Promise Us It’ll be Alright: Leadership in the Time of COVID

Since last January, the life-threatening COVID-19 has swept across the world, disregarding borders and defying control. How leaders manage their country’s fears and anxieties will be crucial to our future welfare and survival.

The virus has emerged at a time when autocracies and strongman leaders are taking hold across the world; at the same time global inequality has never been so apparent nor so undermining of democratic ideals. In a pandemic it is the poor and minority groups that suffer most. Rising inequality produces anxiety on a mass level which many democracies are unable to cope with. Especially during times of crisis we look for a strong leader who will take care of us and know what to do.

If anything, COVID-19 has shone a new light on the debate about what constitutes effective government – what kind of government can deliver what it promises and what are the costs? This debate is very much based on the conflicting ideologies of autocracies vs democracies and the jury is still out.

Last May, Robin Niblett, chief executive of Chatham House, reported,“Although there are plenty of signs that strongmen leaders have used the crisis to try to tighten their grip on power, the coronavirus has revealed the vulnerabilities of autocracies rather than their strength. In contrast, democracies are showing their capacity for innovation and adaptation, as one would expect, and signs of renewal, as one would hope.” (LA Times, “Why democracies do better at surviving pandemics”, Robin Niblett and Leslie Vinjamuri, 26 May 2020)

Niblett, however, admits that the countries worst hit by COVID-19 deaths are democracies; notably the US and the UK, followed by Belgium, Italy, and Spain. In contrast, China, the exemplar of the authoritarian state, has seemingly gained the most rapid control and containment of the virus – and of its economy, reporting a 3% rise last April in industrial output from the year before.

Democracies are by their nature unwieldy and slow, whereas autocracies can act rapidly on policy decisions because power is streamlined from the top. But just as not all authoritarian regimes are doing well, there is the case of Russia, Brazil, and North Korea, not all democracies perform similarly. What Niblett also points out – and perhaps this is the most telling difference to think about – is that democracies with populist governments have so far performed the worst of any regimes. Niblett comments,

“Democracies might be among the worst performers in the COVID-19 crisis, but they are also among the best, especially when they are led not by populist leaders, but by those who can draw on a high level of public trust. This has been the case with Germany, Taiwan, Finland, Norway, New Zealand and South Korea — the first five of which are led by women, whose leadership style tends to be inclusive rather than top-down.” (Ibid.)

The important factor here is public trust, regardless of whether it is in the context of an autocracy or a democracy or whether indeed it is with female leaders or male leaders. Greece is a notable success story with a male leader who opposes the populist rule of the last regime and in acting quickly and decisively has contained the virus more effectively than any other European country.

Christine Lagarde, president of the ECB, points out that women leaders tend to be better at communication and decision-making than their male counterparts. Referring to Merkel, Lagarde observes, “she very, very transparently shared data, numbers, casualties and rate of contamination and so on….It became very quickly a sort of common lingua franca, common knowledge that people would understand those scientific elements [and] that enabled them to appreciate why certain measures were necessary, such as masks, such as being confined, such as keeping social distances.” (Financial Times,”Women leaders outperformed in virus crisis, says ECB’s Lagarde, 22 July 2020) Another distinctive feature in communication amongst women leaders is that they have “carried the water of bad news as well as the water of clear explanation and recommendations.”(Ibid.)

Women also demonstrate greater empathy. New Zealand prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, is seen wearing a head covering and embracing a Muslim widow outside the Christchurch mosque following the terrorist attack. In the US, as some kind of nod to the need for empathy, Melania Trump was brought on stage at the Republican convention to acknowledge that many people had had a hard time during the pandemic. Striking that Trump chose his wife to deliver this message.

The leaders who have successfully managed the virus in their countries have shown what are commonly agreed to be strong features of good leadership. These are: transparency, clear communication of facts, clear decisions related to facts, concern for the welfare and safety of the group as a whole, concern about delivering good government versus personal performance, admitting when they have made mistakes and empathy with others. These are the qualities that are meant to instil trust in citizens.

And yet, these successes do not necessarily equate with political success. Fear may be more decisive to political success than trust. The immediate example is Trump – a strongman populist leader who has by any standard failed dismally in dealing with the pandemic in the US. Should Trump succeed in being re-elected, a possibility that cannot be ruled out at this point, would this tell us that fomenting fear may be far more successful than containing it – at least as far as winning an election is concerned?

Trump is the fear monger par excellence. The enemy is everywhere - from the Mexican murderers and rapists threatening to cross the border, to the “Kung flu” spread by the Chinese, climate change activists plotting to undermine the US economy, and now within the heart of the US itself, the Black Lives Matter protestors who destroy private property and threaten the lives of law-abiding citizens. Only Trump can protect Americans. For many Americans who have lost their livelihoods or fear for their survival, along with others who fear any kind of loss, Trump promises rescue if not greater strength. The strongman restores our belief in our own omnipotence, especially important when a country has suffered humiliating losses and is seen to be floundering. Fear and humiliation not only lead to violence, they also lead to blind faith,

In a time of fear we underestimate at our peril the allure of a political leader who promises that “it’ll be alright.”