The Myth of the Strong Leader

“An important and unusual read… Brown does a wonderful job of showing how the same qualities that can seem so appealing in strong leaders can lead, in the mildest cases, to bad decisions - and, in the most extreme cases, to death and suffering on a massive scale… Though The Myth of the Strong Leader is about political leadership, you come away from Brown’s book with a deeper understanding of leadership in general” – Bill Gates “A profound, and wise, book - one of the most important works on politics for a long time. On the basis of penetrating, wide-ranging analysis, traversing democratic and authoritarian systems, Archie Brown clearly demonstrates the commonly held belief in strong leadership as the answer to political problems to be completely, often disastrously, misplaced.” – Sir Ian Kershaw “A brilliant exploration of political leaders in democratic, authoritarian and totalitarian regimes… Brown’s excellent book stresses the importance of the context for the appearance of effective leaders and, when dealing with democratic regimes, the importance of the institutions” Political Quarterly “The best analysis of the nature of true leadership I have read.” – Gary Hart, Former United States Senator “This book badly needed to be written, and only Archie Brown - with his unique breadth of scholarly knowledge combined with a finger-tip feel for real-world politics - could possibly have written it. It turns out that there are fewer strong leaders in the world than is often supposed and that many of them, far from being desirable, are positively dangerous. Perhaps the best political systems are those that are effectively “leader-proofed”.” – Anthony King, Professor of Government at the University of Essex and co-author of The Blunders of Our Governments

Archie Brown is a British political scientist and historian. He is Emeritus Professor of Politics at Oxford University and Emeritus Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford. A Fellow of the British Academy since 1991, Professor Brown was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003. He has written widely on Soviet and Communist politics, the Cold War, and political leadership.

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