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Transformative Political Leadership

The University of Chicago Press

Contents

Introduction..........................................................................................11 Political Leadership, Governance, Political Culture, and Political Institutions.....................62 Compelling Political Leadership: The Critical Competencies..........................................163 Nelson Mandela: Consummate Inclusionist.............................................................404 Seretse Khama: Resolute Democrat....................................................................665 Lee Kuan Yew: Systematic Nation-Builder.............................................................916 Kemal Ataturk: Uncompromising Modernizer............................................................1197 The Crisis of Contemporary Political Leadership.....................................................145Acknowledgments.......................................................................................177Notes.................................................................................................181Index.................................................................................................205

Chapter One

Outcomes for the citizens of the developing world depend greatly on the actions and determinations of leaders and on critical political leadership decisions. This appraisal tends to fly in the face of conventional wisdom—and to tilt against traditional emphases on the primary salience of structures and institutions. It also appears to contradict older research suggesting that little variance in corporate performance could be attributed to individuals and individual differences. It may even unwittingly differ from those who prefer to emphasize structure and contingency rather than the importance of individual agency in the conduct of human affairs. Yet, after a long acquaintance with politics and political development in the developing world, especially Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean, the conclusion is persuasive and powerful that leaders matter as much as do many external influences, internal structures, and institutional constraints in shaping nation-state policy and in influencing the ways in which beneficial results are pursued across diverse national and continental cultures.

Fortunately, recent corporate and empirical psychological studies support such conclusions. Those studies show that leaders do "have a substantial impact on performance." Those who have examined the role of leadership particularly in the foreign policy realm conclude that individual agency matters. Leaders (not necessarily situations or structures by themselves) largely create peace and war. Leaders even help signally to guide their people into or out of poverty. For example, Jones and Olken established in a path-breaking econometric study with robust evidence that national political leaders, irrespective of institutions and context, influence economic growth attainments. Leaders help to overcome geographical, climatic, and resource limitations. As close attention to the political history of independent Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and the Caribbean will show, human agency has the capacity to strengthen or to fail nation-states, to uplift or to oppress citizens, and to unleash or to stifle the talents and aspirations of all manner of followers.

Admittedly, such a conclusion allows the element of chance into the direction of human affairs. To be more precise, accidents of birth seem unusually apposite when we examine the critical early years of successful nations in the developing world. Studies of twins, identical versus fraternal, indicate that there indeed could be a genetic basis for leadership. Research shows a predisposition for and against taking up the leadership baton. Some were born to lead—born with "an innate set of skills that makes us good candidates for directing a group of people toward a goal...." Moreover, research reveals that genes predispose not only to leadership but also to whether the ambition to lead is achieved, and sometimes at what level.

National founders or rebuilders (after revolutions or dramatic societal breaks) have almost everywhere in the developing world helped to set a dramatic course. The influence of human agency appears at least suggestive. If Lee Kuan Yew had not been born to a Singaporean elite family, coming of age during the Japanese occupation, would Singapore have been led effectively and have developed so extraordinarily after 1959? If Kemal Ataturk had not been a radical-thinking Turkish officer under the Ottomans at the time of the empire's collapse, would there today be a powerful, modern Turkey? If a Govan Mbeki, a Walter Sisulu, or an Oliver Tambo—not Nelson Mandela—had grasped the leadership of South Africa after the demise of apartheid, would South Africa have avoided a revanchist race war or have been so peacefully, even magisterially, developed? Ambitious left-leaning nationalists could even have substituted themselves for Seretse Khama in Botswana and have ignored some of the traditional and religious foundations of what became democratic rule under Khama and his successors. If Khama had been born a Tanzanian and had risen there to political prominence, would Tanzanians now be much wealthier per capita, and much less corrupt? Paul Kagame has vigorously altered the trajectory of postgenocidal Rwandan development. So, for good or ill, have and did Evo Morales in Bolivia, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia, Yoweri Museveni in Uganda, Muammar Qaddafi in Libya, and Robert Mugabe (not Joshua Nkomo) in Zimbabwe channeled follower energies and placed an undeniable personal stamp on the remaking of their peoples and nations.

What, it is also important to ask, accounts for the different outcomes in India and Pakistan after partition? Obviously, size and resources were important. So was religion, and how religion was employed to mobilize electors, a critical factor. But how the first postpartition leaders responded to the different hands that they were dealt mattered massively, too. Arguably, today's India owes its messy but secure democratic political culture and strong institutions as much to Jawaharlal Nehru's formative guidance as it does to the British Raj and the long decades of prepartition Indian Congress Party socialization to democratic norms. As Huntington concludes sensibly, "Economic development makes democracy possible; political leadership makes it real."

The colonial experience, like the Raj in India and Pakistan, conceivably conditioned the growth of developing world leadership. Yet, comparisons show that whether the imperial example was Belgian, British, Dutch, French, Italian, or Spanish, in modern times it has mattered little which metropole tutored and controlled. Every metropole oppressed, conditioned, discriminated, and withheld opportunity and full human advancement until compelled by the rise of nationalism and changing times to respond positively. British rule, sometimes thought more benign than the others, nevertheless spawned Robert Mugabe, Idi Amin, a series of Nigerian tyrants, and many others. It also gave us excellent leaders such as Seretse Khama and his successors, Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam of Mauritius and those who followed...