1. Introduction
Leadership within the African context can best be described as quoted in the Chinese book “I Ching, or Chinese Book of Changes”, (1971) “To become a centre of influence holding people together is a grave matter and fraught with great responsibility. It requires greatness of spirit, consistency, and strength. Therefore let him who wishes to gather others about him ask himself whether he is equal to the undertaking...” Leadership has several forms of agency:
1.1. Official power:
The authority to instruct government machinery to carry out instructions is the prime example. Hence, the leadership we expect is above all about responsibility; requiring acceptance of the importance of one's self-coupled with an appreciation of the greater importance of others over oneself. Therefore, leadership entails liability for those who are led - whereby, leadership becomes a discipline in its own right. There is no set of techniques, rules, or series of commandments with which the leader can arm themselves and be assured of success; nonetheless, they must always interrelate, familiarize, change, and transform themselves.
1.2. Supremacy over dialogue:
Our cabinet leaders are expected to develop the capacity, through their statements and actions, including symbolic actions, to shape debate and dialogue. Even when their formal power is limited, they can use their access to the media and stature in society to influence what people talk about. It is vital to recognize that, through either position or personality, they have the power to impact on the world - to change it. This, in fact, is the essence of leadership: the leader is one who does not accept the limitations of a “given” situation or set of circumstances, but uses the opportunity to transform such constraints into new realities, and takes responsibility for the privilege.
1.3. Moral high ground:
An inspiring ‘job description’ of our ministers must be not only the power over discourse but also their ability to shape morality, to determine what is socially acceptable, culturally sound and politically uplifting. Indeed, leadership is more than a job; it is a calling.
1.4. Leaders operate at national and international levels:
The international component may be particularly important here, given our clear continen-tal African identity adopted under Emperor Haile Sellasse. As custodian of African Unity, our leaders are expected to be the role model for social change.
1.5. Leadership for human development and human security:
Political leadership of human development and human security requires intimate knowledge of public policy analysis, formulation, and management and development of strategic plans and implementing them. We can identify four main aspects to this:
• analysis, formulation and management of policy, strategy, process and organisation;
• obtaining policy consensus;
• ensuring that the public service can actually carry out policy, and not see it subverted or undermined;
• ensuring that the policy is implemented with sufficient energy: this implies mechanisms for monitoring and accountability: in addition, we can identify some of the preconditions for effective public policy measures against a major social ill:
o A set of technical and/or policy measures that a state can utilise to tackle effectively the specific social ill, with a package that works in the most basic technical manner.
o Mechanisms to ensure that the technologies and/or policies are adequately utilised, backed by legislation, administrative commitment or other specific forms of sanctioning. There have to be mechanisms for ensuring that institutions function, and political processes for accountability.
o An ethical consensus, which rules that this specific social ill is unacceptable, the policy must be acceptable to the target group and the public;
This is especially important in our continent when the policy imperatives involve trying to change attitudes and behaviour of a national psyche that has rendered the nation eternally dependent on international charity. Thus, our leaders are on the one hand responsible for breaking the boundaries of inward bound wisdom, of “common sense”, of patterns of thinking and behaving, which, over the years, have built themselves into routines, which pacify people to dormancy. On the other hand, they also have to maintain continuity whilst simultaneously promoting change; such is the nature of leadership ambiguity and contradiction that comes as part of the same deal.
2. Leaders oversight is an important part of the policy making process.
Leaders should ensure that the agreed policy is properly implemented and delivered to the tar-get citizens by means of leaders' oversight. As to Pelizzo et al (2006:8), “scholars have generally agreed on the fact that effective oversight is good for the proper functioning of a democratic political system. Effective oversight is beneficial for a political system for, at least, two basic reasons (West and Cooper, 1989): ‘first, because the oversight activity can actually contribute to improving the quality of the policies/programs initiated by the government; second, because as the government policies are ratified by the leadership branch, such policies acquire greater legitimacy’”. Besides their responsibility for the leadership process, leaders have a key function in providing oversight of the government on behalf of the public (Beetham, 2006:127). Through its core oversight function, leaders holds the government to account on behalf of the people, ensuring that government policy and action are both efficient and commensurate with the needs of the public and leaders’ oversight is crucial in checking excesses on the government (Yamamoto, 2007:6).
