Back when I was a graduate student, I used Kuhnert and Lewis’s transformational / transactional leadership model together with French and Raven’s five bases of social power (rewards, coercion, expertise, legitimacy and referent – the power of “like”) in my research exploring how the Hojo family wrested political power from the courtiers in Kyoto to establish themselves as the de facto heads of the Japanese government in the 13th century, and in the process launching centuries of warrior dominance.
Though they (obviously) didn’t consciously use a 20th century leadership model to guide their actions, the Hojo learned to use different leadership strategies in different situations in relation to different stakeholder groups to gain and maintain their grip on the state. They used the material rewards and punishments that characterize lower order transactional leadership; it was a brutal era and coercion often meant eliminating (i.e. killing) rivals. They also put the imperial court in its place when it made a last gasp attempt to restore control over the state to Kyoto. They distributed rewards such as fiefdoms and titles to those who fell in line behind them.
They also built the kinds of strong inter-personal ties within the family (cemented through inter-marriage of children and distribution of titles) as well as with key warrior and courtier families that characterize higher order transactional leadership. Their initial rise and ongoing dominance were built on strong mutual relationships with their warrior peers and courtier officials who educated them in the forms and rituals of state.
What was most interesting to me, though, was how they managed to transform themselves into an early version of the warrior statesman. They bolstered their legitimacy by creating consultative bodies that (at least appeared to) keep other members of the warrior class involved in decision-making. They issued legal proclamations (such as 御成敗式目 / Gosiebai shikimoku) to guide the resolution of conflict over land rights and other issues, and they established courts that the common people, merchants and warriors could use to settle grievances without resorting to violence.
They began building a set of warrior leader ethics based on a combination of the arts of the pen （文） and the arts of the sword（武） which later came to be known as bunbu ryodo (文武両道), and they integrated Buddhist and Confucian ethics into their thinking on political leadership, creating a sense that they had expertise in the conduct of 善政 (good/moral government). These actions all bolstered their legitimate, expert and referent power bases as heads of state. Over the course of about 50 years, they used these strategies to arrogate a great deal of power and wealth from families and institutions that had formerly had higher status than themselves, at least in the early years they redistributed their gains in ways that enhanced both their transactional (rewards and punishments) and transformational (expertise, legitimacy and referent/attractiveness) power bases.
As time went on and their status rose, they came to seem much more legitimate, and they cemented this legitimacy by leaving behind documents that were referred to for centuries by warrior and merchant leaders as templates for legitimate, stable rule. A lot of their legitimacy came from the perception that they had put in place institutions that restored stability, order and civility after an extended period of conflict and competition among warrior families and their courtier sponsors. The individual I studied Hojo Shigetoki himself role modeled his commitment to the virtue of charity by requesting that his home be converted into a hospital for the poor after he passed away. And the two kakun (家訓) he left to his descedents – “The Letter to Nagatoki” （六波羅殿御家訓) and The Gokuraji Letter（極楽寺殿御消息）served as crude guides to the manners and ethics of a warrior statesman.
The Hojo family transformed the Japanese government and power structure in profound ways that lasted for a very long time. They did this by achieving the right balance of transactional and transformational leadership strategies.
At the beginning of the 14th century, the dominance of the Hojo began to wain for various reasons – some within their control and some not. The main line of the family had concentrated so much power in the hands of the Tokuso (徳宗 / head of the family council) that those who took the Emperor, Shogun, and Shikken roles had all came to be puppets in a play orchestrated behind the scenes by an increasingly cloistered group of Hojo leaders.
As these official roles came to be recognized as only existing to provide the facade of legitimacy for decisions made by a small group of insiders, the Hojo lost the trust of their important stakeholders in the both the courtier and warrior classes. As their monopoly on the organs of the state became more brazen, this unsurprisingly engendered resentment and plotting on the part of those who aspired to take more power for themselves. Toward the end of the thirteenth century, while the Hojo Tokumune managed to pull together a successful (if lucky) resistance to the Mongol invasion, this had been a war of defense rather than conquest, and there were no spoils to be distributed. Tokimune was not able to reward his followers with much of anything except praise and titles. This reduced both his reward and legitimate power bases.
Seeing an opening, the Court and some warrior families formed new alliances leading a new period of open conflict leading to what is known as the Nanbokucho (南北朝時代 / the period of the Northern and Southern Courts) in which rival claimants supported by powerful families laid claim to the title of emperor.
