Successful regimes suppress factional self-interest through inclusive aspiration and ethics

Evidence

Under the leadership of a statesperson a thousand flowers bloom. When someone is at the helm, others, occupying the highest positions of authority, immediately follow. A constellation of individuals and their portfolios make up a regime. To be sure, even under the most favorable circumstances, both a leader and his or her team are neither Olympian nor saintly. On the contrary, individually as well as collectively, they are naturally keyed to their own interests and those of the entities they represent. Nonetheless, if a regime is to attain a modicum of acceptance and legitimacy by the larger society, selfor factional utility would have to be tamed by a combination of inclusive aspiration, a capacious consciousness of imminent needs, ethical and legal conduct, and effective management. — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 109

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Majority rule depends on citizens committing to the common good over self-interest — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 24; Public choice theory treats all policy as self-interested coalitional maneuvering — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1583; Norms can sustain regimes only while elites can plausibly invoke shared commitments — Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and…, 47