Fictional Leaders

In Book III of the Laws, Plato (1997) lays out a series of qualifications that make a leader fit to rule. The first four of these relate to traditional forms of authority through birth and social status: the right of the noble to rule the serf, the parent the child, the master the slave and the old the young. The fifth relates to the authority of those with a superior nature, over the weak. This indeterminate, ‘superior nature’ parallels the trajectory of trait theories of leadership as well as Great Man theories of leadership, both of which posit a nature (sometimes of divine origin)—‘leadership’—then set out in pursuit of this nature. Plato’s sixth qualification is knowledge or expertise and the power of those who know over those who do not. Here we find the precursors for the second major tradition in leadership studies: the idea that the right to lead derives from mastery of a set of skills that can be taught and learned. As the French political philosopher Jacques Rancière (2001) notes, however, there is a seventh qualification: the paradoxical qualification of having no qualification but, by chance or lottery, being thrown into a position of leadership.

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