by Ivanna Pinyak
Over the last couple of years the word crisis must have become one the most most frequently pronounced words in the world. Just check for it in Google! Financial crisis, social crisis, European crisis, French football crisis…
The Crisis of Leadership: that was the title chosen for the 5th Summer University of Democracy organised by the Council of Europe and held this week. The annual event aims at bringing together young active citizens and decision makers in Politics, Economics, Society and Culture from the now 16 schools representing the “non-EU” Member States of the Council of Europe. Young leaders from Russia, Georgia, Bulgaria, Moldova, Kosovo, “The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,” Serbia, Croatia, Romania, Armenia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Montenegro and Belarus, as well a number of international and European experts and prominent political figures exchanged their viewpoints on leadership and crisis.
Amongst the multitude of topics discussed, were: the crisis of leadership in the globalised and multipolar world, challenges for US president Obama and the problems of leadership in Europe, the Copenhagen summit and the crisis of the European project, the so-called frozen conflicts on the territories of the former Soviet Union countries and painful transformations in Russia.
The steady wide-ranging crisis – if that is what we face now – must have its reasons or its meaning. And the meaning of this is that actually the modern world is undergoing important changes. The way is changing so fast that we won’t have to wait our whole lives to figure out what happened. The changes are, and will be, so important, that, yes, we might not recognise the usual way of being in a couple of years.
It is actually fascinating to observe, to analyse, to predict the near future, and to project yourself, your community, your country and your continent into one of the possible scenarios of what tomorrow will be like.
The era of incontestable, charismatic leaders as seen during World War II has long gone. Since the world went multipolar, with the rise of new technologies and Internet, access to information has become very easy, everybody can take initiative and power of expression on blogs and social networks challenging the “official” media. The latter have to adapt to that new reality. Society is more informed and individuals are more educated on matters of global concern. Civil society, in some places called the 3rd sector becomes the real power and factor of influence. Even if you personally don’t think you are able somehow to influence large-scale decisions at this moment in time, your active stance and your opinion do matter in these circumstances. The crisis of leadership means that the globalised, multipolar world with its multitude of actors is no longer under the total control of any government.
Civil society, which is the active citizens’ movement, forms the real 3rd power. It can define trends, form a basis and thus influence further decisions taken on a political level. The European Union project is in crisis as it couldn’t be promoted by mere elites. Remember the non-votes? Now, the collective intelligence and voices of active citizens speaking up is something to remedy the lack of democracy in the EU, this is the key to help it keep going.
Recent Comments