James Macgregor Burns Leadership Summary

James MacGregor Burns’ Leadership also offers critical insight into the theoretical and empirical underpinnings of moral leadership. According to Burns, “transformational leadership demands commitment, persistence, courage, perhaps selflessness and self-abnegation. Pragmatic, transactional leadership requires a shrewd eye for opportunity, a good hand at bargaining, persuading, reciprocating.” Simply put, transformational leaders seek to mobilize their followers to through act of self-sacrificing service for the public good. These leaders use the normative principles of noblesse oblige and political stewardship to guide their idea of statesmanship.
Meanwhile, transactional leaders navigate complex political institutions by building consensus and fostering expedient alliances. Nevertheless, Burns breaks the transformational versus transactional binary distinction down further. In his view, reform leaders are transformational leaders who use ethics to …show more content…
Much like Burns’ political analysis on leadership, Ira Shapiro contextualizes the definition of conscientious statesmanship and provides insight into understanding how governance worked in the Senate during the 1960s and 1970s. To that end, Shapiro’s approach to historical analysis mirrored Kennedy’s stylistic format of framing the meaning of leadership, detailing case studies of the individuals who of embodied statesmanship, and reflecting upon the crucial need for conscientious leaders in the public arena. In contrast with Kennedy’s theory-oriented analysis, Ira Shapiro details the practical application of conscientious leadership when faced with structural obstacles and constitutional limitations. More specifically, Shapiro explores Kennedy’s vision of courageous leadership, and then evaluates it using Congressional case studies from