samedi 25 juillet 2009

LEADERSHIP IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD







Leadership is a socially constructed process in which one person influences the rest by his ideas and oratory, and makes them work to achieve certain goal which represents the interest of the people. It is noteworthy that in the absence of that one person, people either can’t achieve or don’t want to achieve the goal. We therefore can say that leadership is a intangible characteristic of power. So in today’s Machiavellian world a leader in pursuing his goal might confront some conflict from his followers’ or his competitor’s side, in that case he might have to play his cards in a smarter way, and might have to dominate his rival to get his work done first.

It’s futile to look for the exact origin of leadership in ancient past because this human characteristic always existed through ages and ages; this is just because any human civilization can’t progress without a leader since it’s an inevitable quality for the successful management of an organization or society as a whole. But it has existed in different forms in different society according to the needs of the people of that very social gathering. For example leadership can be of different kinds: religious and spiritual gurus, business tycoons, politicians, writers, poets, thinkers and social activists etc.

As leaders can be found in every field, in every society, and according to the expectations and temperament of his people, he chooses the way of working or displaying his ideas. So it’s hard to summarize leadership’s characteristics in a few words. But we can find some common qualities in every leader irrespective of his field or his ideological and geographical affiliation. Let’s see a few common qualities of a successful leader:

- Having long-term vision for his organization;
- Extra-ordinary ability of communication with people ;
- Ability to show his personal motives into public objects and logically put them in public interest;
- Ability and patience to put his vision in practice, and remain stick to his ideas till the last phase of program’s realization into practice;
- At the same time, a smart leader should never hesitate to change his ways of functioning if it does not deliver the intended result at a given time, in that case he should accept his mistake openly and correct his working style.
As per the requirement of our paper, we should focus on the notion of development which is needless to say, can never be achieved without the guidance of a leader. We all know that development is directly related to human progress. According to the dictionary of Battistella on « relations internationales », “development means enhancement and amelioration in people's capacity to realize their individual and collective potential”. In 1990, the UNDP report showed four following indicators for development: life expectancy, literacy rate, per-capita income, human liberty (human rights). We can achieve high index of all these indicators only when we have strong economic growth delivered by effective governance and put in place by committed leadership.
According to the general understanding of ‘development’ (as above described), we shall limit our paper to only political leadership. Considering the length of our essay, we shall not be able allow ourselves to look into business or any other kind of leadership’s approach of development. Since we all know that we live within the set parameters of state, and bringing growth and establishing convivial relation between state and society is the sole responsibility of political leaders. So this paper will intend to focus on political leadership’s approach to development process in both developed and developing world.

How is the process of development intimately related with the effectiveness of political leadership in any nation-state? Slow growth rate in the third world, does it suggest that the leaders in developing countries are less competent than their counterparts of the developed world? The leaders in the developing world, aren’t they good enough at pursuing and implementing right policies? Or are they left with a few options in terms of addressing the needs of their people?

In the first part, the paper tries to focus on the western leaders’ visionary ideas of setting the stage for today’s free market economy which later became the only source of growth engine. In the second part, we intend to examine the productiveness of developing world leaders through the prism of two parameters: first, leaders’ working or operating environment, which is the nature of political state-craft; second, how a leader identifies public or national interests and how he implements them.

Political leaders play a very important role in governance, and the style of governance determines the economic growth. If leaders deliver good governance, then this is translated into economic growth. Aftermath the Second World War, the issue of development is perceived differently by the leaders of developed & developing countries. For the first & second world leaders, their objective was duel, first to deal with the economic needs of their citizens, and then trying to play an important role in the international politics, where as the objective of the developing world leaders was just to cater the economic needs of their people by providing good governance.

[1] Neo-liberal policy as effective tools for economic growth

In 1944, in order to rebuild the international financial institutions, major industrial nation leaders established the Bretton woods system which could protect the world from incidents like the Great depression of 1930. This Keynesian policy based system brought heavy economic growth, popularly known as “trente glorieuses”(from 1945-1973), in the industrialized world. But in 70s, it started showing negative signs like high rate of inflation and unemployment. The system ultimately collapsed when American president Nixon (1972) declared dollar as a currency with fluctuating exchange-rate. But the situation did not really calm down there. In that situation of economic uncertainty, the neoliberal policy was proposed by Chicago school to implement as solution. Major hurdle that any leader might find in implementing this policy was that under this supply centric policy was just opposite to Keynesianism. In general sense, neoliberalism advocates free trade, free market with less and less state intervention. After adopting neoliberal policy, a government asks for the suspension of public expenditure which makes a leader very unpopular among his people.

Despite aware of all these consequences, the British prime-minister Margret Thatcher(1979) took the bold initiative of implementing the free market policy. She heralded the economic reform by increasing interest rates to tackle high inflation; she privatized all the national run enterprises and introduced heavy cuts in the welfare system. Despite being unpopular she remained firm to her decisions thinking of getting long term economic gains. And finally she achieved that; the inflation dropped from 18% to 8% and the British economy started showing very high growth. Since her corrective measures were felt as an absolute necessity for keeping the economy in good shape, so they got adopted by the Blaire government too with certain changes. Another distinguished political figure who adopted the same supply side free market economy was American president Reagan (1981-1989), which made remarkable growth in the country’s economy. Latter other heads of states have introduced the same policy and succeeded in achieving high growth rate, for example Carl Bildt in Sweden, Brian Mulroney in Canada, Bob Hawke in Australia, Junichiro Koizumi in Japan etc.

