No Knights, No Saviours: Leadership in Crisis

Leaders. 

Our ancient and modern history is full of them. 

Our cities’ streets and squares are home to their names and statues. 

Our books tell their stories, appropriately rearranged for our times, celebrated in our collective memories. 

Few great figures stand out from the many, often rising in the face of wars, uprisings, social protests, natural disasters. 

They bring solace and fortitude to a desperate flock, rallying people around their qualities, authority and vision. They part the seas and foresee the future. They impress by their strength, flamboyance, or wisdom, or again their sense of duty and service to the people. 

Leaders are needed also in times of peace. In democratic systems, it is the people who anoint their ruler. Generally, these systems have stuck to the one-person model of leadership. Nowhere more than in the presidential systems has this search for an omnipotent saviour been more dramatic in its shortcomings. But everywhere the twin populist and technocratic trends towards more personalisation, “executivism”, and concentration of power – to the point of threatening the delicate balances of liberal democracy – is signalling the limits to this model.  

Leaders are those who rise to the occasion – whether big or small. But what happens when they don’t? Is it that the “system” failed to produce the “right person”? Is it that the crisis is not blatant enough? Is it that our networked societies are too atomised, polarised and unruly – or perhaps too mature to accept only one banner? What if the old model of the knight in shining armour no longer serves? 

In this series, we address the mutations transforming politics through the lens of leadership. What does leadership mean in the “new climate regime”, as Bruno Latour called it? What alternatives to the populist style can be mustered? Can the Greens, with their complicated relationship with power, bring about a different kind of leadership, at once collective yet efficient?  

From the city of Zagreb to German coalition politics, from the turmoil of social movements to indigenous approaches to power, from the role of the elites to the EU as a “global leader”, we invite our readers join us in the search for a new combination that can renew political legitimacy and transform the practice of power.  

A series curated by Edouard Gaudot and Natalie Bennett