From solidarity to division: An analysis of Lech Wałęsa's transition to constituted leadership Danielle N. Lussier Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley, 210 Barrows Hall, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-1950, USA article info abstract This essay analyzes the capacity and constraints of authority in the contexts of constituted vs. non-constituted leadership. Using the experience of Lech Wałęsa's transition from the leader of the Solidarity social movement to the president of Poland as a case study, this article evaluates the portability of leadership skills and informal authority to the changing operational context of constituted leadership. It argues that the constraints of formal authority are significantly higher than those imposed on non-constituted leaders. As a result, while constituted leaders may have greater resources available to broadcast power, the allocation of these resources entails higher expectation for their custodians. This analysis concludes that a successful transition from non-constituted to constituted leadership is possible only when the leader manages to build new bases of informal authority. Wałęsa failed to expand his informal authority and was unsuccessful at transferring his leadership skills to the presidency. © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Authority Lech Wałęsa Constituted leadership Post-communism Solidarity The story of Lech Wałęsa, Solidarity activist turned president of Poland, presents a useful case study about the portability of leadership from a position of informal to formal authority. The 1983 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize who became Poland's first popularly elected president in 1990 with over 70% of the vote, Wałęsa lost reelection in 1995 to Communist candidate Aleksander Kwaśniewski and received less than 1% of the vote when he campaigned for the presidency in 2000. While critics have been quick to dismiss Wałęsa's poor performance in the presidency as a reflection of a deficient skill set, a closer look at Wałęsa's leadership demonstrates that an equally significant factor was the differing resources and constraints he encountered in transitioning from a position of non-constituted to constituted leadership. To better understand the particular constraints and opportunities for leadership portability from a non-constituted to a constituted position of power, this essay will examine the resources and skills Wałęsa employed to achieve success in both leadership roles and investigate how the constraints on Wałęsa's leadership changed with his operational context. Drawing on Robert Tucker's theory about the differences between non-constituted and constituted leadership and Ronald Heifetz's insights about the resources and constraints incumbent upon authority, the following analysis of the Wałęsa case will engage three core questions: (1) Are the skill sets that non-constituted and constituted leaders require different? (2) Do the differing constraints on non-constituted and constituted leaders impair a constituted leader from maintaining the informal authority he built as a non-constituted leader? (3) How portable are leadership skills? In addressing these questions, several other concepts from leadership theory are instructive in explaining Wałęsa's experience, including reform leadership (Burns, 1978), charismatic leadership (Mumford, 2006), visionary leadership (Mumford, 2006; Crosby & Bryson, 2005), democratic leadership (Morone, 1998), and ineffective leadership (Kellerman, 2004). The Leadership Quarterly 21 (2010) 703–715 E-mail address: dlussier@berkeley.edu. 1048-9843/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2010.07.002 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect The Leadership Quarterly journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/leaqua