King of the Mountain: The Nature of Political Leadership [Hardcover]

It is surprising that the proponents of evolutionary psychology have not paid more attention to this book. Ludwig argues that the human desire to be the supreme political ruler is rooted in the same biological nature that supports the dominance of alpha males among monkeys and apes. He supports this argument with analysis of the 1,941 chief executive rulers of the independent countries in the 20th century. He illustrates his points with lively anecdotes from the lives of the 377 rulers for whom he had sufficient biographical information.

Of the many interesting points that he makes, one is that he can explain one of the universal traits of human politics--that the highest positions of political rule tend to be filled predominantly by men. Political scientists rarely acknowledge--much less explain--this remarkable pattern of male dominance. Ludwig explains it as a manifestation of male primate tendencies rooted in the neurophysiology of the male as shaped by natural selection in evolutionary history. (Surprisingly, Ludwig does not mention Steven Goldberg's book WHY MEN RULE, which makes a similar argument.)

There is one bright spot in Ludwig's otherwise dark vision of politics dominated by Machiavellian brutality--he shows that democratic leaders in established democracies act with more restraint than those in other kinds of regimes. He doesn't explain this. But he could have argued that even this has biological roots by appealing to Christopher Boehm's claim (in his book HIERARCHY IN THE FOREST) that there is a biological basis not only for the natural desire for dominance but also for the natural desire to resist dominance, and that modern democracy expresses that ambivalent political nature by allowing ambitious individuals to compete for high office within the constraints of constitutional structures that protect subordinates from being exploited.

I have developed some of these points in my book DARWINIAN NATURAL RIGHT: THE BIOLOGICAL ETHICS OF HUMAN NATURE.

I found it curious that not one of the previous reviewers mention Ataturk in their reviews, not one, yet; Ataturk came out first in Ludwig's "Political Greatness Scale." How could all these reviewers simply ignore this? I also found his comments about the lack of women leaders at the highest level quite amazing.

In an on air interview with the author, Brian Lamb the host, interviews Arnold Ludwig:
[...]

Ludwig comments that "as I got into my work more and more, a number of questions began emerging that I could not answer, that puzzled me. For example, why was it that there were so few women rulers in the 20th century?"

He goes on to say "There were a total of 27 out of 1,941, which the percentage was 1.4 percent. And of those, half of them -- at least half -- were either wives of some famous politician, they'd borrowed their husbands' charisma, or daughters of him. And so that left -- if you look at just women who have made it on their own, that was about .75 percent. So the chances of a woman becoming a ruler in the 20th century were less than 100-to-1 odds, over 100-to-1 odds against it."

Mr Lamb then asks Ludwig about his "Political Greatness Scale" and says "the number one leader you found in the 20th century, from your political greatness scale, was Ataturk." and goes on to ask "But why Ataturk?" and Ludwig answers: "Let's look at what Ataturk did. And again, mind you, take this in the context of some of the other great leaders that -- some of the immortals I've mentioned. Ataturk created -- started Turkey. He dismantled the Ottoman empire, which was in existence at the time. He not only was the founder of the country, creating a country, but he caused a profound social change in Turkey. He introduced democracy into Turkey, somewhat a militant type of democracy, but a democracy nonetheless. He separated -- he was one of the -- first time in history to kind of separate church and state. In fact, even though it is predominantly a Muslim country, it's one of the few ones where certain types of freedoms are permitted..."

Ignorance of Ataturk is widespread, I hope this book will shed some more light on this man and his accomplishments. For an excellent resource on Ataturk see Ataturk: The Biography of the founder of Modern Turkey or this one which is an older, less comprehensive study Ataturk: A Biography of Mustafa Kemal, Father of Modern Turkey

Despite its hard science dressings, this book is primarily a popular (versus academic) account of modern political leadership. Although Dr. Ludwig is obviously knowledgable about psychology, the scientific discourse in this book is kept to a minimum. Mostly, the book consists of a series of highly entertaining anecdotes about famous political figures, collected to support his thesis that political greatness equates possesing the characteristics of the "Alpha Male". The acceptability of this amoralistic conception of "greatness" - where Mao and FDR are co-ranked the greatest modern political leaders with Stalin a close second - is up to each reader to decide.