Secrecy and Leadership: The Case of Theresa May’s Brexit Negotiations.

A new topical piece on Theresa May: Heide, M., & Worthy, B. (2019). Secrecy and Leadership: The Case of Theresa May’s Brexit Negotiations. Public Integrity, 1-13.

Abstract

Openness is essential for democratic leadership. It represents a moral commitment and an instrument for increasing trust and legitimacy. However, secrecy can still aid leaders by safeguarding their power and policies or preserving their reputation. This article examines Theresa May’s attempted use of secrecy around the UK–EU Brexit negotiations to protect her power, policy, and reputation between 2016 and 2019. While this approach appeared successful initially, over time, the counter-pressure for openness reversed its benefits. By the beginning of 2019, it was clear that May’s secrecy had limited her power, undermined her policy, and ultimately damaged her reputation. The analysis ends by drawing comparisons with Donald Trump, whose efforts to conceal his actions have produced the same counterproductive results. The case study illustrates how secrecy can create political space and bolster a leader’s reputation in the short term; however, over time, secret-keeping encourages leaks and greater scrutiny, exposes policies, and damages reputations, especially in increasingly transparent governance systems such as in the United States and the UK. Context is key, and secrecy surrounding high-profile, controversial issues, such as Brexit, is difficult to preserve. It can prove particularly damaging when it is tied to the leader’s reputation, as in May’s case.

Keywords: Brexit, leadership, legitimacy, secrecy

 

Here’s a download link for the first 50…

https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/9tYfyCe9K6QMIEDZJHdY/full?target=10.1080/10999922.2019.1609273

 

Ground Hog Day for the Next UK Prime Minister

Ben Worthy

Only one thing is predictable about the UK’s next prime minister: they will be a ground hog day leader. For all that the candidates are promising new deals, no deals and new directions, from day one they’ll face the same traps and tripwires that have destroyed May’s premiership.

No doubt May faced an uphill task, and had one of the worst in-trays of any peacetime prime minister. Particularly after June 2017, Theresa May faced a divided party, a split House of Commons and a divided country.

We should remember, before sending off our sympathy cards, that her decisions worsened what was already a bad situation. Her premiership was wrecked on her own promises and ‘red lines’, which she had to retreat from. Her neglect of Scotland and Northern Ireland let to talk of new referendums and separation. And the less said about her decision to hold ‘snap’ election the better, as she manged to somehow win while losing, doing away with a majority she very, very badly needed.

The problem for whoever the next prime minister is that nothing will have changed. It may be that the new prime minister has some skills that May lacked. Perhaps she will be more decisive, a better communicator or less divisive. She could even enjoy a (brief) bounce in the polls and, if she’s lucky, some good will.

Yet like Theresa May, our next leader will be a ‘takeover’ PM, getting to power by replacement not an election win. Being a takeover almost always limits a leader’s lifespan and, sometimes, their authority. I estimated ‘takeovers’ have about three years.

The Conservative party will still be deeply, hopelessly split. There’ll still be no majority for the government in the House of Commons, and the option of a general election, given the local and EU election results, should be, to put it diplomatically, reasonably unappealing. As for ‘re-opening’ or ‘no dealing’ Brexit, the prime minister looks set to be trapped between an EU who will not renegotiate and parliament that will not allow a no deal.

In fact, it will probably be worse for May’s successor. If the new prime minister wins by promising no deal or radical re-negotiations, they’ll have to U-turn or backtrack. Tensions will probably worsen with Scotland, where there are new referendum rumblings, and the complexities of Northern Ireland and the border will stay unsolved. Labour’s dilemmas and problem could make everything worse, not better.

Is there a way out? Perhaps. Prime ministers, like presidents, have a power to persuade. John Harris and Marina Hyde, as well as academics like Rob Ford, have been making the point that no one is trying to change anyone’s mind, or even suggested it could be done. Yet why people voted how they did was complex and changeable. The whole debate about Brexit has been tied up with a belief that the UK is hopelessly and irredeemably polarised, and that the will of the people is now set in stone (listen in to Albert Weale’s great talk here).

