Leadership and Its Basis in Problems of Social Coordination

Leadership is a means by which social groups attempt to realize gains from cooperation, coordination, and efficient allocation. The attempt to achieve such gains gives rise to further, overarching problems of coordination. The latter problems are recurrent but are likely to vary from one situation to the next; this makes decentralized methods of solution especially difficult, and provides the ultimate reason leadership is needed, invented, and accepted. Solution of such overarching problems makes leadership possible in the basic problems in which social gains are available, including activities such as organizing, sanctioning, communicating, and allocating. The stability of leadership is based on the group's need to solve coordination problems; as a result, a leader has discretion or "power," and can get away with less-than-maximal service of group goals. This approach to understanding leadership suggests several useful techniques for the study of political leadership in particular settings.