Mostafa Rejai - Böcker

Since the early 1950s, the "decline of ideology" hypothesis has commanded a great deal of attention in the intellectual community at large. Th e controversy has taken both empirical and polemical turns. Th is book concentrates on the empirical literature, off ering both original contributions and previously published papers of outstanding importance. Selections were made to give full play to freshness of view and diversity of sources.The book presents the hypothesis of ideological decline as set forth by two of its major spokesmen, brings together essays that subject this hypothesis to empirical tests in both Western and non-Western contexts, and then presents both positive and negative evaluations of the hypothesis. Avoiding an ex cathedra definition of ideology, the editor and contributors scrutinize the nature of ideology and its workings and suggest approaches to the comparative treatment of ideologies.This book offers the first clear and wide-ranging overview of the putative decline of ideology, a concept burdened by a history of emotional argumentation. Changes in the function of ideology in the Soviet Union, the United States, Western Europe, and Japan are examined, and the ideological dimension of student movements of the 1960s is taken into account. Ideology: Comparative and Cultural Status is an expertly edited presentation of contrasting views of a vital topic. It is ideally suited for use in a variety of courses in the area of political thought and political sociology.

What motivates political leaders to seek office? What social backgrounds do political leaders exhibit? Are all leaders fundamentally alike or do we find important differences between them? These and related questions concerning political leadership are examined in this unique new work. The authors concentrate on two principal types of political leaders: Loyalists, those who seek office through peaceful processes, whether appointive or elective; and Revolutionaries, those who seize power in violent ways. By systematically comparing the similarities and differences between these two groups, Rejai and Phillips find that Loyalists and Revolutionaires are basically the same type of person. However, their most significant differences lie in their relative access to positions of power and authority within their respective societies.

This study seeks to resolve differences between various types of political leaders and to link broad historical patterns with the idiosyncratic circumstances of individual lives and careers--to integrate the micro and the macro levels of understanding in the field of leadership studies. To accomplish this task, a vast array of previous scholarship and primary documents has been assembled and drawn into new combinations. Equivalent data on all U.S. presidents enable an unprecedented internal comparison within this select group. Comparison with parallel data, developed for other types of leaders, permits U.S. presidents to be analyzed in comparative perspective for the first time. Against this background, the study creates a unique collection of medical and psychological profiles for the entire set of presidents--a body of data that allows us to discover new combinations and patterns of presidential traits.American presidents emerged from this study looking very much like other political leaders in terms of social background and preparation for a political career. But contrary to myth, the authors found U.S. presidents to be puzzingly unexceptional--even average--in their personal and career characteristics. For other types of leaders, the authors had found distinctive combinations of traits and experiences that seemed to account for their political leadership roles. For the presidents, such combinations seemed elusive, even confounding. They did conclude, however, that presidential leadership is firmly anchored in the cultural, sociological, and historical contexts from which it emerges.

Focusing on 45 military leaders from four continents and 13 countries, spread across four centuries, this study paints, for the first time, a collective, comparative portrait of high-ranking military officers. The authors develop an interactional theory of military leaders, stressing the interplay between sociodemographic variables, psychological dynamics, and situational factors. They examine age and birthplace, socioeconomic status, family life, ethnicity and religion, education and occupation, activities and experiences, and ideologies and attitudes. They find military leaders to be a remarkably coherent and homogeneous group of men propelled toward the military by a combination of nationalism, imperialism, relative deprivation, love deprivation, marginality, and vanity.

Three interrelated objectives provide the subject of this study: to cover a wide range of topics on leaders and leadership; to present up-to-date treatments of those topics; and to offer extensive bibliographies for further study and research. The opening chapter defines leadership. Subsequent chapters treat the relationship between leaders and followers and the prerequisite skills of leaders; transforming leaders, transactional leaders, and military leaders; the motivations of leaders; the functions of leaders; comparative studies of leaders; women as leaders; and research frontiers in the study of leadership. This study should prove very useful for political scientists, for sociologists, and for military historians and professionals.

Having established a persuasive conception of leadership, Rejai and Phillips apply it to major thinkers from Plato to Sigmund Freud and Erik Erikson. They find a major shift in leadership theory associated with World War II. Prewar theories are seen as limited and defective in that they posit a vision on the part of the leader and his ability to impose that vision on the followers; postwar theories stress, in addition, a shared vision and leader-follower interaction.A leader's view of leadership, Rejai and Phillips find, is constrained by the person's conception of human nature; the lighter the conception of human nature, the more flexible the nature of leadership; the darker the view of human nature, the more rigid the nature of leadership. This book will be of particular interest to scholars, students, and other researchers involved with political theory and leadership studies.

Since the early 1950s, the "decline of ideology" hypothesis has commanded a great deal of attention in the intellectual community at large. Th e controversy has taken both empirical and polemical turns. Th is book concentrates on the empirical literature, off ering both original contributions and previously published papers of outstanding importance. Selections were made to give full play to freshness of view and diversity of sources.The book presents the hypothesis of ideological decline as set forth by two of its major spokesmen, brings together essays that subject this hypothesis to empirical tests in both Western and non-Western contexts, and then presents both positive and negative evaluations of the hypothesis. Avoiding an ex cathedra definition of ideology, the editor and contributors scrutinize the nature of ideology and its workings and suggest approaches to the comparative treatment of ideologies.This book offers the first clear and wide-ranging overview of the putative decline of ideology, a concept burdened by a history of emotional argumentation. Changes in the function of ideology in the Soviet Union, the United States, Western Europe, and Japan are examined, and the ideological dimension of student movements of the 1960s is taken into account. Ideology: Comparative and Cultural Status is an expertly edited presentation of contrasting views of a vital topic. It is ideally suited for use in a variety of courses in the area of political thought and political sociology.