the absence of anyone with authority over others (i.e., the capacity to assert one’s will against the will of others) means the absence of leadership. It can only mean the absence of leadership having a capacity to exercise power arbitrarily. Here, the casual assumption that leadership is a quality automatically or naturally attached to formal authority, status or position does some harm. This leaves open the question of leadership by initiative through reasoned persuasion. Overtly, Locke is concerned most with the subjection of one person to another’s will and not with the subtleties of persuasion. But his argument can be taken to suggest interesting lines of thought about the importance of non-authoritarian leadership. He cannot be faulted for not considering a conceptual problem which only now reaches our attention but, to someone concerned with the subject of leadership, it is of interest that the same omission continued in subsequent liberal thought and it is a problem that seems to persist. In simple terms, under what conditions does leadership occur? Does it occur only after the creation and delegation of authority to the polity? Clearly, leadership which articulates conditions which make the polity desirable and necessary must precede the formal roles created for the polity. It is fairly easy to misread Locke’s argument in the Second Treatise as presenting a case for the historical development of the polity and the limits upon its authority but it must be remembered that he is focused upon the issue of the legitimacy of the polity more than its derivation. The state of nature, as used by Locke, is not a historical predicate to society and polity but a coexistent condition. As Dunn puts it, the state of nature is “any relationship between any men which is not modified by particular acts of direct aggression or by the particular explicit reciprocal understandings which institute a shared political society.” (1969: I1 1) It is implied that leadership would be required to bring about the social compact as well as to implement it. Locke says that men “by their own consents they make themselves members of some politic society” (15) yet, “it is not every compact that puts an end to the state of nature between men”

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since “rulers of independent governments” with respect to each other, remain in it. Or, in another familiar case, the bargain made by two individuals in the wilderness as “a Swiss and Indian in the woods of America, are binding to them, though they are perfectly in a state of nature in reference to one another.” (14) They remain “perfectly” in the state of nature because each retains full right of sanction to enforce the bargain and has not transferred any part of that right. Here, Locke is most concerned with a somewhat rough notion of the subjection of one person’s will to another and not with the subtleties of persuasion. The implication, however, that the individual subject to a ruler (read leader, in this case) has become so by choice, retaining some relation to the natural state, is strongly suggestive of the reciprocities of action between leaders and followers. But, by virtue of the choices they make people modify their relationship to the state of nature. By accepting a relationship to a polity they do not cease to be natural creatures remaining subject to natural law but hold obligation to God and the community at the same time. Men remain subject to the law of nature even though they ‘remove’ themselves from the state of nature by consenting to the polity and its sanctions. On this point, Locke’s theology should not be mistaken for his psychology. Divine injunction and the state of nature operated within history. The social and political world is constructed by human beings within the state of nature and subject to natural law. In the state of nature argument, government is a human invention and not necessarily willed by God. Leaders, be they kings or not, therefore must be as artificial as government. So, it would seem that leadership cannot be “natural” to human society. But Locke’s version of the argument stresses the possibility of natural cooperation among people! In this construction we can discern some of liberalisms’ confusion about the nature, role and location of leadership. Does leadership occur only after a delegation of authority in the Polity? If so, leadership as initiative in action is not conceptually possible except, perhaps, within the restricted scope of authoritative prerogative. On this tack, liberalism must be troubled by issues of delegated authority and initiated delegation. How may delegated authority (the “public leader’) act and may initiative rest there or is it bound to the original consent which first created the polity? It appears, so far as Locke was concerned, that the two individuals in the wilderness, by reason of their bargaining, can neither constitute, nor institute, any kind of society of polity, however transient, by themselves. The particular sort of bargain which transfers the right and power of sanction to the community and its agents implies that the Lockean civil society is not possible with less than three persons. The source of this apparent oddity is Locke’s premise that since only God has the right to take life, the individual cannot rightfully transfer to another, or to the community, power over his life. Absent such power, two persons need a third, at a minimum, to accept delegated agency and to enforce a bargain when, due to human defect, the parties thereto cannot maintain it autonomously. The issue of one person persuading or influencing another in a diadic relation is ignored as a matter of politics and leadership and can occur only in the realm of triadic hierarchy. By inference, where there is cooperation there is no leadership or government. Thus, although he aimed to specify the limits of political obligation and power, Locke contributed to the structure of inferences in liberal culture separating private from public and leadership and government from natural life, thus leaving us with the perplexing notions of equalities of rights and hierarchies of power. (14)

