Good Democratic Leadership During Crisis; An Analysis of Thucydides, Homer, and the Covid-19 Crisis

For my thesis, I have analyzed and researched leadership, and more specifically: good democratic crisis leadership. I utilized three ancient authors who also focused on crisis periods and the leaders during each crisis. In traversing three different ancient periods and then moving to our modern day and the Covid-19 pandemic, my goal has been to understand what makes a good crisis leader and why. Specifically, by analyzing the accounts of these crisis leaders from the ancient authors, we can learn various lessons about both good and bad crisis leadership while better understanding the phenomenon of crisis and how it is treated by these authors. The goal also is not to simply assert or ponder if one individual leader is a good or bad crisis leader (although this will help at some points), but to actually understand the accounts of the crisis leader by each ancient source and to put this into conversation with relevant secondary literature. Each chapter of this thesis will contains an argument that is unique to that chapter but simultaneously works towards fulfilling the overarching question of the thesis. I first became interested with this question when observing the various different styles of leadership deployed by the world’s leaders to combat the Coronavirus crisis. As a double major, I knew my thesis would also have to be relevant to classics, and so I had the idea to pick out a few different periods in ancient classical civilization and to identify times of crisis, who the crisis leaders were, and compare their traits with our leaders of today. I have addressed my research question with three chapters. The first is on Ancient Greece and the Iliad, as I analyze Homer’s account of Agamemnon as a crisis leader and understand why Homer paints a grim picture of him as a crisis time leader. Next, Pericles and the Peloponnesian War, as I uncover Thucydides’ glowing account of Pericles and discuss how Thucydides describes and views Pericles as a great crisis manager because he possesses virtues like prudence and moderation, which we see on display in the speeches Pericles delivers. Lastly, I move to our modern day to discuss the Covid-19 crisis by looking at democratic crisis managers like Donald Trump and Angela Merkel. By understanding the faults of a narcissistic style of leadership and the benefits of a compassionate type leadership, I relate Trump to Agamemnon and Merkel to Pericles. From analyzing the leadership on display in democracy fighting Coronavirus, naturally some questions arise. What are the traits of good and bad crisis leadership that can be taken away from our ancient sources and where and how can we see this traits in our current leaders? Can we provide a direction for our crisis leaders to move towards based off my conclusions from the ancient sources? Questions like these will be discussed throughout the modern chapter and within my conclusion, and I conclude that leadership can find a compassionate way forward.