POLIS 2118 - The Politics of Leadership

The primary objective of the University of Adelaide is to prepare students for leadership in public and private sectors. This course introduces students to major themes in leadership studies through a multidisciplinary approach, using extensive case studies of political leaders, such as Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt, JF Kennedy, Gandhi, Mao, Thatcher, Reagan, Gorbachev and more recently Putin, Obama, Xi Jinping and Trump. It begins with an analysis of the concept of leadership and proceeds to examine the typology of leadership, including transformational, transactional, situational and charismatic. Finally, it considers the importance of followership and leadership traits, as well as the role of gender and ethics in effective leadership, methods to evaluate leadership and relevance of leadership in the 21st century. Throughout the course, students will be asked to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of existing approaches to the study of leadership and develop their own perspectives through research projects on political leaders.