Instead of labelling opponents as enemies, why doesn’t the new prime minister try to persuade them? Time after time, from Iraq to Same-Sex marriage, UK politicians have tried to persuade the public to re-think their views. Parts of the population were persuaded in 2016. Can’t they be talked back again? It’s the only way out of the loop.

 

 

 

Manfred Weber’s leadership may not be what the EU needs

Manuel Poças and Marij Swinkels

Now that the European Parliamentary die have been cast the EU awaits its first daunting task: nominating the commission’s president. Despite waking up to a strongly fragmented and dispersed political landscape in Europe, the European People’s Party (EPP) is still the biggest party in size. As a result, it is likely that their Spitzenkandidat, Manfred Weber, will be Jean-Claude Juncker’s successor. Weber is a recognisable presence. We have come to know and understand his political beliefs and have listened to his plans for Europe. But what can we expect in terms of leadership? And how will Weber’s leadership impact the precarious relationship between the commission and the council? It has come time to zoom in on Weber’s personality and potential leadership style.

Choosing a new president is not easy, let alone in the complex arena of the European Union. Ideally, the president of the commission understands his role as a collective and collaborative actor in the ‘leaderful polity’ that the EU is. Ideological background, country of origin, and beliefs are but a few factors that matter in choosing a new president. In the weeks leading up to the elections, Weber’s credentials have been extensively debated and scrutinised given the likelihood of his candidacy. However, one crucial factor has been neglected: his potential leadership style. This seems odd, as leadership style may determine the extent to which Weber will stay true to his beliefs, as well as his personal and policy preferences. In addition, interrogating his leadership style may give an indication of whether he is likely to be a collegial, consensus-seeking leader that can adjust to the circumstances that he is in.

In the corporate and public sector, candidates for top jobs are often subjected to psychological tests to determine their suitability for a specific job. Subjecting top political leaders to such tests may be somewhat more difficult but  American professor Margaret G. Hermann has developed a method (named: Leadership Trait Analysis) to analyze leadership styles from a distance. Hermann’s method relies on analyzing ad-libbed data of political figureheads by asking three questions: 1) Do leaders respect or challenge constraints in their environment? 2) Are leaders open or closed to incoming information, and 3) What are leaders’ reasons for seeking their positions? Through these questions, we can analyze a leaders’ leadership style.

By analyzing Weber’s spontaneous interview material since the start of the EU campaign, we were able to draft a general profile of his leadership style in comparison to other leaders. Looking at the data from the coded interviews and resulting trait scores, we can infer that Manfred Weber is the type of leader that is more likely to respect constraints, to be closed to new contextual, incoming information, and to focus on taking advantage of opportunities and building relationships. Reasons for seeking a position are both internally or externally driven, depending on the context. These results show that Weber can be classified as a directive or consultative leader, and that is, we believe, in line with Weber’s behavior in politics. Weber is described as a ‘bedrock of conservative and Catholic beliefs’ and as someone who has fundamental beliefs about Europe and European integration. We can expect Weber to be highly interested in guiding policies along paths that are consistent with his own views, while working within the constraints of his own position. We can also expect that Weber will be particularly adept at shoring up needed support for what he wants to do or achieve. One recent situation that is exemplary for this behavior is the ‘Fidesz-crisis’ in the European Parliament, where Weber continued to provide support to Orbàn’s party up until the morning of the vote to trigger article 7.

These results may be problematic for successful collaborative leadership in the EU’s complex and diffuse leadership polity. Political commentators assumed that Weber was the most viable option for European Council leaders as he would ‘know the Brussel’s drill’ and be the technocratic, collegial leader that they expect him to be. The leaders of the European Council may need to think twice, as this analysis hints at a different picture. The European Council may have to deal with a leader that challenges their power and aims to (re)shape the policy platform as he sees fit in the years to come. This may severely affect the already precarious relationship between the council and the commission, considering the delicate nature of collaborative and consensual leadership in the EU. As such, from a personality perspective, Weber may not be what the EU needs to prosper, both internally and externally.

Marij Swinkels is a PhD candidate and lecturer at the Utrecht University School of Governance. In her research, she aims to understand how the beliefs of political leaders permeate crisis decision-making. She is the founder of Utrecht University’s InclUUsion and blogs about her life as a researcher on Faces of Science.

