Boat versus Shopping Mall

Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, has written an article on the IHT titled “A rudderless world” (19 Aug 2011). He describes the world as “…people living in more than 190 cabins on the same boat. Each cabin has a government to manage its affairs. And the boat as a whole moves along without a captain or a crew.”
According to Mr. Mahbubani, “the demand for global leadership has never been greater. The world is truly lost in trying to find a way out of the current crisis.” I would like to provide a different perspective.
Who needs a leader?
The need for leadership is culturally determined. Different cultures express different needs for different kinds of leaders. Research shows that in Singapore hierarchy and respect for authority is much more highly valued than, for instance, Northern Europe and North America. For every Singaporean who wants strong leadership to “run the boat”, there is an American Tea Party member who wants less leadership, and more autonomy and freedom for all those different people living in the 190 different cabins. The “need for leadership” needs to be qualified.
Margaret Thatcher once said “There is no such thing as ‘society’. Everyone should look after themselves.” A fine example of individualist, “low power distance” thinking, which is predominant in North America and Northern Europe. Research also shows that, on the other hand, most of the world’s population live in “hierarchical” societies. Outside of Northern Europe and North America, practically everybody else is in a “hierarchical” culture, totaling 91% of the world’s population. Only 9% of the world’s population live in “egalitarian” societies, which include Australia, New Zealand and Costa Rica, in addition to the aforementioned NA and NE.
If we lived in a planetary democracy, indeed we would choose, as a planet, for a strong leader as Mr. Mahbubani seems to be asking for. However, the reality is that those 9% of “egalitarians” in the Northwestern corner of the world account for 36% of the world’s GDP. Their share of production is proportionately much higher than the rest, and that gives them more political clout.
The US alone spends more on its military budget than all the other nations combined. This also tilts the scales towards the Northwest. Still, what has changed in the past 20 years is that connectivity has grown exponentially, and the share of GDP held by “the Northwest” has actually decreased (it was much more in 1970) as emerging markets have developed at a quicker pace (notably China and India, but others as well). Moving forward, the trend is that the economic imbalance between “the Northwest” and “the Rest” will decrease.
Mr. Mahbubani points out that “geoeconomics require consensus”, but “geopolitics of the world are running at cross purposes with the geoeconomics of the world.” He concludes that “The world is adrift”. This is where I think we need to look at this from a different angle. The need for leadership is different, depending on whether you come from Asia or from North America. And if geoeconomics require consensus, maybe that means we need a different analogy to guide our thinking.
Ship or Shopping?
The metaphor of being on a ship and needing a captain to tell the crew how to run the ship and how to “look after” the passengers in the cabins is a very hierarchical one. It assumes that all parties involved share “hierarchical” values, which is not the case. It also plays down the notion of sovereign states. Granted, that notion is outdated and will be replaced by a different political order. However, that will be a long process, lasting perhaps yet another 20 or 30 years, if not more.
Our situation at present is more akin to that of 190 shop owners in a shopping mall. We form a kind of condominium that needs to be managed, but the mall manager does not hold the same kind of authority as the captain of a ship. The shop owners may appoint someone for the role of mall manager, but they have complete authority in managing each their own shop. From time to time, they need to meet in a sort of assembly, to decide on certain broad issues, such as opening hours, shared services such as security, cleaning, waste management, energy consumption. The analogy to Planet Earth is more clear than thinking of a ship.
The mall manager of Planet Earth needs to be more of a coordinator, rather than a captain. Mr.Mahbubani argues that Barak Obama is “the best candidate for global leader”. I agree, but only if he relinquishes the presidency of the US (to Sarah Palin? Rick Perry? Hillary Clinton?). The mall manager cannot manage the mall and simultaneously manage the largest shop in the mall.
One might argue that the mall manager is the Secretary General of the United Nations. I would say that the UN has become too bureaucratic and has lost much of its legitimacy. It needs to be replaced by another institution, with a similar purpose but a different mandate. We need a fresh institution with a different governance model, perhaps with an Economic Council made of the G20 and a different arrangement for the Security Council.
The irony in the US is that Obama may not get re-elected, because people in the US want a leader that is aggressive, decisive and bold. They want a cowboy type like a Texan, but with the intellect of a Bostonian. Those two archetypes seldom come together… and having to choose between the two, Americans may go for the stupid cowboy rather than the wimpy intellectual. Yet, if there were global elections to appoint a global leader, Obama would win by a landslide.
The Crisis OF Democracy
Mr Mahbubani asks: “Have democracies become dysfunctional?” I would say the short answer is: “Yes. But only temporarily and only in very specific parts of the world.” Anglo-Saxon democracies, notably the US and the UK, have become dysfunctional. For how long, we don't know. The US is paralyzed due to their “Competition” model of governance pitting Democrats against Republicans. They need a “third force” to solve the impasse. The UK is in crisis because of their similar model, pitting Labour against Conservatives. None managed to secure a majority in the last election, so they had to form a coalition which has found it difficult to manage the economic issues.
However, one should not judge Europe by looking at the UK. And we should never judge Europe looking at it through the eyes of the UK, either. The European Union is all about trying to reach consensus through coordination. This profoundly irritates advocates of the Anglo-Saxon model of decisive leadership, and it also annoys very much all those living in hierarchical societies, who expect a strong, authoritarian leader, even if they might not like the person currently in that position and would prefer someone else. However, the EU is not hierarchical and it is not Anglo-Saxon. It has a diversity of values and of governance models which demands something different from the simple “top-down” approach found in hierarchical societies and also different from the decisive model valued in the US and UK.
Northwestern democracies need renewal, yes. The bad news for the Anglo-Saxon advocates and for the hierarchical advocates is: in a multilateral world with a more balanced distribution of power among the US, Europe, China and a couple of other key players, the more appropriate leadership style may be the coordinator, the” mall manager”, rather than the ship captain.
The Dutch and Scandinavian cultures have had such governance models running for at least a few hundred years, maybe more. They have some of the best Human Development scores in the world, so they must be doing something right… We need to look at that more closely, for therein may lie the best alternatives for the world going forward.