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Saturday, December 2, 2023
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  • COP28
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Democracy is the default mode

Two heritages: the autocratic and the egalitarian. We have them both, and we can switch between them, but the default mode is probably egalitarian (i.e. democratic), because that’s the way we spent most of our human past.

Leaving actual killers aside, the ‘alpha male’ model of leadership is still successful in many countries that are formally democratic: Vladimir Putin in Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, and Viktor Orban in Hungary. Indeed even genuine democracies of long standing can be seduced by a ‘great’ leader, like De Gaulle in France. No, I don’t know where Donald Trump fits in this Pantheon, writes Gwynne Dyer. Photographs courtesy of Commons Wikimedia and Flickr
Opinion
BY GWYNNE DYER
July 28, 2021
Opinion | BY GWYNNE DYER | July 28, 2021

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