Manuel Campinos Poças is a political science and international relations student from Universidade Católica Portuguesa in Lisbon, Portugal. He’s currently doing an Erasmus program at Utrecht University School of Governance, and taking the course Understanding Political Leadership, for which he had to profile a political leader of his choice.

 

 

 

Downing Street Blues? Prime ministerial memoirs and memory 23/5/2019

How do prime ministers think? And what do their memoirs tell us? At this event we will explore how these apparently personal histories provide insight and are also used to justify, explain and establish a leader’s persona and, most importantly, their place in history.

Ben Worthy (Birkbeck) presents in discussion with Birkbeck Politics Writer in Residence Sian Norris.

Thu, 23 May 2019

18:00 – 19:20

Location

Room 124, 43 Gordon Square

WC1H 0PD

Tickets here 

‘I like to operate’: Bhutan’s PM spends weekends as a surgeon

 

A great story in the Guardian

For most prime ministers, the task of running the country is enough.

But not so for the multitasking prime minister of Bhutan, who spends his weekends at an operating table and tending to patients.

Dr Lotay Tshering was one of Bhutan’s most high regarded doctors before he entered politics last year, and while his prime ministerial duties occupy him during the week, on weekends he returns to the hospital as a way to let off steam.

Read the whole story here

White House Blues: Trump, Mueller and What it Tells Us

Here’s a great first analysis on what it means-and what Mueller did not do via the Lawfare Blog-with perhaps they key revelation that Trump did try and obstruct but his aides and staff didn’t obey him.

There’s also an interesting piece of analysis by US academics on what Mueller tells us about Trump’s mental state, pretty much encapsulated in the title ‘If One is Too Incompetent to Commit a Crime, Despite Trying Hard, Is One Competent to be President?’ with a Huffington Post summary here.

This is, of course, part on an ongoing debate about leaders and their health. Trump’s arrival in the White House has led to argument about whether Trump poses a danger, and the continuation of the so-called Goldwater Rule concerning the rules around discussing leaders and their mental health. There’s also a good BBC piece as background on the mental rigours of being US president here .

Just as historical background, there’s also a famous paper by Davidson, J. R., Connor, K. M., & Swartz, M. (2006). Mental illness in US presidents between 1776 and 1974: A review of biographical sources. The Journal of nervous and mental disease, 194(1), 47-51-see here.

PSA Political Leadership April update

‘Our government rests in public opinion. Whoever can change public opinion, can change the government’

Abraham Lincoln

Dear All,

Welcome to the April 2019 PSA Political Leadership monthly update.

Research

Here’s three pieces of recent leadership research on leadership in China

• Gueorguiev, D. D. (2018). ‘Dictator’s shadow: Chinese elite politics under Xi Jinping’. China Perspectives, (1/2), 17 here .
• Wu, Z., Luo, J., & Zhang, X. (2019). ‘Uncovering Political Promotion in China: A Network Analysis of Patronage Relationship in Autocracy’ draft is here.
• Jiang, Junyan and Luo, Zhaotian, (2019) ‘Leadership Styles and Political Survival of Chinese Communist Party Elites’. Available on

As an extra, here’s a very recent piece on US presidential wit

• Carpenter, D. M., Webster, M. J., & Bowman, C. K. (2019). ‘White House Wit: How Presidents Use Humor as a Leadership Tool’. Presidential Studies Quarterly here

Again, if you have any research please send it along…

Events

PSA (April) A number of us will be at the UK PSA annual conference, University of Nottingham 15-17 April 2019-let us know if you’ll be there too. Mark is there Monday-Tuesday and Ben on Wednesday.

Workshop (December) We are also planning a small workshop and Parliament and leadership with PSA parliament and legislatures and gender and politics groups. This looks to be in Lincoln in December 2019-please drop Ben or Mark an email if you are interested.

Our blog

Just a reminder about our blog for the group here. Read Ben’s recent blog on leadership, choice and Brexit ‘A Tale of Two failures: Poor Choices and Bad Judgements on The Road to Brext’  and Marij Swinkels on the barriers facing female leaders. We’d very much like to add to our blog, so please send any blog posts, papers or articles which we can post and send around in future emails. Email them back at this address or b.worthy@bbk.ac.uk

News

Slovakia: Zuzana Caputova, an anti-corruption lawyer who entered politics only a year ago, is now the first female President of Slovakia, in the wake of the killing of Jan Kuciak and Martina Kusnirova in February 2018. There’s a BBC profile here.

