ABSTRACT
Like “power,” “leadership” is one of the most complex and elusive of concepts in social science. Leadership has meaning for, and has been studied extensively across, all social science disciplines: politics, business (especially management), psychology, philosophy, sociology, and military studies. 1 Most studies of political leadership reflect certain assumptions about how leadership is conceptualized, who is counted as a leader, and how leadership should be studied. Some of these assumptions seem to tie leadership to holding office or positions in organizations; others focus on the personal traits of the people who are leaders. Still others seem to conceive of leadership as the ability to contribute to a cause, organization, or process and focus on the effectiveness of different leadership strategies or styles. Finally, there are assumptions that lead to an examination of the relationship between leaders and his or her followers. All of these assumptions inform both the research design and the conclusions reached about political leadership. However, it is not untypical for a study built on one type of assumption about leadership to ignore the other dimensions that form the totality of leadership in urban politics today. Although it is not without value to select a narrow aspect of a field to study, what seems to be occurring in the area of political leadership is a certain blindness as to how the implicit or at least unstated assumptions reflect biases about culture and gender.
