هل نريد زعماء أقوياء؟

Jun 3, 2016 Joseph S. Nye, Jr.

كمبريدج ــ يبدو أن اتجاها نحو قدر أعظم من السلطوية بدأ ينتشر في مختلف أنحاء العالم. فقد استخدم فلاديمير بوتن القومية بنجاح لإحكام قبضته على روسيا، ويبدو أنه يتمتع بشعبية أكبر الآن. ويُعَد شي جين بينج أقوى زعماء الصين منذ ماو تسي تونج، وهو يتولى شخصيا قيادة عدد متزايد من لجان اتخاذ القرارات الحاسمة. ومؤخرا، قرر رجب طيب أردوغان في تركيا تغيير رئيس وزرائه، فاستعاض عنه برئيس وزراء آخر أكثر امتثالا وتوافقا مع سعيه إلى تركيز السلطة التنفيذية. ويخشى بعض المعلقين أن يُثبِت دونالد ترامب، في حال فوزه بالرئاسة الأميركية في نوفمبر/تشرين الثاني، كونه "موسوليني الأميركي".

الواقع أن إساءة استغلال السلطة ممارسة قديمة قِدَم التاريخ البشري. يذَكِّرُنا الكتاب المقدس كيف قام ديفيد، بعد أن أوقع الهزيمة بجالوت وأصبح مَلِكا، بإغواء بثشبع وإرسال زوجها عمدا إلى الموت المحقق في المعركة. إن الزعامة تنطوي على استخدام السلطة، وكما حَذَّر لورد أكتون في تعليقه الشهير فإن السلطة تفسد حقا. ولكن القائد الذي يفتقر إلى السلطة ــ القدرة على حَمل الآخرين على القيام بما يريد ــ يعجز عن ممارسة القيادة.

ذات يوم، مَيَّز عالِم النفس ديفيد مكليلاند من جامعة هارفارد بين ثلاث مجموعات من الناس وفقا لدوافعهم. فأولئك الذين يولون القدر الأعظم من الاهتمام لإنجاز المهام بشكل أفضل تحركهم "الحاجة إلى الإنجاز". وأولئك الأكثر اهتماما بالعلاقات الودية مع الآخرين تحركهم "الحاجة إلى الارتباط". أما أولئك الأكثر اهتماما بالتأثير على الآخرين فيُظهِرون "الحاجة إلى السلطة".

We hope you're enjoying Project Syndicate.

To continue reading, subscribe now.

Already have an account? Log in

Support High-Quality Commentary

US President-elect Joe Biden may have promised a “return to normalcy,” but the truth is that there is no going back. The world is changing in fundamental ways, and the actions the world takes in the next few years will be critical to lay the groundwork for a sustainable, secure, and prosperous future.

For more than 25 years, Project Syndicate has been guided by a simple credo: All people deserve access to a broad range of views by the world’s foremost leaders and thinkers on the issues, events, and forces shaping their lives. At a time of unprecedented uncertainty, that mission is more important than ever – and we remain committed to fulfilling it.

But there is no doubt that we, like so many other media organizations nowadays, are under growing strain. If you are in a position to support us, please subscribe now.

As a subscriber, you will enjoy unlimited access to our On Point suite of long reads and book reviews, Say More contributor interviews, The Year Ahead magazine, the full PS archive, and much more. You will also directly support our mission of delivering the highest-quality commentary on the world's most pressing issues to as wide an audience as possible.

By helping us to build a truly open world of ideas, every PS subscriber makes a real difference. Thank you.

Subscribe Now

new comment has been posted. new comments have been posted.

0 Comments on this paragraph, 12 in all 12 Comments on this article

Jose araujo Jun 7, 2016

"power – the ability to cause others to do what we want" WRONG, power is the ability to make others do what they don't want.

What a collection of BS... from start to bottom, there have been many powerless leaders, Jesus Christ, Claudius, etc Leadership isn't a trait, its a condition, we are all leaders under certain situations, and there is no right nor wrong, its just what works and what doen't work.

Now I would really preferr not to see if Trumps leadership works...
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Jerry F. Hough Jun 7, 2016

This avoids all the problems. The Founders created a system of absolute veto for the South to protect slavery. They informally agreed on an even number of states (12 at first, the 16 with the addition of Vermont, Rhode Island, Kentucky, and Tennessee) half free and half slave so each section would have a veto in the Senate and thus Congress. They wanted a Congressional election of President for the same reason, but Washington with control of the army (1787 was really a military coup) refused. They hoped the Electoral College would have the same result with a one-state, one-vote runoff in the House.

They strengthened the Southern veto by decentralizing military power to the states and giving the federal government almost no power in the domestic sphere. The income tax and the Social Security program were unconstitutional by original intent.

