Professor Stephen Whitefield participates in BBC forum on political decision making

Stephen Whitefield took part in a discussion on the BBC World Service program 'The Forum' (12 May) entitled ‘The Art of Political Decision Making’.

Stephen joined Harvard Professor Joseph Nye, anthropologist and anarchist David Graeber, and corporate dialogue facilitator Martijn de Liefde for a wide-ranging conversation that touched on American presidential leadership, anarchic decision making in the Occupy Wall Street movement, the use of consensus in United Nations bodies, how traditional dialogue-driven processes of decision making in Botswana can be applied to large companies, and the use of emotional appeals in leadership and decision making.

Drawing on some of his own recent research, Stephen noted, the role of emotional appeals in British politics has grown significantly over the last forty or fifty years. It strikes me that increasingly voters and citizens are looking not just to have their views or their interests represented, what they want to have and find is politicians who emotionally represent them as well, who stand for what they feel. And this characteristic of politicians is perhaps going to transform our politics further. We need different kinds of leaders to manage emotional representation than we would if we were simply trying to represent peoples demands for a share of the resources.

The program can be heard in full here.