Studies have underlined that the legislature may adopt several tools to oversee the actions of the executives such as hearings in committees, hearings in the plenary assembly, the creation of inquiry committees, leaders’ questions, question time, the interpellations and the ombudsman (Pelizzo et al., 2006:8; Maffio, 2002 & Pennings, 2000). The key functions of leaders’ oversight can be described as follows. At the core of this function is the protection of liberties of citizens, to detect and prevent abuse, arbitrary behaviour or unconstitutional conduct on the part of the government and public agencies. It detects waste within the machinery of public agencies. Thus, it can improve the efficiency, economy and effectiveness of government operations and hold the government to account in respect of how the taxpayers’ money is used. Ensuring that that policies are actually delivered includes monitoring the achievement of goals set by legislation and to improve the transparency of operations and enhance public trust, which is itself a condition of effective policy delivery.
However, as to Blackburn and Kennon (2003:6) “the government is not the only source of in-put of business for leaders. Much business originates from the opposition. The inspiration for their input is largely found in general public opinion, outside pressures or interest groups, newspapers, radio and television, and in the minds and attitudes of millions of citizens represented in the Com-mons by Members”. Leaders, therefore, finds itself the recipient of a wide range of external pressures and proposals, broadly divided between the governments on the one hand and the outside world - the public on the other. The prerequisite for policy making process is the existence of strong and competent leadership body. No country can have a workable democracy, with adequate avenues for citizens to be heard and without a vibrant and meaningful leadership (Ornstein, 1992:1).
Nonetheless, in almost every nation around the world, there is a gap between leadership powers to hold the executive to account (Power, 2012:16). However, since recent times, optimistic practices have been emerging even in the most criticized Sub-Saharan Africa. Joel Barkan (2009), in a wide-ranging study of leadership development in Africa, suggests that the situation is changing, with leaders evolv¬ing out of their role as rubber stamps for the executive and becoming more effective as watchdogs, policy-makers and representatives. Leaderships has to make effort not only to promote the public participation in the policy making process but also to perform representation functions.
The first and foremost characteristic of a leadership is its intrinsic link to the citizens of the nation or state – representation. In a representative democracy, they act as the eyes, ears and voice of the people (Ornstein, 1992:2). The other dimension to constituency activity consists in ensuring that local experience informs national policy-making. through their interaction with voters, local MPs gain enormous expertise about the impact of policy decisions and legislation at the local level. That direct experience is often far greater that of the civil servants and ministers responsible for drafting and implement¬ing legislation, but is rarely used by leaders in any systematic fashion to shape legislation. Instead, it is most frequently due to the initiative of individual politicians that the experience of citizens is used as a policy resource (Greg Power, 2012:66).
Leaders also need to have means of engaging and influencing the public. Openness and being accessible to the voter and taxpayer is a crucial feature of leaderships. Most leaders have sought to improve their outreach in the basic provision of information, especially through the development of visitors’ centers, open days and events – based on the insight that, in order to interest people in the leaders, there is no substitute for physical access. Because leaders’ outreach will ever physically touch only a small proportion of the population, the key means for informing citizens about public affairs, and a key channel of communication between leaders and public. In their investigative role, the media have always been seen as a ‘watchdog’ against all kinds of abuse. How well they fulfil these functions is vital for the quality of democratic life. Given the tendency for these functions to become distorted, whether by executive partiality in a state-controlled system, or by powerful economic interests in a commercialized one, leaders have key democratic role in setting an appropriate legal framework for the media, to ensure both their independence and their diversity (Beetham, 2006:6).
