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In September the University of Toronto Press will publish my next book. It’s titled Why We Follow Leaders – and Why We Don’t. These are the four questions to which the book provides answers. First, what are our rewards for following? Second, what are our punishments for not following? Third, what are our rewards for not following? Fourth, what are our punishments for following?

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As I frequently point out, for every billion books and articles about leadership there is one about followership. Imagine my surprise then when, in just the last few days, two items that made news were not about leaders but about followers.

Both were articles about work done by academic researchers. In one case the research was based on followers in Nazi Germany. (Germans during the Nazi era – the many who supported Hitler and the few who resisted him – have been grist for academic mills since the 1950s.) And in the other case the research was based on followers during Argentina’s so-called Dirty War, in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Researchers at Harvard found that those of Hitler’s followers who joined the Nazi Party before he became chancellor (in 1933) tended to be committed Nazi ideologues. In contrast, those who joined only later tended to do so less out of conviction and more out of convenience. They joined because everyone else was joining. So, they were doing no more than, but also no less than succumbing to social pressures. Conforming to what had become social norms.*

The two German social scientists who focused on what happened in Argentina found that middle or low-level bureaucrats were especially vulnerable to following orders that “violated professional obligations, fundamental norms, and even basic morality.” Why? Because if they were willing to do what their superiors told them to do – notwithstanding their superiors might be corrupt or malign – their chances of being promoted or in some other way professionally rewarded were significantly improved.**  

Though they made news, neither of these findings were surprising. In fact, they were completely in keeping with earlier research on followers, especially though not exclusively of Adolf Hitler’s.

This is not, however, to diminish their importance. Expert research on followership remains all too rare. Moreover, it has special resonance in a time such as this one when the United States has a president who is a would-be strongman. When the second largest party in Germany is far-right, so far right that just a few years ago it was seen as extreme. And when the number of democracies has been in decline while the number of autocracies has been on the rise.  

Of course, for someone like me who’s convinced it’s impossible to grasp leadership without followership, studies like those mentioned in this post are catnip.  

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*This research was reported by Sy Boles in “Who Joined the Nazi Party?” in The Harvard Gazette, May 15, 2026.

**This research was reported by Amanda Taub in “Why Autocracies Love Loyal Losers” in the New York Times, May 20, 2026.

In September the University of Toronto Press will publish my next book. It’s titled Why We Follow Leaders – and Why We Don’t. These are the four questions to which the book provides answers. First, what are our rewards for following? Second, what are our punishments for not following? Third, what are our rewards for not following? Fourth, what are our punishments for following?

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As I frequently repeat, for every billion books and articles about leadership there is one about followership. Imagine my surprise then when, in just the last few days, two items that made news were not about leaders but about followers.

Both articles reporting findings by academic researchers. In one case the research was based on followers in Nazi Germany. And in the other case it was based on followers in Argentina during the so-called Dirty War in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Researchers at Harvard found that those among Hitler’s followers who joined the Nazi Party before he became chancellor (in 1933) tended to be committed Nazi ideologues. In contrast, those who joined the Party only later tended to do so less out of conviction and more out of convenience. They joined because everyone else was joining. They joined because they were succumbing to social pressures; they needed or wanted to conform to social norms.*

The two German social scientists who focused on what happened in Argentina discovered data that was somewhat different, though similarly it came as no surprise. They found that middle or low-level bureaucrats and officials were especially vulnerable to “violating professional obligations, fundamental norms, and even basic morality.” Why? Because if they were willing to do so on the orders of a superior, including one who was corrupt or malign, their chances of being promoted or of being in some other way professionally rewarded were significantly improved.**  

Though they made news, these findings were not, as indicated, new. Rather they were in keeping with earlier research on followers, especially though not exclusively of Adolf Hitler’s. This is not, however, to diminish their importance. Expert research on followership remains all too rare. Moreover, it has special resonance in a time such as this one. A time when America has a president who is, or would-be, a strongman. A time when the second largest party in Germany is far-right, so far right that even a decade ago it would have been thought extreme. And a time when the number of democracies has been in decline while the number of autocracies has been on the rise.  

Of course, for someone like me who’s persuaded it’s impossible to grasp leadership without grasping followership, studies like those mentioned in this post are catnip.  

