Abstract

I jumped at the chance to shepherd this collection. This was personal for me. In the past, when I had prepared to teach courses on political leadership, I had come up with a dearth of recent scholarly attention to the topic. Perhaps my perspective on politics and leadership exacerbated the difficulty of my search. I had in mind a politics that touched all aspects of power and authority in our lives, encouraged the moral imagination, and affirmed human agency that could make the future better than the present. I searched with limited success for material that would explain how all of us shape and are shaped by politics. My perspective on leadership may have also hindered my search. I had in mind the simple notion of taking initiative on behalf of shared values. I found too little material about leadership that extended beyond the spectacle of authority and its assumption of hierarchy. I wanted to explain that each of us, regardless of our place in a hierarchy, has a calling to lead - to act on behalf of our moral imagination. Editing this volume permitted me the chance to develop the material I sought. I no longer have a shortage of material relating politics and leadership with each other. From the Introduction.