Abstract
During the 20th century, the United States went from being a second rate power to becoming the world’s sole superpower. Did leaders matter? In the cases I examined in Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era, most presidents mattered, but not necessarily those that one might expect. Leadership experts distinguish transformational leaders with broad visions and an inspirational style (such as Woodrow Wilson or Ronald Reagan) from transactional leaders who have modest vision and a managerial style (such as Dwight Eisenhower or George H.W. Bush). Experts and editorialists generally prefer transformational leaders and consider them both more effective and more ethical. But the concepts have been poorly defined, and the normative preference for transformational leaders is not justified. Leadership theorists need to be more careful in their definitions and assessments.
Keywords
The 20th century ended with an extraordinary imbalance in world power resources. In terms of hard power, the ability to affect others to obtain preferred outcomes through coercion and payment, the United States was the only country able to project military force globally, and it produced more than a quarter of the world economy. As for soft power, the ability to obtain outcomes through attraction and persuasion rather than coercion and payment, the United States had the world’s leading soft power resources in its universities and entertainment industry. Because the United States represented nearly half of world military expenditure, and was formally allied to Europe and Japan, the remaining countries could not create a classical balance to American power. Moreover, the change from the Soviet Union to Russia reduced the nuclear threat that helped to deter some American actions during the Cold War.
To what extent did presidential leadership matter in creating this extraordinary situation of primacy? And if so, what type of leadership mattered? Leadership theorists sometimes fall into attribution error, automatically assuming that leaders make a difference. International relations theorists, on the other hand, generally place more explanatory emphasis on structural factors like economic and social forces and tend to downplay the role of individuals. I chose to write this book as a way to bring together these two bodies of theory that have informed my previous work, and to have the space to confront them with empirical historical evidence.
Clarifying definitions and behaviors
For the last three decades, leadership theory has placed a great deal of emphasis on transformational leaders, and the term is widely used though in confusing ways. According to James McGregor Burns, who developed the term in 1978, transformational leaders use conflict and crisis to raise their follower’s consciousness and transform them by appealing to their higher ideals and moral values rather than baser emotions of fear, greed, and hatred (Burns, 1978). Followers are thus inspired to undertake adaptive work and respond to change for the good of the group. Transactional leaders, on the other hand, rely on the hard power resources of carrots and sticks to appeal to their followers’ self-interest. One source of confusion, however, is that Burns builds values into his definition. Thus a Hitler, who clearly transformed Germany for the worse, cannot be a transformational leader by definition. Burns distinguishes “leaders” from “power wielders” and thus Hitler is not a leader in Burns’ terminology. But even power wielders require some inner core of followers, and this value-laden definition hinders analysis. In general, it is better to distinguish questions of good or bad from questions of effectiveness. Normative judgments about leadership are important, but they should be kept separate, and I devote an entire chapter to norms in my book (Nye, 2013). But if they are built into definitions, they prevent us from comparing the dimensions and effects of different transformational leaders.
A second reason leadership theorists and editorial writers are often confusing is that they use the term “transformational” to refer to three different dimensions of behavior: leaders’ objectives, the styles leaders use, and the outcomes they produce. Those three dimensions of what a leader seeks, what he or she achieves, and what methods they use are not the same thing and do not necessarily co-vary. Sometimes a leader may transform the world and not transform his followers, or vice versa, and sometimes the leader may use a transactional style to accomplish transformational objectives.
Franklin Roosevelt is often cited as an example of a transformational leader, and in the 1930s, he used the soft power of inspirational vision and communications to help achieve his transformational goals of social reform, transforming the views of his followers in the process. American government and politics were never again the same. But in foreign policy, FDR was unable to transform American isolationist attitudes, and he used very indirect transactional bargaining methods to pursue his goal of moving American foreign policy toward support of Great Britain before Second World War. His followers were ready for transformation on social issues, but not on foreign policy so he adopted transactional methods. Harry Truman is another example of a successful leader who developed transformational objectives while in office but tended to be transactional in his style. And sometimes a leader who seeks primarily incremental changes, like Bill Clinton, will use inspirational methods.
Leaders’ objectives and styles.