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*This research was reported by Sy Boles in “Who Joined the Nazi Party?” in The Harvard Gazette, May 15, 2026.

**This research was reported by Amanda Taub in “Why Autocracies Love Loyal Losers” in the New York Times, May 20, 2026.

When I was still teaching at the Harvard Kennedy School, I would sometimes describe to my students – who were all adults – the historical trajectory toward weaker leaders and stronger followers. I addressed the trend in my 2012 book, The End of Leadership, in which I also explained it. Explained how it happened that leaders had become more enfeebled and followers more empowered.

This trajectory was characteristic only of democracies; in autocracies it was the opposite. In autocracies followers were getting weaker and leaders stronger. This was because by the second decade of the 21^st century it became clear to autocratic leaders such as Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping that unless they clamped down, controlled their followers more completely than previously, their followers would start to resemble their democratic counterparts. They would become increasingly difficult to control.

Most students came to understand and agree with my argument. But frequently someone in the class would ask, “Where does this all end?” What would happen if the trajectory that I was describing continued? If liberal democracies continued to be characterized by followers who were getting still stronger and leaders who were getting still weaker? To which I would reply that I wasn’t sure. While I was sure that what I was describing was happening, I couldn’t confidently predict where it was going.

Now, some fifteen years after I wrote The End of Leadership, we have some answers. Looking at liberal democracies – especially but not exclusively at the United States, at most countries in Europe, and at some countries in Asia – we do now know where this ends, at least for now.

• When followers get too strong and leaders too weak sometimes it ends in constitutional crisis. As it did a year and a half ago in South Korea when an exasperated president, Yoon Suk Yeol, was unable to control his constituents and so declared martial law. While the decision was quickly reversed, South Korea remains on edge and difficult to govern.
• When followers get too strong and leaders too weak sometimes it ends in voters turning sharply to the right – away from the hallowed principles of democratic rule. While this shift is in evidence in many countries, nowhere is it more striking than in Germany. Why? Because until recently, because of their history, Germans were allergic to right wing politics and politicians. Those days are now gone. The far right, populist, nationalist, conservative party, Alternative for Germany, is the second largest party in Germany.
• When followers get too strong and leaders too weak sometimes it ends in the election of a strongman. As in, obviously, the United States where Americans elected Donald Trump to a second presidential term during which his proclivity to erode democratic norms is fully in evidence. The indicators of Trump’s preference for more autocracy and less democracy include but are not of course limited to his persecution of political opponents; his vilification of marginalized groups; his use of unprecedented power for unprecedented profit; and his bypassing of legislators who, it must be added, give him permission to roll over them.
• When followers get too strong and leaders too weak sometimes it ends in persistent enfeeblement. Of which a sad, stark, example is that once great pillar of democratic governance, Great Britain. The aborted tenures of recent prime ministers speak for themselves. Theresa May and Boris Johnson each managed three years. Johnson’s successor, Liz Truss, squeaked out six weeks. And her successor, Rishi Sunak, was evicted from 10 Downing Street a scant year and a half after he moved in. Which brings us to the present – to the present Prime Minister, Keir Starmer.

To me Starmer is an especially interesting case – perhaps because his vertiginous descent seems to prove my point. As Tom McTague, editor of The New Statesman, described him in the New York Times, Starmer is one of the “most inoffensive politicians imaginable.” If that is, you believe in democratic governance. He is a centrist and a moderate, a Social Democrat who believes in and supports human rights, international law, and public services for his constituents. On his watch has been no calamity or catastrophe – and yet. And yet in less than two years Starmer’s landslide victory has curdled to a point where Brits seem to want nothing so much as to push him out. His approval ratings are historically low. Most of his cabinet has lost faith in his capacity to govern. And more than 100 members of his own Labour Party have publicly called on him to resign.

To answer the question of why for at least the last decade the British have had such terrible trouble governing themselves, McTague tips his hat to context. He points to the pandemic and to inflation, and to economic and geopolitical upheavals, prominently among them Brexit. All of which and more do pertain, as I am the first to claim. (To wit, my regular reference to the leadership system in which 1) leaders, 2) followers, and 3) contexts are all equally important.)

