Assessing the policy effects of political leaders: a layered framework

ABSTRACT

How should political leaders be evaluated? This article reviews existing approaches and argues that they are insufficiently developed to map the more complex policy effects of political leaders, since they tend to focus on electoral and broader regime level outcomes. In response, it maps out a layered framework based on scientific realism. The layered approach argues that analysis should focus on the effects of leaders within societal structures, formal political institutions, the framing of policy problems as well as policy. The approach requires that we are sensitive to the structure and agency relationships between layers when identifying where leaders brought about policy and political change, as well as the effects on the international system and on other polities. It is proposed that the new approach will help to develop a more complete and nuanced understanding of the policy effects of leaders that will uncover their effects in hidden spaces as well as broader societal shifts.

KEYWORDS:

• Political leaders
• policy process
• Donald Trump
• Trumpism
• presidents

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Christopher Byrne, Mònica Clua-Losada and colleagues in the University of East Anglia Politics, Media and International Relations Research group for comments on an earlier version of this paper. All errors remain the responsibility of the author.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I am grateful to Christopher Burn for this point.

2 The SRA is simplified here for the purposes of space. There are a greater number of moments in dialectical relationship between structure and agency. See: Jessop (2001).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Toby S. James

Toby S. James is Professor of Politics and Public Policy at the University of East Anglia. His previous books on political leadership includes co-edited volumes on British Labour Leaders and British Conservative Leaders (both Biteback, 2015). He has also published extensively on electoral integrity and is the Deputy Director of the Electoral Integrity Project. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of Policy Studies.