New Zealand: a great piece on Jacinda Adern and her remarkable leadership in the wake of the terrorist attacks here.

The age of the hyperleader: a piece on what happens when ‘political leadership meets social media celebrity’ in the New Statesman .

Finally, an interesting Talking Politics podcast here ‘The Problem with Political Leaders’ with Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s former chief of staff, Recorded before a live audience at Trinity Hall, Cambridge.

 

Will she, won’t she? The evasive communicative style of Theresa May

Based on the 23 sessions of PMQs held during Theresa May’s first term of office, Peter Bull finds that her mean reply rate to questions from Jeremy Corbyn was just 11%. He also explains that her equivocation style was covert, characterised by ignoring or modifying questions, stating or implying that she had already answered questions, and acknowledging questions without answering them.

Not answering questions is an accusation commonly levelled at politicians, but to what extent is this actually true? In the analysis of what is known as equivocation, we have devised the term reply rate to refer to the proportion of questions that receive an explicit reply: the lower the reply rate, the more equivocal the politician. We have also devised a system for identifying different techniques of equivocation through which to date 37 ways of not replying to questions have been identified.

We have conducted a series of analyses based on 33 interviews with British party political leaders (broadcast between 1987 and 1992), which showed a mean reply rate of just 46%. A more recent study of 26 interviews with party leaders during the 2015 and 2017 general elections showed similar reply rates, with a mean of 38% across both elections (2015 election 43%; 2017 election 34%). Notably, however, reply rates for interviews with Theresa May were much lower – just 27% in two interviews she gave shortly after becoming PM, and again 27% in four interviews from the 2017 general election.

To further investigate political equivocation, we decided to extend these techniques of analysis to encounters between the PM and the Leader of the Opposition in Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs). One study was focussed on former PM David Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn, based on the first 20 sessions of PMQs following Corbyn’s election as Leader of the Labour Party (12 September 2015). Following that appointment, Corbyn introduced a new technique to PMQs of sourcing questions from members of the public. However, no significant difference was found between Cameron’s reply rate to these public questions (23%) and to questions not so sourced (20%). Notably, these figures for PMQs are much lower than those quoted above for political interviews.

A second study was conducted based on all the 23 PMQs that took place during Theresa May’s first administration (20 July 2016 – 26 April 2017). It was found that her mean reply rate averaged over these sessions was almost half that of David Cameron’s (just 11%), a difference which is statistically highly significant. Further analyses were conducted to assess whether a distinctive equivocation style could be identified for Theresa May. Overall, her most frequently occurring forms of equivocation were as follows: makes political points (92%), ignores the question (43%), modifies the question (26%), personal attacks (23%), states or implies she has already answered question (19%), and acknowledges the question without answering it (16%) (each figure represent a percentage of the total number of May’s equivocal responses).

Two of these categories are unremarkable. The most frequently occurring category (making political points) has been shown in previous studies of broadcast interviews with three leading British politicians (Margaret Thatcher, Neil Kinnock, and John Major) to be much their most frequent form of equivocation. Although broadcast interviews undoubtedly differ markedly from PMQs, it scarcely seems surprising that in both situations the politicians equivocate most frequently through making political points. Also unremarkable is the category of personal attacks (23%), given that May’s five predecessors have been shown in a previous study to make frequent personal attacks on the Leader of the Opposition in PMQs.

However, the remaining four categories are interesting in the context of a distinction between overt and covert forms of equivocation. In an overt response, equivocation is quite open (for example, in declining to answer a question), whereas in a covert response, the equivocation is not explicitly acknowledged, or may even be concealed. Notably, all these four categories (ignores the question, states or implies she has already answered question, acknowledges the question without answering it, and modifies the question) can be regarded as covert, as argued below.

Thus, in acknowledging the question without answering it, Theresa May may give the misleading impression that an answer will be forthcoming. In ignoring the question, May does not even acknowledge that a question has been asked. In stating or implying that she has already answered the question, May conceals the fact that the question actually has not been answered. Responding to a modified version of the question is perhaps the most covert of all four techniques, because May thereby seemingly gives the impression of providing an answer, but in fact it is not to the question that has actually been posed.