Another essential function of leaders in the policy making process is entertaining of public petition. Any citizen or group of citizens may prepare and sign a petition to the house on any matter in which the house has jurisdiction to interfere (Blackburn & Kennon, 2003:380). They extend their account by indicating that the petition must be presented to the house by a member. Policy is nothing without budget allocation, hence, it is a component of the policy making process. A law without a budget is simply rhetoric and the budget-making process is as critical as the lawmaking process (Hollister, 2007:7). The budget is the most important economic policy tool of a government and provides a comprehensive statement of the priorities of a nation. As the representative institutions of the people, it falls to national leaderships to ensure that the budget optimally matches a nation’s needs with available resources. Effective leadership participation in the budget process establishes checks and balances that are crucial for transparent and accountable government to ensure efficient delivery of public services (Wehner & Byanyima 2004:9).
Leaders’ 'power of the purse' is a fundamental feature of democracy. The vast majority of democratic constitutions require appropriations and taxation measures to be approved by leaders in order to become effective. For this requirement to be more than constitutional fiction though, leaders must ensure that the revenue and spending measures it authorizes are fiscally sound, match the needs of the population with available resources, and are implemented properly and efficiently”. Its options are to approve or reject the budget, to amend it, or, in a few cases, to substitute the draft tabled by the executive with its own budget. In some countries, the leadership passes separate legislation for appropriations and changes to the tax code; in others, it considers a unified budget bill. The exact form of leadership approval is less important than the fact that it must be comprehensive. Principles of authorization of all public spending & taxation ensures the ‘rule of law’ in public finance (Ibid:1, 30-31).
Thus, leadership capacity here entails conceptualization in global categories that are invested with varying local meanings that are themselves in part actualization of trends in international polilitical (and development) such as witnessed in Singapore and the Tiger Economies.
See more here or paste this link - https://www.academia.edu/11750510/Africa_Strategic_Governance_and_Leadership_Challenges_and_Opportunities
Leadership within the African context can best be described as quoted in the Chinese book “I Ching, or Chinese Book of Changes”, (1971) “To become a centre of influence holding people together is a grave matter and fraught with great responsibility. It requires greatness of spirit, consistency, and strength. Therefore let him who wishes to gather others about him ask himself whether he is equal to the undertaking...” Leadership has several forms of agency:
1.1. Official power:
The authority to instruct government machinery to carry out instructions is the prime example. Hence, the leadership we expect is above all about responsibility; requiring acceptance of the importance of one's self-coupled with an appreciation of the greater importance of others over oneself. Therefore, leadership entails liability for those who are led - whereby, leadership becomes a discipline in its own right. There is no set of techniques, rules, or series of commandments with which the leader can arm themselves and be assured of success; nonetheless, they must always interrelate, familiarize, change, and transform themselves.
1.2. Supremacy over dialogue:
Our cabinet leaders are expected to develop the capacity, through their statements and actions, including symbolic actions, to shape debate and dialogue. Even when their formal power is limited, they can use their access to the media and stature in society to influence what people talk about. It is vital to recognize that, through either position or personality, they have the power to impact on the world - to change it. This, in fact, is the essence of leadership: the leader is one who does not accept the limitations of a “given” situation or set of circumstances, but uses the opportunity to transform such constraints into new realities, and takes responsibility for the privilege.
1.3. Moral high ground:
An inspiring ‘job description’ of our ministers must be not only the power over discourse but also their ability to shape morality, to determine what is socially acceptable, culturally sound and politically uplifting. Indeed, leadership is more than a job; it is a calling.
1.4. Leaders operate at national and international levels:
The international component may be particularly important here, given our clear continen-tal African identity adopted under Emperor Haile Sellasse. As custodian of African Unity, our leaders are expected to be the role model for social change.
