It's Time to Abandon the Pursuit for Great Leaders

From Napoleon to Donald Trump, it has always been tempting to empower individuals who seem extraordinary. It has also always been a mistake.

Remember that delightful period right after the Cold War, when globalization was the buzzword du jour, democracy was spreading like wildfire, and America's political and economic system seemed like an attractive model? Academics who should have known better believed realism was headed for the dustbin of history, and lots of smart people thought tyrants, dictators, potentates, and other authoritarians were living on borrowed time. They believed the vox populi would grow ever louder, more and more countries would install representative institutions, adopt market economies, and protect human rights, and soon we’d be living happily ever after in a tranquil Kantian Garden of Eden.

Such notions seem rather quaint today, to say the least. Indeed one of the striking trends in contemporary world politics are the number of people who think that what we really need are Great Leaders—men and women who are unfettered by pesky domestic constraints. Instead of building effective institutions and strengthening liberal values, we see people rushing to back some Great Leader who will lead them out of darkness and toward a bright and glorious future. It's probably not an accident that most of the candidates for that role seem to be men....

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