Why do we follow our leaders?

Possible directions of studying political followership

Abstract

Although political followership is a spectacular and vital process in modern politics, political science and political leadership studies do not pay enough attention. Political scholars have to face various distorting effects and conceptual problems when looking for the answers to why and how followers relate to their leaders and what is the role of followership in politics. So, our knowledge is incomplete and limited. This ‘stateof-the-art’ review undertakes to understand the role of political followers and followership on a theoretical and conceptual level supported by empirical results. I formulate two specific goals. On the one hand, I show how political science and political leadership studies describe the relationship between leaders and followers, pointing out their conceptual limitations. On the other hand, I intend to introduce follower-centric models of generic leadership studies with a cognitive and social psychological background to political science to gain more insight into political leadership and a deeper understanding of the role of followers in the political world. To do this, I synthesise leadership relationship processes described by these models and summarise their relevant empirical results. The follower-centric perspective can establish a promising research agenda for future studies in political science.