The adoption of free market policy in the world economy shows the long term vision of those leaders. Because in the first run this policy brought prosperity to their own country and in the second run this has created a closed net of interdependence among all the nations. This network of trade and commerce fostered the spirit of solidarity and soft competition which put almost an end to the possibility of war, as we very famously say that democracies do not wage war among selves. So this shows how leaders have reinvented the politics of development by introducing the culture of free market economy.

We can have a few examples from emerging developing countries where leaders have really made their mark in choosing and implementing the neoliberal policy in spite of turbulent past and inner weaknesses. For example the Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew despite being a nation of limited resources, made his country a fast developing economy and forged the concept of city-state. Latest example in this regard can be cited from People’s republic of China, where leaders like Jiang Zemin, Hu Zin Tao have very successfully brought a smooth transition from centralized communist economy to free market economy. After the introduction of “consensus of Washington”(1989), many other countries joined the neoliberal team which brought a kind of boom in their economy. In this regard, we can include the economic reforms initiated in 1991 by the then Indian finance minister (now prime minister) Dr Manmohan Singh, due to this neo-liberal policy India managed to pull as many as people out of poverty line in the last 15-16 years, which it could not do starting from 1947 till 1990 with such magnitude in the pre-reform period. But despite that a large section of the third world still lives under extreme poverty. Despite the constant efforts made by the international inter-governmental organization like united nation bodies, deprivation of people living in the southern part of the globe does not seem to be relenting fast. So does it suggest the inefficiency of their political leadership? Where does lie the actual problem of political leadership’s weakness?

[2] Factors influencing the leaders’ effectiveness

As we know that political leaders’ way of governance is primarily up to an extent depends on the nature of the state they operate in, it means to say democratic or autocratic set-up of the state institutions. Secondly, it comes to defining the public interests, taking decisions by choosing right policies. At the same time, leaders have to have public opinion in their favour for implementing those plans especially in a democracy.

(A)How does the political culture influence the effectiveness of leadership?

Let’s first discuss the political set-up of a country which sets the parameters of nurturing leaders in any society. Needless to say that democracy is the best tool available for the governance to us, because it’s based on checks and balances amongst various sources of powers, namely parliament, executive, judiciary etc. Undoubtedly in democracy if leaders don’t deliver as per the expectations of the people, they can be voted out in election. But this dynamism of democracy does not always bring good results. Why do people not use this right in electing the leaders whom they feel, competent enough to bring development? Actually in most developing nations (which practice democracy), people due to lack of information or lack of trust in their leadership don’t believe in punishing them by voting them out of power. Because people have a general perception is that whoever is in office, their life is not going to improve. People think that the power is concentrated in a few hands of elite political leaders who take decisions sitting in closed room without really taking into account the poor’s concern. It’s very interesting to ask that why very often the opportunity of leadership does not come to a person of grass-root level in a developing country? Why in most cases is it remained within the circle of elites? Where as we don’t find such cases (except a few exceptions, for example election of Berlusconi in Italy) in developed world. We’ve just heard the victory of Obama over Hillary, Which very much shows the culture of meritocracy in choosing a good leader.

