While reading the Gardner piece, I was especially struck by how important followers are in a leader\/follower relationship. To be frank, leaders are more reliant on their followers than the audience is on their leaders. Every decision that a leader makes is supposed to be as reflective as possible of the common good to maximize the most happiness and success of his or her constituency. One of the hardest parts of being a leader is being elected and well-liked in the first place, and even after that initial success, s\/he often attempts to be elected again while maintaining high approval ratings. For example, the representative democracy that the United States has is so hugely impacted by leaders attempting to represent as much as possible of their constituency’s wishes. When writing a platform, a candidate is hugely biased by what the public has voted on lately. However, I appreciated how Gardner referred to this relationship as a “two-way conversation” in which social norms hugely impacted how both social groups, the audience and those who represent them, acted and what they expect from one another.<\/p>\n
It is interesting to consider how constituencies may act without policy-maker’s influence and the impacts of those around them. Societal pressures definitely lead both parties of this relationship to make different decisions than they would have without these societal expectations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While reading the Gardner piece, I was especially struck by how important followers are in a leader\/follower relationship. To be frank, leaders are more reliant…<\/p>\n