Leadership in Politics? A qualitative examination of young politicians in Hessen.

To understand political leadership it is crucial to understand if politicians act as leaders in their respective constituencies and parties. Although little work has been done on this topic from a political science perspective there exists established literature on a comparable topic, the roles of managers as leaders in business. This paper examines whether a theory on business leadership proves to be robust for political leadership. In 2002 W. Bennis and R. Thomas proposed a theory of leadership that attributed to leaders common biographical situations and common attitudes. This study tries to ascertain if those common characteristics could also be found among political leaders in a different cultural context and of a different generation. For this purpose 19 qualitative interviews with young Hessian politicians were conducted. They all executed leadership positions in the youth organizations of their respective parties. Although the major claims of the 2002 theory could not be corroborated the results of this study suggest that management theory can serve, if not as a source for robust hypotheses, than at least as a guideline for the design of studies on leadership behavior of politicians. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]