Norm-based leadership and the challenge of democratically elected authoritarians

Abstract

Across the post-World War II western liberal order, antidemocratic leaders have ascended to power through the ballot box and then engaged in an assault on prodemocratic norms. Commentators have worried that counter-normative behaviors will bring into existence a “new normal,” constructing an antidemocratic regimen in which future leaders will be freed to operate beyond either long-standing or newly created democratic expectations. In this article, I explore the matter of how and when incumbent leaders establish norms for future leaders. Normative leadership is typically presented as the capacity of leaders to set norms for the social units they are heading. Less examined but vital to the understanding of how leadership is enacted is the question of how prevailing norms create opportunities and limitations on the exercise of leadership. Leaders set norms not only just for their followers but also for future leaders. With particular attention to the norm breaking of Donald Trump in the United States, I examine a pattern of norm setting, norm breaking, and norm resetting that has unfolded at the presidential level. Whatever norms Trump, or any authoritarian leaders, may break during their incumbency, the setting of new norms will rely on a network of actors: not only just future leaders but also representatives of institutions (the courts, military, press, congress, etc.) as well as voters.

Keywords

Norm-based leadership democratically counter-normative behaviors normative leadership authoritarian leaders

Introduction

“President Donald Trump’s flagrant and frequent violations of fundamental norms of presidential behavior undermine our constitutional democracy. They test the ability of long-standing existing systems and institutions to sustain the rule of law, to protect fundamental rights and values, and to check presidential wrongdoing” (Johnsen, 2020: 1205).

It has become a common—although by no means trivial—observation that, through word and deed, Donald Trump’s behaviors as president defy long-standing prodemocratic norms. A norm is a governing assumption about how certain members of a particular community should behave under specified conditions. Norms are “governing” not in the sense of carrying legal weight (although they might if and when they are converted to law) but rather in the use of social sanctions as tools of enforcement. It is in that sense of setting expectations that norms encourage actors to “orient their behavior” in a particular direction (Weber, 1964: 124).

Formal, hierarchical leaders are supplied with considerable institutional power, typically granted through the mechanism of an official charter. For corporate chief executive officers, that framework is established by articles of incorporation and subsequent corporate bylaws. For heads of state, formal job descriptions are found largely in official constitutions. In the United States, for instance, that description appears mainly in Article II of the Constitution, which vests “executive power” in that office. The United Kingdom maintains a constitutional system that articulates rules of governance, while the duties of the Prime Minister derive largely from long-standing practice. A relatively recent constitution in Poland vests considerable executive power and some legislative authority as well in the presidential office (Wyrzykowski and Cieleń, 2006).

The variety of official charters is great, but in all cases, these formal grants of authority are surprisingly general, even vague. Article II, for instance, consists of just over 1000 words. To enable the exercise of executive power, presidents are designated as the commander in chief of the military. They “may” call upon the opinions of Cabinet officers who they appoint with the advice and consent of the Senate. They nominate federal judges and ambassadors, appointed with Senate approval. A small number of other duties—a report on the state of the union “from time to time,” for example, and powers such the “power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment”—are included. Article II devotes significantly more attention to delineating the process of electing a president and the rules for eligibility than in enumerating specific duties and responsibilities. There is an impeachment clause stipulating that the president as well as the vice president and all other federal officers “shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” The most sweeping and general grant of duties and responsibilities appears as the midst of the final sentence of Article II, Section 3: the president “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

I focus on the specifics of Article II, or, more accurately, the lack of specifics, to make the point that formal charters are not the only, or even the most significant, source of executive prerogatives. No study of executive leadership in a corporate setting (at least none that I have come across) bothers to analyze the legalistic job description of a CEO contained in the articles or bylaws.

When it comes to the US presidency, the lack of specificity embedded in Article II creates an opening for the US court system to add its own institutional voice.¹ What is and is not covered under the “faithfully executed” clause (Yates and Whitford, 1998)? In perhaps one of the most significant and currently relevant rulings, the Supreme Court in US v Nixon (1974) unanimously found that the president is not above the law. “Neither the doctrine of separation of powers nor the generalized need for confidentiality of high-level communications, without more (i.e., without offering evidence that national security is at stake), can sustain an absolute, unqualified Presidential privilege of immunity from judicial process under all circumstances.” But even this institutional formality tells only a partial story. That is because, aside from formal charters and institutional clarification, leadership is also norm based.

