In college, back when it was possible to do so in a short period of time, I had to read The Prince for a political philosophy class. Since I was far more amused by Machiavelli than by John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx, I've begun to flip through it again (fortunately it's a a short book, like 80 pages at most).

And it got me wondering what exactly makes a ruler or leader a "good" one anyway? And since I apparently know little about democracy, let's not restrict ourselves to it (or ignore it either). There are a lot of countries in the world (over 190 in the UN) and, without actually counting them, a good majority of them are probably not democracies by the standards of the "western" or "developed" worlds.

So if we ask ourselves is a particular ruler or leader a "good" one, can we see it is based on effectiveness? But how do we mean "effective"; like one who has completed the political agenda (s)he set out to do? Because otherwise, could you not say that Adolph Hitler was at least a partially-effective ruler? After all, he succeeded in more or less wiping out a good deal of the Jewish, Roma, homosexuals, and other peoples he set out to liquidate, not to mention his political opponents, in concentration camps; which, we must admit, even with the most extreme regret, was part of Hitler's political agenda: to wipe out a shitload of the "enemies" of the God-chosen, Nordic, German People. The other part of his agenda, restore Germany to "greatness" (which is another debate, what is "greatness" for a nation?) failed, but only eventually, and only because the military might of the Allied forces ground Germany's "greatness" to a crashing halt (at great cost, I might add). Maybe, then, the word "effective" ought to necessitate a moral or ethical standard of some sort, but does it, typically?

However, does a "good" ruler's agenda, by which (s)he can be found to be so good at successfully completing, have to be a "good" agenda in the first place? (Again, we're talking moral, ethical and/or beneficial to the ruler's people.) And we must ask ourselves if good, as Chancellor Palpatine said to Annakin Skywalker, is merely a point of view or not. (Though it would be beneficial to us not to get bogged down in a discussion on the nature of truth, or whether it's relative or constant, and whatnot.)

Machiavelli's point of view was that a ruler should be capable, and have "virtue". He used the medieval Italian word "virtu"; but his meaning seems to have been what I suggested: he was an "effective" ruler, and to him, "good government" seems to have meant that the ruler was capable enough to actually maintain law and order in his state (after all, "political freedom" is no good when you do not have the freedom to walk down the street and go about your own business without being mugged or raped, right?)

And even if we do go down the ethical/moral road in order to seek our "good" ruler, can we allow a little leeway for the particular kind of state in question or the character of the particular region on Earth? Some parts of the world cannot be run so morally and ethically because of the inherent disorder within them (for example, Tito's Yugoslavia and other ethnically Balkanized regions of the world whose people have had personal vendettas for centuries and, lacking a "strong" ruler, they'd be at each others' throats in a nanosecond). And of course, different cultures have different needs, requiring different rulers and therefore standards of rule....or do they?

So how do we judge a ruler as a good or virtuous one? Does that depend only on our own ideas of what virtue and good are? Or even just our own ideas of effectiveness and ineptitude? Or maybe at the end of the day, it means nothing more than how well---or just how long---a ruler can cling onto power. Do we abandon the shackles of morality and ethics and fly high and fast into the realm of pragmatism, or do we cling to what we hold dear, even if there are countries in which other people don't.

A good ruler is one who, through his /her/ its actions, increases the total and median well-being of the people. Well-being encompasses Martha Nussbaum's list of 10 capabilities and anything that makes a person's life better.

Awesome answer...and short and sweet to boot. Realizing I had left my post with an open question I was in the process of writing a reply to clarify it...so I'll finish that soon as I can. Glad someone answered so far.

Have you read "1066 and all that" by Sellars and Yeatman?

It is parody, and based on years of wrong answers by schoolboys to history tests, but it does by example show different English rulers and defines them as whether they were a Good/Bad King and also a Good/Bad Thing.

