Copyright © Alasdair Roberts 2018
The right of Alasdair Roberts to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2018 by Polity Press
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ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-2150-0
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-2151-7(pb)
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I began this book while teaching at the Truman School of Public Affairs at the University of Missouri. My thinking on the subject was improved through conversations with students in my graduate seminar on governance and public affairs. I am particularly grateful to Kyoung-sun Min for helping me talk through ideas. I must also thank Dean Bart Wechsler for his collegiality and support during my time at the Truman School. A few words from Harry S. Truman, president of the United States from April 1945 to January 1953, make a fitting epigraph for the book, given its emphasis on the challenges of leadership in a turbulent world. “I discovered that being a president is like riding a tiger,” Truman wrote in 1956. “A man has to keep on riding or be swallowed.”