Abstract
Can Confucianism be reconciled with democracy if it is based on a leader-centered idea of political leadership where citizens exercise almost no influence in charting collective political directions? This question is central to the relevance of Confucianism to contemporary East Asian politics. This article overcomes this conundrum by presenting a new theory of Confucian democratic leadership. Contemporary leadership studies are analyzed to determine the fundamental conceptual elements of democratic leadership. At the same time, classical Confucian intellectual resources are used to develop a conception of democratic leadership that can be considered distinctively Confucian. The result is a robust conception of Confucian democratic leadership that is not only distinguished from traditional Confucian undemocratic views of political leadership but also from dominant Western theories of democratic leadership. © 2025 Southern Political Science Association. All rights reserved.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 437-448 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | The Journal of Politics |
| Volume | 87 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| Online published | 20 Feb 2025 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Apr 2025 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
Support for this research was provided by the research program \u201CEthics of Socially Disruptive Technologies\u201D; the gravitation program of the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science; and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (024.004.031).
Research Keywords
- civic leaders
- Confucianism
- democratic leadership
- political leadership
- social relations
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'Confucian Democratic Leadership: A Reconstruction for Contemporary East Asia'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Cite this
- APA
- Author
- BIBTEX
- Harvard
- Standard
- RIS
- Vancouver