Leadership and Developing Societies

COVER NOTE: COVID-19 Special Issue

‘Funmi Olonisakin, Barney Walsh — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Leadership in Crisis: Markers of sustained influence for societal mobilisation in response to COVID-19

'Funmi Olonisakin, Barney Walsh — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

COVID-19 posed an intense and prolonged threat to many aspects of societal life. Its global reach and impact was truly remarkable. This situation demanded a response that went beyond that of social mobilisation in “normal” times: it required the rapid deployment of the aggregation of an entire population and its resources to fight against this threat to their common existence. Societal mobilisation in this sense, was thus critical to an effective response to COVID-19 at any level of society – local, national, regional and global. This work argues that societal mobilisation presupposes an existing leadership infrastructure that places a given society at a vantage point to respond effectively during crisis with all its resources – human, social and economic. Ultimately, leadership was the striking difference between societies that responded effectively to the outbreak of COVID-19 and those that were less effective. In this paper, Leadership infrastructure refers to a combination of the formal institutional elements of governing across realms (the hardware of leadership infrastructure); and the foundational relationships, shared values and expectations that underpin and reinforce these institutions across society (the software of leadership infrastructure). The paper discusses the role and implications of this infrastructure in shaping government and society responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, in relation, also, to the alternative leadership infrastructure that might support societal mobilisation outside of government frameworks; and the collective memory of previous pandemics. The paper argues that COVID-19 laid bare the strengths and weaknesses of societies and leaders. New leaders and alternative repositories of trust emerged; and there was no hiding place for those who failed to live up to the challenges of the moment. This paper provides a conceptual framework for subsequent research to take place.

Leading in Crisis: Leaders’ Approaches to Societal Mobilisation in Response to COVID-19 In Kano State, Nigeria

Ibrahim Mohammed Machina — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The outbreak of COVID-19 posed unprecedented challenges, disrupting public health systems as well as socio-economic and political activities globally, including in Nigeria. In Kano State, the rapid spread of the virus, coupled with a fragmented government response, raised critical concerns. Citizens’ reactions to government mobilisation efforts varied widely, with many resisting or disregarding public health measures due to complex social, cultural, and political factors. This article employs a process-based leadership framework to examine how leaders mobilised society in response to COVID-19 in Kano. It explores the patterns of citizens’ responses, the emergence of citizen-led initiatives such as Kano Against COVID-19, and other sources of influence shaping these dynamics. Drawing on primary data from ten virtual interviews and secondary data from existing literature, the article highlights key moments where leadership and governance structures were tested. The article argues that, while it is justifiable for the government to mobilise society during pandemics such as COVID-19, its effectiveness in Kano was intrinsically tied to leadership and governance structures. The findings reveal that the nature of leadership, trust, and state-society relations in Kano significantly influenced the government’s (in)ability to mobilise and sustain societal mobilisation in response to COVID-19. This highlights the need for hybrid governance systems that integrate formal and informal structures to foster trust, mutuality, and societal mobilisation in the face of global challenges.

Social Distancing and Distanced Societies: A Case study of leadership in the early days of COVID-19 in South Africa

Abigail Riggs — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The outbreak of COVID-19 This paper provides a leadership analysis of the first five months of the COVID-19 response in South Africa. Societal mobilisation requires a unified and rapid response to crisis, meaning that effective leadership must reach all areas of society. This paper examines the strength of the leadership foundation by applying Olanisakin and Walsh’s markers of sustained influence to two disparate communities in Durban, South Africa: Inanda, a working-class township, and Durban North, a middle-class suburb. A case study was produced using social media, news articles, and government communications to compare mobilisation in the two neighbourhoods. This paper argues that the sense of the threat posed by COVID-19, as articulated by the government, was not shared across society. While Durban North residents felt the medical threat of the virus, people living in Inanda were more concerned with the threat of poverty. This research found that the government's COVID-19 policies did not sufficiently protect those living outside of everyday structures of governance, such as informal workers, and this led to an exacerbation of pre-existing inequalities. Without a common sense of what is at stake, and a common experience of this threat, it is difficult to establish a ‘whole society’ response. While a strong software of leadership infrastructure enables action based on trust and shared values of togetherness, a weakness in the software can lead to reliance on the hardware of leadership infrastructure, which in this example reproduces existing inequalities within society.

Mutuality and Power: An Analysis of Non-State Actors’ Influence in Mitigating the Negative Consequences of State Response to COVID-19 on Adolescent Girls in Kenya

Nyawira Wahito — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The gendered impacts of pandemics tend to be very conspicuous in how they destabilise the lives of women and girls. However, they are also visibly inconspicuous in academic literature and research. This especially pertains to how these impacts categorically affect adolescent girls and the underpinning leadership dynamic that facilitate the brunt of these impacts. Available literature tends to present women as a homogenous category and focuses on leadership through its governing bodies. This paper aims contributes to this academic gap by interrogating the influence of state and non-state actors in mitigating the negative consequences of COVID-19 on the lives of adolescent girls in Nairobi and Machakos Counties of Kenya. This study does this by exploring two main objectives; 1) To understand the impact of societal mobilisation in response to COVID-19 on adolescent girls in Nairobi and Machakos; 2) To investigate the degree to which women’s rights organisations are able to mitigate the impact of the state’s response on adolescent girls. The study examines the patriarchal power dynamic that sustains Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) which was exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic and lead to the spike in teenage pregnancies in Nairobi and Machakos. The leadership concepts of mutuality and power help this study unpack the relationships of the state, non-state actors and adolescent girls; as well, as how these actors influence adolescent girls stemming from the social bases of power they hold.

Guinean leadership in the face of crisis, from Ebola to COVID-19

Aminatou Diallo — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper, based on research undertaken during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, evaluates Guinea’s leadership infrastructure from independence in 1958 until the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. It determines that Guinea’s leadership can be characterized by a coercive social contract. The paper uses leadership theory to determine the underlying issue to Guinea’s continuous stagnant development. It highlights that leadership emergence is deficient due to the inability of persons and institutions to respond to the true causes of Guinean’s malaise, thus demonstrating an inability to build mutuality between the population and national leaders. The failure, then, to build true mutuality with the population and advance common goals led to a perpetuation of the coercive social contract, which historically has proven unsustainable and has resulted in the swift and violent departures of successive regimes. The paper specifically focused on leadership in response to crisis, during the 2013 Ebola and 2019 Covid-19 pandemic to demonstrate that whilst crisis response did take place, leadership was lacking and thus a continued cycle of re-enforcement of the status quo at the detriment of the needs of the population was maintained.

A Taoist Perspective on China's Dynamic Zero-COVID Policy and Implementation

Kaiyu Feng — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

South Sudanese Youth Agency in a Time of COVID-19: Insights on Youth, Leadership & The Opportunity of Crisis

Maggie LoWilla — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Mutual Aid and COVID-19 in London: Understanding Community Resilience

Awino Okech, Wadeisor Rukato — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000