When I was still teaching at Harvard, I would sometimes describe to my students – they were all adults; I was faculty at the Kennedy School – 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 21st 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 difficult and maybe even impossible to control.
Most students came to understand my argument. But with few exceptions, someone in the class would ask where this ends. What happens 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 replied that I wasn’t sure. While I was sure that what I was describing was happening, I could not 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.
- 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 still on edge and exceedingly difficult to govern.
- Sometimes it ends in an electorate that has turned sharply to the right – sharply away from some of 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, right wing populist, nationalist, conservative party, Alternative for Germany, is the second largest party in Germany.
- Sometimes it ends in the election of a strongman. The most obvious example of this is of course the United States. Notably the election of Donald Trump to a second presidential term during which – no surprise – his proclivity to erode democratic norms is as fully in evidence as it is unprecedented. The indicators of Trump’s preference for more autocracy and less democracy include his persecution of political opponents; vilification of marginalized groups; use of power for profit; and creation of a cult of personality.
- Sometimes it ends in enduring 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 in point – 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 references to the leadership system in which 1) leaders, 2) followers, and 3) contexts are all important to outcomes.)
McTague also does what most people do – he 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 where in this case it primarily belongs. Which is not on the leader – after all, by his own testimony Starmer might be somewhat hapless but he is harmless. Nor is the context primarily to blame. To be sure, while context is always a determinant in this case it’s not the major one. In this case the most important determinant is the followers.
Which brings me back to where I started. Starmer, as noted, was elected in a landslide. Starmer, as also noted, was elected only relatively recently. Finally, let the record show that Starmer’s approval ratings did not decline only in the last few months. They declined rather dramatically beginning shortly after he was elected and well before he had a chance to prove himself.
British followers, British voters, are so fickle that 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 21st century was getting stronger – followers. And who in the 21st century was getting weaker – leaders. Amazing how fast the furious Brits have repeatedly brought their leaders to their knees.