I became interested in leadership when I was a graduate student in political science at Yale University. Though this was not long before the explosive growth (beginning in the 1980s) of the leadership industry, at the time was a remarkable paucity of relevant materials. In fact, the word “leadership” was scarcely to be found in the now antediluvian card catalogue of the University library, though the word “management” was, as was “elites.”
To this general rule were few exceptions. Perhaps most notable among them was the eminent historian and political scientist James MacGregor Burns, who was a longtime professor at Williams College. There was also the distinguished Soviet expert, Robert C. Tucker, similarly an historian and political scientist, who was for many years faculty at Princeton University. Both men researched and wrote about leadership full on. Burns became something of an elder statesman in the nascent field of Leadership Studies; Tucker was less central in part because his work was largely on the Soviet Union.
In a small book by Tucker that was published in 1981, titled Politics as Leadership, he made a distinction between those he called constituted leaders and non-constituted leaders.* Constituted leaders occupy official leadership roles. Because of the title and position they hold they see themselves as leaders – and they are so seen by others. In contrast, non-constituted leaders are leaders “without possessing power or occupying high political office.” Some have not even aspired to it, such as, Tucker points out, Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. For obvious reasons, it’s harder initially for non-constituted leaders to get others to follow than it is for constituted ones. But once they, non-constituted leaders, have reached a certain point, a point at which they have earned the trust of their followers, there can be no stopping them. Sometimes their successes far outstrip those of their more conventional counterparts.
Tucker’s distinction has come to mind in recent months for not since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 – not since the heyday of King – have voting rights in America been as threatened as they are now. The threats have emanated not just from the White House, with its fixation on, for example, mail-in ballots. As much or even more they have come from the Supreme Court which, for example, last April issued a ruling widely seen as a heavy blow to the voting rights of minority voters. According to the Campaign Legal Center, the decision in the case of Louisiana v Callais did nothing less than “eviscerate the Voting Rights Act.”
Predictably, Democrats have inveighed against the Court’s decision and against the attacks on voting rights more generally. But their words and deeds have failed to capture the nation’s attention. They have failed to sound the alarm loudly enough.
Could this be because, unlike in the 1960s, today most of the nation’s black leaders are constituted leaders? They are leaders like House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senator Raphael Warnock, and Governor Wes Moore – all part of the system. They are in the system – they do not stand or operate from outside it. King on the other hand – along with colleagues, contemporaries, and compatriots such as Rosa Parks, Jesse Jackson, and Malcolm X – was a leader who was non-constituted. Seems plausible then that there are times when leading from the outside is more powerful a force, more effective a strategy, than leading from within.
*University of Missouri Press.
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