Age and Leadership: Cross-Cultural Observations

The human species is unique in that muscular power and a full endowment of aggressive instincts is not necessarily linked to social power or leadership. In human affairs, dominance has to do with the ability to command the muscular power of others, rather than the personal possession of physical strength. Indeed, leadership capacity often makes its appearance relatively late in life, in the form of a strong personality or a strong ego. Paradoxically then, the leader's charisma may be most apparent in later life, when it emerges in its own right, no longer to be confused with the muscular power of a youthful body. In this article I trace some of the ways in which the aged come to exercise leadership, despite—or perhaps because of—their loss of the outward signs and cosmetics of physical power and aggression.

The association between advanced age and leadership is not immediately perceivable in our own society, but comes into view as a deep structure in human affairs when we look across societies ranged historically and culturally. Even in our time, supposedly given over to the rule of youth, we find that the aging Mao Zedong could rouse the young into a Cultural Revolution against the middle-aged bureaucrats of communist China, and the Ayatollah Khomeini could pack the streets of Teheran with raging, exultant young men whenever he chose.