McTague also does what most people do – which is to blames the leaders. Starmer, he writes, is like most of his immediate predecessors, he is “utterly unsuited to the job.” We should, in other words, see Starmer as “just the latest in the long line of duffers.” He has “never known what he wanted to do in the job.” Nor did he arrive in office with any conception of “why things had gone so badly wrong before him.”  

What McTague does not, however, do is to point the finger of blame at those who are primarily responsible for Great Britain’s malfunctioning political system. They have not been the leaders. They have been the followers.

Which brings me back to where I started. Starmer, as noted, was elected in a landslide. And he was elected only relatively recently. Still, his approval ratings did not decline starting only in the last few months. They declined starting almost immediately after he was elected – well before he had any sort of chance to prove himself.

British followers, British voters, are so exceedingly fickle they are failing to keep their end of the bargain. Both Sunak and Starmer were in every way normal. Normal men and normal leaders in that they were reasonably competent and reasonably middle of the road in style and substance. Still, the British electorate was inordinately quick to be dissatisfied and so they exercised their muscles. They showed who in the 21^st century was getting stronger – followers. And who in the 21^st century was getting weaker – leaders. Amazing how fast the furious Brits have repeatedly brought their leaders to their knees.

When the world’s two most powerful leaders meet face to face it’s news. It’s news even when nothing much happens. As was the case this week when American President Donald Trump met in Beijing with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Summits – especially between leaders of superpowers – have a mixed record. Occasionally they result in breakthroughs, as did the several meetings between American President Ronald Reagan and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. Both then and now was wide agreement that the two leaders got on surprisingly well and that, together, they transformed the decades-long Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union into something considerably more cordial.*

More often though summits are exercises in pomp and circumstance on the one hand and futility on the other. They do not generally lead to breakthroughs either in politics or policies. When they do, they are in consequence of extensive and extended advance planning – the sort of preparation for which Trump is not, to understate it, well known.  

The summit just concluded was, then, neither a notable success nor a fearsome failure. Nor was it a surprise. But this is not to say that the meeting between Trump and Xi was meaningless, it was not. Here then three items to make meaning of.

First, the summit confirmed that the critical relationship between China and the United States is back on track. Closer at least on the surface to cordiality than animosity.

Second, Trump secured no significant gains. Certainly not on the all-important issue of the war with Iran. Or on the equally important issue of critical (or rare-earth) minerals – a singular asset on which China continues to have a chokehold. (Critical minerals are essential to making everything from munitions to renewable batteries. How China came to came to control the global supply is another story.)

Third, Xi reaffirmed his (implicit) claim to being the single most important leader – the single most powerful player – in the world. Which, as it happens, he is. History will testify that it is he not Trump who has by far the more impressive track record and that it is he not Trump who presides over a country that during his time in office has been relentlessly on the ascent. Moreover, in Beijing it was Xi not Trump who had the temerity to launch a shot across the bow. Out of the gate it was China that issued a stark warning to the American delegation not to interfere with, not to defend, Taiwan.

Xi has been in power in China since 2012. Moreover, unlike Trump, Xi has no opposition. In China Xi is in control of everyone and everything. Also, unlike Trump who will be out of power in two and a half years, in 2017 Xi arranged things so that he is leader for life.

His supreme self-confidence is, moreover, justified. He has much to be confident about. Within China Xi reigns supreme over an enormous country that has by most measures thrived beyond anyone’s imaginings. And without China he is a force that every other national leader in the world has no choice but to reckon with.

Xi casts himself as a Confucian and a custodian of Chinese civilization. Which, I might add, goes back not a mere, measly, hundreds of years but thousands. Xi with boundless assurance governs a country with over a billion people who from kindergarten through graduate school are taught “Xi Jinping’s Thought.” This thought is, make no mistake, communist. Unlike say, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin who is a not-so-secret capitalist, Xi is a deeply committed socialist. He is also, in keeping with previously prominent communists, including his revolutionary predecessor, Mao Zedong, an authoritarian leader to the point of being a totalitarian leader.   

So, if the summit favored China President Xi Jinping over American President Donald Trump no wonder. The former is a strongman who looks in the mirror and sees Superman. The latter in contrast is a strongman who looks in the mirror and thinks he sees Superman.

