When I criticize leaders great and small, critics often reply: “You’re so naive. These leaders are under immense pressure to act as they do. Even if what they’re doing is as bad as you say, they have no choice.”
Question: What exactly does it mean to say, “Leaders have no choice but to do X”? Here are a few interpretations:
1. If leaders tried to do not-X, they would instantly lose their leadership position. The leader’s only choice is to do X, or get fired and watch their replacement do X.
2. If leaders tried to do not-X on any major decision, they would soon lose their leadership position. So while leaders have a wiggle room on details, they’re still tightly constrained.
3. If leaders tried to do not-X on many major decisions, they would have a markedly higher probability of prematurely losing their leadership position.
4. If leaders tried to do not-X on many major decisions, they would endure a lot of aggravating criticism.
If my critics mean #1, I say they’re obviously wrong. Leaders almost never suddenly lose their job over a single “bad call.” Crazed media scandals are the exception that proves the rule.
If my critics mean #2, I still say they’re obviously wrong. New leaders standardly make a large number of rather arbitrary changes. When I talk to friends with office jobs, for example, they often tell me how a new boss suddenly rearranged the floor plan or telework policy because he happened to have an odd “management philosophy.” And even when such decisions are plainly unpopular, these leaders usually hew to their eccentricities for years. This is even more obvious for politicians, who hold their jobs with near-certainty until the next election no matter how unpopular their decisions are.
If my critics mean #3, they might be right. But this hardly shows that leaders “have no choice” but to continue whatever specific policy I’m criticizing. Indeed, #3 means precisely the opposite. Maybe the leader in question couldn’t do everything I want and retain power, but they can easily do the specific thing on my mind and retain power.
Finally, if my critics mean #4, they’re definitely right. But so what? Plenty of people choose careers that practically guarantee a lifetime full of aggravating criticism. Since they choose it, they undeniably “have a choice.”
Overall, then, it’s my critics who are naive. In reality, leaders have considerable slack. Many have immense slack. Indeed, that’s the main reason why people want to be leaders! It’s hard to quench your thirst for power when you can only exercise your “power” one way.
Where, though, do my critics go wrong? While it’s tempting to say, “Non-leaders are tightly constrained, so they assume their leaders are, too,” this is a silly story. Every rank-and-file worker has some slack, so the natural inference is that their leaders have some, too. Probably more. In any case, most of my critics are tenured professors, who infamously swim in a sea of slack. At long as you half-heartedly teach 150 hours a year and keep your hands to yourself, you can do whatever you like. Tenured professors denying the existence of slack is like fish denying the existence of water.
The better story comes from Mike Huemer’s Problem of Political Authority. In chapter 6, “The Psychology of Authority,” Huemer argues that human beings have a pronounced tendency to justify even the least-justifiable actions of authorities. Government is Stockholm Syndrome writ large. Responding to “The leader is wrong to do X” with “The leader has no choice but to do X” is yet another desperate effort to pretend that bad leaders aren’t as bad as they seem. The sad reality is that they’re even worse, for with great power comes great responsibility.
Though perhaps the best story is that my critics confuse past selection with present constraints. People in current leadership positions have plenty of slack. To attain such a leadership position, however, you generally have to tow the line. And in organizations prone to do evil, men and women of conscience do not tow the line. The reason leaders of bad organization do so much evil is not that they couldn’t do good if they wanted to. It’s that people who rise to the top of bad organizations are usually bad themselves.
READER COMMENTS
HH
Apr 26 2021 at 10:12am
My first question to people asserting #1 or #2 is: in what sense are those people “leaders”? If they’re completely constrained by other people or the facts, then maybe use a less grandiose term to describe them.
Ryan M
Apr 26 2021 at 10:25am
Bryan,
I enjoyed this little essay… but I get the impression that you’re referring to something that I may have missed. Unless you’re speaking more generally (certainly, there has been a lot to criticize with our “leaders” over the past year).
I’d add something to your point #4, though. Namely, if your critics recognize the reality of #4, then aren’t you the “aggravating critic” that they are speaking of? And isn’t that the entire purpose of elected leadership? You are supposed to be aggravatingly critical of your leaders in order to hold them accountable. In fact, I’d even suggest that a bulk of your own criticism of leaders (and of your peers) is that there has been an overwhelming lack of “aggravating criticism” as our leaders have been eviscerating individual liberties this past year.
So why on earth would your critics respond with “leaders are under immense pressure” as a way of dismissing the pressure that you are attempting to assert? If anything, this should be an incentive for these individuals to join in with your criticism in order to exert the right sort of pressure on our leaders, so that we can further incentivize them to do the right thing.
If you feel that our leaders have no choice but to do X, and you also believe that this choice is due to pressure put on leaders by citizens, then it is your responsibility to see to it that these same leaders have no choice but to do Y, instead.
As such, it seems that your critics are making your argument for you. Unless what they really mean is “I actually don’t mind what [this leader] is doing,” they should feel compelled to add their voices to yours.
