"We just need a good leader"

I was in Pakistan for a wedding a few weeks ago (1) and was talking to someone about Pakistan’s history. I asked “Wo do you think is the best leader Pakistan has had?”

He answered that other than their founding father, Jinnah, he didn’t think Pakistan had had any good leaders and that this was one of the main reasons Pakistan had troubles.

This reminded me of something I’ve heard people say in Kenya: “the problem with Kenya is that our politicians are greedy.”  I’ve heard Americans say a similar thing.

If a country 1 out of 5 leaders who does a really bad job, then maybe that person is just a bad leader. But if a country has 5 bad leaders in a row, then you have a systemic issue, not a personality issue.

So why do we focus so much on the individual leader, and try to pin our hopes and assign blame to them?

It’s not a big mystery: It’s much easier to think at the level of individual narrative and blame rather than think about the drivers of a system of societal governance.

I don’t think it’s bad to think about the virtues and defects of individual leaders – those traits do matter, they are interesting to explore, and that exploration can teach us about a person’s ability to maneuver within a political system. But it’s helpful to keep in mind that we overestimate the importance of individual traits, and underestimate the importance of the overall system.

Why else would I have asked him who he thought Pakistan’s best leader was without asking anything about the political system overall?

So next time I ask someone about their favorite political leader, I will follow up with asking “and what about the political environment they operated in allowed them to do good where others did bad?”

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1.       The Pakistan trip was awesome and I’ll have another post soon with more about what I saw and learned