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*The fact that Gorbachev’s tenure finally succumbed to the collapse of the Soviet Union is another, arguably related, matter.

In September the University of Toronto Press will publish my next book. It’s titled Why We Follow Leaders – and Why We Don’t. These are the four questions to which the book provides answers. First, what are our rewards for following? Second, what are our punishments for not following? Third, what are our rewards for not following? Fourth, what are our punishments for following?

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This post is to the point. Here are four books – all published in the last few months – that are all about followers, not leaders.

*The first is about resistance – about how followers who refuse to do what they are ordered to do and, or supposed to do and, or expected to do, can defy both the system and those who are leading it. The book is by Gal Beckerman and is titled How to Be a Dissident.   

*The second is about the absence thereof – the absence of resistance. It’s about how (most) Germans who lived in Berlin from the beginning of World War II to the end followed. They conformed to and accommodated the Nazi regime. The book is by Ian Buruma and is titled, Stay Alive: Berlin 1939-1945.

*The third is a memoir by one of those rare birds who defied or tried to the second administration of Donald Trump – specifically, the dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development. The book is by Nicholas Enrich and is titled, Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower’s Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID.   

*The fourth is about how corporate scandals can end in backlash. About how when wrongdoing is uncovered – specifically about companies that are behemoths – they can and sometimes do provoke people to protest. The book is by Pepper Culpepper and Taeku Lee and is titled, Billionaire Backlash: The Age of Corporate Scandal and How It Could Save Democracy.

I lament that for every billion books about leadership there’s just one about followership. Books about followers though abound. We just need to look in the right places!

In September the University of Toronto Press will publish my next book. It’s titled Why We Follow Leaders – and Why We Don’t. These are the four questions to which the book provides answers. First, what are the rewards for following? Second, what are the punishments for not following? Third, what are the rewards for not following? Fourth, what are the punishments for following?

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This post is to the point. It’s about what happened in this week’s Indiana Republican primary.

In the last year the propensity of Congressional Republicans to religiously follow wherever Donald Trump led became even curiouser and curiouser. The president’s approval ratings sank. His war with Iran proved highly unpopular. Prices rose, most visibly at the pump. Trump (and his family) pocketed billions while many millions of Americans financially struggled. And his proclivity to glitzy self-aggrandizement reached new highs.   

Notwithstanding all of this, what became clear in Indiana is that Trump continues to control the Republican party. He continues to dominate both Republicans who are in office and Republicans who aspire to do the same. His penchant for revenge was why he backed primary challengers against all seven of the incumbent Republican state senators who had rejected Trump’s redistricting plan. The result? At least five of Trump’s toadies won.

The details of their wins – including an avalanche of cash – do not concern us here. What does concern us is how it happens that a leader so clearly flawed can control followers hellbent on not crossing him because they are hellbent on not being punished. In fact, they are hellbent on being rewarded, on securing the president’s blessing.  It all goes back to the voters, of course, to Trump’s MAGA base. This base is smaller than it used to be. But notwithstanding withering criticisms of the president by some MAGA elites, even now his base remains a potent political force that all Americans have to reckon with.

Republicans who hold political office are like Democrats who hold political office. They reap a range of rewards that include but are not limited to power, status and money. So, even in an environment as politically fraught as this one, holding political office remains an attractive or even very attractive professional option. Which is why Republic incumbents and aspirants continue to shill for a leader who, however problematic, still holds the cards. Donald Trump makes it plain that he will reward those who follow him and punish those who do not – which, whatever has gone down, he still has the power to do.

My post of two days ago was a response to Haig Patapan’s new book, The Modern Tyrant. While the book is very good, I took issue with the fact that Patapan skirts, so to speak, the gender issue. That he takes it as a given that a tyrant is a man – a “he” not a “she.”

I do not argue that this is wrong. I argue that we cannot or at least we should not make this assumption without discussion.  

For the purposes of this post, I accept the point. I accept that nearly all modern tyrants are men. Further, nearly all tyrants have always been men. Which inevitably raises the question of why. Why is it that some men tend to be tyrannical while hardly any women tend to be same – even when, as they occasionally are, in leadership roles? Is it that men, generally the physically stronger of our species, have historically been more able to be all-controlling? Or is it that men want it more than women? Want more fervently and frequently than women not merely to exercise power but to exercise total power over near everyone and everything.

