Author: Barbara

Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the other forms that have been tried from time to time.

So famously said Winston Churchill in 1947, when democracies, notwithstanding their postwar struggles, were still flush from their victory over the Nazis. Even now most Americans would agree that Churchill was right. Even now most Americans would agree that living in a democracy is better than living in an autocracy.  But perhaps for the first time, Churchill’s observation should be challenged – even argued.

What if the most powerful autocracy in the world is running reasonably well and the most powerful democracy in the world is not? What if the deficits of democracy are becoming increasingly apparent? And what if the same can be said about the benefits of autocracy?

As I write, the United States is stumbling if not crumbling – no surprise given it’s being led by two men swinging a sledgehammer. And, as I write, China is steady as she goes – no surprise given it’s being led by a smart, sane strongman who’s helmed the ship of state since 2012.

This is not by any stretch to say that China is problem free. It is not. But for better and worse the Chinese government has been stable for well over a decade while the United States government has lurched from pillar to post. During the same stretch that China has been governed by a single individual, President Xi Jinping, and a single party, the Chinese Communist Party, the United States has been governed first by Republican President Donald Trump (2017-2021), then by Democratic President Joe Biden (2021-2025), and then back again to Republican Trump (2025-2029). This time along with political newbie and newfound sidekick, Elon Musk.  

Moreover, when both presidents came into office (in Trump’s case the second time), they did nothing so fast as to undo legacies left by their immediate predeccessors. In 2021 Biden promptly issued a string of executive orders intent on erasing as much as he could as fast as he could of Trump. And in 2025 Trump did the same, intent on erasing as much as he could as fast as he could of Biden. Is this any way to run a railroad? Can you imagine Apple or JPMorgan doing a one-eighty, a total U turn every four years?

The United States though is not alone. Other democracies are also having a hard time – for example, Germany and France, Japan and South Korea. Is it then possible that for a constellation of causes democracy and the 21^st century are incompatible? That there is something about this moment in history – especially the breathtaking changes in culture and technology – that makes good democratic governance exceedingly difficult to sustain? Is it possible that changing governments every few years as democracies are wont to do – even if in response to the will of the people – is ill-suited to an era in which leaders who are free to engage in long-term planning are greatly advantaged while leaders who are not, and who are, to boot, constantly being distracted by detractors, are greatly disadvantaged?

Let’s be clear: President Xi has benefited – and in many ways so has China – from his being left alone. Left alone to do what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it – and carefully to consider the future without much if any, intrusion or interruption.

No question that Xi – self-appointed leader for life – is far more dictatorial now than he was a decade ago. Similarly, no question that the Chinese people are far more subject to state and party control – in every aspect of their lives, from the cradle to the grave – than they were a decade ago. But from a geopolitical perspective China has gained against the United States. Moreover, given the times in which we live there is no good evidence that the U.S. will have the competence and consistency to slow its greatest competitor ever. For China is far more fearsome an opponent than the Soviet Union was even in its heyday.  

This post is not about the current American president. Nor is it about the current Chinese president. Rather it is about the comparative advantages and disadvantages of the American and Chinese leadership systems in the 21^st century.

In just the last week two things became clear.

First, China is giving the United States a run for its money on technology. The impact of DeepSeek on the American psyche has been profound and properly so. Not for nothing have the revelations about DeepSeek been dubbed a Sputnik moment: they made clear to Americans along with the rest of the world that so far as artificial intelligence is concerned, they are not invincible. Not only will China not be a bystander, it will be a formidable competitor.

Second, China is giving the United States a run for its money on the military. China now has the largest army in the world. China now has the largest navy in the world. And China is rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal. OK, you might say, how much does this matter? Consider this. What does it say about Xi’s military ambitions that he is building in Beijing a military command center projected to be 10 times larger than the Pentagon?

Sure, maybe it’s just for show. But maybe not. Maybe size matters. Maybe size especially matters when it’s coupled with a leader who has boundless ambition and no competition. Maybe size especially matters given China’s arch-rival has a crippling case of whiplash that has no prospect of being cured anytime soon. And maybe size especially matters when democratic centrism gives way to nationalism, populism, and extremism. Which, even if they don’t further flower do damage. Damage to individuals. Damage to the state. Damage to democracy.