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The centrality of religious motive, Biblical text and tradition to Locke’s perspective, and its importance to liberalism in general, make it useful to take further note of Wildavsky’s analysis of the story of Moses. The same conflict between equality and hierarchy can be perceived in that case. Once we understand that the Bible is written from the dual premises of hierarchy and equity, both of which, in differing proportions, Moses embraced, its “binocular vision” (Citing Alter: 148) becomes explicable. These two ways of life, moreover, are deliberately left in contention so that future generations.. .can make their own compromises among these perennially valid but incomplete visions of the good life. (212)

That equity wars with hierarchy Moses “came to understand from bitter personal experience. But equity also has desirable aspects. So he sought to contain its energies by enveloping equity within a network of hierarchical institutions.” (Wildavsky: 214) Attempting this “impossible union of opposites”is a duty of a leader and is what causes “Moses to mock himself as a “nursing father.” (Wildavsky: 216) Locke was aware of the image of the “nursing father” and seems to have accepted it as an appropriate definition of leadership. But his use of it, in any explicit way, is tied to his thoughts on the role of the conjugal family, fathers and traditional societies in human history. When families, under the natural leadership of fathers, provide the model for a stable society based upon (a largely implicit) institutionalized consent drawing upon natural affection, protection provided against external threats and little internal conflict they become the key to groups forming true polities and mark the “golden age of government, an age in which kings are the ‘nursing fathers’ of their kingdoms.” (Dunn, 1969: 117) Of course, Locke’s discussion of the role of the father in the conjugal family is important to his attack on Filmer’s patriarchalism with its claim that kings are the proper heirs of the original authority possessed by Adam. While Locke’s “father”plays a major role in helping his argument appear to be in conformance with conventional notions of social and political hierarchy, fatherhood alone was no claim to rightful power. For Locke, the family is a “conjugal society” which arises naturally and stands as a model for the commonwealth. For it he constructs the image of the father as a benevolent prince or governor, and of the children as obedient members for whom “it was easy and almost natural... by a tacit and scarce avoidable consent, to make way for the father’s authority and government.” (75) A father’s leadership rests upon the quality of his behavior and his children’s will and not upon any right of fatherhood alone. In the state of nature the father exercised within the family “that executive power of the law of nature which every free man naturally has” (74) so iong as the children remain in the family. But he must give some of it up in order to form a commonwealth. This view implies much about the contingent, emergent and reciprocal nature of leadership, as they are now understood, and are, seemingly, taken for granted by Locke. There can be little doubt that they are consistent with the contractarian basis of liberalism. Locke’s civil society is a rational construct resulting from a chain of rational and prudential actions, both individual and collective. Those actions are occasioned by “strong obligations of necessity, convenience and inclination” (77) and by the need to