Of course presidents do not fit neatly in boxes, and all try to adopt different styles in different contexts (Simonton, 1986; Winter, 1989). Franklin Roosevelt did not enter office with a clear game plan for the American economy, and he experimented with a variety of domestic changes. Clinton tried to pass an ambitious health care bill and also to strengthen the United Nations, but he curtailed his objectives after early defeats. Similarly, Barack Obama proclaimed transformational foreign policy goals in his 2008 campaign, but followed mainly incremental policies in office. Change is a matter of degree and many leaders seek it on some issues and not others. Nonetheless, leaders generally tend toward a predominant style. By definition, transformational leaders seek major change, and their objectives can be scaled in terms of the degree and scope of change they seek (Sternberg, 2002). Whether they succeed in achieving their ambitious objectives is a third question. If not, they are “would-be” or “failed” transformational leaders. A leader can be transformational in intentions, but not in outcomes.
Leaders may also deliberately change their objectives and style over the course of their career. For example, one of the great transformational leaders in the history of international politics, Otto von Bismarck, was transformational in his goals before he achieved the unification of Germany under Prussian leadership, but largely incremental and status quo oriented after that success. And as we shall see below, Franklin Roosevelt changed his foreign policy objectives and style quite dramatically during his presidency. His objectives were incremental in his first term, but became transformational in the second half of his second term.
Theorists argue that transactional leadership styles are more effective in stable and predictable environments, and an inspirational style is more likely in periods of rapid and discontinuous social and political change. The transformational objectives and inspirational style of a leader like Mohandas Gandhi or a Nelson Mandela can make all the difference to outcomes in fluid social situations, particularly in developing countries where there are weakly structured institutional constraints (Rotberg, 2012). In contrast, the context of American foreign policy formation is highly constrained by institutions like Congress, courts, and the constitution. Thus, we would expect less opportunity for transformational leadership. But even the American constitution is ambiguous about the powers of the president and the Congress in foreign policy. At best it creates what constitutional scholars call “an invitation to struggle” (Corwin, 1957). Much depends on external context. Theodore Roosevelt entered office with transformational objectives in foreign policy, but Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Truman only developed such objectives in response to external events after they entered office.
Crisis conditions can liberate a gifted leader from the accumulated constraints of vested interest groups and bureaucratic inertia that normally inhibit action in the American system. Bill Clinton, caught up in the complacent 1990s, is said to have envied Franklin Roosevelt’s crisis conditions of the 1930s (Burns and Sorensen, 1999). Potential followers experience new or accentuated needs and look for new guidance. Action becomes more fluid. For instance, George W. Bush used the crisis conditions after 11 September 2001 to make strong assertions of the executive power of the presidency as well as to invade Iraq. When followers feel the need for change, a leader with transformational objectives faces better odds, and an inspirational style is more likely to find responsive followers and to make their role more relevant. Turbulent times may set the scene for transformational leaders, but it does not follow that bold and risk loving leaders are always best suited to deal with the crises that define turbulent times.
Skills of effective leaders and contextual intelligence
Whether they are transformational or incremental in their objectives, leaders need certain soft and hard power skills to be effective, and these too are a matter of degree. The presence or absence of these skills affects the methods and styles that leaders use. Among the soft power skills are emotional intelligence (emotional self-control and the ability to use emotional cues to attract others); vision (an attractive picture of the future that balances ideals, objectives, and capabilities); and communication (the ability to use words and symbols to persuade both an inner circle and a broader audience.) With regard to skill in the use of hard power resources, two hard power skills are particularly important; organizational capacity and the Machiavellian political skills of bullying, buying and bargaining in the formation of winning coalitions (Nye, 2008) (Table 2).
Above all, effective leadership requires the skill of contextual intelligence, an intuitive diagnostic skill that helps a leader understand change, interpret the outside world, set objectives, and align strategies and tactics with objectives to create smart policies in new situations. Contextual intelligence implies both a capability to discern trends in the face of complexity as well as adaptability while trying to shape events. Bismarck once referred to this skill as the ability to intuit God’s movements in history, and seize the hem of his garment as he sweeps by (Taylor, 1955). More prosaically, like surfers, leaders with contextual intelligence have the ability to judge and adjust to new waves and then ride them to success.