Let’s assume for a moment that my argument is valid. That there are certain things about this moment in history that make democratic governance difficult, or even, at least some of the time, impossible. What might a good democrat do? For starters, think big! The problems that bedevil liberal democracies are not small, nor are they familiar. They are large, and they are new, which means they require solutions that similarly are large, and new. Unfortunately I have yet to hear the leaders of the Democratic opposition – Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Ken Martin – say a single syllable that begins even to rise to the occasion.

OK, so you can tell from the title of this post no way I’m thinking it’ll be a woman. But I do think there will be a man, a single individual who emerges as leader. As unambiguous leader of the American opposition.

Anyone familiar with my work knows I am not leader centric. I have argued for years that leadership is not a person. It is a system with three parts, each of which is equally important: 1) leader; 2) followers; 3) contexts.

But there are situations in which one or another of these three parts is more important than the other two. For example, Los Angeles is now a story not about a single individual such as the mayor, or the governor of California. Nor is it about Angelinos generally. Rather for months if not years to come the story of the city will be about context: about Los Angeles as a safe and secure place in which to live and work.

So, hard to tell what the United States will look like, say, two years from now. But my best guess is that the landscape – and I don’t mean just the political landscape – will still be dominated by President Donald Trump. This suggests that if the Democrats want to take away his power they will have to have a leader worthy of the task. A leader capable of capturing not just American hearts and minds – but their attention and imagination.

No ordinary leader will do – Trump is too forceful a presence. Even when he stumbles, he looms, he’s larger than life, he steals the spotlight. So, the opposition will need a man at the helm – please, ladies, don’t mess with the messenger – who is his match. Who, like Trump, dominates. Who, like Trump, is magnetic. Who, like Trump, sucks the air out of the room.

Suggestions? Nominations?

Think of this post as a lesson. A history lesson. It has nothing whatsoever to do with politics in the present. It’s only about politics past.

Have I made myself clear? This post is only about politics in the past. This means that any parallels to the present are purely, entirely, totally and wholly and completely coincidental.

In my most recent book, Leadership from Bad to Worse: What Happens When Bad Festers, I make two primary points. As the book’s title suggests, first, I write based on overwhelming evidence that if bad leadership is not stopped or at least slowed, it gets worse just as sure as night follows day.

Second, I write based on overwhelming evidence that bad leadership goes from bad to worse over time, in predictable phases. Over and over again, in every case of leadership that goes from bad to worse, the progression is the same. It is in four phases that unfold like clockwork, from one case of bad leadership in one time and place to another case of bad leadership in another time and place.

In Chapter 4 of the book, “The Phases of Development,” I introduce the four phases by drawing on a single example: Adolf Hitler. The book is not about Hitler. I simply use him and his assertion of power, and then more power, as an introductory case in point.

In Phase I, Onward and Upward, Hitler did what bad leaders initially do: they promise the moon and the stars. Of course, all leaders try to persuade their followers that under them the future will be better than the past. But leaders like Hitler take this to the extreme. Hitler promised his people that under him Germany would rise from the ashes, become a great nation, and then the most mighty, and glorious the world had ever seen.

In Phase II, Followers Join In, Hitler solidified his political base. Throughout the 1930s, Hitler’s hold over the German people grew ever stronger. To the point where in time it became a stranglehold. Hitler’s powers of persuasion, especially his oratory, were immense, and he used them to full effect. Moreover he backed up what he said with what he did. He had zero compunctions about using his increasingly dictatorial powers to ram through his increasingly compliant parliament laws so restrictive they would’ve been regarded as inconceivable just a couple of years earlier.

In Phase III, Leader Starts In, Hitler began executing policies and programs that by any measure were “bad.” For example, in 1935, two years after he came to power, Hitler got passed the Nuremburg Laws, intended to address “the Jewish question.” As I wrote in Leadership from Bad to Worse, the passage of these laws reduced Jews to second-class status in a single stroke, and they were the precursor to the genocidal policies that followed several years later.