As their legitimate, reward and coercive power bases declined, the Hojo also lost their reputation for good government, and they faded into the history books about 130 years after their sudden emergence. The political and social transformation they had initiated continued. The warriors continued the long transition from killers to poet bureaucrats. New legal institutions looked to the Hojo institutions. The letters written by Hojo Shigetoki (the subject of my research) were used to educate warriors and merchants. The Hojo themselves, however, did not survive. As their power bases weakened they disappeared from the seat of power so completely that it eventually became difficult to figure out who were their legitimate descendants or if they even had any.
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Over the past few weeks, I’ve been playing out in my mind how the current administration in my country of origin gets people to fall in line. It’s a fascinating mix of all three levels of leadership. While this is a different era with different problems, the same models are useful in categorizing the strategies the current administration has been using.
We’ve seen lots of threats of punishment for resistance, distribution of rewards to those who show loyalty, and obviously also a lot of relationship building. The two tiers of transactional leadership loom large in this administration’s leadership strategies. But as frustrating as it may be for those who do not support this administration, it has also come up with a transformational vision statement that appeals quite strongly to at least part of the population – even if it repels or even draws jeers from many of their peers (myself included).
Still, I am not confident that this administration will succeed in driving anything like a lasting transformation. Like the emperor GoDaigo who followed Hojo, the legitimacy of this administration’s vision is based on a tenuous foundation and fantasies about a Golden Age that never existed. It will be difficult to re-create something than never really existed to begin with. Problems seem likely to arise in the maintenance of the expert, legitimate and referent power bases. Much of what has been done so far looks pretty clumsy, and a lot of it feels like it could end up being more show than substance. Moreover, I’m not at all sure that this is the kind of transformation that the majority of Americans really want. Initial reactions indicate that an increasing number of American citizens feel they have fallen for some sort of bate and switch.
I suspect that the expert and legitimate power bases will decide the fate of this administration. It’s quite possible that at some point, a large percentage of Americans will wonder if the expertise that the current administration brings is the right expertise for running a country. In the legitimate power category, the overreach has been quite remarkable, and that may end up hurting the legitimacy of the administration. How many official and unspoken rules can you break before most people start to think you’ve broken one too many and decide they don’t want to follow you anymore?
I’ll be curious to see how the transactional and transformational strategies of this administration shake out. Viewed from afar from the perspective of a former aspiring scholar of political and social power, the next four years have the makings of quite a show of transformation – if not necessarily a real transformation…
Sometimes overreach is successful long enough to create a new set of rules for what is legitimate. Still, I wonder how long the show can go on before a majority of Americans start to see the whole thing as an affront to the laws and ideals we’ve built up over the past two and half centuries…
Will all these transactions and less-than-universally appealing transformation eventually add up to a durable transformation in how the USA is governed? Or will the current administration come to be seen as an anomalous disturbance in the evolution of the American polity?
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Postscript:
When I was in Nepal in two stints between 1986 and 1990, I witnessed another political transformation as Nepal attempted to make the transition from monarchy with semi-democratic supporting institutions to a more pure form of democracy. As anyone with a little knowledge of Nepali history knows, the transition didn’t go smoothly. The King relinquished absolute power in 1990, but only after a series of demonstrations challenging the legitimacy of the monarchy and its supporters. I was an observer/participant in some of these demonstrations, including one that was violently suppressed, resulting in hundreds of deaths. The government’s violent suppression of the protests was followed by several days of Marshall law and the eventual abdication of the King.
It would have been wonderful if there had been a “They lived happily ever after” end to this story, but the reality was much grimmer. In the aftermath of the King’s abdication, Nepal was plunged into a civil war the better part of a decade and claiming thousands of lives before things settled down again. I understand things are much calmer now, but the current peace came at a great cost.
Once legitimate power has been compromised, it can be very difficult to re-establish it in the minds of the many followers who hold a nation together. If enough followers come to see their leaders as illegitimate, things can fall apart very quickly.
Unfortunately, after legitimacy has been undermined, the path back to legitimacy is often strewn with the bodies and lives of the people. It can take a long time to re-establish enough belief in the legitimacy of leaders and leadership institutions to re-establish a sustainable order.
© Dana Cogan, 2025, all rights reserved.