1.5. Leadership for human development and human security:
Political leadership of human development and human security requires intimate knowledge of public policy analysis, formulation, and management and development of strategic plans and implementing them. We can identify four main aspects to this:
• analysis, formulation and management of policy, strategy, process and organisation;
• obtaining policy consensus;
• ensuring that the public service can actually carry out policy, and not see it subverted or undermined;
• ensuring that the policy is implemented with sufficient energy: this implies mechanisms for monitoring and accountability: in addition, we can identify some of the preconditions for effective public policy measures against a major social ill:
o A set of technical and/or policy measures that a state can utilise to tackle effectively the specific social ill, with a package that works in the most basic technical manner.
o Mechanisms to ensure that the technologies and/or policies are adequately utilised, backed by legislation, administrative commitment or other specific forms of sanctioning. There have to be mechanisms for ensuring that institutions function, and political processes for accountability.
o An ethical consensus, which rules that this specific social ill is unacceptable, the policy must be acceptable to the target group and the public;
This is especially important in our continent when the policy imperatives involve trying to change attitudes and behaviour of a national psyche that has rendered the nation eternally dependent on international charity. Thus, our leaders are on the one hand responsible for breaking the boundaries of inward bound wisdom, of “common sense”, of patterns of thinking and behaving, which, over the years, have built themselves into routines, which pacify people to dormancy. On the other hand, they also have to maintain continuity whilst simultaneously promoting change; such is the nature of leadership ambiguity and contradiction that comes as part of the same deal.
2. Leaders oversight is an important part of the policy making process.
Leaders should ensure that the agreed policy is properly implemented and delivered to the tar-get citizens by means of leaders' oversight. As to Pelizzo et al (2006:8), “scholars have generally agreed on the fact that effective oversight is good for the proper functioning of a democratic political system. Effective oversight is beneficial for a political system for, at least, two basic reasons (West and Cooper, 1989): ‘first, because the oversight activity can actually contribute to improving the quality of the policies/programs initiated by the government; second, because as the government policies are ratified by the leadership branch, such policies acquire greater legitimacy’”. Besides their responsibility for the leadership process, leaders have a key function in providing oversight of the government on behalf of the public (Beetham, 2006:127). Through its core oversight function, leaders holds the government to account on behalf of the people, ensuring that government policy and action are both efficient and commensurate with the needs of the public and leaders’ oversight is crucial in checking excesses on the government (Yamamoto, 2007:6).
Studies have underlined that the legislature may adopt several tools to oversee the actions of the executives such as hearings in committees, hearings in the plenary assembly, the creation of inquiry committees, leaders’ questions, question time, the interpellations and the ombudsman (Pelizzo et al., 2006:8; Maffio, 2002 & Pennings, 2000). The key functions of leaders’ oversight can be described as follows. At the core of this function is the protection of liberties of citizens, to detect and prevent abuse, arbitrary behaviour or unconstitutional conduct on the part of the government and public agencies. It detects waste within the machinery of public agencies. Thus, it can improve the efficiency, economy and effectiveness of government operations and hold the government to account in respect of how the taxpayers’ money is used. Ensuring that that policies are actually delivered includes monitoring the achievement of goals set by legislation and to improve the transparency of operations and enhance public trust, which is itself a condition of effective policy delivery.
However, as to Blackburn and Kennon (2003:6) “the government is not the only source of in-put of business for leaders. Much business originates from the opposition. The inspiration for their input is largely found in general public opinion, outside pressures or interest groups, newspapers, radio and television, and in the minds and attitudes of millions of citizens represented in the Com-mons by Members”. Leaders, therefore, finds itself the recipient of a wide range of external pressures and proposals, broadly divided between the governments on the one hand and the outside world - the public on the other. The prerequisite for policy making process is the existence of strong and competent leadership body. No country can have a workable democracy, with adequate avenues for citizens to be heard and without a vibrant and meaningful leadership (Ornstein, 1992:1).
