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 18th 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.