Selected by Anjana Ahuja

Author:Anjana Ahuja
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile
Published: 2010-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

To recap, over human history there has been a steady increase in the size and social complexity of political units, from bands and tribes to chiefdoms, early states and modern nation-states and businesses. The agricultural revolution played a key role in the transition from a relaxed Big Man governance to a more formal leadership structure in which chiefs and kings accrued astonishing levels of power over their subordinates. In return for providing public services they received taxes or kickbacks that enabled them and their kin to live in style. This provided a window for corruption to flourish. Devious, manipulative chiefs, kings and warlords saw opportunities to abuse their power to enrich themselves and their family. Many consolidated their inflated rank by taking multiple wives and siring lots of children, thus ensuring that their own descendants would come to power and retain the family wealth. Only in the last 250 years have we witnessed a move away from despotic leadership in which governments of multi-ethnic and multilingual nation-states and businesses have relinquished powers and privileges to attract citizens and employees with a wide range of abilities and skills. (See Appendix B for a table displaying the four phases of the natural history of leadership.)

Now we come to the sordid relationship between leadership and corruption. Leadership is power and, as Lord Acton, one of William Gladstone’s contemporaries, famously insisted, ‘power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely’. Is this true? We can return to the zoo for a reunion with our closest primate cousins, the chimps, to get a glimpse at the distorting influence of power. When a male chimp attains the status of alpha male, his elevated status does indeed distort his behaviour – and even his appearance. His body grows, and he adopts a stern facial expression. Even testosterone levels reflect pecking order, rising when he comes to power and falling when he is dethroned. Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson described the psychology of primate power in Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence:

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