On the Circuit: The System Leadership of Ministers

In his formidable study of leadership, James MacGregor Burns asks us to ‘consider the classic case of the young zealot, a rising leader of a new reform or left-wing cabinet, who is appointed head of a ministry of education’ (1978: 377). Such an executive leader, he suggests, is going to face challenges from within the department they head as well as from ‘unit leaders’ linked to interest groups—in this case professional organisations and unions—outside. Without using the term, Burns is recognising that in certain policy fields—education and health, certainly—government ministers are ‘system leaders’. Burns’ quote also unveils a paradox of the ministerial role in system leadershipLeadership, system. Although ministers avoid the term ‘followers’, seeing interest or stakeholder groups often as partners in policy-making and deliveryDelivery, and recognising individuals throughout the system as leaders of specific elements, there is no question from the empirical work that the ‘ministerial gazeGaze, ministerial’, as ministers perform on the circuit of stakeholders linked to their department, is in this context, perhaps inevitably, downwards.