Great leaders - born or made?

However, with the coming of the 90s, the European Union and currency reform, her homey nationalism had become dogmatism; her colleagues in the Conservative Party had to reject her for being an electoral liability.

If the fate of Margaret Thatcher is any guide, leadership in a democratic society is a contingent, transactional one. The future of the leader is to an extent dependent on those he or she leads. The onus is on the leader to show that he or she is doing good, is in tune with the times and with public opinions but is just slightly ahead of the game without alienating the people.

The ability to “lead” sits on a knife-edge, subjected to the vagrancies of history and electoral favour.

Leadership in a democratic society calls for a special kind of political skill. It is a skill that ensures the leader’s political vision must gel with public opinion, yet still keeps their ability to lead.

This “two steps forward and one step back” type of politics is hard for those with a messianic bent and for those who are self-assured. They are likely to be impatient with the clumsiness of the democratic system with its check and counter-checking of governmental power

In Singapore Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew’s prosaic terms, people cannot be allowed to “blackmail” the government at the ballot-box when its harsh, unpopular policies are doing good work and bring prosperity to all.

History is full of leaders who led without eagerly courting the approval of the masses. These were unique individuals, ushered to prominence as much by the times and circumstances in which they lived, as by their personality and Machiavellian skills.

For example, there were Caesar and the Gallic wars; Hitler and the Nazis; Lenin and the Russian Revolution; Mao Tse-tung and the Long March. In the morally more positive realm: Ghandi and the India Independence Movement; and Nelson Mandela and the anti-Apartheid struggle. Women too were history’s chosen: Jeanne D’Arc (Joan of Arc) and the French victory at Orléans; and Mother Theresa in the Calcutta slums.

Historical conditions gave these leaders a strong sense of destiny and their missions a social and political urgency.

Given this urgency, some would also assume for themselves the licence for ruthless repression, cutting down those who stood in the way of the “Great Cause”. In all events, great leaders are not merely figureheads. They guide, influence, cajole, inspire, discipline and punish. And people often follow with a fierce and desperate passion.

Great leaders evoke people’s deep-seated need to follow, sometimes making them abandon their will and submit to the fervour and, one may say, joy of submission.

But how do we account for great leaders’ power to make us do so this?