I like freeman's definition. I would have said something along the lines of acting in the best interests of their people (which is not always according to popular will), but yes - leaving things better than they found them. Of course not all leaders have the luck to be able to determine outcomes. Maybe Hoover would have been better absent the Wall St Crash. Maybe Ford or Carter not having to come after Nixon, a failed war and a fuel crisis.

danivon

Of course not all leaders have the luck to be able to determine outcomes.

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Freemans definition works very well in the complex world we live in... Where human kind has developed and continues to develop an amazing society.

In baseball the stats geeks like to find a handful of vital stats that combine all of these things.
In the world of socio economic theory that Nussbaum's list contributes towards, the Human Development Index, or better the Human Development Index adjusted for inequality (to better guage development across the whole population) provide those stats.
If we were going to use this "stat" to guage Obama (for instance) the Inequality adjusted HDI for the US in 2014 is .755
In 2010 it was .799 ..... A decline.
The HDI not adjusted for inequality was .902 in 2010 and .914 in 2014. An increase...

Kind of interesting... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index

In my mind it demonstrates that Obama has failed to deal with at least one of the primary problems facing him. You can do the same comparison with other nations...

Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881): "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics

The numbers did not work for the argument being proposed, so a modifier needed to be applied. Perhaps the numbers should stand on their own.

a batting average for good and bad leaders...wow that's nifty! Didn't think it could really be quantified like that. Cool. And I'm glad to see you've come around on Obama's ineptitude, even if just on one aspect.

Well, Smith/Bueno themselves go down the Machiavellian path and look at things like what leaders must do, because they---even democratic leaders---want to stay in power as much as possible. What differs is what they have to do to stay in power, and the nature of their state (e.g., the size of its selectorate and "winning coalition"). Though democratic leaders tend to convince themselves that they're doing it for benevolent reasons. I firmly think most leaders tend to acquire power out of good intentions, I really do. Or at least "If I don't run for president, that @#$! so-and-so will, and ruin the country!" Ambition can be hidden very well with good intentions. But again, leaders can toss aside those good intentions in favor of clinging to power, still convinced they're doing the right thing; that they have to get one more term---just one more!---to get their agenda accomplished, which is so incredibly critical to their country's survival and prosperity. But by that time, there is little left but a desire to stay on at all costs.

Fortunately our first president set a two-term maximum (custom, not law) announced in an open letter that he would neither seek nor accept election to a third term as president. It was only a political custom (broken by FDR) until the 1950s when it became official, that you didn't have more than two terms as president. Had Washington accepted a third term as president---which he would have won with great certainty---he might have died in office, triggering a custom wherein it was perfectly acceptable to cling to the executive power in America, until death do you part. With Washington's 2-term maximum tradition, the office outlives the man. Not the other way around.

But rulers like Hosni Mubarak (30 years) and Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali (24 years) are not leaders of representative states. (The machinery was there, but it was either manipulated to the President's advantage, or ignored for the same reason.) Robert Byrd (lately the senior Senator from West Virginia) died in office, aged 92. He was the senator from West Virginia for 51 years. Then again, he did not wield singular executive power, but legislated collectively with 99 colleagues. Probably that's not as dangerous.

Should that at least that ought to be one of the rules of a "good" ruler? Someone not so self-obsessed, or power-obsessed, that he or she knows when the hell to throw in the towel? Naturally, this cannot apply to absolute monarchies where the ruler serves life without parole; but of course in republics---more specifically the "phony republics" like Mubarak's Egypt, Ben Ali's Tunisia or Assad's Syria---where the mechanisms of government appear more clear on paper but are in fact more nebulous, the term of the ruler does not depend on dynastic succession and is therefore indeterminate, and mostly up to the occupant himself to employ whatever methods necessary to prolong his power.

Rule No. 1 of a "good" ruler: know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em.

