6 - Leadership and the cult of personality

Summary

Throughout the world, including the Arab region, the cult of personality has played a significant role in authoritarian and totalitarian states, impacting them politically, economically, and culturally. In general, a cult is “an established system of veneration of a political leader, to which members of the society are expected to subscribe, a system that is omnipresent and ubiquitous and one that is expected to persist indefinitely.” Some leaders in the Arab republics developed a personality cult, but even those who did not utilize this device to strengthen their regimes created a sense of being unassailable. With the possible exception of Algeria, Arab leaders carefully centralized power and were the final decision makers.

This chapter will first focus on leaders in the Arab republics, in order to understand how they functioned and interacted with their institutions, ministers, and other Arab leaders. It will then explore the cult of personality and compare it to tyrannical systems outside the Arab world. The reasons for developing a cult, the methods leaders used to achieve it, the common factors among the “cult” dictators, and the implications for decision making will be examined also, concluding with remarks about leadership and the future of personality cults in the region.

Leadership

Between the Egyptian Revolution in 1952 and the Arab uprisings in 2011 there have been forty-one presidents in the eight republics under study; some were in power just for one to two years, while others managed to rule for three or four decades (see Table 3.1). Thirty of these presidents hailed from a military background, and there were other similarities, particularly among those who succeeded in staying in power for a long time. They learned to contend with different constraints and to deal with conflicts and wars, albeit some of their own making; they manipulated the constellation of power to suit their needs, and some created a cult of personality.

What drove many of these leaders to become more despotic is not a simple issue; no doubt they believed as time went by that they were more capable and intelligent than their colleagues, and some of them definitely worked harder than their subordinates.