Finally in Phase IV, Bad to Worse,Hitler had full and free rein. Full and free rein completely to dominate the German people. Full and free rein to shake up starting in 1936 the international order. Full and free rein three years later to start the Second World War. And, finally, full and free rein beginning in the early 1940s to annihilate or to try to, especially but not exclusively every Jew in Europe.

To be clear, Hitler did not, nor could he have done what he did alone. The progression to which I allude was led by Hitler. But alongside were cadres of his followers, ranging from those up close and personal, his acolytes, to those at a great remove, ordinary Germans caught, voluntarily or involuntarily, in the Fuehrer’s web. Put directly, there can be no bad leaders without bad followers. There can be no bad leadership without bad followership.

Similarly, bad leadership can be stopped ONLY by good followership. Good followers stop or at least they slow bad leaders. No bad leader ever wakes up one fine morning and says, “Oh, golly, gee, I’ve been bad. I must, I will, change my errant ways!” Bad leaders can be, will be, stopped ONLY if someone(s) stops them.  

Oh, did I mention this post was a lesson? A history lesson. Did I mention it has nothing whatsoever to do with politics in the present?  It’s about politics in the past. It’s only about politics past. Which means that any parallels to the present are purely, entirely, totally and wholly and completely coincidental.

Sorry, girls, that’s the way it always was, that’s the way it still is.

Among great apes – of which we, we humans, are one – males typically dominate, females typically submit. Not always. There are nuances and differences. Still, the principle mostly holds.

Over eons nothing much has changed. From pre-human history throughout human history the situation remains generally the same. World affairs are conducted and controlled nearly entirely by males. Most obviously wars. Males, men, are big on war. Either they love it or for other reasons are driven to engage in it. Maybe both.

The war in Europe between Russia and Ukraine is spearheaded by men. The war in the Middle East between Hamas and Israel is spearheaded by men. And though I’m no expert on Africa I have every reason to believe that the wars in Africa are spearheaded if not entirely by men, then nearly so.

Most Americans don’t pay much if any attention to Africa. Still, it should be noted that Africa now has more armed discord than at any time since at least 1946. “An unprecedented explosion of conflicts” is carving “a trail of death and destruction across the breadth of Africa – from Mali near the continent’s western edge all the way to Somalia on its eastern Horn.” *

What gives? Why have men always done this and why do they still? At the most fundamental level, going back to prehistory, males have wanted to dominate if not conquer for sex, for procreation and pleasure, and for territory, to maintain power and exercise control. In his book, Why We Fight, Christopher Blattman, list additional reasons for going to war, such as leaders whose interests remain unchecked, high levels of fear and uncertainty, and misperceptions in every direction. Whatever the specifics though, the generality applies. With few exceptions it’s men who start wars and, notwithstanding some women in some militaries, it’s men who fight wars. When it comes to matters of war and peace, fact is that women and of course children remain mostly at the mercy of men.        

But no need for war for Americans, especially now, to be aware of how male-dominated remains their culture. Not just our political culture, our culture more generally. President Donald Trump is driven every moment of every day to prove just how manly he is. His nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, is likely to be confirmed by the male dominated Senate despite his wretched record, personal and professional, when it comes to females. Tech bros from Elon Musk on down now loom large not only over their own domains but over ours. Trump has elevated the status of Dana White, chief executive officer of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, beyond anything he, or we, could have imagined. And, of course, abortion which used to be legal in every American state is now in many states illegal or ridiculously, unconscionably, difficult to obtain.

To all this our response – the response of women to what men are doing – is shall we say, muted. First time Trump was elected president, in 2016, at least we said something and did something. We protested loudly and proudly. This time around nada, zilch. Seems we’ve been stunned into silence – which means we’ve been stunned into submission.

I’m pretty savvy when it comes to the subject of women and leadership. It’s soil I’ve tilled for years. So, I’m not shocked that we are where we are. But I am surprised.   

