Abstract
The aim of the present chapter is to clarify the concept of leadership democracy as coined by Max and Alfred Weber and to show that the concept was influential on some figures in Czech sociology of the interwar period. First, the meaning of leadership democracy is reconstrued according to M.
Weber's statements on this subject, especially in such writings as Parliament and Government in the reorganized Germany, Politics as a Vocation and Economy and Society. The notion of leadership democracy is shown to contain a paradox in that it means an anti-authoritarian reinterpretation of charisma, but charisma is always the foundation of some sort of authority.
Leadership democracy is empirically represented through plebiscitary democracy in its various historical incarnations such as revolutionary dictatorships or Bonapartism. The discussion also pays some attention to the German discussion on whether the concept of leadership democracy and Weber's support for direct election of the head of state was an influential factor in shaping the intellectual background of the favorable acceptance of the Fuhrer principle in national socialism during the 1920s and 1930s.
Contrary to this thesis, the present interpretation emphasizes the elitist, but at the same time authentically democratic character of leadership democracy. A similar conclusion is reached regarding Alfred Weber, one of the foremost liberals of the Weimar era, who, unlike his brother Max Weber, associated leadership democracy with competence rather than charisma.
In the interwar Czechoslovakia, the Weberian concept of leadership democracy exerted strong influence on Jan Mertl, who in the 1930s was one of the advocates of the direct election of the Czechoslovak president. Leadership democracy and the closely related topic of selection of capable political figures also played an important role in Heinz Otto Ziegler's political sociology.
In Ziegler's early work on German political system from the 1920s, the concept of leadership democracy, in an interpretation influenced by Alfred Weber, is the basis for defending the proportional electoral formula. The introduction and conclusion of the chapter point to Miloš Havelka's pioneering contribution to the reception of Max Weber's sociology in Czech social sciences.