Contingency and Political Action: The Role of Leadership in Endogenously Created Crises

András Körösényi, Gábor Illés and Rudolf Metz
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András Körösényi: Institute for Political Science, Centre for Social Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary
Gábor Illés: Institute for Political Science, Centre for Social Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary
Rudolf Metz: Institute for Political Science, Centre for Social Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary

Politics and Governance, 2016, vol. 4, issue 2, 91-103

Abstract: Among the recent literature about leadership and crisis situations two main strands are to be observed: structuralist ones mainly treat political leaders as reactive agents who have relatively little room for maneuver, while constructivist ones put greater emphasis on the opportunities in interpreting crises. Our claim is that there is a third analytical possibility mainly neglected in recent literature that is even more voluntaristic than the constructivist approaches. In this scenario, there is no external shock; leaders do not only interpret, but also “invent” crises. To make our claim plausible, we build a conceptual-descriptive typology of the potential relationships between crisis situations and agency. The typology is founded on Kari Palonen’s differentiation between Machiavellian and Weberian types of contingency, but uses his originally conceptual historical argument for analytical purposes. To underpin our theoretical argument, we present short illustrative examples to all three types of crisis scenarios (the structuralist, the constructivist, and the voluntarist one).

Keywords: Bush; contingency; crisis; leadership; Machiavelli; Orbán; Weber (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:poango:v4:y:2016:i:2:p:91-103

DOI: 10.17645/pag.v4i2.530

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