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protect property and punish violations of the law of nature beyond the individual’s capacity to do so in the state of nature. Political society is necessary for men to live together in peace and security. Only the regulation of behavior which threatens peace and security is justified. The civil society comes into being only when “every one of the members has quitted his natural power, resigned it up into the hands of the community in all cases that exclude him not from appealing for protection to the law established by it.” (87) Thus, Locke sets a pattern characteristic of subsequent liberal thinking by focusing on why men create the commonwealth but saying little on how it is accomplished. Locke’s argument rests upon a preference for a theological argument for ‘free will.’ In simple terms, men may choose to sin or to obey the law of God and nature. Some men will choose the former thus creating the conditions (insecurity and disorder) for the creation of civil society. Thus, some men, those not choosing to “sin” (i.e., not choosing to behave irrationally) must form a polity. Some will make rational choices (not sin) and some will not (sin). But Locke’s argument does not polarize the options, as this simplification may suggest, but rather clearly accepts that choices may be implicit as well as explicit, falling along a dimension defined by the two extremes. Choice (may be read ‘consent’) could take various forms and signaled the recognition of an obligation, not the “general ground of the duty of honouring it” (see Dunn, 1980: 31) since men are not free to consent to unlimited, arbitrary rule. Consent legitimized political authority. Political obligation or duty, for Locke, was secondary to the primary duty to God. In this way each individual’s obligation to obey God and the law of nature ultimately transcended the duty to obey political authority. Consent both creates and limits political obligation, but only in the setting of transferring to the community the power to invoke sanctions on certain matters. (See Dunn, 1980: 30-52) Thus, individuals make prudential calculations, and behave accordingly, in order to pursue greater peace and security. But, in so doing, there must be a prior issue: how do people realize the condition under which they come to establish (or accept) civil society? The transition from the state of nature to civil society may be a historical fiction for Locke, a metaphorical device to allow ideological purchase in his argument, but as such it models a continuous process in which basic political and leadership functions must be performed. Whether it is in the creation and acceptance of the polity or in the acceptance of its rule at any subsequent point in time it would be farfetched to assume that rational men would come to the same conclusion at the same time (absent perfect information and perfect rationality) without some communicative intermediary, especially since a compelling reason for joining into the civil society is to deal with the insecurity generated by those who want to harm others or threaten property. In terms familiar to modern students of leadership, who defines and articulates the situation? Who articulates the solution adopted and the path thereto? How is it determined if that path (forming a community) and solution (establishing a polity with a common superior) is acceptable to the prospective members of the community? How is the organization and management of the process through which the new order is realized conducted? In short, what of leadership? That Locke did not intend the state of nature of be understood as an antecedent, historical condition supports a suggestion that he imagined not a sequence of developments so much as coexistent and interrelated sets of conditions, metaphorically

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more akin to ‘nesting boxes’ than to a ‘ladder,’ in which we find the state of nature, the family, the primitive community, and the full polity. The state of nature describes a continuing, direct, jural relationship between the individual and God for which the individual is responsible. God is the only absolute will, and no person may presume to it. Only sin, the failure of the individual in performing requisite duties to God, modifies that relation and requires intermediaries. In a way, it is the failure of the individual to lead himself according to God’s moral order which requires the existence of institutions and leaders which themselves cannot be legitimate save to the extent they serve the same moral order. Thus, leaders of any kind can no more be born to the role than they may have absolute authority. Inherently, then, Locke’s thrust against the patriarchal claim to legitimacy contributes to the redefinition of leadership still implicit in liberalism. His search for the limits of political obligation coincidentally describes some limits upon the purview of leaders, as well; limits which, for the most part, have become part of liberalism’s cultural mindset about leadership. Ineluctably, from a liberal perspective, leaders are made, not born. Perhaps there was no more important assertion in the Two Treatises than that no one acquires superior rights by birth. Moreover, men can confer no more authority on a ruler than they have by birth. It is of central import to Locke’s case that only God has the right to take life so suicide is not within the rights of an individual thus “the psychological acceptance of absolute power is morally more or less equivalent to suicide (and) is indeed a sin of some enormity; and.. .no degree of psychological passivity on the part of his subjects can confer legitimacy upon the power of an absolute monarch.“(Dunn, 1980: 59,60) This is the ground of the relation of follower to leader. Dunn’s comments merit more extensive quotation here: Only full legal authority exercised for the general good can be binding upon the conscience of the subject, and each single individual in the community had an irreducible right to judge the legitimacy of the act or the authenticity of the intention, if it was impinged upon him in a sufficiently threatening fashion. And it was logically necessary that each individual should be left in this position as judge, both because of his persistent duty, as long as he remained a fully moral agent, to preserve his own life and because to judge was an act of the intellect and no human being could be excluded from the possibility of correct intellection by the judgement of another human being. (60)

Institutions and leaders might serve human happiness and moral well-being in the social world created by human action but they could never seek protection from challenge in a claim of authority assigned by divine province. In attempting to counter Sir Robert Filmer’s absolutist patriarchalism, Locke spent considerable effort in discussing the social role of father. In a sociology of the family he sets out a model for the commonwealth, an explanation and justification of rulership based upon limited obligation; and, thus, describes a setting in which the essential roles of leadership are acted out and its character defined. He views the family as historically natural or commonplace, not as theologically mandated, just as is the commonwealth and government. 1 will not deny, that if we look back as far as History will direct us, towards the origin of Commonwealth, we shall generally find them under the government and administration of one Man. And I am also apt to believe, that where a Family was numerous enough to subsist by itself, and continued entire together, without mixing with others...the Government commonly began in the Father. (105)

