Political leadership in transboundary crises, responsibility attributions, and the role of the media: a synthesis of previous research and theoretical extension

ABSTRACT

With the increasing frequency of transboundary crises in the twenty-first century – examples from the past are the financial crisis, the migration crisis and the current coronavirus pandemic – the need for political leadership beyond national borders is growing. As public visibility is an essential leadership resource with regard to transboundary leadership, the question arises of how media construct and thus legitimize political leadership in transboundary crises. The basic theoretical assumption is that perceived leadership in a transboundary crisis results from publicly observable processes of attributing responsibility beyond geographical and hierarchical boundaries. Consequently, a tool for capturing attribution statements, their senders and addressees as well as their reasoning in the media coverage is presented.

KEYWORDS:

• Transboundary crises
• political leadership
• media coverage
• responsibility attributions

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Weber names yet another type of leadership, ‘traditional leadership’, which is disregarded here because it is based on the recognition of the so-called ‘holiness’ of a given order and thus has more to do with ecclesiastical rather than political leadership