ABSTRACT
Margaret Thatcher, the British Prime Minister - the most senior and the most successful political leader in today's free world - has no programme. In her ten years on the job she has concentrated on only three tasks: breaking the labour unions' stranglehold; privatization in industry, in housing, in education; making sure that growing involvement in the European Economic Community does not endanger Britain's 'special relationship' with the United States. The American media explained the blandness of the 1988 election campaign with the personalities of the contenders, and especially with their lack of 'charisma'. Traditional political leadership organized around issues, that is, around disagreements over ends. Increasingly the task of political leadership will be to organize around agreement over ends, indeed to mobilize the consensus on ends. And this also may be the only way to undercut the paralysing power of the small minorities.
