The Complex Challenges of Modern Leadership: A Scholarly Overview of Ethics, Democracy, and Political Leadership

Considering how 2025 compares with 2020, which was described as one of the worst years ever in part because of the Covid-19 pandemic and other challenging events, sharpens our appreciation of the complexity of modern leadership. The nine articles within this thematic issue adeptly engage with the collection’s main themes of ethics, democracy, and political leadership at the theoretical and empirical level. As a group, the authors present an impressive range of specific examples of political leadership as well as citizen-based social action. The complexity found in exercising competent, democratic, ethical leadership in today’s political context is a common theme across these works. As well, the continuing importance of trust in the exercise of leadership signals the necessity for more academic scholarship on this topic.