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*https://www.wsj.com/world/africa/africa-has-entered-a-new-era-of-war-c6171d8e

Whoever said Donald J. Trump was not a reader?! Whoever falsely maligned the man? Well…lots of people.

In his bestselling book, Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff described Trump as barely glancing at the written word. “He didn’t process information in any conventional sense,” Wolff wrote. “He didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semi-literate.” Wolff quotes Trump’s onetime economic adviser, Gary Cohn: “It’s worse even than you can imagine,” Cohn claimed in an email. “Trump won’t read anything – [not] one-page memos, not brief policy papers, nothing.”  

Fake news! Slander! How do I know? I know because it’s obvious that Trump not only read Machiavelli’s The Prince, he’s about memorized it. The Prince is Trump’s gospel, the book in which he fully believes and whose dictates he follows.

The Prince is a primer. A manual, an instruction on leadership originally written for Lorenzo de ’Medici who became Duke of Urbino in 1516. But there’s a reason the book has endured, has been as popular as pertinent for fully five centuries. It’s because, like all great leadership literature, The Prince is two things at once. It is particular and it is universal. It speaks to the situation immediately at hand – and simultaneously it transcends it. The book is a subjective reflection, based on Machiavelli’s own experience as a politician and diplomat, who earlier in his life fell woefully out of favor, to the point of being briefly imprisoned and tortured. At the same time, The Prince is an objective discussion of governance and the nature of the human condition.

More than anything else, the book instructs on the exercise and preservation of power. It is purely pragmatic: The Prince lacks not only a moral code but a legal one. God is absent from the book, so is the rule of law and every other moral compass. The prince is the ruler, the governor, the leader who is responsible to himself and, after a fashion, to his people, but certainly not to a higher power or authority of any sort.*

Machiavelli’s view of humankind is dim, dark. “For one can generally say this of men,” he wrote. “They are ungrateful, fickle, pretenders and dissemblers, evaders of danger, eager for gain.” When you are good to them, he adds, “they are yours.” But if you are not, beware. “They revolt.” In other words, pay attention. And do what you must to ensure that your subjects – your followers – stay loyal. For if  they don’t you’re done.

But contrary to conventional wisdom, Machiavelli is not what is usually thought of as “Machiavellian.” Rather he is transactional.  He argues it’s in the interest of leaders to be liked, not disliked. To this end, the prince should do what he can to be “held in esteem.” He should “show himself a lover of virtues” – though how “virtues” are defined is debatable – and “prepare rewards” for those who do what he wants them to do. The back of his hand should be reserved only for those who fail to fall into line.

The Prince is equally clear on the prince’s priorities. He should never be casually cruel. But if cruelty is necessary to maintain order and, or, the prince’s power, it could and should be employed. “A prince, therefore, so as to keep his subjects united and faithful, should not care about the infamy of cruelty, because with very few examples he will be more merciful than those who, for the sake of too much mercy, allow disorders to continue.” So, it is much “safer,” Machiavelli maintained, “to be feared than loved.”

I rest my case. Is it not evident that Trump not only read The Prince, he took it to heart? It is.   

But one caveat. Machiavelli’s prince is careful and calculating. As Trump earlier today testified, he is capable even on a day as august as this one is, of being neither. Trump’s first speech, his scripted, formal inaugural speech, was Machiavellian. His second, delivered almost immediately thereafter to a large group of acolytes, was not. It was entirely impromptu, weirdly long, full of falsehoods, and in every way incautious. It suggested that Trump should be feared all right – but not for reasons Machiavelli would sanction.

President Trump, “Sir,” I respectfully request you give The Prince another read.

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This and the preceding paragraph are based in part on comments I made about The Prince in my edited and annotated collection of the great leadership literature. (See Barbara Kellerman, ed. Leadership: Essential Selections on Power, Authority, and Influence. McGraw-Hill, 2010.)    

Mark and Elon are so competitive, especially but not exclusively with each other, that in 2023 was serious talk about a cage match. Rumor has it that it was Musk who slunk away, fearing that Zuckerberg, known in recent years for being deadly serious about being seriously fit, including in the martial arts, would humiliate him.