Incumbent leaders always rely on norms that impact their own behaviors and help shape the response of constituents to those behaviors. The role of norms in empowering and limiting the US President is especially salient, given that the unspecified nature of Article II (Renan, 2018). A concept of norm-based leadership recognizes that duties and responsibilities are shaped by unwritten and informal rules.

Norms do not impact all members of a unit equally or uniformly. Unit members with greater power have a greater capacity than others to set, break, and reset norms. Outside of totalitarian regimes, there will always be resistance to any norm breaking, pushback that can constrain the behaviors of even powerful individuals. State and federal courts have, for instance, reined in many of Trump’s most egregious antidemocratic impulses: his initial anti-Muslim travel ban, his attempts to prevent publication of unfavorable books, his claims of broad executive privilege for advisers and immunity for himself, and his insistence that he could avoid legal accountability of violations of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, many but not all.² Despite the courts, Trump has remained a prolific breaker of long-established norms that have been applied specifically to the holder of that office.

Trump is not the first president, and undoubtedly will not be the last, to break with presidential norms. Norms have been established by one president and broken by others since the earliest days of the Republic. Some of that norm-busting is more ritualistic than fundamental. Thomas Jefferson chose to deliver the state of the union speech via written message rather than in person. Other norm-breaking action strikes at the heart of fundamental democratic practices. That is the territory that Trump occupies.

From his explicit deployment of the Justice Department to investigate critics to his open invitation to foreign governments to provide personal dirt on political opponents and their families, his endless torrent of easily disproved lies, his denial of the principle of constitutional checks and balances, his active resistance to intelligence agency efforts to protect national security, his open conflicts with public health officials and experts during a global pandemic, his calls to postpone an upcoming presidential election, his public musings about the possibility of serving beyond the two-term constitutional limit, his fermenting of armed rebellion against democratically elected and Democratic state governors, and his urging of supporters to commit a felony by voting twice in the 2020 presidential election, Trump’s words and deeds have called into question many of the fundamental assumptions of a democratic system. Perhaps most fundamental, Trump has brought into question the assumption that an incumbent will accept the outcome of a constitutionally constructed election. A majority of the public apparently agreed that an assault is underway. Polls have found that over 60% of respondents agree with the statement: “Trump does not respect democratic norms” (Pace and Fingerhut, 2019).³

In democratic societies, whatever their variety and however many their flaws, citizens are able to call on the structures of election to place individuals in leadership positions. That ability includes the election of would-be authoritarians. That is how Trump found his way to the US presidency; he ascended to that position through the ballot box (with a great deal of help from the antidemocratic structure of the Electoral College, active voter suppression, interference by Russia, a strong current of sexism running through the populace and the press, and a solid, last minute assist from the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation).⁴

The popular election of antidemocratic authoritarians is not some particular glitch in American democracy. The same phenomenon has been repeated by Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, India’s Narendra Modi, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, Indonesia’s Joko Widodo, Turkey’s Recep Erdoğan, and Poland’s Andrzej Duda (Diamond, 2019). It is a dynamic—democratic elections resulting in antidemocratic leadership—being repeated across the post-World War “liberal order” (Applebaum, 2020).

Citizens seeking an escape from freedom, to borrow Fromm’s (1941) redolent and prescient phrase, are seemingly engaged in a “war” on democratic traditions and institutions.⁵ Democratic institutions—a (relatively) free press, an autonomous judiciary, a depoliticized military, and so on—are under siege. So too are the norms, the expectations of behavior applied to the leader, that have evolved to support democratic traditions.

The observation that Trump’s behavior as president is counter-normative is a fact statement. It is—or at least was in 2016 and may be still—fundamental to his base appeal (Luhrmann, 2016). A promise to violate well-established presidential norms was a virtual guarantee from the earliest days of the 2016 campaign. “He pledged to act in illegal ways; expressed illiberal attitudes toward freedom of speech, religion, and the press; attacked immigrants and minorities; tolerated, and even incited, thuggery at his rallies” (Goldsmith, 2017). Promises kept.

But another set of questions has been raised that is predictive rather than observational: to what extent will norm-busting behaviors on Trump’s part result in the setting of new norms, ones that will shape the behavior of future presidents? Is Trump establishing new norms for future office holders to follow? Has he permanently altered or even unmade the American presidency? To explore that question, it is useful to think more completely about just what norms are and how they operate as well as the link between leaders and norms.

