The Politics of Leadership

Authority or instrument?

Watching the repeated ritual humiliation of Kevin McCarthy this past week, I was put in mind of a joke that Richard Dawkins once made about ant colonies. Humans call the mother of these colonies their queen, often depicted in children’s stories as holding the political authority that name implies. Dawkins suggested we may as well think of the relationship as being the other way around; that the worker ants are exploiting the queen. Of course, neither is the case, but I like to think there’s some truth to this suggestion even for human leaders.