Major and Classification
International Relations
Faculty Mentors
- Professor Robert English
Department
McNair Project
“Dissidents as Political Leaders: A Study in Adopting Transactional and Transformational Leadership Models to International Relations”
Without strong leadership developing nations flounder and fall victim to corruption and chaos. However, those engaged in nation building and studying this phenomenon in international relations can only refer to limited literature about nation-state leadership. Leadership, by James McGregor Burns, uses two terms, transactional and transforming, to describe leadership and uses historical narratives to fill in these categories. This study will explore the appropriateness of this model when used to account for the behavior of political leaders in a democratic government. To relate these models to international relations this study will examine the descriptions contained in Burns’ book to ascertain the appropriateness of using these models in international relations research, and to add any additional variables that are not accounted for in the organizational management literature.