Mark and I have not chatted in recent weeks. But it appears that Elon’s incessant proximity to President-elect Donald Trump, and Elon’s relentless megalomania, is getting to Zuck. Driving Zuck so nuts he’s doing what he can to assert that if he’s not King of the Hill at least he’s Co-King.

It’s true: Musk is taking chutzpah to new lengths. The richest man in the world is now wearing, on top of all his other hats, that of foreign policy czar. Musk is interfering – actively, aggressively – in major political battles now not only at home but abroad. In Britain, for example, he has already made clear his electoral agenda: to oust incumbent Prime Minister Kier Starmer and install sooner not later a government decisively to the right of center. And in Germany Musk is doing no less than engineering a break, or trying to, with what had been haloed post-war German tradition: not to swerve too far to the right. German elections will be held in just over a month – with Musk now loudly supporting the far-right chancellor-candidate. Her name is Alice Weidel. She leads the AfD, Germany’s far-right party, recently become the second largest in Germany.

Because Musk’s wealth, Musk’s power, Musk’s visibility, and Musk’s proximity are more than Zuck can handle he’s reinventing himself, again. Zuckerberg is moving to the right where he can. He is bending his knee when he can. And he is becoming as manly as he can – even more manly than he was before, if such a thing is possible.      

What signaling was desired or required happened where the gods wanted it to – on Joe Rogan’s podcast.

First, Mark took on Tim. That would be Tim Cook, CEO of Apple. Mark said that Apple had long ago stopped innovating. Mark said that Apple had “random rules.” And Mark said that Apple was “squeezing people for money.” Is it relevant that Cook was the first CEO of a Fortune 500 company to come out as gay (in 2014)? Absolutely, positively, out-of-any-question not.

Second, Zuckerberg opined that corporate America had, heaven forefend, become “culturally neutered.” In virtually the same breath he implied that all that cultural neutering was largely the result of DEI, which was limp, namby-pamby, not the macho stuff of which great companies are made.

Third, Mark credited the “masculine culture” of the martial arts for making a man out of him. A real man as opposed to a fake man. A full man as opposed to only half a man. Having an activity with his male friends during which they all can, literally, “beat each other,” had been good for him, Mark insisted. It was a “positive experience.” Then he added, “I think having a culture that celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits that are really positive.”

Finally, in case anyone missed his claim to being the manliest man on the planet Mark came right out and said it: corporate America should have more “masculine energy.” Right, just what the United States needs. Just what the world needs. More “masculine energy.”

I want to be fair here. During his chitchat with Joe, Mark pointed out that he had been surrounded by women all his life – after all, he has three sisters and three daughters. Mark avowed that “you want women to be able to succeed.” But exactly how they can succeed in a corporate culture that was any more “masculine” than it already is – 90% of Fortune 500 companies are led by men – remained for women to figure out.   

Anyway, we, we women, were beside the point. Mark Zuckerberg talking to Joe Rogan was all about men and masculinity – with Mark strutting his stuff if not literally then sure as shooting figuratively.  

Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman recently wrote a column in which he argued that the future of Europe was in the hands of two men: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. Putin, Rachman argued, is a menace to Europe. Trump, in turn, is indifferent to Europe.

This post is not to take issue with Rachman. Rather it is to point out his Carlylean assumption – that men make history.* Not all men, of course, some men. Usually (though not always) powerful men in high posts. Like the presidents of Russia and the United States.     

What do I mean by “Carlylean assumption”? And is the assumption widely shared?

It might seem evident that leaders make a difference. And, to some political philosophers, biographers, and social scientists it is. The quintessential example of someone who believed that “heroes” make history was the mid-nineteenth century English historian and philosopher, Thomas Carlyle. He famously insisted that history is “at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here.”

Not that Carlyle had the last word – he did not. Just a few decades later he was challenged by a fellow Britisher, the polymath Herbert Spencer. Spencer dismissed the idea that any single individual made a difference as “utterly incoherent.”