Ryan M
Apr 26 2021 at 10:43am
EconLib, your comments policy is infuriating. It is extremely difficult to engage in discussion when half of what you say is randomly deleted.
For some unknown reason, it was objectionable to say that I agree with the author, and that it seems like his critics are rather proving his point if they believe #4 (wrt leadership incentives) to be true. Bryan is, at that point, the incentive for leaders to do the right thing, and his critics (unless what they really mean is “I actually agree with this policy,” in which case, they should just say so) ought to vocally join in.
Ryan M
Apr 26 2021 at 12:51pm
Resolved. Thank you!
LEB
Apr 26 2021 at 11:39am
“Yet while there is little that is likely to induce men who are good by our standards to aspire to leading positions in the totalitarian machine, and much to deter them, there will be special opportunities for the ruthless and unscrupulous. There will be jobs to be done about the badness of which taken by themselves nobody has any doubt, but which have to be done in the service of some higher end, and which have to be executed with the same expertness and efficiency as any others. And as there will be need for actions which are bad in themselves, and which all those still influenced by traditional morals will be reluctant to perform, the readiness to do bad things becomes a path to promotion and power. The positions in a totalitarian society in which it is necessary to practice cruelty and intimidation, deliberate deception and spying, are numerous.” -F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
Nicholas Weininger
Apr 26 2021 at 1:06pm
First of all, I think leaders in modern large bureaucratic organizations, while they do have some slack, have less than you think on average. Moreover, rising in the hierarchy often decreases slack at least at some levels: middle managers may have much less slack than either the line managers and individual contributors “below” them or the VPs “above” for instance. I observed this directly when I became a middle manager at a large corporation. Tenured professors have much, much more slack than the typical corporate leader and likely much more than the typical political leader too. And this is good, however frustrating it may be; it would not be a positive thing for liberty if political leaders, especially, were less constrained.
Second, I think you overestimate the extent to which people become *and remain* leaders out of a desire for power. I think it is common to want to become a leader because you *think* leaders have more power than they actually do. But then once you become a leader and observe the reality that leaders in large bureaucratic organizations are heavily constrained, you may still choose to stay for a bunch of reasons: high compensation, high social status, a sense of responsibility, or simply a belief that this is now “all you can do.”
Mark Z
Apr 26 2021 at 2:11pm
If we consider that there’s fierce competition for leadership roles and apply the reasoning of efficient market hypothesis, then leaders should, in fact, have very little slack. If a CEO makes anything other than the profit-maximizing choice on any decision, another potential CEO will take his place. If a politician does anything other than what voters want, another candidate will promise to make the voter-optimal decision and beat him next election.
I’d guess that many leaders spend their whole careers doing things they don’t like because they feel they have to to keep their jobs so that they may occasionally do things that they think are right. They themselves probably sincerely believe they have little slack. And again, when one considers just how intense competition for leadership positions is, it seems plausible (I think that’s one shortcoming of your post, you don’t seem to consider competition; selectors for leadership roles, whether voters or boards of directors, may be constantly shopping amidst a sea of alternatives).
robc
Apr 26 2021 at 2:27pm
10-15% of house races are unopposed in a typical year.
Fierce competition? That is a lot of slack.
Alabamian
Apr 26 2021 at 7:36pm
Why is the focus on loss of position? It seems to me that those in leadership positions are selecting to maximize the amount of power or influence they wield over time, in aggregate. Being out of a position is of course a factor in that, but not the only or even primary one.
I think the truth is closer to:
5. If leaders tried to do not-X on a major decision (or not-X on many minor decisions, or some combination of the two), then they will lose the coalitional and bureaucratic support upon which they rely to project power and influence, diminishing their ability to project power and influence at a later time.
Or to use Bryan’s framing, they risk losing the ability to do Y on a different major decision.
BK
Apr 27 2021 at 12:50am
My questions are: what would be different if the leaders themselves believed these hypotheses, even if the hypotheses themselves were incorrect? Sometimes they may seem to deviate, but that is a case of them being human and making a mistake (and inadvertently exercising their power independently), or they are only the rare cases where a leader with enough guile has figured out the same slack the Bryan has spotted.
Secondly, how do we account for all the bad decisions these leaders aren’t making in light of belief in these hypotheses? Maybe if they actually internalised Bryan’s coaching here there would actually do a lot more harm than they currently are. It could well be a useful delusion, from society’s perspective.
David S
Apr 28 2021 at 3:16am
I believe it is closer to say that you have many leaders, each saving their political capital for their preferred project. This means that on average, they must support X even if they don’t agree with it, to preserve their political capital for Y that they care most about.
And then, since everyone else is doing the same thing they don’t get Y either…
Jose Pablo
May 1 2021 at 2:05am
“It’s that people who rise to the top of bad organizations are usually bad themselves”
This reminds me Hayek’s “the worst get on top”.
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