Tra leadership e tempo. Le dimensioni sfuggenti del cambiamento delle politiche

Leadership and time are powerful drivers of political and policy change. Both can be considered as structural elements of policy-making. This paper sets out some theoretical questions concerning both the role of leadership and time in the analysis of policy change. Regards to leadership the paper focus on why, when and how leadership becomes a fundamental driver of policy change, by focusing on: the fact that policy leadership may be viewed as a collective, longitudinal, horizontal dimension of the policy dynamics present throughout the policy process; the situational nature of leadership, i.e. how different leadership styles and structures match contingencies. Respect to time, the paper makes the distinction between the time of policy and the time inside policy. The time inside policy is theoretically articulated through the articulation of its specific dimensions. The time of policy is discussed working on the problem of how to cope with the historical dimension.