Nor has the “hero in history” debate ever been settled. As distinguished historian Margaret Macmillan wrote just this month (in Foreign Affairs), “Scholars have long been divided on the question of whether leaders shape or are shaped by larger forces.” She goes on to add that while political scientists remain wary of studying individual actors, the evidence suggests that those who “possess exceptional power” can use it to “take their societies and sometimes larger parts of humanity down one road rather than another.”  

Of course, the question is a larger one: it applies not just to political leaders but to corporate leaders, as to all leaders. Moreover, it is more nuanced than it first appears. It’s possible, for example, that a leader as powerful and prominent as Mark Zuckerberg has already left a permantent imprint on the context and culture within which he is situated. It’s equally possible that 99.9% of his corporate contemporaries are essentially insignificant.

The age-old debate will not be settled here. But for those who wonder, for example, how deep will be Trump’s fingerprints, it is as irresistible as unresolvable.

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*Given the dispute has long been referred to as the “hero in history debate,” and given that women have hardly ever held power at the national level, I’m assuming for the purposes of this post that leaders are men. The point, though, pertains of course to leaders everywhere, at all times, and of every gender.

We worry about the eventual impact of artificial intelligence. We worry it will take over the world… maybe in ways that are malevolent.  But, if we’re going to worry about the tyranny of technology, I suggest we do so starting now. No matter where we are in the hierarchy of power – high or low – technology has the potential to do us in.   

In 2012 I published a book titled The End of Leadership. My primary argument was that in many countries around the world leaders were getting weaker and followers stronger.  For this there were, there are, two primary reasons: changes in culture and in technology.

About changes in culture, I wrote, “Once upon a time we simply obeyed orders issued by our superiors, our leaders and managers. Now we are more inclined to challenge them…. The evidence of the decline in respect for authority is everywhere – and everywhere are leaders who labor to lead.”

About changes in technology, I wrote that weaker leaders and stronger followers were also the result of “advances in communications technologies that led to 1) more information, 2) greater self-expression and 3) expanded connection.”  The sequence is important for expanded connection leads logically, if not inevitably, to action. To action in which a few of the powerless can take on many or even all the powerful.     

Should anyone doubt the point about technology I would suggest they look at the front page of Sunday’s New York Times. It featured two articles that make precisely, if only implicitly, the argument that technology is changing the nature of power. This especially applies to democracies in which technology has been free to run rampant, the consequences, including threats to democratic governance, be damned.*

Consider what happened in recent weeks in South Korea. For decades the American foreign policy establishment assumed that South Korea was a stable, virtually unshakable, democracy. But this conventional wisdom has now been upended. This is not to say the country will slide into autocracy. Rather it is to indicate that the government of South Korea is in crisis – and that the fear and loathing was fueled and then fanned by technology. On the one side have been South Korean Youtubers who are persuaded that “North Korean followers” are poisoning South Korea’s country and culture. And on the other side are South Koreans who are convinced the Youtubers are being lured by “online demagoguery,” spread by right-wingers “with the help of social media algorithms.”

Not so very different from what has happened in recent weeks in South Korea has been what has happened in recent years in the United States. Technology has changed the political dynamic: it has weakened establishment leaders and strengthened those who are anti-establishment.

As far back as the 2016 election, Donald Trump used technology to his advantage whereas his Democratic opponent in the race for the White House, Hillary Clinton, did not. One study, by researchers at Columbia University, concluded that Trump had been “highly effective” in his use of social media, specifically to connect with the American people. Unlike Clinton, with her “sober position papers and policy proposals,” Trump forged a “direct and rapid link with the electorate,” absent the delays and edits that for old media were still standard practice.

In plenty of time for the 2024 election Trump and his team did something similar. They used technology to “flip the script.” They managed to turn what was, and was initially expected to remain a crippling political liability – the deadly January 6^th, 2021, attack on the U. S. Capitol – into what is now seen by many as something of a political asset.  As the Times put it, “violent rioters – prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned – somehow became patriotic martyrs.”     