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And, after citing many reasons why the bonds of familial loyalty to the father would continue even after children achieved maturity Locke concluded that “if therefore they must have one to rule them, as government is hardly to be avoided amongst Men that live together; who so likely to be the Man, as he that was their common father” who, nevertheless, was “fit” for the role not by fatherhood but by performance. If the father was not a ‘good leader,’ his claim to authority should be for naught. He might be unfit by reason of “Negligence, Cruelty, or any other defect of Mind, or Body.” (105) Where a fit common father was not available, “or where several families met, and consented to continue together; There ‘tis not to be doubted, but they used their natural freedom, to set up him, who, they judged the ablest, and most likely, to Rule well over them.” (105) The judgment of the ‘follower’ both creates and sustains the leader in his role, not any other claim to authority, and only the leader’s performance and rectitude (See Tuck), as so judged, can define the “ablest.” Not only is the continued exercise of rectitude required, therefore, for this natural leadership but effective exercise of ruling authority which further defines the appropriate nature of leadership since it “comes to be unique by settled standing rules, indifferent and the same to all parties, and by men having authority from the community for the execution of those rules decides all the differences that may happen between any members of that society concerning any matter of right.” (87)

Men might be slow to refuse leadership from one who failed to live up to such standards, but ultimately they must do so for the father, and any leader, who so fails becomes, with a “long train of abuses,” a tyrant. The quality of leadership is to be judged by the individual (both follower and leader) according to the preservation of peace and security in property and by rectitude. These form the interwoven standards by which Locke would judge who is “ablest” to lead and whether they sustain the right to rule. Once again, the legitimation of authority over others is established by consent, however implicitly given, not by descent. The paternal model suggests a peaceful evolution of leadership and authority within the community. The specific criteria for leadership selection and legitimation may vary from case to case, however, according to conditions external to the group. Locke’s image of the “general” speaks to a kind of leadership not necessarily dependent upon familial bonding but created by the problem of defending the community against “foreign force.” (107) Under such conditions the community is thrown into a situation redolent of a decadent state of nature in which they must choose “the wisest and bravest Man to conduct them in their wars, and lead them out against their enemies, and in this chiefly be their ruler.” (61) Like the war chiefs of American Indians of which he had heard, the generals would be war leaders only and not in other things. Cabinet government in liberal societies suggests a similar notion of leadership specialization but American Presidential government seems to confuse the issue. In any case, the leader implicit in Locke’s argument is, fundamentally, the agent for the community which is itself surrogate for the individual and for it as actor in the ‘state of nature’ continuing to exist among societies, and states or princes. In Locke’s commonwealth the idea of leadership is easily perceived as a function to be carried out through the designated roles of government. His compact created, out of consent, a “common superior” or “common judge” possessing limited powers. Under these conditions the holder of

