What Makes You Political Leader: Competence, Integrity And Authenticity

There are three broad sets of qualities that citizens might expect politicians to display: competence, integrity and authenticity. 

To be authentic, a politician must be judged to be in touch with the lives and outlooks of ordinary people and previous research has suggested that this expectation has grown more prevalent in recent times.

The personality and qualities of political leaders has long been acknowledged as an important element of politics and influence on political attitudes and behaviour.

In more recent decades, academic attention has turned towards how the expectations that citizens have of politicians determine these important dynamics.

This increasing attention has been accompanied by the argument that these expectations and evaluations have become even more important over time, as partisanship in the electorate has declined dramatically.

Citizens are less tied by loyalty to a party or candidate and thus might be more engaged in a process of judgement about who to lend their support to at each election.

The dynamics of interaction between politicians and citizens have also changed as media technology develops rapidly and party organisations shift, fundamentally reshaping our political landscapes.

There has been some variability in the findings and terminology of previous studies on the personal traits of politicians: 

while most of these find two distinct dimensions relating to competence on one hand and integrity on the other, there is less consistency on other potential dimensions.

A third dimension has been called ‘charisma’, described as the ability of leaders to persuade voters, but also sometimes including traits such as warmth and humility.

Relatedly, there is emerging evidence that it has become more important to citizens in recent decades that politicians appear more ‘human’ to them.

However, the expectation that politicians be ‘human’ appears to have developed from a relatively minor and undemanding expectation that politicians be genial, warm, and sympathetic to a relatively major and more demanding expectation that politicians be ‘normal’ in a variety of ways and situations and especially ‘in touch’ with the ‘real’ lives of ‘ordinary’ people.

In other words, this has gone together with changing expectations of politicians: while citizens have always associated ‘The Good Politician’ with personality traits related to integrity and competence, there is a growing expectation that politicians should also be more ‘human’, ‘normal’ or ‘in touch’ with ordinary people: to be more authentic.

Charisma is a term better reserved for when exceptional qualities of vision, veracity and trustworthiness are perceived in a leader by followers.

Moreover, there is an important distinction between the trait of being able to persuade people on issues and being perceived as likable and like them.

Indeed, it has been argued for a long time that with the advent of social media and the rise of post-materialist values, citizens have begun to place more importance on politicians appearing to be likable and similar to them, on the same level rather than above them. 

Therefore, to be a good leader, try to meet up with some qualities that has to do with people who are driven by their abilities to proffer solutions and can face reality. 

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TakeMyGist™®

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