What is the role of the charismatic leader in democracy?
One of the things I have been concerned with in my recent work on democracy is the reliance we place in our political sphere on individuals. While we claim to want a system that values each and every voice and promotes processes for consensus-building, we are still constantly drawn to idolise (or demonise) individual figures. This is certainly true in the United States where we might say the cult of celebrity and of the individual has made it possible for a flamboyant if rather dim-witted billionaire to be put in charge of the lives and fates of millions.
But it is not just this caricature that should make us question whether the allure of charismatic leaders undermines democracy. I think we should be equally resistant when these individuals come in the shape of the heroic US senator Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or the serene New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. This is also not just a problem of an individual-focused West.
Is it true that only the West values the individual?
I live and work across not only Western contexts but also in South Asia and am myself of South Asian origin. One of the widely accepted truisms is that while the West places great value of the individual, non-Western societies and cultures are more collectivist and communitarian. Many South Asians will claim that they place greater value on the community and indeed it is often on this basis that concepts like human rights are rejected as being too Western.
But if it is true that South Asians see the individual as secondary to the family or community, then why does the figure of the heroic individual resonate so widely in South Asia? You only need a passing knowledge of Bollywood cinema to recognise the frequency of a particular storyline: the noble individual – policeman, teacher, loveable rogue – who takes on the corrupted system and society. The caste system, anti-widow prejudice, gender inequality, organized crime, corrupt politicians are always defeated by (almost always) one heroic man.
This individual hero worship is not only in cinema. We have seen repeatedly the cult of the individual leader: in India think of Gandhi, Bose, Ambedkar. In Sri Lanka we have a very powerful example in the man known widely as ‘Anna’ – Prabhakaran, the leader of the Tamil separatist movement, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam. So this cult of the individual is not a Western phenomenon alone even if in South Asia it is only ever certain types of individuals that seem capable of rising above their communal ties and identity.
We need to move away from all charismatic leaders, not just the ‘bad’ ones
But why is this a problem? Many of the people I have named above are revered for the positive contribution they have made to their societies and the world. We could think of someone like Nelson Mandela whose personal sacrifice, intellectual vision and charisma were vital in bringing an end to Apartheid in South Africa.
So it might seem odd for me to suggest that we should be skeptical of figures who have often rightly gained admiration for their sense of justice, their courage, their compassion. I don’t mean to suggest they don’t deserve praise. I am just not convinced that democracy benefits from this focus on individual heroes (or villains).
For a start, if we continue to value individual leaders then things may be good when we have a good person in charge but they can also always change. We have no certainty and no control. And for those leaders that we detest, focusing on them doesn’t help us address the reasons why their success was possible in the first place.
We also in many ways give up our agency and responsibility. And it is this last aspect that concerns me most when I think about the state of democratic politics. Our role as participants in a democracy seems to have been reduced to voting periodically (at a push and in some places, only because we are forced). Not only does this make us feel very powerless a lot of the time (especially in electoral systems that we know make individual votes virtually meaningless), it also means we generally feel disengaged. We have all just come to accept that politics is a dirty game, that politicians are a species of their own and that the rest of us have limited roles to play.
Away from leaders, towards the people
But I wonder, what if we stopped focusing on identifying good or bad leaders and instead spent more time looking at whether we are each engaged and acting as good political actors?
A democracy is supposed to be the rule of the people. I don’t think many of us really feel that this is the case in many of the places we live, however much leaders invoke our names to support whatever they are doing. But why not?
Let me use the example of a recent scandal in the UK to illustrate. As others around the world may or may not know, the Prime Minister’s Aide Dominic Cummings – a fairly infamous character in British politics as the key architect of the ‘Leave’ campaign during the Brexit referendum – was proven to have flouted the very guidance that he helped to draft during the COVID-19 lockdown. It is a long and boring story which includes driving 60 miles to a natural beauty spot to check his eyesight (I am looking forward to my next eye-test!). But basically even the police have said he broke the rules. He not only refused to apologise, he justified his actions repeatedly and received unwavering support and indeed praise from the Prime Minister.
There was huge outrage at this with people flooding media outlets and social media with their disgust at the hypocrisy and their own stories of suffering caused by following the rules. But after four days of the government refusing to back down the story receded into the background. Now it is just a distant memory and come the next election we may well see the very same people come into power again.
How is this possible? Why do we endure it? I have already heard people saying that they are not surprised, that this is classic politician behaviour (and it is – how many of these examples can we find all over the world!) and that we need to focus on more serious issues. But what is more serious than the fact that we have given the power to make decisions about our very lives and deaths to people who have no respect for us? Who have shown time and again that they do not consider themselves bound by the same rules? Who constantly and blatantly lie to us as if we are too stupid to know better?
Re-engaging politics, reimagining politics
And I am sorry, but perhaps we are stupid. I certainly have been stupid: raging privately, losing sleep and peace of mind but not finding any outlet for my anger. We need to stop accepting politics is something dirty and something we are not part of.
At the same time our old methods of resisting are no longer adequate. So many of us have marched, gone on strike, protested and been broken. Others have tried joining political parties and unions and become disillusioned. We need to come up with not only new ways of engaging in politics but new ways of imagining politics: what politics are and how they can and should be done.
And this is why, much as I hear the frustration of people saying we need more action, I stand by my claim that we first need to do some serious thinking. Without taking some time to think and reflect we will keep acting as we always have and keep falling back into the same traps. I say this with a heavy heart watching the US burn following the murder of another Black man at the hands of White police officers. While the protests and even the rioting and looting are understandable, I can’t help but wonder what we think they will achieve. Why would they succeed in changing things when all earlier examples of exactly the same actions have failed? The current situation seems to represent an absence of hope and ideas and no one person, however clever or charismatic can solve this problem.
Don’t get me wrong, there is value in protest: it shows our communal anger and allows for a feeling of solidarity (a topic I would like to write about in a separate post). But genuine social and political change will require us doing something else as well. And to work out what this something else is we will have to be inventive and creative. We also need to take seriously the fact that even those of us who think we have been engaged in ‘progressive’ politics have often failed to simultaneously address racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, classism, and other forms of discrimination or at least not prioritise one cause over another.
So I propose that we start practicing: experimenting at a small scale with developing our ideas, discussing and debating them with others, reflecting back and trying to find ways to shift (ourselves and others). Let’s start identifying little things we can do in our daily lives to produce the world we would like to see. And then when it comes to the Jacinda Arderns, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezes and others who inspire us, we should not focus so much on them as unique individuals but rather see within them the reality that other ways of being and functioning in the world and in politics are possible. They demonstrate that however much a corrupted, heartless, patriarchal, racist, neo-liberal system may seem to have prevailed it does not have a complete monopoly. But they are also not the solution. That requires more mundane everyday work by all of us at individual, local and community levels. More ideas of how in the next post…