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authority would seem more functionary than leader having only powers assigned and “defined beforehand by the light of that sole intention of the parties to preserve themselves and their liberties which they enjoy under the law of nature.* (Kendall, 1965: 65) But leadership necessarily precedes the creation of political institutions and cannot wait upon them for entitlement. Locke does not address this issue in any way which would allow us to infer that he made any assumption about it but the observation does not contradict his argument. Even if we assume the equality of initial express consent prior to the establishment of the political community the idea of some individual persuading others of steps to be taken does not deny that requisite equality of right. The fact that one person is more persuasive than another, absent coercion, does not deny such equality since he who is persuaded retains a power of consent equal to that possessed by he who persuades until consent is given. The commonwealth is built on reciprocal obligations and, once begun, every right is accompanied by duties. And, in it, “mens duties to God-and hence to their fellow men-are more demanding than their duties towards those set in authority over them.“(Dunn, 1980: 37) Those superior duties do not displace the individual’s obligation, as a member of the political community, to obey legitimate authority. But just as clearly, “any violation of natural rights which was not designed to preserve them was unjust.” (Brecht, 1950: 139) The wrong acts of a leader, then, make him the sinner, not the citizen who retains a moral right, perhaps obligation, to withdraw consent from such a leader. But, because of political realities, Locke does not expect people readily to disobey authority on moral grounds and only wants to make the point that the holder of authority so exercised has no moral basis to the claim to authority or the expectation of obedience. On this issue Locke puts leadership squarely upon the horns of a dilemma still problematic for liberal societies. For the commonwealth, Locke not only allows for but expects and requires leadership initiative. Flexibility is needed. He attempts to deal with the prudential difficulties of leadership through the notion of executive authority both supported and restrained by the obligation to serve the law of nature-God’s will-even if such powers have not been explicitly assigned by the compact. In order to be leadership in a full sense, however, rulership in the political community must go beyond simple custodialism. Conditions will require the exercise of “a latitude left to the Executive power to do many things of choice which the laws do not prescribe.” (180) Realities will force the executive to be more than mere functionary, then, and to lead through the exercise of prerogative.” Locke says that “prerogative is nothing but the power of doing public good without a rule.” (166) This sets both the scope and domain of leadership within the limits of “doing public good.” It is here that the Lockean ‘leader’ must demonstrate rectitude by service to the good and thereby justify not only that service but the continued holding of authority itself. He may be said to be looking for the virtuous republican prince who may choose to exercise arbitrary power but only to do the “public good.” Locke admits the necessity of leaders to “act according to discretion. for the public good, without the prescription of Law, and sometimes even against it.” (160) Clearly this option is limited to the executive and controlled by two basic rules: (I) there must be objective service of the public good; and, (2) its exercise is justified only until the legislative “can conveniently be assembled to provide” (159) for the matter.“’ He holds that executive prerogative is sometimes necessary because of a

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fundamental law of nature and government, vis., that, as much as may be, all the members of the society are to be preserved: for since many accidents may happen wherein a strict and rigid observation of the laws may do harm-as not to pull down an innocent man’s house to stop the fire when the one next to it is burning. (159)

The community interest in stopping the spread of fire is superior to the interest of one member in his material property. It may well be that since a spreading fire would increase the threat to human life, in which each person has a basic property right and a superior obligation to God to preserve, it is that which warrants the exercise of prerogative. Plainly, the leaders prerogative is based upon an obligation to act in the interests of the whole community and is derived more from the requirements of the situation than from formal authority. By inference, the leader must also be able to know when the action fits the case. So, Locke is careful to say, prerogative is not a right of office and cannot be presumed so by successors. We might add that neither can leadership, by the same logic, be presumed an attribute of office. The political executive, as leader, should display a degree of initiative required by necessity and allowed by (a generous) public tolerance and capacity to recognize its merits. Absent Locke’s certainly about the individual’s capacity to know the law of nature and the will of God, contemporary liberalism suffers uncertainty about the relation between individual consent and the legitimacy of political authority, on the one hand, and confusion about the propriety of prerogative, and its proper exercise, on the other. If, of necessity, people must make prudential judgements, then so must leaders and executives. Clearly, Locke’s executive must serve the ends of the compact-the peace and security of the community-above all else save the will of God, even if this requires violating the compact or derivative legislation. This troublesome position reveals a central function of leadership in Lockean imagery and the only checks on its abuse are the morality of the executive and legitimizing consent of the people. In the end, Locke, no more than any contemporary student of liberalism or leadership, does not have a satisfactory solution for the problem of leaders who exceed the proper bounds of prerogative save, perhaps, one based upon religious faith. His argument may be read to suggest that leadership is necessary but not sufficient to the creation and preservation of the commonwealth. In particular, it may be understood to expect of the holders of public authority leadership in service to the well-being of the commonwealth. In it may be detected the roots of a continuing conflict in liberal societies between the view of government qua leadership as mainly responsible for the maintenance of human security and the view of it as a provider of human happiness. His notion of ‘natural man’ (wholly of the state of nature) and ‘political man’ (citizen and subject of the commonwealth) is contributory, however unfair it may be to his thinking, to the continuing liberal conflation of the public and private, political and non-political, discussed earlier in this essay and is suggestive of the contemporary liberal habit of thinking about politics in dichotomous rather than continuous terms. Yet, in his images of the father can be found an acceptance of leadership as natural in human society. When leadership by the exercise of prerogative, however properly, is put over against the notion that the individual retains some natural autonomy in society, we find a basis for both the attractions of leaders and the fear of leaders that plays so important, yet subtle and complex, a role in liberal states.

