Why the quote marks around “everything is connected to everything else”? Because I’m quoting … myself. I must have said it millions of times when teaching leadership and followership.
Examples: Leaders are connected to followers. Past is connected to the present. Past and present are connected to the future. What people think is connected to how people behave. Social media are connected to political performance. Increasing freedoms are connected to growing constraints. Markets in Great Britain are connected to markets in the United States. What Vladimir Putin does is connected to what Xi Jinping says. What Xi Jinping says is connected to what Nancy Pelosi does. What Nancy Pelosi does is connected to American public opinion. And so on.
“Everything is connected to everything else” came to mind when reading Max Fisher’s New York Times column of a couple of days ago, titled, “Power of the Protest is Waning Worldwide.”* Fisher’s piece is obviously about relations between leaders and followers – about relations between those with power and authority and those without.
Based on research conducted by Harvard political scientist Erica Chenowith, Fisher writes about how the odds of success of political protests – such as the one currently in Iran led by women – have in recent years sharply declined. Whereas just twenty years ago these sorts of movements succeeded two in three times, now that success rate has been halved, to one in three. Put somewhat differently, as followers have become more demanding, leaders have become more controlling. The increase in the number of autocracies in the world is connected, directly, to the increase in the number of democracies in the world or, more precisely, to the increase in the number of democratic demands. Demands for rights, whether the rights of women in Tehran or transgenders in Chicago.
Bearing in mind that everything is connected to everything else, the reasons why the power of the protest is, at least for the moment, waning, are familiar: increased polarization which means people power is less likely to be a mass movement with widespread support; the impact of social media which are good at sending the message but bad at supporting the message with experienced leadership and effective organization; and a learning curve for autocracies hellbent on suppression – that is, they have learned to use to internet to scare people into silence, into obedience.
Given the present is connected to the past no surprise that more than a half century after the various rights revolutions – such as civil rights, women’s rights, gay and lesbian rights – is a backlash. A backlash represented by political leaders such as Donald Trump, Viktor Orban, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Jair Bolsonaro, hellbent on putting back into the box that which was let out of the box. Followers who refuse to follow.
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*https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/30/world/middleeast/iran-protests-haiti-russia-china.html