Wisdom
Integrity
Love
Surrounds themselves with good advisors
Self Control
Compassion
Aware of their influence over the people they rule
No need for public approval
Moderation
Aware of the position of a leader in submission to not only the people, but a higher power

I did a list but I had this sense of déjà vu after I did it...so I deleted it...my proposed definition was very abstract...maybe a more concrete look at actual historical figures would be in order.

bbauska

The numbers did not work for the argument being proposed, so a modifier needed to be applied. Perhaps the numbers should stand on their own

You mistake the sequence. I looked at the numbers and found a conclusion only after looking at the numbers. (That's how I was taught to use evidence...)
I think you also want to consider Freeman's original statement
Freeman3

A good ruler is one who, through his /her/ its actions, increases the total and median well-being of the people

The idea of leavening the development indices by factoring in the inequality in a society takes the "total and median well being into account". In a society that greatly enriches itself over a period of time, but in which only handful at the top of the pyramid actually share in the added riches, the total well being is not being improved ....

Statistics can be deceiving. Which ones decieve depends upon how they are used and what they say...
In baseball a .300 hitter could be a prized part of your line up. Unless that .300 hitter, never walked and hit only singles.
Would you not rather have a .275 hitter who walked another 10 percent of the time, and hit 50 doubles and 35 home runs?
I would
In the same vein I want to live in a society where everyone benefits from development. Not just a select few. That's why the index adjusted for inequality is a more realistic measure.
And I'd want a leader who sought to ensure that development did benefit did benefit everyone, not just the elite.

hacker

a batting average for good and bad leaders...wow that's nifty! Didn't think it could really be quantified like that. Cool. And I'm glad to see you've come around on Obama's ineptitude, even if just on one aspect

The problem with apportioning all of the credit or blame to the leader, in a complex democracy, is that said leaders neither deserve all the credit nor all the blame because their power is limited...
Although Obama has done little to reverse the problems of inequality he is working against Congress, an array of financial and corporate interests who have out size control over the political process, and a 30 year history of bending law and regulation to benefit an elite.

I also think that if you compare most nations in the two indices, inequality is a problem .

rickyp:

The problem with apportioning all of the credit or blame to the leader, in a complex democracy, is that said leaders neither deserve all the credit nor all the blame because their power is limited...
Although Obama has done little to reverse the problems of inequality he is working against Congress, an array of financial and corporate interests who have out size control over the political process, and a 30 year history of bending law and regulation to benefit an elite.

uh-huh...though I do agree that in a representative republic there is a complex web of power and it is indeed difficult to assign credit or blame to any one of them. Though you yourself have been quite adept just now at assigning blame to all but one of them (i.e., the Presidency). You must ask yourself, is the White House immune from such financial and corporate interests? Do you honestly think lobbyists in the United States ignore the executive branch entirely?

But at any rate, I beg thee, let's not go too far in that direction; I think we were talking about the goodness of leaders/rulers. And I'm mostly talking about the person with whom the buck stops (though I think I did mention Robert Byrd, one of our longest-serving members of Congress

bbauska:

Wisdom
Integrity
Love
Surrounds themselves with good advisors
Self Control
Compassion
Aware of their influence over the people they rule
No need for public approval
Moderation
Aware of the position of a leader in submission to not only the people, but a higher power

I agree that Integrity, Love and Compassion are wonderful traits in a leader. But we're not necessarily talking about Mother Teresa are we? (Which is part of the purpose of this thread). If we're talking about leaders/rulers in general, we must not limit ourselves to the democratic world, must we? And even if we were, there are times the President of the United States, the British Prime Minister, the German Chancellor and other democratic leaders cannot---and even some times they should not---act with those particular traits in mind. I might even go so far as to say it would be incredibly negligent to act with those traits principally in mind.

The liberals in our country often use the argument that, "the state should not be in the business of killing." Regrettably, I have to say that I disagree with that argument in toto. The problem is, folks, that the state already is in the business of killing. How many of you here are against the Navy Seals whacking Osama bin Laden? If the last president had said he refused to invade Afghanistan in order to break up the terrorist training camps and overthrow the regime shielding those who attacked us (and others), because he thought that "the state should not be in the business of killing", who would have taken him seriously as a national/international leader? (In fact, I think Republicans would have joined hands with Democrats in Congress and started impeachment proceedings soon after the words left his lips.)