In a previous study of public attitudes to PMQs, many of the respondents were infuriated by a perceived failure to answer a ‘straight question’, and by the scoring of party political points. The results of the above analysis confirm these public perceptions. Thus, in 23 sessions of PMQs, not only did May answer on average only 11% of the questions from the Leader of the Opposition, but also used a variety of covert techniques to equivocate, thereby failing to maintain any semblance of dialogue with her opposite number. Overall, the study provides ample empirical evidence to substantiate these public perceptions and their gross dissatisfaction with the dialogue (or lack of it) in Prime Minister’s Questions.

From a wider perspective, equivocation is politically important if it infuriates the public, and potentially turns them off politics, when voter apathy and poor electoral turnouts are recognised as serious problems for an effectively functioning democratic system. Equivocation is also important because of its potential to undermine political accountability, if at this showpiece parliamentary event the PM persistently avoids answering questions from the Leader of the Opposition. However, it is possible that the identification of different forms of equivocation through such analyses as described above may provide useful cues to pose more challenging and penetrating questions in PMQs – thereby to improve its political accountability, and hence to provide more effective parliamentary scrutiny.

______________

Note: the above draws on the author’s published work in Parliamentary Affairs.

Peter Bull is Honorary Professor in Psychology at the Universities of York & Salford.

Originally on the LSE Policy and Politics blog https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/the-evasive-communicative-style-of-theresa-may/

Image HM Government [OGL 3 (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3)%5D

A tale of two failures: poor choices and bad judgements on the road to Brexit

David Cameron. Picture: World Economic Forum/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 licence. Theresa May. Picture: EU2017EE Estonia Presidency/CC BY 2.0 licence

As the process of leaving the EU finally reaches crisis point, politicians, parties and people seem trapped in legal processes and strict deadlines. Brexit now looks as if it was fated to happen because of events long ago, a sort of Titanic meets the iceberg moment (and Boris Johnson did say it would be a Titanic success). The iceberg that hit the Titanic in April 1912 set off in the autumn 1911, and actually began to break away in 1908. Jennings and Stoker show how Brexit too has deep, slow-moving roots in economic division, political distrust and ‘tail winds’ of ‘Englishness, anxiety about immigration and economic pessimism’.

Yet there is also a very powerful human element. We are where we are because of a long string of poor political decisions by David Cameron and Theresa May. Even the sinking of the Titanic was about choice, as the boat was going too fast and iceberg warnings were ignored.

Politicians’ actions don’t always matter. Much of the time, situations aren’t fluid enough for one person to make a difference. Often they have little choice or room for manoeuvre, and we can safely say anyone in their place would have done (roughly) the same thing. It is probable, for example, that any politician in power, whether David Cameron or Gordon Brown, would have had to bail out the banks in 2008. Most British leaders would probably have passed some form of same-sex marriage legislation between 2010 and 2015.

But sometimes we can pinpoint those situations when one person’s decision does make a difference – what Fred Greenstein calls action and actor dependability. This is partly about being in the right place but also about personality: a certain person’s traits and psychology mean they make a choice another would not. In 1940 Churchill wanted to fight on when his closest rival to be leader, Halifax, was much less certain. In 1956 Anthony Eden, after some serious skulduggery, seized the Suez Canal before stopping under pressure from the USA. His predecessor Churchill made it clear he would have done things differently:  ‘I would never have dared, and if I had dared, I would never have dared stop.’ Thatcher’s Falkland’s war Blair’s Iraq war look to be very personal decisions.

Brexit too is a product of choice, or a series of choices made first by David Cameron and then by Theresa May. Each decision forced them and their country further down a particular path, and meant they were less able to escape.

David Cameron’s EU choices began long ago when he withdrew Conservative MEPs from the EPP group in the European Parliament. He famously vetoed treaty changes in 2011 and threatened it again in 2012. Each time he won cheers from his sceptical backbenchers in the short-term, but each move forced him on a path towards a referendum while worsening his relations with his EU allies.

