Pioneering Leadership as Political Entrepreneurship

Abstract

The distinctive and extraordinary nature of the entrepreneurial-style, pioneering kind of political leadership has remained largely unrecognised since Schumpeter’s time. As his theory of democracy failed to draw an analogy with entrepreneurship or mention pioneering leadership, it was left to a later generation to introduce the concept of entrepreneurialstyle leadership into political science. And these political scientists usually introduced it as a concept of ‘political entrepreneurship’ that lacked the Schumpeterian focus on pioneering initiative and innovation.