Contextual intelligence allows leaders to adjust their style to the situation and to their followers’ needs. It enables them to create flows of information that “educate their hunches.” It involves the broad political skill of not only sizing up group politics but of understanding the positions and strengths of various stakeholders so as to decide when and how to use transactional and inspirational skills. It is the self-made part of luck. In unstructured situations, it is often more difficult to ask the right questions than to get the right answer. Leaders with contextual intelligence are skilled at providing meaning or a road map by defining the problem that a group confronts. They understand the tension between the different values involved in an issue, and how to balance the desirable with what is feasible. In particular, contextual intelligence requires an understanding of groups’ cultures; the distribution of power resources; followers’ needs and demands; information flows; and timing (Nye, 2008).
The two Bush presidencies provide an interesting illustration of the importance of contextual intelligence. George H.W. Bush was an incremental president with a transactional style. He famously said that he did not do “the vision thing.” Yet he had superb contextual intelligence about foreign affairs that grew out of a career that included being ambassador to the United Nations, representative of the United States in Beijing, and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Though he was not the cause of transformational change, he skillfully presided over an extraordinary two years of transformation. As I argue in detail in my book, the end of the Cold War was largely the result of structural economic and social forces, but Bush deserves credit for responding to those changes in a prudent manner which allowed Germany to be unified inside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization without a shot being fired. In 1989, many analysts and other leaders had doubted that this was possible.
In contrast, his son, George W. Bush was deficient in contextual intelligence about foreign policy. His career had focused on the state of Texas, both in business and as governor, and he had little experience in travel or study abroad. He expressed no transformational views about foreign policy in the 2000 election, but developed a transformational vision after the shock of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the American homeland. If Al Gore had won the tightly contested 2000 election, he might have sent troops to Afghanistan from whence the attack originated, but Bush went further with the invasion of Iraq. Not only did he want to prevent Saddam Hussein from developing weapons of mass destruction, but he hoped that by removing Saddam and creating democracy in Iraq, he would address the roots of terrorism in the Middle East. Without a good understanding of the context, he was unable to implement his transformational vision, and had counterproductive effects.
The role of leaders in creating American primacy
Using the method of counterfactual history in which I changed one variable—who was president––I examined the roles of the eight 20th century leaders who presided over the four expansionist phases in the creation of American primacy and asked what difference their leadership contributed beyond what could be predicted by purely structural explanations (Nye, 2013). In addition, I asked in the book whether those leaders who are sometimes called “transformational” from the point of view of their transformational objectives and inspirational styles made greater contributions than those who were primarily incremental in their objectives and transactional in their styles. After examining plausible counterfactuals, I concluded that all except Theodore Roosevelt and William Taft made contributions (though not always as intended) beyond what could be explained simply by structural forces, and that while two presidents who developed transformational objectives (Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman) made particularly important contributions to the creation of the era of American primacy, two who had incremental objectives and a transactional style (Dwight Eisenhower and George H.W. Bush) may have been equally important by prudent management that allowed favorable structural change to occur and avoided potentially disastrous disruptions. A good historical analysis of leaders’ roles in causation has to look nonevents as well as events.
I also asked whether these eight men were good foreign policy leaders in the sense of ethics as well as effectiveness. Leadership theorists often assign a positive normative value to transformational leaders, but I found no evidence to justify such a preference after looking at these presidents. The best ethical record belonged to the incremental and transactional George H.W. Bush, and the poorest records to the transformational and inspirational Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.
In short, leadership mattered in the creation of American primacy. If the causes were purely structural, the process should have been much smoother. The United States represented roughly a quarter of world product both at the beginning and the end of the century. American power was strengthened by First World War. A change in the structure of power resources cannot explain the interwar phase of retraction. A good explanation must take the (unwise) leadership decisions into account.
In the middle of the century, America came to represent nearly half of world product and held a monopoly on nuclear weapons. Over the next two decades, this share reverted to the century long norm. That decline was structural, but it was accompanied by unwise leadership decisions related to the Vietnam War that created a second period of retraction. But America’s return to its earlier share of world product did not lead to Richard Nixon’s expected multipolarity and the end of American primacy. On the contrary, American primacy increased in the 1980s and 1990s as the distribution of power shifted from bipolar to unipolar. A major cause of this shift was long-term economic structural change that weakened the Soviet Union. But again leadership mattered, most importantly in Mikhail Gorbachev’s unintended acceleration of the demise of the Soviet Union, but also in the successful choices made by Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush that allowed the United States to capitalize successfully upon the structural changes.
Effective leadership: soft and hard power skills.