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NOTES 1. Intellectuals us have received some attention. A well-know collection including such work is Dankwart A. Rustow, Philosophers and Kings: Studies in Leadership (1970). Eg. Barry D. Karl, “The Power of Intellect and the Politics of Ideas” and Bruce Mazlish, “James Mill and the Utilitarians.” 2. It is of interest to note that until very recently, political scientists, students of political thought and, in particular, students of liberalism either ignored leadership as an independent subject of concern, took it for granted as a concomitant of political power, or deliberately sidestepped the conceptual issue. See, for example, Bert Rockman, 7icle Leadership Question (1984). In this study of the American Presidency, he briefly discusses “leadership and change as concepts” concluding that “chasing after conceptual clarification of the term can take us into irretrievable quagmires” and so abandons it. 3. Interestingly, most of these are significant to the evolution of liberal thought, as well. See, for example, Harry Girvetz, 7?1e Evolution o~~i~era~is~ (1969). 4. Perhaps best understood as a claim for equality in a community in terms of both status and condition. (See Wildavsky: esp. 212, 214). 5. “Authority” and “power” are among the most ubiquitous and difficult concepts with which the social scientist or theorist must deal. Here, by “power” I mean simply the capacity to act so as to effect a change in another’s behavior or condition. By “authority” is meant the legitimate or rightful exercise of power. It is fair to say this is close to Locke’s meaning as well. As will be seen below, however, Locke’s notion is that the primary source of legitimacy in authority comes from adherence to divine injunction or natural law. At first blush, this does not quite square with the modern behaviorist perception that leader authority is a function of follower acceptance of direction. It may be argued, however, that the behaviorist view reflects issues foreshadowed by Lockes’approach. In his construction, the person who exercises power wrongly has no moral claim to authority even though continuing to exercise it. Although the follower might obey the directions of such a leader that obedience does not, in itself, confer legitimacy. But does acceptance of direction constitute authority of a kind? Thus does moral justification struggle with empirical observation. See below, especially the discussion of “prerogative.” Also see note 6 regarding Burns’ “power wielders.” (See Bass: 306-307) 6. Among few exceptions, J. Roland Pennock’s Democratic Politic& 7beory is notable for its thoughtful chapter on leadership and democracy (470-505). Also see John Plamenatz, Democracy and Zl~~io~ (83-89); James MacGregor Bums, Leadership is a major example of an approach to leadership from a liberal standpoint, in particular in his insistence that leadership is exercised only when a moral purpose is served and that holders of authority or power who serve ‘immoral’ purposes cannot be classified as true leaders but must be called “power wielders.” (18-23) As will be noted below, Locke showed a similar perspective in the view that the individual’s most basic obligation is to obey God (the Laws of Nature) so that a ‘higher law’ must be served by both leaders and followers as individuals at the same time as the Iaws of society. This dual basis of contingent obligation is a tenacious idea in liberalism and continues to feed a certain perplexity about leaders and leadership. 7. This, of course, is functionally derivative of the social contract assumption fundamental to much of liberal thought. Its heritage is evident in much modern thinking about leadership and organizations. In one of the best known works of this century, for example, March and Simon speak of an “employee’s relation to the organization” by asserting that “in joining the organization he accepts an authority relation; i.e., he agrees that within some limits (defined both explicitly and implicitly by the terms of the employment contract) he will accept as the premises of his behavior orders and instructions supplied to him by the organization.” (90)

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8. Leftwich puts it thus: “The fact of the matter is that, unless one adopts a very narrow view of it, politics is a pervasive feature of collective human life.” (3) Corning says “politics is a natural and necessary process of social life, a process that occurs whenever two or more individuals come together.” (3) 9. Citations are for paragraph numbers in the Second Treatise. See Laslett (1960). 10. However incoherent the argument might be in some respects it is clear enough that Locke understood that leaders both define their role and are defined by it. 11. Locke’s treatment of the legislative role can be taken to imply going beyond checking executive power to verifying its proper exercise.

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Tucker, R. (1981). Politics as leadership. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press. Weaver, D. (1978). Leadership and survival. Proceedings of the Academy of Applied Philosophy. University Center, Michigan. Wildavsky, A. (1984). ne nursingfather: Moses as apoliticalleader. Birmingham: The University of Alabama Press.