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Prime Ministerial Character: An Alternative View

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

J.E. Esberey
J.E. Esberey
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Extract

The analysis of political leadership is an enterprise often handicapped by the lack of an adequate conceptual framework. Mr Courtney has selected James Barber's model of presidential character as a means of overcoming this problem and has presented an interesting examination of Mackenzie King's political leadership based on this approach. There are, however, a number of aspects both of the Barber model and of Mackenzie King's leadership that Courtney has been unable to develop. It is proposed in this brief rejoinder to discuss some of these issues and to indicate the main lines of an alternative interpretation of Mr King's character.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , March 1976 , pp. 101 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1976

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References

1 The main lines of this interpretation have been drawn from a full-scale psychobiography of Mackenzie King presented in a doctoral dissertation in the Department of Political Economy, University of Toronto, in 1974. The author wishes to thank the literary executors for access to the family papers in the W.L. Mackenzie King collection (Public Archives of Canada).

2 Identity, Youth and Crisis (New York 1968), Identity and the Life Cycle (New York 1960), Childhood and Society (Middlesex 1965)

3 Dawson, R. MacGregor, William Lyon Mackenzie King: A Political Biography, 1874–1923 (Toronto 1958)Google Scholar

4 W.L.M.K. to family, 30 January 1898

5 W.L.M.K. to family, 6 February 1898

6 W.L.M.K. Diary, 29 September 1897

7 See, for example, W.L.M.K. to family, 10 October 1897

8 The author's subjective estimate based on extensive reading of the diary and family correspondence is that the conflicting elements are more predominant.

9 Barber, James D., “Classifying and Predicting Presidential Styles: Two ‘weak’ Presidents,” Journal of Social Issues XXIV (1968), 61Google Scholar

10 Diary, 26 July 1900

11 W.L.M.K. to family, 5 August 1900

12 Dawson, King, 115

13 W.L.M.K. to Taussig, 18 April 1904

14 The Age of Mackenzie King: The Rise of the Leader (London 1955), 56

15 Dawson, King, 109–12

16 W.L.M.K. to family, 4 November 1900

17 Barber, “Classifying and Predicting,” 52–3

18 W.L.M.K. to Larkin, 2 December 1925

19 Diary, 7 February 1936

20 W.L.M.K. to V. Markham, 1 February 1937

21 W.L.M.K. to J. Buchan, 7 April 1937

22 Diary, 7 January 1936

23 Diary, 14 November 1937

24 Diary, 14 January 1936

25 Diary, 4 January 1936

26 Horney, K., Our Inner Conflicts (New York 1970), 27Google Scholar

27 Diary, 7 November 1937