Then came the big, fatal choice. In 2013 Cameron promised an in/out referendum if he won a second term. Mystery still surrounds why. He feared the electoral power of UKIP and the ‘over the shoulder’ pressure from his own backbenchers, who had engineered a large rebellion in 2012 and threatened continual disruption. It was said more recently that he hoped to use a referendum as a bargaining chip in any future coalition negotiations. Each of these judgements proved badly flawed. UKIP won no new seats in 2015; Cameron won a majority. Whether backbench pressure truly forced his hand is hard to know – but the same supposedly all-powerful group couldn’t remove Theresa May in 2018. Could he have just held his nerve?

Another reason Cameron chose a referendum was because he was pretty obsessed with them. Back in 2009 Cameron had made a ‘cast-iron’ promise for a referendum on the Lisbon treaty, which he then had to back out from. But then, once in power, he got referendum fever. It was a very David Cameron device: it was an ideal way to get out of (self-made) scrapes, while giving the ‘people’ power in a headline-grabbing, populist way. In 2011 to quieten his backbenchers he passed a law that ensured an automatic referendum if there was an EU treaty change. The same year we had a referendum onAV that sealed the deal with the Liberal Democrat coalition. In 2012–13 he made it mandatory for a local referendum to be held if council tax went above a certain level. In 2014 the referendum in Scotland was supposed to see off the SNP. In each case the referendum seemed to do its job – though the Independence referendum came close to backfiring. His choices become less clever still when you realise the Leave campaign practised all their techniques in the AV referendum in 2011.

Plenty of people at the time believed the in/out promise was a bad choice. The list of those who allegedly warned or begged him not to do it is wrapped in irony: Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and George Osborne all reportedly tried to dissuade him. Donald Tusk told him to ‘get real’ over his ‘stupid referendum’.

It’s important to note how little the public cared. As this article points out, the EU didn’t even appear in the public’s top ten issues in the 2015 election. In 2015 only 6% thought it was an important issue, in part because all the major parties refused to discuss it. Even in March 2016 only 25% thought it was the most important issue, and only 33% put it in their top three.

Cameron pushed on regardless and the rest is history, including David Cameron. He made plenty of other poor choices, including conceding on the wording of the referendum, which one Vote Leaver campaigner thought was worth 4 points to them (the margin of victory).

So we get to Theresa May. Her premiership has been defined by a series of sharp choices. In October 2016 she promised a hard Brexit, with a series of clear red lines over which she has tripped ever since. In March 2017 she triggered Article 50, and so started the clock giving herself a far too strict, if not impossible, deadline. She then called a snap election that took away her majority. Red lines, deadlines and a lost election took us to where we are.

Many of Cameron and May’s decisions can be explained by the need to keep their party together – and allay the fears, or some would say appease, their Brexit wing. Both put party before country and then proceeded to misunderstand a whole series of things, from Britain’s influence to the very basics about how the EU and its politics worked.

For all their differences, however, they share some traits and outlooks. Both clearly believed they knew better than anyone else. They were gamblers and risk-takers. Cameron was always the essay crisis Prime Minister but May, for all her claim to be the careful, diligent vicar’s daughter, recklessly gambled time and again – losing worse each time she did so. They also chose to style themselves as against the ‘establishment’, with Cameron always portraying himself as against the EU and May against everyone, including her own MPs.

Cameron and May lacked the essential level-headedness to weigh up risks or the foresight to see how things could go wrong. They also lacked historical insight. On one level, they failed to see how Europe had destroyed Conservative premiers: Cameron asked his party not to talk about it then stoked it. By the time Theresa May became leader her three predecessors as Conservative Prime Minister had all been partly or wholly destroyed by Europe. May’s interview with American Vogue in 2017 spoke of how ‘she doesn’t read much history and tries not to picture how things will be in advance…. She seems wilfully unimaginative.’ Both May and Cameron lacked this sense of place, perspective and imagination.

Above all, May and Cameron lacked the courage to tell the truth: Heifetz famously spoke of how leaders must ‘teach reality’ to their supporters and public and somehow manage their disappointment. Neither of them could or would tell the real story about Europe to their party or country or deliver the ‘blood, toil, tears and sweat’ type speech needed. Instead they obfuscated, played to the tabloid gallery and blundered on. Just a few months before begging the UK to Remain, Cameron was warning against ‘swarms’ of migrants in Calais. May took this to another level with her weird Trump-esque claim that the EU was attempting to get Corbyn elected.