Suffice here – this is a post not a book – to say that any attempt to answer questions about gender differences as they pertain to leadership and followership must begin with, and maybe even end with, the fact that we, we humans, are great apes. We humans are great apes who are extremely closely related to two other species of great apes: chimpanzees and bonobos. We three share a common ancestor as well as more than 96 percent of our DNA.

All well and good – though in a discussion about power the similarities and differences among the three species of great apes can be said to raise as many questions as give answers.  For chimpanzees are known, like humans, to be aggressive. Moreover, it is the male of the species who is nearly always the aggressor both within chimpanzee groups and without. Bonobos, in contrast, are far less aggressive. They don’t generally engage in warfare, and they don’t generally intentionally kill each other. Further, and to the point that I make here, unlike chimpanzees among whom males dominate, among bonobos it is females who typically reign supreme.

So, when males dominate aggression, especially but not exclusively physical aggression, is a predictable byproduct. In contrast, when females dominate, physical aggression is far less frequent. Therefore, while among bonobos there are instances in which dominant females form coalitions, particularly against problematic males, bonobos tend naturally toward more peaceable conflict resolution than chimpanzees. Which is to say that compared with chimpanzee leaders (who are males), bonobo leaders (who are females), are less naturally disposed to leading by exercising power and more naturally disposed to leading by exercising authority and influence.

Which returns us to humans. Humans share a common ancestor with chimpanzees and bonobos. Which means that we bear similarities to both species. However, when it comes to leadership and followership, a cursory look suggests that our resemblances to chimpanzees are significantly greater than to bonobos. Overwhelmingly our leaders are as they have always been – men not women. Which goes a long way toward explaining why overwhelmingly the modern tyrant is as tyrants have always been – men not women.

Several months ago, I was asked to endorse a book written by a colleague of mine, Haig Patapan. The book is titled: The Modern Tyrant: Authoritarian Leadership in Theory and Practice.

Patapan is Professor of Political Science at Australia’s Griffith University. Without hesitating I said yes to the publisher’s request, knowing that Patapan is a first-rate scholar and that most of what interests him interests me.* He, like me, writes about leadership; and he, like me, is interdisciplinary. Patapan tends to weave the classics through what he writes, for example, in this book he references Plato and Aristotle, religion and rhetoric. As I thought I would be, after reading The Modern Tyrant, I was glad to provide the blurb – a highly enthusiastic one.

I would do so again. But it is also true that since my initial reading of the book, I’ve become more sensitive to the fact that Patapan omitted from his discussion any substantive reference to gender. Throughout his book he assumes that tyrants are men and he refers to them as “he.” Patapan does address the gender issue – though only in a single footnote. The note reads as follows: “I refer to tyrants throughout as ‘he’ as they have been predominantly male. Whether this is an historical accident or reflects deeper psychological, institutional or cultural factors is an important question that has not received the scholarly at tension it deserves.” (p.5)

 It’s true that as it pertains to power, authority, and influence, the issue of gender has been severely shortchanged, including among academics. Or, better, as in Patapan’s book, gender is a given. It is a given – an assumption – that as it pertains to power women are an endnote. And it is a given – an assumption – that as it pertains to combat women are similarly no more than a sidebar. Why? For the simple reason that men are virtually always the tyrants and men are virtually always the aggressors.

We are so used to men being the tyrants or the despots, the totalitarians or the authoritarians, the invaders or the attackers that we refer to them, effectively mindlessly, as “strongmen.” Not – for example, when referencing Russia or China, Turkey or Egypt, North Korea or Cuba or Sudan, as “strongwomen.”

During the heyday of the women’s rights movement (in the late 1960s and early 1970s) attention was paid to the fact that nearly always it was men who made war. Further was the widespread idea that if only women ruled the world, the world would be different. It would be better. But nothing much came of it. Overwhelmingly, everywhere in the world, and in every sector, it is still men who do the leading and women the following. And, overwhelmingly, it is still men who employ force. They do so first to attain and then to maintain, control.   