Let's face it: rulers must do a lot of nasty stuff to protect their own people, democracy or dictatorship notwithstanding. So perhaps a better suggestion for a "good ruler" would be, one who acts with cruelty if and only if that's exactly what is needed to protect the lives and interests of his/her people. Or, one who acts with compassion if that is precisely what is needed to protect the lives and interests of his/her people.

Where a ruler becomes a bad ruler is where they cannot justify their actions, whether cruel or compassionate.

And also I think even the Ayatollahs of Iran are aware of their positions as leaders in submission to a higher power (after all, they are by definition a theocracy).

hacker

Though you yourself have been quite adept just now at assigning blame to all but one of them (i.e., the Presidency). You must ask yourself, is the White House immune from such financial and corporate interests? Do you honestly think lobbyists in the United States ignore the executive branch entirely?

Good lord. I am not a fan of Obama. I would have thought the reference I made in this thread didn't make that obvious. The problem may be that the nature of debate by many Americans on this site is to consider everything from an us or them situation.
And its pretty obvious that i think lobbyists, especially Wall Street have an outsize influence within the White House as well as Congress. Tim Geitner?

hacker

The liberals in our country often use the argument that, "the state should not be in the business of killing."

Who are these people?
And to what are they referring? Sounds like an argument against capital punishment and not an argument against the use of force in defending the nation.

Actually ricky, I said that with a great deal of levity; perhaps I was a bit too sarcastic with it. My apologies. And don't think I'm stereotyping all Canadians (or Britons, or French, or....etc.) as being automatic Obama-lovers, or you as one because you speak ill of the Republicans (which I myself have done!). Though it does seem that you put all the blame on Congress rather than the executive branch, some times. And, I think someone on Redscape (not necessarily you Ricky) accused me of falling for "GOPropaganda" because my opinion on the whole budget crisis leaned more toward "it takes two to tango". Because I disagreed with the viewpoint that it's all the Republicans' fault.

BTW: Tim Geithner? Was he the Secretary of the Treasury who failed to file tax returns for several years before being appointed to that position by President Obama?

Who are these people?
And to what are they referring? Sounds like an argument against capital punishment and not an argument against the use of force in defending the nation.

Good political instincts! Yes, it is the textbook argument against capital punishment by American liberals. My position---and OMG please please please I beg you let's not take over this thread with capital punishment discussion---is that the democratic standard of statecraft and international diplomacy seems to get a pass while at home it doesn't. In other words, there were some---though not many---Americans who objected to domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh being executed for his crime, claiming instead he should get life without parole. But no objection was heard from any quarter. left or right, when Navy Seals whacked Osama bin Laden.

Here is where I REALLY stick my neck out. What I say now is at least partly theoretical. I am simply looking for the most accurate answer with the least hypocrisy in it, and this may require detaching myself from the moral or ethical imperative for a moment or two. I only seek the truth in what makes a ruler good or bad, without getting too hypocritical or complicated about it. So pardon me for getting all Machiavellian about it. I believe myself to be a moral person, but I'm going to have to get Amoral---not immoral---to work through this.