Nonetheless, in almost every nation around the world, there is a gap between leadership powers to hold the executive to account (Power, 2012:16). However, since recent times, optimistic practices have been emerging even in the most criticized Sub-Saharan Africa. Joel Barkan (2009), in a wide-ranging study of leadership development in Africa, suggests that the situation is changing, with leaders evolv¬ing out of their role as rubber stamps for the executive and becoming more effective as watchdogs, policy-makers and representatives. Leaderships has to make effort not only to promote the public participation in the policy making process but also to perform representation functions.
The first and foremost characteristic of a leadership is its intrinsic link to the citizens of the nation or state – representation. In a representative democracy, they act as the eyes, ears and voice of the people (Ornstein, 1992:2). The other dimension to constituency activity consists in ensuring that local experience informs national policy-making. through their interaction with voters, local MPs gain enormous expertise about the impact of policy decisions and legislation at the local level. That direct experience is often far greater that of the civil servants and ministers responsible for drafting and implement¬ing legislation, but is rarely used by leaders in any systematic fashion to shape legislation. Instead, it is most frequently due to the initiative of individual politicians that the experience of citizens is used as a policy resource (Greg Power, 2012:66).
Leaders also need to have means of engaging and influencing the public. Openness and being accessible to the voter and taxpayer is a crucial feature of leaderships. Most leaders have sought to improve their outreach in the basic provision of information, especially through the development of visitors’ centers, open days and events – based on the insight that, in order to interest people in the leaders, there is no substitute for physical access. Because leaders’ outreach will ever physically touch only a small proportion of the population, the key means for informing citizens about public affairs, and a key channel of communication between leaders and public. In their investigative role, the media have always been seen as a ‘watchdog’ against all kinds of abuse. How well they fulfil these functions is vital for the quality of democratic life. Given the tendency for these functions to become distorted, whether by executive partiality in a state-controlled system, or by powerful economic interests in a commercialized one, leaders have key democratic role in setting an appropriate legal framework for the media, to ensure both their independence and their diversity (Beetham, 2006:6).
Another essential function of leaders in the policy making process is entertaining of public petition. Any citizen or group of citizens may prepare and sign a petition to the house on any matter in which the house has jurisdiction to interfere (Blackburn & Kennon, 2003:380). They extend their account by indicating that the petition must be presented to the house by a member. Policy is nothing without budget allocation, hence, it is a component of the policy making process. A law without a budget is simply rhetoric and the budget-making process is as critical as the lawmaking process (Hollister, 2007:7). The budget is the most important economic policy tool of a government and provides a comprehensive statement of the priorities of a nation. As the representative institutions of the people, it falls to national leaderships to ensure that the budget optimally matches a nation’s needs with available resources. Effective leadership participation in the budget process establishes checks and balances that are crucial for transparent and accountable government to ensure efficient delivery of public services (Wehner & Byanyima 2004:9).
Leaders’ 'power of the purse' is a fundamental feature of democracy. The vast majority of democratic constitutions require appropriations and taxation measures to be approved by leaders in order to become effective. For this requirement to be more than constitutional fiction though, leaders must ensure that the revenue and spending measures it authorizes are fiscally sound, match the needs of the population with available resources, and are implemented properly and efficiently”. Its options are to approve or reject the budget, to amend it, or, in a few cases, to substitute the draft tabled by the executive with its own budget. In some countries, the leadership passes separate legislation for appropriations and changes to the tax code; in others, it considers a unified budget bill. The exact form of leadership approval is less important than the fact that it must be comprehensive. Principles of authorization of all public spending & taxation ensures the ‘rule of law’ in public finance (Ibid:1, 30-31).
Thus, leadership capacity here entails conceptualization in global categories that are invested with varying local meanings that are themselves in part actualization of trends in international polilitical (and development) such as witnessed in Singapore and the Tiger Economies.
See more here or paste this link - https://www.academia.edu/11750510/Africa_Strategic_Governance_and_Leadership_Challenges_and_Opportunities
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