The leadership capital index: a new perspective on political leadership

Political science and other related disciplines have sought to measure and theorise about political leadership in order to predict (or at least explain) the success and failure of party leaders, heads of government, mayors, governors, or leadership teams at the apex of government. One important avenue to explore, interpret and ‘measure’ leadership is through examination of what we are calling political ‘leadership capital’. The notion of political capital stems from Bourdieu, but contemporary analysis rests on a finance analogy: politicians gain, invest, lose or even squander the ‘credit’ gifted to them by the sum of their constituencies and stakeholders. Leadership capital has an application to the fundamental nature of political leadership: the extent to which the actions of leaders are determined or constrained by forces beyond the leader’s control and the capacity for individual action (‘t Hart and Rhodes, 2014). As it combines institutional and discernible attributes with less tangible ‘moral’ qualities and skills, leadership capital is essential to understanding political leadership processes and outcomes (Renshon 2000; Kane 2001).The book introduces, applies and develops an analytical tool, the Leadership Capital Index (LCI), which offers a systematic framework for conducting systematic, comparative research into the antecedents, dynamics and effects of the ‘credit’ political leaders are given or denied by their own attributes, their constituents, key stakeholders and institutions.