Hard then to blame Patapan for using “he” – never “she” or even “they” – when writing about the modern tyrant. So far as we know it was not President Putin’s mother who decided to launch an unprovoked attack on Ukraine. Nor was it his erstwhile wife, nor either of his two daughters, nor any of the several other women in his life. It was Putin. Putin whose advisors and close cronies have always been male. Putin who, during his 25 years in power, has presented himself as nothing so much as very, very virile. As All-Man All the Time.**

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*The Modern Tyrant was published in 2026 by Edinburgh University Press.

**https://www.gettyimages.com/search/2/image?phrase=putin+no+shirt&tracked_gsrp_landing=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gettyimages.com%2Fphotos%2Fputin-no-shirt

For months, even years, he was front page news. But now, with occasional exceptions, he has, at least in the United States, receded deep into the background.

Nevertheless, he plows on. He plows on, continues, against all odds, to lead his impossibly beleaguered country. He plows on, continues, against all odds, to lead his troops into battle against an ostensibly formidable military foe. He plows on, continues, against all odds, to lead a coalition of the willing, a retinue of his reliable allies. He plows on, continues, against all odds, to lead a revolution in battlefield technologies. He plows on, continues, against all odds, to weaken his opponent economically, to bleed it so that it cannot continue indefinitely to fight. He plows on, continues, against all odds, to play his part as a beacon of democracy in a world in which such beacons are in short supply. He plows on, continues, against all odds, to circle the globe to make his case, to shake hands with anyone anywhere who might provide him and his followers with critical military, financial, political, and technological support.

When the history of this period is written Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will be one of the very, very few political leaders who proved the real deal. A good leader who was exceedingly, exceptionally effective and reasonably, relatively ethical.   

Those among us who are students of leadership would do well to move him from background to foreground. Zelensky continues to stand the test of time. He is a political leader who defies the odds. Who remains true to his mission and who continues faithfully to do everything in his power to keep his followers, his country, as strong, independent, determined and democratic as possible under its impossibly difficult circumstance.

When I wrote my previous post, I was not aware of how big the story about the Hungarian election would become. In both the United States and the West generally the resounding defeat of Viktor Orban was hailed by many as a harbinger of change. A signal that rightism and populism – which had pockmarked the West – were on their way out and that centrism and moderation were on their way back in. I also pointed out that what had happened in Hungary reflected a triumph of fed-up followers over a leader who had long been confirmed as corrupt as callous.

All of which raises the question of how replicable the Hungarian model really is. Should we assume that what happened in Hungary is, for example, a signal that the far-right party in Germany, the AfD – which in recent years has been stunningly successful – is similarly fated to have seen its better days? Or, for that matter that not only are Donald Trump’s approval ratings at all time lows, but that Trumpism itself is part of America’s past, not its future or even its present.

Counterintuitively, Hungary had four advantages that, for example, the United States might not enjoy, especially not at the national level. For Hungarians to defeat their autocratic leader they had to have:

• An election that – despite their country’s being termed an illiberal democracy – was reasonably free and fair.   
• A massive turnout so the prime minister’s defeat resounded throughout the country as throughout the world.
• A landslide victory with Orban’s opponent winning by so large a margin that his victory was indisputable.     
• A single candidate around whom Hungarians could coalesce. Peter Magyar was their man, and he will become their next prime minister. But… Magyar came to national attention through a highly atypical set of circumstances that, among other things, involved personal, political, and financial scandal.  (Remember… context matters!)  

If we Americans are sufficiently vigilant, we might well have free and fair elections both in 2026 and in 2028. If we Americans are sufficiently engaged, we might well have high voter turnouts both times over. And if we Americans better remember what we have in common rather than what drives us apart we might well also bestow on some candidates’ major victories.

Which brings us to the final criterion: will the opposition produce candidates – around whom the American people can coalesce? Will Democrats stop their infighting? Will Democrats get their act together? Will Democrats unite around platforms that are clear, consistent, and coherent? Most importantly, will Democrats produce a single presidential candidate who is as clever as charismatic as qualified?

Evidence is growing that Americans long to be led by someone other than Trump – or his toadies. But for him and his minions to be tossed sooner rather than later into the dustbin of history will require of Democrats a level of innovation and cooperation that is not yet in evidence.