Most of their choices were fêted as ‘bold’ and ‘brave’ game-changing ideas. Yet their choices, instead of bringing freedom, trapped them. Their decisions took away the two things a politician need most: room for manoeuvre and time. It made them subject to other people’s choices, and delivered them into their arms of their opponents and critics. Cameron handed, fatally, his power to Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and the British people. Now Theresa May, after a string of supposedly decisive actions, is caught between the EU, the ERG and the House of Commons. We got to where we are through the terrible choices of successive leaders but now the vital question of if, how or when we leave looks to be determined by others.

Who run the world? Mostly men, still.

To celebrate International Women’s Day, here’s a guest essay from Marij Swinkels on the barriers still facing female leaders.

More than 90 percent of our political leadership positions are held by men.  If this trend continues, future generations will grow up with male role models as leaders of their countries. Scientific studies have started to explore why this is the case, why it is that more men are in political leadership positions than possible female counterparts, and what, if anything, can be done to recalibrate and strike a balance within our systems. These findings suggest that the answer, in part, lies in the choices we make in politics.

Last week, while blogging for Faces of Science, a Dutch initiative where young scholars share stories about life in academia, I discussed the topic of female leadership. Although this is not the key focus of my research, I do teach on the subject and keep a database on the number of female leaders in EU institutions (spoiler alert: very few).

From the heads of state or government (roughly 300), only 25 are female. Within the EU, we have six heads of state and two prime ministers (soon to be one with March 29 approaching). Outside the EU, there are five more heads of state or government on the European continent, two in the Caribbean, two in Africa, five in Asia, two in Oceania, one in Central-Asia and none in South- or North America.

Figure 1: female leaders on International Women’s Day 2019. Source: own data.

In short: men still dominate the world stage of leadership. How come? Science is here to provide you with answers. I walk through some of the latest studies to show where, according to science, we could pay attention to to increase the number of female leaders worldwide. I’ll leave it to politics to decide

Point 1: stereotypes distort our image of a ‘good’ leader

When asked, people disagree or strongly disagree with the statement that men are better leaders than women (see figure 2, results from the World Value Survey (n=28)).

Source: Allen and Cutts, 2018: 152-153

However, our implicit assumptions about men and women do paint a different picture than when we’re asked to reflect upon our opinions. Implicit assumption tests[1], where we see photos of both men and women and have to link them to words relating to leadership or followership as fast as possible, show how we, in general, find it easier to link male photos to leadership words than female photos. When asked, the results show marginal differences, but our implicit assumptions do impact how we respond in reality. This is what we can refer to as ‘gender bias’. This gender bias basically shows that we have different expectations regarding men and women in leadership positions, and not that women truly have distinct leadership qualities than man.

These gender stereotypes create a ‘no-win’ situation for female leaders. This is referred to as the ‘double bind’. This means that there’s a contradiction between how we perceive women in political positions and what we expect from them as women. Thinking in terms of stereotypes as ‘men take charge and women are more caring’, the following happens. When women take charge, they are seen as competent – but not appreciated as women.

Textbox: one very recent example is a critique on Euro-parliamentarian Judith Sargentini, who wrote a critical report on the state of democracy in Hungary. The tweet below, sent into the world after Sargentini performed on Dutch television, translates to: “My wife was inspired by Sargentini during the talk show tonight and has decided on her  carnival costume”.

Alternatively, when women take up ‘caring roles’ they are not taken seriously as leaders. Think about the many self-help books in which women are told to not behave as women if they want to be effective leaders. Books as ‘Nice girls don’t get the corner office’ or ‘Lean in’ are perfect examples of this.

If we want to do something about this, we can. There’s a role for us, for the media and for politics to work towards ‘bias consciousness’. A recent article by Loes Aaldering and Daphne van der Pas (2018)  shows results from a quantitative content analysis of Dutch newspaper articles. Here the authors demonstrate that Dutch newspapers attribute more leadership qualities to male party leaders than to female party leaders. Some kind of gender-check in newsrooms may be a first step towards a more gender-neutral reporting culture.

