Governing By Committee: Collegial Leadership in Advanced Societies

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SUNY Press, 1989 M01 1 - 236 pages
Governing by Committee is the first book-length study to examine decision-making among political executives. It examines sixteen advanced Western and Communist states and shows that collegial and semi-collegial patterns are far more common than is generally assumed.

Contrary to the assertions of Max Weber, Baylis contends that modern bureaucracy, with its growing role in policy-making and its intimate association with neocorporatist forms of interest group representation, offers a particularly congenial setting for collegial leadership.

A timely study, Governing by Committee opens a new dimension in the comparative study of political executives. But it also complements and contributes to the existing literature on political leadership, decision-making, consociationalism, and neocorporatism. It belongs as well to the still relatively small number of works comparing the politics of advanced Western and Communist states.
 

Contents

The Problem of Collegial Leadership
7
Collegial Leadership in the Swiss Political System
25
Collegial and Monocratic Leadership in the British Executive
47
Coalition Governments and Collegial Leadership
63
Communist Collective Leadership
93
Monocratic Leadership
125
Conclusion Determinants and Consequences
145
Notes
167
Selected Bibliography
215
Index
229
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About the author (1989)

Thomas A. Baylis is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

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