FDR partially overthrew the Constitution in 1937 with a pro-democracy revolt. It has been reversed. The left-wing party is back with Eisenhower on economic policy, and the right-wing is back to Goldwater. This began under Bill Clinton who moved economic policy to Eisenhower in order to win the northern Country Club Republicans. The minority working class gets identity politics and white working class core 0f the New Deal gets nothing. Westchester and Newton gets a
Dow that was in 750 in 1982 and is now at 18,000 The Democratic nominee is a Goldwater activist who retains his earlier domestic and foreign policy views. Her most vocal proponent who speaks of Trump as Mussolini (Paul Krugman) says her chief virtue is that she will do nothing. That is not fair. She would negotiate with Paul Ryan to get an increase in the minimum wage for immigrants in exchange for the cut in Social Security and Medicare they both want.

In Eur0pe the policy is even more explicit in taking power from elected government and giving it to the EU bank and finance ministers.

Let us pray that Trump wins. The West is not far from 1928 in
Germany and France in 1785 or Europe in 1846. We need the European democratic solution of the 19th century, not that of the other two.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Stephen Morris Jun 7, 2016

The constitutional political economy of this problem is quite straightforward. We find very effective "powerless leaders" in genuine democracies like Switzerland.

To begin with one must dispense with non-tractable concepts such as "liberty". Such slogans may appeal to those who love rhetoric, but they yield no solutions. The great contribution of Ronald Coase to the subject of constitutional political economy was to identify the essential symmetry (what we might call "Coasian Symmetry") of right-obligation pairs: each individual's "liberty" comes at the cost of infringing the corresponding liberty of other individuals. (For more detail discussion see here: http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2013/09/thinking-like-coase-not-an-economist/#comment-276447 and here: http://www.economist.com/comment/628319#comment-628319).

Having disposed of non-tractable rhetoric we may go on to consider the issue of "adverse selection" of leaders as described by Nobel laureate James Buchanan:

"“[S]uppose that a monopoly right is to be auctioned; whom will we predict to be the highest bidder? Surely we can presume that the person who intends to exploit the monopoly power most fully, the one for whom the expected profit is highest, will be among the highest bidders for the franchise. In the same way, positions of political power will tend to attract those persons who place higher values on the possession of such power. These persons will tend to be the highest bidders in the allocation of political offices. . . . Is there any presumption that political rent seeking will ultimately allocate offices to the ‘best’ persons? Is there not the overwhelming presumption that offices will be secured by those who value power most highly and who seek to use such power of discretion in the furtherance of their personal projects, be these moral or otherwise? Genuine public-interest motivations may exist and may even be widespread, but are these motivations sufficiently passionate to stimulate people to fight for political office, to compete with those whose passions include the desire to wield power over others?” (James Buchanan and Geoffrey Brennan, “The Reason of Rules”, Cambridge University Press, 1985, p64.)

It is the prospect of exercising "a monopoly on power" which tends to adversely select aggressively narcissistic, machiavellian (and possibly psychopathic!) political agents. Conversely, it is the elimination of the monopoly which eliminates adverse selection.

As Buchanan himself remarked: "In sum, the effects of direct democracy add-ons to existing decision rules surely work toward reducing the range and scope for politicization, a result supported by classical liberals."

To see this in operation one only need look at the multi-partisan Swiss Federal Council which comprises 7 members drawn from the 5 largest parties across the political spectrum. It is not uncommon for Swiss Cabinet Ministers to implement policies that are contrary to their own parties’ platforms.

Megalomaniacs are not adversely selected because under the system of direct democracy there is no prospect of wielding the sort of political power typical in purely elective systems. Thus the purpose of genuine democracy is not so much to empower the people as to dis-empower potential megalomaniacs.

The question remains, "Do the People prefer powerless politicians or do they wish to be 'led'?"

The answer may be found by asking them! And it is fairly unequivocal.

Where people have been given a free choice in the form of government they prefer for their country of state (with the options not pre-vetted by entrenched politicians) they almost invariably choose direct democracy to the greatest extent made available to them.

More importantly, where people enjoy such democratic rights they never vote to abolish them, even though it is a straightforward process to call a referendum for that purpose.

Thus genuine democracy demonstrates the ongoing consent of the citizens being governed in a way that non-democratic elective government does not.

In light of this, the anti-democrats have a battle on their hands to explain why they deny the people the right to choose their preferred form of government. We might well ask, "Where did they get their Monopoly on Wisdom? When were they granted a 'Charter from Heaven' to make these decisions on behalf of everyone else?"

So what sort of government do the people want?

Answer: ask them.

