| Sumario: | Studies of social movements have devoted a great deal of attention to types of leadership and problems of leadership change. Max Weber's concept of charismatic leadership has had an immense influence upon the thinking of sociologists about the sources of authority and dominance in changing political life. The "natural history" approach of many writers has stressed the decline of enthusiastic, agitational leadership and the development of statesmanlike, bureaucratic administrators as movements have become formally organized into stable structures. The approach of these studies has been on leadership changes through time as a function of different forms of structure and of different situations in which organized movements operate as they become large and institutionalized. It is our intention, in this paper, to examine the problems of leadership from a slightly different perspective. We are concerned with the conflicting types of demands made upon persons in leadership offices in many different situations. The focus of our attention is upon the persistent demands that leaders function within and before diverse audiences. In social movements, as well as in other complex and large organizations, the incumbent leadership is the center of demands to function in both internal and external environments. He is at the head of a hierarchy of authority and decision-making within the movement. At the same time, in the effort to affect change and to prevent the detrimental damage of a hostile environment, he operates in an environment of clients, enemies, adherents and potential recruits in which he has no authority and in which he represents the movement. The tension between these two areas gives rise to some characteristic problems of movements and their leadership. The empirical analysis given here is largely drawn from one organization—The Woman's Christian Temperance Union. It deals with leadership in two different periods—at the turn of the century and in the mid-1950's.
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