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On the issue of political leadership, Ibn Khaldun says

One of those people must be the leaders who has superiority among them (Ed: ie among the people). He is singled out as leader of all the various group feelings, because he is superior to all the others by birth. When he is singled out for (leadership), he is too proud to let others share in his leadership and control or to let them participate in it, because the qualities of haughtiness and pride are innate in animal nature. Thus, he develops the quality of egotism, innate in human beings.

The above quote reflects the situation when Ibn Khaldun was alive - an era when governments were formed of dynasties rich with familial ties. The leadership of those dynasties were usually passed on from one family member to another as if power was inherited along familial lines. Democracy may have existed at that time (I don’t know), but it was not as widely established, and certainly not as we understand it today. It is therefore understandable, and perhaps even expected, for scholars during the era wrote to defend such form of government.

Ibn Khaldun was spot on when he said “the qualities of haughtiness and pride are innate in animal nature”. This is a disease that infects many leaders. The form of government we now call democracy is an attempt to circumvent that “innate nature” of mankind – there is now a mechanism to remove leaders who have become too egoistic.

Ibn Khaldun went on to say

politics requires that only one person exercise control. Were various persons, liable to differ among each other, to exercise it, destruction of the whole could result.

Quotes source: The Muqaddimah, translated by Franz Rosenthal (2005), p. 132.

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