Because this begs an interesting question, doesn't it? It seems people regard rulers as "bad rulers" because they will stop at nothing to preserve their power, even kill their own citizens. But when you go to war and kill foreign citizens, hey, that's OK because they're not your constituents. Even "collateral damage": regrettable but you cannot make an omelet without breaking an egg, that seems to be the prevailing attitude, even among "peace loving" people. In 1991, we killed 60,000 (possibly more) Iraqi civilians "to save a nickel on a gallon of gas" (as the terrorist in Air Force One put it mildly). [Personally, I think the situation WAS serious enough to warrant war against Iraq in 1991...but that's just me, I'm not the Prince we're talking about, here. ]

So....what does a good ruler or a bad ruler do in relation to killing his or citizens versus killing foreign citizens? If killing is wrong, and the state "should not be in the business of killing" as it is often put, why is it OK to kill 60,000 Iraqi civilians in the First Gulf War (and most likely a lot more in the Second)? Would a good ruler do that? Was George H.W. Bush a "bad ruler" for going to war against Iraq in Jan.-Feb., 1991, and killing so many civilians, not to mention a good bit of the Iraqi Army and Republican Guard? And Why?

The key word you are missing Hacker is context.

Judging a ruler from the 16th century from today, one has to account for the historical context. At what point was the world developed? I don't think you can compare leaders across time without accounting for the context of human development at the time.

The one thing George Bush had right is that modern democracies tend not to make war on each other. A large part of the reason for that is that democracies ensure that the common folk have political power. And the common folk aren't really interested in war that will affect them personally. I think most have learned that in modern wars, ordinary people suffer much of the harm.
Therefore the standard that Freeman alludes to is attained more by democracies because their rulers must respond to the masses... To an extent dictators and kings did, but not in a way comparable to the need to respond that is inherent in an elected official..

Interesting side note. One reason that the US can still support many foreign interventions is that
few are actually directly affected by these wars.

As a country, America has been at war nonstop for the past 13 years. As a public, it has not. A total of about 2.5 million Americans, roughly three-quarters of 1 percent, served in Iraq or Afghanistan at any point in the post-9/11 years, many of them more than once.

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/arc ... ry/383516/

by the way, worth the read ... the link.

SO its easy to use the military if voters aren't really affected.
George Bush 1 could invade Iraq and return Kuwait to its despot status because it really only affected a handful of people. I think he was probably right to do so, and also right not to occupy the nation... Compare the occupation by his son and the negative affects on the US as a result of that failure.

Well, I cannot say that I agree with all of that article's conclusions but I'm willing to cut the author some slack for at least showing some respect for the needs of the military and Americans' attitudes toward it (which I do not agree he's got spot on, however).

But I think the article was a little off topic where it comes to good and bad rulers. The main point is what makes a leader or ruler "good" or "bad"? And we're not just talking about republican (lower case r) presidents (and I mean real republics, not jumped-up tinpot dictators who use, or rather misuse, the title) or democratic (lower case d) prime ministers; we're also talking about the jumped-up tinpot dictators, too. The United States (and every country with significant international interests of some sorts) deals with lots of types of regimes and peoples around the world, from the Czechs to the Chinese.

So you're saying, we should take the goodness or badness of rulers in the context of the time in which they ruled? Well, should we take them in context of the region of the world they're governing part of? If bauska's list of characteristics of "good" rulers is correct, aren't we giving quite a few leaders a "pass" on the atrocious acts against they have committed against their own peoples? and others'?

Well, you've avoided my question about killing one's own citizens versus killing those of foreign countries? And does a good ruler kill only the other nation's citizens rather than his own, even if it's in the best interests of safety and freedom of his own people?

Interesting side note. One reason that the US can still support many foreign interventions is that few are actually directly affected by these wars.

No, we can support many foreign interventions because we have the military budget and revenues to do so. According to the CIA World Factbook the United States has revenues of $2,849 billions of dollars. And it spends 4.35% of GDP on the military (so theoretically it could be even bigger; in the past, it was). though again, Ricky, that's getting a bit off topic and you haven't answered my question above.

And by the way a lot of people in the US still have military in their families, or know someone as a friend or associate who came home from the war in Iraq or Afghanistan. There's a good reason we still have the GI bill and other measures to help returning veterans.

But again, that's off topic. What does our support of foreign interventions in relation to fewer or greater people being affected by those wars? If there is some connection to the main topic here, I am missing it.

And since it's January 1, 2015 already for some of our members, Happy New Year!