It is, after all, their country.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Matthew McCarthy Jun 6, 2016

What exactly is the fear if Donald Trump wins the presidency? The idea that he will unilaterally override the legislative branch? Apparently that is not an issue, since when Obama unilaterally overrode the legislative branch the press encouraged him. The idea that he will silence the press? How would he do it? Ban particular press groups from press conferences? Coincidentally that was the only thing that got a half-hearted criticism of Obama out of the press. And many members of the press encouraged him since it was FOX news anyway. My point is not that Trump would make a good president - I am quite certain he would not. My point is that Trump might make you a better press. Clinton will just encourage you to 4 more years of defending the status quo regardless of how corrupt or unconstitutional its behavior is. With a functioning press even a Donald Trump would not be a problem as president under our constitutional system. The real issue is can our system survive a Donald Trump when the press has been encouraging abuse of the system for the last seven years.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Tim Sheehy Jun 6, 2016

I think Lord Acton said that power 'tends' to corrupt.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
j. von Hettlingen Jun 5, 2016

Joseph S. Nye believes we do want powerful leaders, because leaders "without power...can not lead" - even in a Western democracy. We can't always rely on the uncertainty whether a leader uses his power properly, although "emotional maturity and training are important means of limiting a narcissistic lust for power." There are fortunately "appropriate institutions" that serve to get "the balance right" and to rein in the power of the executive.
In recent years we are seeing a "trend toward greater authoritarianism" across the globe. If Vladimir Putin and Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan lead the club of autocrats, they definitely kept a low profile a decade ago, when they came to power. Enjoying popularity during the boom years, their narcissism and authoritarian streak began to emerge when their citizens took to the streets and showed their discontent. When they responded with violence and earned international condemnation, they became truculent. By the time Xi Jinping assumed power in March 2013, China's double-digit growth began to recede. He knew he had to "tighten his control" over the "crucial decision-making committees" to prevent popular protests from breaking out. Now some fear that Donald Trump might become an "American Mussolini" should he be elected.
Nye points out that "motivations" play a role in shaping leaders, and there are three types - "those who care most about doing something better have a 'need for achievement.' Those who think most about friendly relations with others have a 'need for affiliation.' And those who care most about having an impact on others show a 'need for power.'" The latter seems to be common among "the most effective leaders." According to Lord Acton, "power corrupts," and Nye compares the right amount of power to "calories in a diet, too little produces emaciation, and too much leads to obesity."
"Ethics and power can be mutually reinforcing" according to Niccolo Machiavelli, whose monumental work, "The Prince" revealed the realities of politics. Machiavelli tells us what a ruler should be like, how elastic his integrity or ethics should be. It helps to appear virtuous, compassionate, loyal, humane and honest - the "soft power attraction." The make-believe game is that "a leader doesn't have to possess all the virtuous qualities I've mentioned, but it's absolutely imperative that he seem to possess them." At the same time "the hard power of coercion" is equally important. "It is better to be feared than to be loved" - Today few leaders have the acument to adopt Machiavelli's playbook satisfactorily.
Nye says today's autocrats do heed their supporters' demands, and their "leadership is a combination of leaders’ traits, followers’ demands, and the context in which they interact." While the people in Russia, China and Turkey have different grievances, they "create enabling environments for leaders who feel a psychological need for power." In equal measure Trump "magnifies the discontent of a part of the population through clever manipulation of television news programs and social media" in order to "satisfy his narcissistic need for power."
Thanks to the founding fathers' prescience, James Madison had decided "how powerful we want our leaders to be." In order to "preserve liberty, not maximize government efficiency" the Constitution provided for a "system of institutional checks and balances ensuring that the US would never resemble Italy in 1922 – or Russia, China, or Turkey today." Americans will soon learn "how resilient" their founding fathers' "framework for power and leadership really is," despite complaint about "institutional decay."
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Louis Stouch Jun 5, 2016

Putin, Xi and Trump.
Wow. Why not throw in Hitler as well.
There is NO basis for comparison. Obama made up the rules as he went along, and not a peep.
Translation: as long as the power does what The Elite want, all is well.
If the power does what the People want, that's bad.
One more reason to vote Trump. Glad you are showing your true colors.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Mike Holly Jun 5, 2016

The problem is the world lacks people, let alone leaders, in group one, with a need for accomplishment. We have mostly group two crony capitalists, which has led to the rise of group three authoritarians.
- Mike Holly Jun 5, 2016
  
  The crony capitalists have destroyed market controls by first using regulations to monopolize industries and then trying to stimulate a monopolized economy with low interest rates that create perverse incentives like the short term bleeding of corporations.
  A new reply to this comment has been posted.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Doug Huggins Jun 4, 2016

Nice analysis. My perspective is that institutions alone can deliver neither democratic legitimacy nor good governance. For these, we also need virtue (or its appearance), as Nye cites Machiavelli. And it's this latter quality that appears to be in short supply these days.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
M M Jun 3, 2016

It Is always good to learn from history and from other people's experiences however what the world needs today more than ever are mature, sain and honest leadership and these are not only in short supply, they are non existent.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.

https://prosyn.org/Rjgw90xar

Cookies and Privacy

هل نريد زعماء أقوياء؟

To continue reading, subscribe now.

Support High-Quality Commentary

The Secret of Putin’s Survival

New Comment

Email this piece to a friend

Contact us

Log in/Register

Cookies and Privacy

هل نريد زعماء أقوياء؟

To continue reading, subscribe now.

Support High-Quality Commentary

Edit Newsletter Preferences

Set up Notification