Characteristics of Legislative Leadership

Characteristics of Legislative Leadership

Legislative Leadership

Legislative leaders are the individuals who direct the activities of the legislative chambers in any liberal democratic system. Among others, they include office holders within the legislature itself, such as the speaker or president of the chamber, other presiding officers, and the heads of legislatures' substructures such as committee chairs—standing committees as well as even more specialized subcommittees and special, often investigatory or research, panels. In addition, parties themselves provide the most important political leadership within a legislature, generally within the framework of a party group system. Such leadership may include members of the government (cabinet members in parliamentary systems) and of the official opposition (such as the shadow cabinet), majority and minority party leaders in congressional systems, party whips and other leaders of party communication, and other party group officers. As discussed below, a parliamentary system's premier or prime minister might also be included as a legislative leader. However, the primacy of their executive responsibilities suggests such analysis is better placed under the category of executive leadership (Brooker, 2005).

Analysis of legislative leadership depends greatly upon the context in which the leadership occurs. Key differences in leadership styles exist not just at the individual level, but are greatly influenced by institutional, political, and cultural context. Numerous contextual variables affect legislative leadership. Among these are the differences between (a) presidential and parliamentary systems, (b) electoral systems, and (c) internal legislative organization and rules. The issue is one about conceptual clarity and knowing exactly what is being analyzed. For example, the term congressional leadership in the U.S. literature on leadership generally refers specifically to the U.S. Congress. However, legislative leadership in the U.S. context may also refer to leadership in the 50 different state-houses in the U.S. federal system. Similarly, legislative leadership in parliamentary systems, particularly those with strong party cohesion (the degree to which individual legislators vote together, normally along party lines), is functionally quite different from in congress in presidential systems.

With a concern for analytical consistency, this chapter utilizes important descriptive adjectives to help differentiate leadership context. When speaking generally or generically, it refers to legislative leadership. It refers to parliamentary leadership when discussing the unique features of parliamentary systems, congressional leadership when analyzing national legislative leadership in the United States and other presidential systems, and state legislative leadership when subnational or subcentral legislatives are mentioned in federal systems such as in the United States, Germany, and Australia (Cain, 1987).

Tasks of Legislative Leadership

Legislative leaders hold many responsibilities. Guidance to their fellow legislators, especially those within their own political parties, encompasses a variety of goals and takes on many forms. The most critical task centers on the law-making process since many of the other goals emanate from this. The aphorism, widely attributed to the Prussian statesman and first chancellor of the German Empire, Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898), “Whoever knows how laws and sausages are made can no longer sleep soundly at night,” clearly provides a widely shared insight into the legislative process—and by implication ...