“Somehow” – but how precisely? Again, primarily by using technology, in this case to rewrite history. To claim that it was Trump not Joe Biden who won the 2020 presidential election. It was this lie that fueled the January 6^th attack which, even in its immediate aftermath, was reconfigured to suit Trump. A hard right Republican Congressman promptly tweeted the mayhem had all the “hallmarks of Antifa provocation.” Within hours Fox regurgitated the lie, which then was again repeated, the next morning, by another hard right Republican Congressman. According to the M.I.T Technology Review, within 24 hours the blatant falsehood reverberated online more than 400,000 times.

Lest anyone think that the overweening impact of technology is limited to state actors, and to actors within states, think again. The recent attack by a lone wolf ISIS supporter in New Orleans, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, reminds us that nonstate actors not only use technology, but they also depend on it. It is their lifeline – without an online presence a loosely knit group such as ISIS would not exist or, if it did, its reach would be narrowly confined. How did ISIS connect with Texas born, American citizen and denizen Jabbar? Initially at least, only one way: through online videos and social media platforms.

Technologies are the new power players. Leaders who don’t master them will be mastered by them. Followers who don’t master them will be mastered by them.

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*Some countries – such as those in the European Union – do more to rein in new technologies than others. Additionally, even in the United States, where tech has been nearly entirely unfettered, is some evidence that times are changing, slightly. Jonathan Haidt’s recent book, The Anxious Generation, made the case that social media increase anxiety and depression, especially in teens, which is leading more schools to ban phones from their classrooms.  

The dictionary defines “nostalgia” as a “sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past.”

So, what is “Leader-Nostalgia”? It’s a sentimental longing or wistful affection for a leader from the past. How else to explain the outpouring of admiration – indeed, veneration – of Jimmy Carter?

To point out that the fervid response to his death at age 100 is astonishing is not for a moment to detract from his considerable, and multiple, attributes. No need for me to list them here, neither those evidenced during his brief presidency nor those evidenced during his extended post-presidency.  

But let’s be honest.  While Jimmy Carter was alive, he was, for decades, largely and widely ignored. Notwithstanding Jimmy Carter’s Nobel Prize; his deep, lifelong commitment to public service; his personal and political rectitude; and his disdain for the usual trappings of money and power; Carter always was, and so he remained, an outsider. He was never an insider: not even while he was in the White House, and certainly not after.

For better and worse, he was not part of the Washington establishment. For better and worse, he did not curry favor with the American people. And, for better and worse, once he returned to Georgia, which he did immediately after leaving the White House, he remained for the rest of his life at the margin of our collective consciousness. America moved on. But Carter stayed put. Though for many years he travelled widely, he and his wife and partner, Rosalynn, remained anchored in Plains – physically, psychologically, and spiritually.

JImmy Carter was a throwback – which explains the attention to him in death as not in life. A throwback to a time when America is remembered as being simpler. When America is remembered as being better. And when America’s political leaders are remembered as being much more virtuous than they are today. As much more interested then than now in serving the public as opposed to the self.

Impossible to ignore the timing. Jimmy Carter died on the cusp of Donald Trump becoing President of the United States a second time. To say the two men are at opposite ends of the spectrum – of every spectrum – is to say the obvious. Which is why our leader-nostalgia.

Before I turn to this year’s selection for Follower of the Year, two pieces of business. First, how I define “follower.” Then a comment about last year’s selection.

In leadership studies the word “follower” has forever been difficult to define. First, in comparison with “leader” and “leadership,” the words “follower” and “followership” are rarely used. Seems everyone is endlessly interested in leaders – and in being a leader. Seems nearly no one is interested in followers – and nearly no one wants to be one. Followers are seen as being passive and weak, in contrast to leaders who are viewed as active and strong.

Still, in the real world as opposed to the imagined one, there is no leader without at least one follower. And, in the real world as opposed to the imagined one, it’s impossible to be a leader for any length of time and ignore your followers.

I define followers by their rank – not by their behavior. Followers are subordinates who have less power, authority, and influence than their superiors and who therefore usually, but not inevitably, fall into line. Simply put, in my lexicon followers usually follow, but not always.

