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Viewing report
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Ahmadinejad´s Quest for Leadership. Edition No. 1
VDM Publishing House, June 2009, Pages: 64
Is Iran a `regional leading power´? How can
leadership be conceptualised? How can its impact be
measured? While leadership has often been equated
with the possession of power capabilities, this
study emphasises the social and ideational
dimensions of leadership, taking recourse to
symbolic interactionism, constructivism and
reflexive-interpretative methodology. Discourses can
be regarded as dynamic arenas in which claims to
leadership are articulated, legitimised but also
contested. Therefore, they are a commensurate means
to grasp potential leadership-relations as well as
to identify continuity or change in such relations.
A starting point to assess the scope of leadership
is to compare the representations of regional order
of the potential leader and followers. If they are
shared between the two parties and mostly shaped by
the potential leader, leadership may be effective at
least on a normative level. In the light of the
nuclear conflict, which makes this study highly
topical, following question is raised: to what
extent are Ahmadinejad´s visions of regional order
shared by his political counterparts in the Gulf
region?
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