Norms as a regime of control

Norms carry “ought to” assumptions, signaling an imperative stance in which behaviors are sorted into what behaviors members of the designated community ought and ought not to engage (Gibbard, 1986). Either implicitly or explicitly, norms promise, assert, and/or command the existence of a future “good” state of being, good at least for the social group that adopts the norm (Dumas, 1991; Taylor, 1961). Although typically stated in moral language, norms may also have an aesthetic, economic, legal, or ethical foundation.

Norms gain power through a process of social judgment. Members of a group often internalize norms and abide by them out of a sense of obligation and commitment to that larger social entity. But there will always be some process of external sanctioning in which counter-normative behaviors will be condemned (Hechter and Opp, 2001; Horne, 2001). By rewarding adherence and punishing deviance, social norms erect and maintain a regime of control.

That phrase—a “regime of control”—sounds ominous. It does not have to be. Norms often have pro-social benefits. Norms can build trust among group members: encouraging collaborative effort and enabling group achievement. It is difficult to think of a coherent social unit accomplishing complex tasks absent at least some binding group norms (Gouldner, 1960). Nevertheless, the more pernicious potential of norm setting should not be overlooked.

Norms may proscribe behaviors over individuals and groups excluded from the process of norm setting and disadvantaged by their enforcement (Mills, 1987). The construct of “transformational leadership” that came to dominate leadership discourse in the later years of the 20th century (e.g. Bass, 1990; Tichy and Ulrich, 1984) encouraged executives to impose (an imposition softened only slightly by applying to term “share”) a set of value-defined behaviors.⁶ When norms are set by a powerful social group, they work to control the less powerful.

Norms become more deeply entrenched in a regime of control if they evolve into binding rules and laws whose enforcement is policed by the state. US Jim Crow codes represented just such as evolution. In the antebellum South, norms defined the subservient behavior expected of Blacks. After the Civil War, Southern elites at first opposed the more democratic norms instigated by Reconstruction governments and then, when Reconstruction collapsed, imposed Jim Crow laws that reasserted and legally enforced antebellum subservient norms (Walker, 2018).

Formal, hierarchical leaders have a unique role, based on a combination of institutional power and the capacity to exercise symbolic influence through their own behavioral modeling (Johnson, 1990; Klapp, 1965).⁷ “By serving as exemplars who model desired behaviors,” note Brown and White (2009), “leaders aim to increase the levels of those behaviors among their followers” (p. 126). The status of leaders—their hierarchical position, their power and prestige, and so on—invites emulation (Brown and White, 2009; Trice and Beyer, 1991). Evidence of that emulation effect can be found in the rise of hate crimes following Trump’s election (Edwards and Rushin, 2018). Through their behaviors, leaders can impact the norms impacting the behavior of others.

Norms and leadership

Normative leadership is typically presented as the capacity of leaders to set norms for the social units they are heading: work groups (Taggar and Ellis, 2007), business organizations (Schein, 1985), and even nations (Grint, 2010). Burns (1978) built his construct of “transforming leadership” around instances of leaders resetting the norms of an entire society. Less examined but vital to the understanding of how leadership is enacted is the question of how prevailing norms create opportunities and limitations on the exercise of leadership. Leaders set norms not only just for their followers but also for future leaders.

Presidents set norms for other presidents. When first George Washington and then Thomas Jefferson declined to seek reelection to a third term, a two-term norm was created. Because leaders cannot simply command new norms into existence, it was the behavior of successive presidents—James Madison and James Monroe in the immediate aftermath of Jefferson’s tenure—and their decisions to abide by the two-term norm that functioned to establish the tradition (Korzi, 2001).

Presidents can and do bust norms as well, as when Franklin Roosevelt sought a third term in 1940 and a fourth term 4 years later. There was certainly institutional pushback against Franklin D. Roosevelt’s (FDR) norm busting. The fiercely anti-FDR Chicago Tribune suggested that “Mr. Roosevelt as a third-term candidate would confront the nation with a dictatorship in flesh and blood, not in theory” (quoted in Korzi, 2001: 81). The friendlier New York Times, a two-time Roosevelt endorser, also adamantly opposed a break in the two-term norm: “We believe that at a time when the traditional safeguards of democracy are falling everywhere, it is particularly important to honor and preserve the American tradition against vesting the enormous power of the presidency in the hands of any man for three consecutive terms of office” (Choice of a Candidate, 1940).

