Course Details

Course offered Autumn 2013

Honors 230 B: Democracy, Leadership, and a More Thoughtful Public (SSc)

Honors 230 B: Democracy, Leadership, and a More Thoughtful Public (SSc)

SLN 15208 (View UW registration info »)

Roger Soder (Education)
Office: MGH 211, Box 353600
Email: rsoder@uw.edu

Credits: 5
Limit: 30 students

Honors Credit Type

INCOMING FRESHMEN ONLY. Please note that we will be staggering enrollment to ensure equitable access for all summer registration dates.
We will consider the following five propositions:

1. Leadership always has a political context; leadership in a democracy is necessarily different than leadership in other political regimes.

2. Leadership involves at its base the creation of a persuaded audience, but, more than persuasion, involves creating and sustaining a more thoughtful public, a public capable of rising above itself.

3. A more thoughtful public must not only be created and sustained, but, given that things inevitably fall apart, must be recovered and reconstituted.

4. Distinctions must be made in the leadership functions of (a) initiating, (b) sustaining, and c) recovering and reconstituting. What it takes for leader to sustain isn’t quite the same as what it takes to initiate, and neither of these approach what it takes to recover and reconstitute when the organization or regime falls apart.

5. Good leadership involves ethical and effective information seeking. A leader must have knowledge of what must be done, knowledge of what it takes to persuade others of what must be done (and, in persuading, creating a more thoughtful public), and knowledge of how an audience/public will respond. Only with a thorough understanding of the principles, strategies, and costs of information seeking will one be able to engage in ethical and effective leadership.

Sources of texts will include Tocqueville, Orwell, Machiavelli, Bacon, Dostoevsky, and Sophocles, as well as contemporary authors.

Method of instruction: close reading of texts, coupled with short papers on texts, plus a longer (8-10) synthesis paper; small and large group discussions with each other and visiting scholars/practitioners.