Our World in 2017

ISSUE#1193 | January 2017
EXERCISING LEADERSHIP
NEW EUROPE: OUR WORLD IN 2017
Page-32
www.neweurope.eu
by Alberto Alemanno
Jean Monnet Professor of Law, HEC
Paris; Global Professor, NYU School of
Law; Founder, The Good Lobby.
Re-inventing political leadership:
10 qualities political leaders need
FRANCE-PARIS
What critical skills and abilities do political
leaders need in today’s rapidly shifting world?
In a world characterized by epic political,
social and technological transformations,
there has never been a greater need for
responsive and responsible leaders. Yet today’s
dominant models of leadership struggle
to reconcile both qualities. If technocratic
leadership privileges responsibility over
responsiveness, populist leadership is all
about responsiveness.
Critically, neither of these leadership
models allow for – or are interested in – the
judgement and will of citizens. Indeed, while
the populists claim to know and represent
the only authentic ‘general will’, technocrats
assume there is only one correct policy
solution. Theirs, of course. What can today’s
leaders do in this context?
Embracing populism seems (electorally)
irresistible, after the 2016 major political
events wrenched open the so-called “Overton
window” of acceptable ideas and language.
Moreover, the role of intermediary bodies -
from political parties to trade unions - is on
the wane as leaders seek to connect directly
with their audiences. This trend is even
sharper between elections, as leaders facing
the incessant demands of social media news
cycles look to other forms of legitimization.
The way today’s leaders increasingly rely
on referenda, petitions and social media to
legitimize their action suggests the emergence
of a worrying trend of delegation of leadership
and therefore responsibility. In Britain, the
Brexit referendum is a case in point, where
those who put this issue to a vote and
campaigned for the UK to leave the EU did
not take responsibility for the consequences.
The illusion that politics can simply collect
people’s preferences and mechanically turn
them into a reality threatens to override the
idea behind political representation.
In a representative democracy, the mission
of leaders should be to temper citizens’ input
and emotional responses rather than to foster
the violence of the majority. In other words,
the relationship between representatives and
represented must be ongoing and should
entail judgement on both sides.
Hence the need for responsive and
responsible leaders to re-appropriate, redesign
and expand the shrinking space that
today’s populist and technocratic leaders
allow between them and the electorate. This
space is set to become the playing ground for
new forms of political leaderships.
Here the good news is that while
conventional political engagement has
eroded, democratic expression and
unconventional political involvement have
expanded. Citizens are not losing interest
in public affairs. Quite the contrary. The
British Prime Minister David Cameron leaves at the end of the first day of the European Council meeting in Brussels, Belgium, 28 June 2016. EU leaders met for
the first time since the British referendum, in which 51.9 percent voted to leave the European Union.
EPA/STEPHANIE LECOCQ
challenge for leaders is therefore to channel
this growing interest in the democratic
process through the creation of new avenues
of participation, co-creation of policies
and oversight of leaders’ actions. In our
re-politicised societies, successful political
representatives will be those capable of
transforming mounting distrust into civic
virtue.
This requires personal qualities that are
too often deficient among our leaders. Ten
features stand out:
Compassion and emotional intelligence
Leaders must be able to put themselves
into their people’s shoes. While excessive
empathy can distort our judgement,
compassion and emotional intelligence
foster leaders’ problem-solving ability and,
eventually, maximize their impact on society.
To do so, leaders must share and experience
people’s pain and suffering, as well as joy and
happiness. They must leave the office, spend
more of their time in the streets and while
online stay away from filtered bubbles.
Integrity and openness
Leaders must be beyond suspicion before,
during and after the exercise of power.
They should commit to democratizing the
access to political parties by opening it up
to citizens with different, non-political and
unconventional backgrounds, including
entrepreneurship. Today, the barriers to
entering political parties remain very high
and the opportunity costs of a political life
are even greater. Once elected, leaders must
ensure the full transparency of their actions
(e.g. lists of meetings, legislative footprints,
donors) and accept various forms of citizen
oversight (e.g. evaluation boards, watchdog
groups, investigative bodies). When leaving
office, they must resist the temptation to
monetize their network and experience by
walking through revolving doors.
Fairness and inclusiveness
While most voters do not know their elected
representatives, affluent, well-connected,
organized lobbies and other groups always
do. Responsible leaders should level the
playing field by taking their decisions only
after having listened to and understood all
affected interests. To do so, leaders must
go beyond formal equality and proactively
support the representation of all interests in
the policy process. This could be done by
providing financial resources that could be
transferred from the haves to the have-nots
(e.g. via public consultation fees) and/or
by promoting skill-sharing by tapping into
networks of citizen experts – such as The
Good Lobby, the organisation I lead – who
could serve civil society organizations on a
pro bono basis.
Competence and respect
for evidence
In a world of limited resources, any
leadership action can be costly,
especially when it generates unintended
consequences. To mitigate those risks,
leaders must commit to basing their
decisions on available evidence rather than
ideology. Responsible leadership must be
evidence-based, competent and transparent
as well as ready to unmask “merchants of
doubt” - pundits who claim to be impartial
scientific authorities, but actually represent
corporate interests.
Consistency and sobriety
Leaders must lead by example. Their daily
conduct should be in line with the values
they predicate and stand for. At a time of
unprecedented inequalities, they should
make a sober living a feature of their success
and stay away from conflicts of interest. They
should be more afraid of social disapproval
than of legal and ethical sanctions. Being
a leader requires embracing higher moral
standards of behavior.
Successful leadership stems from
responsive, responsible and daily
interaction with - and exposure to - a
web of stakeholders, including organized
groups, grassroots and individual citizens.
In particular, by fostering a culture of
citizen oversight, political leaders protect
society (and themselves) from their (own)
excesses, thus boosting their ability to
deliver on their promises and serve the
common good.