FDR was, of course, elected both times. Would the two-term norm now be permanently nullified? It was precisely a concern over this question that led congressional Republicans, joined by a significant number of Democrats (including newly elected Representative John F Kennedy) to entrench the two-term tradition into a Constitutional requirement. Advocates of that amendment were well aware that the behaviors of one president can and do set future norms.

I am not suggesting that leader norms are established only by the precedent of their predecessors. Much of the negative reaction to Trump is that he is not following just such precedent. It is the concern—let us face it, the fear and horror—that he may be setting a “new normal” for future presidents that I wish to address.

Provisionality and normative discourse

Norms are provisional; they do not last forever. “Difficult to circumscribe, they can be highly fluctuant over space and time” (Portelinha and Elcheroth, 2016: 662). Norm fluctuation arises out of an ongoing negotiation among members of a social unit: an organization, a corporation, and a country. Under new and different circumstances, the dynamics of that negotiation, and the wishes of the unit’s constituent members change. “Breaking norms is neither good nor bad,” noted Kesler (2018), “except as the norms themselves are good or bad.”

Trump’s norm busting has precipitated dire warnings that a “new normal” will shape the behavior of future presidents. Breaking norms will always evoke response and sanction. That is what makes them norms. The matter under consideration here is not if norms will be broken (yes, they will) or whether norm busting will provoke social sanctioning (of course it will), but what it means to set and reset a presidential norm. That is a process that relies on the deployment of normative discourse, a particular use of language that involves, either implicitly or explicitly, an ought to assertion. The goal of normative discourse is to make an assertion in order to orient future behaviors. It is discourse that both expresses and endorses a particular mode of behavior (Hesni, 2019).

To help distinguish between assertions that are fundamentally normative and all other types of assertions (“A Category 5 hurricane has formed in the Atlantic” would be considered a descriptive assertion but not normative), normative assertions contain purposeful expressions of evaluation and prescription. When Thomas Jefferson decided voluntarily to leave office after his second term, he called upon normative discourse to explain that decision. His leave taking, he insisted, involved a democratic “duty.” If incumbents were allowed to seek endless reelection, the presidency would evolve into a lifetime position.

To be more specific, then, a normative assertion can be understood as a speech act with two clear intentions:

To define “good” and “right” as the goal of norm formation.

To assert a sense of obligation or oughtness to behave in a way consistent with the achievement of that good and right end-state.

The definition of good and right justifies the norm, while the sense of obligation defines behavioral expectations (Taylor, 1961).

The making of a normative assertion does not guarantee that the norm will actually be set and followed. Normative assertions by a leader will be more likely to impact behaviors if the leader is seen to possess legitimate authority to speak not just for the community but to the community (Dumas, 1991).

Leaders in democratic societies “give voice through speech, advocacy, symbolization, and action” on behalf of citizens (Casey, 2009: 1). That representation is established largely through voting. To be sure, the voting process is flawed, providing some groups structural advantage over others (e.g., Anderson, 2018; Badger, 2016; Bartels, 2008) and vulnerable to suppression (Anderson, 2018) and manipulation (Alvarez et al., 2008). And even though they are elected officials, presidents—like all chief executives—exert an outsized influence due to access, even control, of formal mechanisms of power and influence.

Normative discourse requires not just a speaker but a designated agent, an individual or group whose behaviors are intended for shaping (Taylor, 1961). Jefferson’s two-term assertion clearly intended future presidents as the agents who would/should adhere to the patriotic duty of voluntary retirement. Trump’s norm busting has not been accompanied by normative discourse aimed at the behavior of future presidents. Rather, his discourse is framed as personal grievance unfolding in a particular stew of egocentric personality traits.

Look, for instance, at his public utterances on violating the twenty-second amendment prohibition against a third term. Tweeting, “do you think the people would demand that I stay longer? KEEP AMERICA GREAT” (#RealDomaldTrump, 2019), Trump insisted that “they have stollen [sic] 2 years of my (our) Presidency.” His reference is to the Mueller investigation, what he called “Collusion Delusion.” There is no intended agent, no future president whose behaviors he wishes to shape. It is Donald Trump and Donald Trump alone whose continuation in office will “keep America great.”

That lack of explicit normative discourse may be the evidence needed to counter fears that the presidency is in the process of being remade or unmade.