The reason behind this contrast of giving chance to only meritorious leaders to lead in developed world, needs a closer look in the history of the two worlds. Let’s first start with the developed world. Leadership as already pointed out is a socially constructed process, so first overall social development in any nation is required to give equal opportunity to everyone to develop the leadership. Western Europe has been a great contributor in enriching the idea of the people living there, and latter for the whole world as well. French, British and German philosophers have guided the people by their extra-ordinary ideas on the path of socio-political advancement. Montesquieu started the idea of separation between the various branches of government. Rousseau emphasized on the sovereignty of the people, which become the guiding force for French revolution. Lock made the clear distinction between ruler and ruled. In Hegel and Marx views, development is the product of opposing social forces. Voltaire’s idea of “il faut cultiver son propre jardin” has sent the message for becoming self-dependent. So all these ideas have brought a broader understanding in western people’s mind about their rights, little by little they found the tools of achieving good governance in liberal democracy. In order to get good governance, the western world learnt over years to hold responsible their leaders for better economic growth, better welfare system etc. In case of not getting these things done in a satisfactory way, people learnt how to punish that very government by not voting for them, and electing in someone who can really take good care of the people’s preoccupations. That’s why leaders groomed themselves in such a way that they could solve people’s problems otherwise their responsibility of governance would be handed over to some other group of leaders. But it is noteworthy that this development of democratic mind-set took at least less than two hundred years (since French revolution) and two world wars, this maturity of mind did not come in a few years.
On the other hand this democratic mind-set which lets prevail the meritocracy in any walk of life could not yet develop in developing world. Because these newly born states did adopt the democratic model of governance in their home land which they borrowed from their former respective colonial powers, but it did not function as well as it should have. The Fact remains that people in developing world first yearned for independence, it mean for self-governance but not necessarily for democracy. Many think it is just about casting votes after certain time period, most of them are not aware of their rights which they should fight for in case of its violation in front of their political representatives. In that case, people failed to make their leaders highly productive, and leaders kept playing their cards of all sorts for remaining in power year after year rather than thinking about the development of people.
During colonial period due to existing unequal distribution of wealth, very limited amount of elite people who took over the charge of governance after decolonization remained in the centre of power. Due to slow growth of democratic functioning, power remained in the clutches of those handfuls educated powerful people. Over the years, those elites’ children and grand-children get elected in election after election; nobody really questioned their ability of delivering because these newly elected leaders in certain ways reminded people the charisma of their old generation leaders whom they were and are related to. One can find the living example of this case in South Asia especially in India, Pakistan where the Nehru-Gandhi and Bhutto family have been centre stage of power in national government. Needless to say that these families have gifted a few talented politicians in the past but it does not mean that the modern day inheritors from this family should remain in politics. Sometimes they might proof to be good leader, but their being in power cuts the chances of others those who don’t belong to that elite circle. This is where meritocracy is downplayed by family favoritism which encourages the culture of inefficient leadership in developing world. Though a little bit of resemblance of this sort in the name of the Kennedy, Bush and Clinton family can be found in the US politics too but recent defeat of Hillary shows quite well that Americans prefer to be ruled by a less known talented leader than by an ex-first lady of the country. People in developing world will take a few years to learn such lessons.
The issue of choosing right leader is related to the socio-political system of the country, which is decided by a leader’s understanding of public interests in a given society.
(B) How does the understanding of public or national interest testify the competence of leaders?

Defining public interest is another key issue on what a leader’s efficiency is tested, especially how he convinces his people about this. Sometimes people don’t agree with their leader on a particular issue, and public opinion might go against the leader. In this case, he tries to show his way is better for the progress of the society in the long run. Because it is easy for a government to define it in rhetoric but it becomes more complicated while implementation especially in democracy where people have a voice through today’s electronic media.
In a democratic country, it takes a longtime in between taking decision on an issue and then implementing that. Sometimes due to internal crises, leaders take some measures which cause some other problems as by-product to the solution. The problem becomes vicious for the leaders when they don’t have clear mandate of their people, it means they rule on the support of some outside power. In many weak states of Latin America, Africa and in Middle-East, powerful countries put their own beloved candidate for the sake of their vested interests. But in internal politics, these leaders are proofed to weak in taking drastic measure for his country. For example, the US always needed Pakistan because of its important strategic position, that’s why military leaders have always been encouraged by American administration to rule in the country. So these military leaders face very tuff time in taking any important decision related to foreign policy, and to take public opinion on their side. For example the people of Pakistan never supported the decision of their president general Mussaraf of becoming an American ally on war against terror. From then onwards, the popularity graph of Mussaraf started going down till he was asked to leave office. In such case, people don’t see the public interest the way their leader does, sometimes it might ferment into some dangerous situation.

The issue of cutting public expenses sometimes becomes an inevitable measure to take, but because of the fear of the people, leaders take some other stand in order to remain in power. For example, Indonesian president, Sukarnoputri in 2003 took the decision of maintaining cuts in fuel, electricity and telephone subsidies. But amidst of public’s growing protest, she changed her mind and retained many of the subsidies. Mostly Leaders take populist decision just to remain in power rather than doing something which might be less pleasant in short term but in long term it is expected to bring good result.

There are difficult situations when leaders are left with nothing but to take some decisions to save their credibility. Let’s take the present economic situation persisting in Pakistan, due to that the government has asked for a heavy loan to the IMF. The facts remain that after doing so, the IMF is going to clamp a series of restriction, which include cutting public expenditure, increasing food commodity prices, dismantling tariff barriers for foreign goods etc. So as prices go up sharply, no government can remain their people’s favorite. We all know that after a great difficulty Pakistan made a transition to democracy after a eight year old military dictatorship, so decision of going to the IMF can backfire to the civilian government, and can invite the military leadership again.

Taking decision in public interest is increasingly becoming difficult in today’s world where people are getting smarter about their needs and their expectations from their leaders. A slight wrong decision can cost the leader heavily and he might have to lose his job.


We live in a world of increasing interdependence guided by the free market economy, where liberal movement of goods, services and people have been taking place from one to another corner of the globe. Due to this connective process of globalization, both developed and developing worlds are witnessing unprecedented growth in every quarter which makes people more aware of their rights and responsibilities. On the other hand, world leaders confront new problems to work on, for example immigration, global warming, terrorism etc. These three issues directly or indirectly are related to poverty, backwardness, lack of economic freedom, so there is only one solution to all this which is how to reduce the gap between haves and have-nots. So this would be interesting to watch in years to come: firstly, how the leaders in developed and developing countries practice deregulated market economy in a regulated way; and secondly, how leaders in the developing world bring the inclusive growth in society in order to empower their people especially minorities and women.

“If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich”
--John F. Kennedy

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