Presidents, Prime Ministers and Chancellors

Presidents, Prime Ministers and Chancellors focuses on the leadership performances of the political chief executives in the United States, Britain and Germany since the end of the Second World War. Drawing on a wide range of material, Ludger Helms provides a genuinely comparative perspective on the conditions and manifestations of executive leadership in three of the world’s largest established democracies. The study looks at long-term trends in the historical development of leadership conceptions on either side of the Atlantic and examines the opportunities and limits for political leadership under different forms of democratic government. As executive leadership is understood here as an activity reaching well beyond the boundaries of the executive branch, the study is designed to mark a major contribution to the wider field of transatlantic comparative politics.

Author Biography

Ludger Helms is Heisenberg Fellow and Academic Visitor in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK. He has held previous appointments at Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Heidelberg and at Humboldt University, Berlin. He has published numerous books and articles.