Bulgarians Appealing To the E.U.

As a form of government that checks abuses in government, federalism can pit a state government against that of the union. In fact, several state governments should be able to hold back encroachments from the federal government, and that government in turn should have the wherewithal to stop abuses of power in a state government. The appeals of protesters in Bulgaria, the poorest E.U. state, to the E.U.  in July 2013 exemplify how not to invoke this function of a federal government. The question regards how the Bulgarians got it wrong.

Bulgarian protesters appeal to the E.U. to stop corruption in Bulgaria. Federalism itself can be seen visually in this picture by looking at the flags.  Image Source: Euronews.               

The full essay is at "Essays on the E.U. Political Economy," available at Amazon.

Teaching Ethical Leadership

Can ethical leadership be taught? In the typical business school, this question would be interpreted, or “refurbished.” Can students be trained to become ethical leaders? While often conflated contemporaneously, these two questions are indeed distinct. Instructors, professors and school administrators should first decide which question is more relevant to their purposes. The question chosen should fit with the education, pedagogical method, and philosophy of education of not only the instructor or professor, but also the school itself. In this essay, I distinguish the two questions in order to unpack them with their full significance.

The question, Can ethical leadership be taught, can be interpreted as being centered on knowledge of the concept and theories of ethical leadership. Can this particular knowledge be taught? That is to say, if a student were to ask, What is ethical leadership? could the instructor or professor answer with a definition? Have scholars even come up with an agreed-up definition? More broadly, how does ethical leadership as a concept differ from that of leadership more generally? Do theories of ethical leadership explain it rather than merely being oriented to how to? Furthermore, do any extant theories relate the concept to other, related concepts such as strategic leadership or even strategy? If so, can such theories be taught to the students at a particular level of education? Last but not least, would teaching the theories toward an understanding of what ethical leadership is be in line with the approach of the particular business school? Some schools are more commercially-oriented than others. I contend that two basic schools of thought can be identified and used as pedagogical approaches for teaching ethical leadership.

Democracy or Force: The Case of Turkey

The Turkish army removed four governments of Turkey in the period between 1960 and 1997. In the midst of political protests in June 2013, the government sought to insulate democracy from the force of a coup by amending army regulation #35 to restrict the army to “defending the Turkish nation against external threats and dangers.”[1] At least on paper, no longer would safeguarding the republic be the legal basis for enacting a coup. Prime Minister Recep Erdogan had already inserted civilian authority in the National Council, which had been dominated by the army. Actively marginalizing the military top officials, rather than relying on mere parchment may be necessary to stave off another coup in the future, given how easy it was for the Egyptian military to toppled an elected president in a few days in July 2013.


Democracy, it may be said, is feckless if it is to rely on parchment as a barrier to military force. Civilian control should go so far as to enter the military at the top. In Turkey, hundreds of high-ranking military officers had been put on trial for plotting a coup. For democracy to be protected, the civilian political officials should have the power to fire even the top generals; troops must see that the orders they are given ultimately come from civilians heading the military who have a political interest in the government in power.


In the case of Turkey, an additional safeguard for the democracy would be to become a state in the E.U. The Union would not permit the military in one of the states to take over that state government. More abstractly, the checks and balances in federalism itself could act as a deterrent to any army at the state level desiring to take over the state. Of course, that Turkey’s government feels the need to protect itself against a coup may be an indication that Turkey’s democracy is not yet sufficiently rooted for Turkey to meet the E.U.’s accession criteria.


In short, military coups rely on force, as in “might makes right.” To protect itself, democracy needs not only parchment power, but also the force of civilian officials even at the top of the military. To be sure, those officials do not themselves have the guns, so democracy is still tenuous without a solid rooting in the people. Even so, a coup need not be a case of force over parchment, since democracy can avail itself of force as well—what we may call legitimate force with democratic accountability.

See the video made to accompany this essay: http://youtu.be/_1yuvnOq5YE

See a related video on Syria: From Protest to War  http://youtu.be/NJm3ZaamhgA 

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1.Sernem Arsu, “Turkish Lawmakers Move to Curb Army’s Political Power,” The New York Times, July 13, 2013.