Point 2: pathways to power are more difficult for women than for men.

Geerten Waling, a Dutch historian, said the following in a radio interview on Dutch radio this year: “…women just have to bang through the glass ceiling with an iron fist”. Obviously, women try, but men and women keep systems in place that make it difficult for women to, in the words of Waling, bang through the ceiling. Institutional sexism. This means that we don’t think that women are worse than men, but that inequality can be traced back to the institutional structures that we’re part of), is one of the reasons why the whole ‘banging through glass ceilings’ is extremely difficult. One example is the appointment of ‘crown princes’, as Jean Claude Juncker did with Martin Selmayr as top civil service executive in the European Commission. Institutional sexism makes the pathways to power more complicated for women than for men.

Research by Farida Jalalzai (2018) demonstrates that of the female leaders we currently have, few have taken their seat by popular vote. In addition, most female leaders govern in shared power systems (semi-presidential) and as such have less power resources than their male counterparts.

Other research by Muller-Rommel and Verseci (2017) shows that in the EU, female prime ministers had a far more complicated pathway to power than their male counterparts. Female prime ministers in general need more professional experience before being able to assume office. Furthermore, the study’s results show that female prime ministers mostly come from centre-right parties.

Political-institutional conditions such as primaries or appointment procedures can further hinder the rise of female leaders, creating formidable barriers and multiple constraints from an early point in their career. These are not just once-off barriers. They build up and make it more difficult to women to break through. More frequent pathways to power for women are either familial ties (such as Hillary Clinton), or ‘chance openings’ (such as Margaret Thatcher, who seemed to be promoted due to weaknesses of others, not her own strengths).

In short: according to science, we should think about ways to reduce institutional sexism to level the playing field and give women equal chances as men in their pathways to power. This may entail critically examining selection or appointment procedures (e.g. when choosing a new party leader).

Point 3: quotas work but they’re considered ‘principally undesirable’.

A third point that we see in discussions about female leadership is that ‘time will tell’. Just stick it out and things will change. After all, the numbers seem to have increased in recent years, right? Recent studies show that this argument doesn’t stand. Without incentives or quota measures, it takes a very long time to achieve any kind of balance. If we want future generations to grow up in a world where women are world leaders as well, we don’t have that kind of time. An interesting study by Peter Allen and David Cutts (2018) shows that the much-disputed incentives of quota systems increases political support for women. So, not only do we have more women through quotas (duh!), but these women actually gain increased support from their constituents. The authors refer to this as the ‘vote of confidence’ effect. Quotas remain a highly disputed instrument though (the poll I held last week on Instagram showed a 47 against -53 in favor result). Most used argument: who wants to be the ‘token’ woman? However, if we trust science, quotas should be taken seriously as they change the narrative of ‘token’ women into credible partners in politics.

So, what can we do in the world of politics now and in the future:

• Combat institutional sexism to equalize the pathways to power for men and women
• Increase our consciousness of stereotypes of women in politics.
• Use quotas to increase the visibility of women in politics. This has the enhanced benefit of increasing support for women in politics.

Further Reading

Allen, P., & Cutts, D. (2018). How do gender quotas affect public support for women as political leaders?. West European Politics, 41(1), 147-168. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01402382.2017.1320082

Aaldering, L., & Van Der Pas, D. J. (2018). Political leadership in the media: Gender bias in leader stereotypes during campaign and routine times. British Journal of Political Science, 1-21. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/political-leadership-in-the-media-gender-bias-in-leader-stereotypes-during-campaign-and-routine-times/B197672D2B8A6BCB0A65920396151699

Alexander, A. C., Bolzendahl, C., & Jalalzai, F. (Eds.). (2017). Measuring Women’s Political Empowerment across the Globe: Strategies, Challenges and Future Research. Springer.

Müller-Rommel, F., & Vercesi, M. (2017). Prime ministerial careers in the European Union: does gender make a difference?. European Politics and Society, 18(2), 245-262.

** This blog has appeared in Dutch on my Faces of Science webpage. Special thanks to Jo Luetjens for proofreading the translated version.

[1] Want to try? https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/user/agg/blindspot/indexgc.htm