Watching The Office. Jim just got promoted to Co-Manager, and Oscar (who is probably one of the more "normal" characters)sarcastically says something along the lines of "Look, it doesn't take a genius to know that an organization thrives under two leaders. How many countries can you name that don't have two presidents?"


What I find ironic is that most countries DO in a way have two leaders. Canada has the Prime Minister, and, technically, the governer general, who in theory can veto anything (not to mention the fact that we almost invariably have had minority governments for the last few elections). Similarly, both ourselves and the United States have two legislative bodies, ours being MPs, theirs Congressmen, with us both having Senators.

England also comes to mind, having similar assemblies, a Prime Minister, and a Moncarch. The German form of goverment (I can't remember the name, as I'm pretty baked) has both a President and a Prime Minister, as do many European countries. China has a whole Board of some sort, many south american countries have had some form of junta, and in liberal democracies (socialist?) like Canada, where the opposition can easily have more pull than the elected party itself.

And this is just ignoring the historical facts. Most countries before the rise of Rome were ruled by many tribes, united mostly in name, culture, and levels of technology. Despite common opinion, these "barbarians" were generally almost as technologically advanced as the Romans themselves, and did indeed engage in trade, education, and other things generally considered part of "civilization". These nations survived mostly unchanged, barring things like wars and disasters, for a relatively large amount of time, until the Roman Empire absorbed them.

After his annexing most of Europe, Rome's Senate lost most of its power to the conquering general Octavian (later "Augustus") (though it had long been corrupted and in decline), who was one of several fantastic men who ruled the Empire virtually alone. However, they were largely outnumbered by incompetent or corrupt men, many of whom ruled "alone" in name only, with family members in key postions assisting. This prompted an attempt or two to return to a "republic", and once North Africa, most of the Middle East, all of Eastern, Western, and nearly all of central Europe were under Roman rule, it became evident it was just too big for one person to run.

The solution, decided opon by Dioclitian, and cemented by Constantine (also the first Christian Emperor), was to appoint a system of two co-Emperors, with two co-emperor replacements ready at any time, should something happen to one of them. This split the Empire into the Western and Eastern Roman Empires, both nominally Roman (although the Eastern Empire, ruled from Constantinople (aka Byzantium, Istanbul) was Greek in culture and language), and in theory part of the same Empire. However, in practice, the West was ruled by a series of generally useless dictatorial Emperors, and was eventually simply a burden on the treasuries of the East, led by dynatic governments, or more co-ruler type systems. The east flourished, aided by huge natural resources and good leadership, while the west stagnated. It collapsed in 476 (the Empire as a whole existing since 27 BC under an "Empire" system, and since 508BC as a republic), only a few years after Constantine offically created the eastern empire and finalized the divide in 330. To contrast, the typically multi-ruler Eastern Empire survived until 1453, over a thousand years, coming to be known as the Byzantine Empire. Russian rulers before the desolution of the monarchy sometimes called themselves Emperors of Eastern Rome, or just Roman Emperors, which led to a clash when Charlemange claimed the title of (Western) Roman Emperor, eventually leading to the creation of a "Holy Roman Empire", which was infact mostly pagan, German, and a collection of generally warring small states, which formed the prototype for nations in the middle ages.

Nations in the middle ages were ruled by many princes or dukes, rather than a king. These countries were slowly tied more closely together, until eventually one king came to rule them. After a few centuries of this, single families or people could rule over many, many nations at once, a good example being the Hapsburgs, who ruled most of Europe, or the King of Bavaria in the late enlightenment era, who ruled a group of countries known as Germany. While nations prospered and developed very quickly during the process of uniting and following one single leader, they stagnated* VERY quickly once united. This caused a flurry of issues, with a sort of constitution (Magna Carta) being written up and presented as a demand to King John in 1225. The gradually increasing incompetence and general ridiculousness of the majority of the European monarchy cause their virtually complete extinction, leading to revolutions all around the world, in a relatively short period of time.**

Even look at modern democracy, in which one country is generally ruled by one person, for a short amount of time, based on majority votes. While one person is nominally in charge, you could probably argue that in an ideal world, the concept of democracy is pretty much the opposite of this, and that countries under it are run by many people, and the opinions of many people.

Of course, one man dictatorships exist, typically being either pretty decent (Cuba) or just shitholes (Most of Africa, which has stagnated), which could be argued as evidence that one leader doesn't really mean a country will prosper at all, but is completely dependant on the individual.


ANYWAY. As a more literal interpretation, I can name one country that has more than one president: The U.S. It has a president, and a vice-PRESIDENT. WHen Bush was in, their roles were slightly reversed.


Well, there's a history lesson. In conclusion, "multiple leaders" doesn't seem any better or worse to me than "one leader", as both, when provided with adequate leadership, tend to fail or succeed based on unrelated factors. As examples:

Cuba is pretty nice, because it had a good single leader, made friends with the USSR, and was an easily isolated island, where media control is easy, and one man can go unchallenged.

Paraguay has been described as "a green hell", though it's generally been ruled by multiple leaders in a junta, been a democracy, or has had it's presidents couped with enough regularity and bloodless efficiency that it was basically an election. However, it's also landlocked, has nothing of value besides cheap labour, and managed to literally get over half it's population repeatedly killed in a series of pointless wars, something common to all the rulers). I'm not kidding, Paraguay is seriously fucked up.

China is, in general, pretty nice. They are ruled by a generally faceless group of individuals classed as "generations" of chinese leadership in the west probably because their names are really hard to pronounce, they are very numerous, and not that well known. China has fewer freedoms than the west in some regards, but the situation's improving, and they are pretty much on par, if not pulling ahead of most first world nations. They're a large, coastal nation, have lots of resources, cheap labour to use them, and are advancing culturally as each new generation comes to light. This has taken a VERY long time, due to these resources being technologically unavailable to the Chinese government for the majority of it's existance, but are now rocketing it forward.



I am tired and will maybe write more later. This is really fucking long.


ANYWAY... The end point is that leadership is more or less irrelevant. If you want to succeed, have the resources. Failing that, have the ability. Ideally, have them both. If you don't, if still will work, it will just take a VERY LONG TIME.

*I am now making footnotes. I personally belive this stagnation is the result of a lack of external conflict, which I'll probably never get around to writing about later.

** A very good example of this is both the Russian and German Empires "revolutionizing" nearly simultaneously in 1918, followed by Spain, Italy, and Portugal.