Explaining the Impact of Jacques Delors: Conceptualizing and Assessing the Commission Presidency

This paper analyzes the Presidency of the European Commission as a political leadership position. It does so on three levels. First, it considers the relational nature of leadership, arguing that every leadership position is shaped by its "relationship network"- the relationship of the leader with his constituents, co-actors, and subordinates. Second, it develops a typology of leadership styles, that Commission Presidents might exercise within the limits of the Commission Presidency's highly constraining relationship network. The three main types (neo-functionalist, federalist and intergovernmentalist) integrate integration theory literature with existing knowledge of the activities of Commission Presidents. Third, these ideas, and a personality-assessment-at-a-distance technique, are employed in a case-study of Jacques Delors. The study shows that Delor's leadership cannot be understood in simple Euro-federalist terms. It also shows the ability of the concepts and methods used to advance comparative study of the Commission Presidency.