Last year my Follower of the Year was Alexei Navalny. In February he died, of unexplained causes, while incarcerated in a remote Russian prison by his nemesis, Vladimir Putin. My post, which appeared a year ago today, concluded as follows:

Some of the world’s greatest leaders were once followers in that they spent time behind bars – Mohandas Gandhi, Alice Paul, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, to name a few. But each was eventually released – even Mandela who was locked up for more than 27 years. Whether Navalny will ever again be a free man is, at best, uncertain. Meantime he can take solace from his mission which has already been accomplished. The near successful attempt on his life, his relentless tribulations and repeated trials, and now his apparently unending captivity are charges against his captor that will stand forever.

This year the Follower of the Year is the Democratic Electorate. This year the Follower of the Year is not, then, a single individual, but a group. A loose group of ordinary people, most of whom have little or no power, authority, or influence, but who are nevertheless resisting those with vastly more. The Democratic Electorate is generating “a crisis of democracy” precisely because, though they are expected to go along with the leaders they selected, large numbers are refusing to do so. They have, moreover, become relentlessly carping and critical. Drawing on changes in culture, and in technology, followers are far quicker than they used to be to diminish, demean, and deride their leaders – those more highly placed than they.

Evidence of resistance and rebellion is everywhere. A majority of voters across seven Western countries including the United States believe their democracy is in worse shape now even than five years ago. And in nearly every democracy at least half of all voters say they are “dissatisfied” with the way the system works. Further, majorities agree the system is “rigged” in favor of the rich and powerful – and that “radical change” is needed.

Freedom House found that in 2023 “global freedom declined for the 18^th consecutive year.” Why? Because “global freedom” is not giving the people – the Democratic Electorate – what they think and feel they need and want.

In Europe the evidence is everywhere. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz recently lost a vote of confidence in parliament and is likely to be defeated in the next elections. French President Emmanual Macron has repeatedly suffered stinging defeats; now there is speculation that he will resign before the end of his term (in 2027). In Britian, the track record for prime ministers is even worse. Recent residents of 10 Downing Street – Teresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak – have been unable to hold on to power for long. (Truss lasted just six weeks.) And the present prime minister, Kier Starmer, is, after five scant months in office, more unpopular than any UK prime minister has been in forty years.

Who has benefited from the widespread dissatisfaction? The far right. Large swaths of the Democratic Electorate now support leaders who previously were outsiders, such as Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and Georgia Meloni in Italy. Same in France and, notably, in Germany. Because of its Nazi legacy, for 75 years right wing parties in Germany were essentially verboten. Now the stridently far right Alternative for Germany (AfD), is the second most popular party in the country.

Nor are non-European democracies an exception to the general rule. In Canada the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has morphed over the last decade from golden boy to laughingstock. (According to a poll taken this month, 73 percent of Canadians think he should resign, now.) In Japan the ruling Liberal Democratic Party lost its majority for the first time since 2009. And in South Korea the president, who was so foolish as to discount his followers, was recently impeached.

Evidence the Democratic Electorate is fed up is nowhere as strong as in the United States. Donald Trump’s reelection as president for a second term – despite who he is, what he has done, and what he has not done – underscores the point. For now, at least America’s Democratic Electorate is profoundly anti-establishment, anti-elite. It is composed of followers who are furious – furious at their leaders – so they resist and rebel against those who traditionally have held power and authority.

Explanations for why this is happening abound. They include extreme and still expanding income inequity; divides between urban and rural, and between white people and brown people; the transitions from an industrial economy to an information economy and now, to an AI economy; wokeness that became as enervating as exhausting; dated and broken systems and institutions; immigration, globalization, polarization, alienation, and atomization; and, perhaps most importantly, the vanishing if not vanished American dream.

Obviously much if not most of the Democratic Electorate does not feel that democracy – and its al-important conjoined twin, capitalism – is working for them. And so, they, we, lash out. It’s impossible to lash out at an abstraction, such as an institution. But it’s not impossible to lash out at something concrete, such as an individual. So, the Democratic Electorate, followers, is taking out its anger at the Democratic Establishment, leaders. Which is precisely why a man who presents himself as, and literally is, an outlaw, and as anti-establishment, will soon be inaugurated president of the United States, again.