Part I of this piece, posted a day ago, ended with this question: “Is there any connection between leadership and followership in Europe and leadership and followership in Latin America?” Coincidently – or not – in the last 24 hours my question was answered. Not by me but by national elections that happened to be held virtually simultaneously, the first in Serbia, the second in Brazil.
The astonishing outcome is that the elections mirrored each other, voters surprising the pollsters and predictors in both Serbia and Brazil. In both countries voters came out in large numbers against populists and for liberals. In Serbia the victory over longtime strongman Aleksandar Vucic – he was both president and prime minister for over a decade – was especially sweet. It came after nearly two years of anti-government demonstrations led by you guessed it, students. Again, a consistent, persistent display of relatively young followers furious at relatively old leaders who in their view were screwing up.
Of course, the parallels between what happened in Serbia and Brazil go only so far. The outcome of the election in Brazil was the reelection of the incumbent president, Lula da Silva. In Serbia in contrast the old order was overturned with a new one yet to be ushered in. Still, in both cases voters roundly rejected autocracy – opting instead for democracy.
Which returns us to France and other countries in Europe such as Greece and Spain, where students first and foremost have taken to the streets to object to the status quo. In these cases, demonstrations are not against right-wing governments or long-term strongmen. Rather protesters are objecting to ostensibly democratic leaders and democratic systems – political systems, economic systems – that they believe are failing them. Failing to assure them that they will have what their elders have had. A future that is reasonably safe and secure.
Repeatedly we hear that the protesters are leaderless. That the demonstrations are more spontaneous than organized, more the result of social media contagion than of anything smacking of central planning. Which sounds well and good. Wonderfully democratic rather than dangerously autocratic.
But if history teaches us anything it is that nature abhors a vacuum. Leaderless groups and organizations never ever stay leaderless for long for the simple reason that if they do, they will fail. Fall apart. So, counterintuitively perhaps, my advice to those hellbent on challenging the status quo is first to decide on leaders and then to publicly identify them. Otherwise? First anarchy, then autocracy.