Leadership is a quality which in theory signifies the ability of a person or a group of people to persuade others to act by inspiring them and making them believe that a proposed course of action is the correct one.
Political leadership is generally thought to be a desirable property, except when a leader becomes too conscious of his or her position and refuses to acknowledge their accountability to the rank and file of their party or to the electorate. Leadership may, in certain romantic or fascist philosophies, take on a special role, but in normal democratic politics it is seen as a routine feature of the political process.
Sometimes the ruling élite of a party may be known as its leadership (see élitism). In the Soviet Union, for example, the Communist Party stressed its ‘collective leadership’ as a basic principle of government in contrast to the Stalinist period when one-man leadership was the order of the day. In many countries—especially newly independent countries with a recent history of nationalist struggle—the leader is seen as the embodiment of the people and the nation, as with Dr Hastings Banda of Malawi. However, leadership in Third World countries is often difficult to sustain over a long period of time in the absence of durable political institutions and economic progress.
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