Not so fast.

Despite the lack of normative discourse targeting future presidents on Trump’s part, it is still worth considering the many dire warnings about the future of the presidency. Even absent specific use of normative discourse, Trump’s behaviors amount to a system of norms (Gibbard, 1986). A number of individual actions—attacks on the press and denial of constitutional checks on presidential power, for instance—gain synergistic normative power through their overlapping and reinforcing assertions of attitudes and values.

If a system of norms replaces that assumption with the assertion that the leader operates beyond the constraints of the Constitution, above the society’s laws, and sheltered from the requirement to represent the community of peoples represented through the office, then it is prudent to worry that the structure of that leadership position might be fundamentally altered.

Violation of presidential norms by an incumbent has been a regular and ongoing feature of the office. Norm busting will always be accompanied by some sort of external sanctioning. But sanctions come in an endless array of strength and resolve: the stronger the sanction, the stronger the norm. The process of norm resetting is, in reality, a two-step process. First, the standing norm is broken. And then, a new norm is asserted. On the absence of the second step, there will be no new norm.

Norm breaking may be an individual act, but norm resetting occurs only if and when a network of like-minded actors coalesces around a new norm. When sanctions for violating the standing norm are weak, the possibility opens for a reset. Trump’s norm busting has occurred with only limited opposition and occasional endorsement from Republican congressional representatives. And even more potent in considering the future of democratic norms is the significant willingness of constituents to choose norm busting as a desirable trait of their elected leaders.

The underlying and fundamental norm governing leadership in any democratic system is that leaders have no autonomous sovereignty. Rather, they gain authority through a system, however flawed, of popular representation and work within a formal charter that has been approved by that same populace (Kane and Patapan, 2012). For some countries—former Soviet bloc nations, for example—democratic norms may not be deeply embedded in and accepted by their populace. Cultural, religious, social, ethnic, and/or racial anxiety might lead to a yearning for a “restoration” of an old order—restoration rendered in quotes because it is an imperfect, selective recollective of the past—that overwhelms any commitment to democratic principles (Applebaum, 2020). With its two century-plus history of representative democracy, the United States has likewise become susceptible to the same imbalance.

Communities are especially susceptible to authoritarian appeals when constituent members believe they are facing “crisis.” A crisis situation “allows for the bypassing of the usual protocols of democratic control, decision-making, or public debate” (De Cauwer, 2018: xv). With perceived threat comes a desire for “strong” leadership. Individual leaders believe they must demonstrate resolve, determination, courage, and decisiveness. Followers tend to agree, seeking just those qualities from a crisis leader (Staw et al., 1981).

The term “crisis” is nothing more or less than a label applied to a set of contingencies as a way of asserting meaning and shaping response (Spector, 2019). When aspiring leaders apply the crisis label in a way that appeals to the bigoted, racist, xenophobic, and paternalistic impulses of constituents by emphasizing the “other” as a treat to the community, support for democratic, pluralistic, and rational norms can be overwhelmed. Arendt (1958) discerned just such a dynamic in the rise of pre-World War II European fascism. Constructing fear of others has propelled the rise of authoritarians across Europe (Applebaum, 2020) and defines Donald Trump’s brand in the United States. As long as those fears outweigh a commitment to democratic norms, a strong voting bloc exists for authoritarian leadership.

It takes a combination of like-minded constituents, leaders, and institutional support to establish democratic norms. Likewise, it takes agreeable constituents, willing leaders, and weak prodemocratic institutions to create new, antidemocratic norms. As much as the press, the courts, and in some cases, the military can and do contribute to prodemocratic pushback, other vital institutions have failed miserably. Opposition parties and elements of the press have fallen into an authoritarian, antidemocratic lockstep. Finally, it will be the citizenry as much as future leaders and creaky institutions who will determine the degree to which their own representative governments will reinforce or abandon democratic norms. The so-called followers may well emerge as the authentic leaders.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to Mariaelena Bartesaghi, Teun De Rycker, Paul ‘t Hart, John Kane, Maureen Kelleher, Milorad Novicevic, and Haig Patapan.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author biography

Bert Spector, an Associate Professor at Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business, specializes in issues of management and organizational history, leadership, and crisis studies. His articles have appeared in Organization, Management and Organizational History, Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, and Leadership. His latest book, Constructing Crisis: Leaders, Crisis, and Claims of Urgency, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2019.

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