Predatory Leadership

   This reader seeks to explain how the global community, beleaguered by multiple interconnected crises, has been brought to the point of exhaustion and despair. It investigates the poor quality of leadership and decision-making that enabled the preventable spread of COVID-19, the climate crisis, increased levels of xenophobia, populism, and racial tensions in recent years, as well as the decline of democratic institutions, social and political trust, social cohesion, cooperative behaviour, and tolerance. 

    The reader exposes and examines the predatory leadership - leadership borne of self-interest which seeks to exploit, oppress, or victimize - that so often underlies these crises. Historically, it is embodied in European colonialism and the slave trade; since the 1970s it is seen in the world-wide dominance of deregulated markets, the capture of national tax codes by elites and the role of "dark money". It is also seen in the leadership of multilateral agencies such as the World Bank, which is often more interested in promoting its neoliberal agenda than adhering to common sense public health policies. It is seen in the actions of political actors such as the now-defeated President Trump, British Prime Ministers Boris Johnson, Cameron and May and Canada's former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, each of whom preyed on the biases and vulnerabilities of disenfranchised populations and increased ethnic and racial tension for their own political advantage. Predatory leadership is also seen in the actions of Russia's President Putin in Eastern Europe and China's President Xi in Hong Kong and Africa.

    Based on decades of field research in remote villages and capital cities of Latin America, Africa and Asia, the author describes today's struggle between science and ideology, public health and economic values, and between greed and selflessness. He warns that privileging the present over the future is leading to the ultimate tragedy - the irrevocable loss of planetary health. With governments' ongoing failure to prepare and plan ahead, to monitor, mitigate and adjust, the author concludes we may be getting the leadership we deserve.

    This reader consists of 55 articles drawn from publications that the author produced over the last 20 years. About half of these articles have appeared in the Lancet or the BMJ in various forms but mainly as opinion pieces. Others are drawn from publications supported by NGOs such as Christian Aid, Action Aid, Save the Children while others have been published in the Guardian newspaper, Institute of Development Studies (UK), and journals such as the International Journal of Clinical Practice, the CMAJ, Canadian Journal of Public Health, New England Journal of Medicine, and the American Psychologist.