Surprisingly little is known about leadership in social movements (Morris & Staggenborg 2004). It is not that there are no studies on leaders or leadership. Indeed, nearly all studies of social movements include some acknowledgement or discussion of the role of leadership in relation to, for example, recruitment, mobilization, or the achievement of goals. Rather, the area suffers from weak theoretical development, and a general failure to place leaders and leadership at the center of the analysis. Leadership is often tangential to analyses of social movement development, goals, tactics, and outcomes. Until recently, leadership has been treated as a structurally or socially constituted dependent variable, thus we know little about its independent effect on social movements.