It’s been a great week for those of us intent on stopping bad leaders – and one equally excellent for those of us intent on supporting good leaders.

First and foremost finally, more than ten years after he was indicted as a war criminal by the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague, Radovan Karadzic was arrested. I have been writing and talking about this man for years. In fact, in my book, Bad Leadership, I used him as the exemplar of “evil leadership,” for there is nearly no doubt that during the Balkan wars of the 1990s, he was responsible for the death of thousands, most obviously in connection with the massacre (of some 8,000 Bosnian Muslims) at Srebrenica.

The court has charged Karadzic with genocide and other crimes. And Richard Holbrooke, the former State Department official who brokered a sort of a Balkan peace, described him as “the worst,” a racist believer, who “really enjoyed ordering the killing of Muslims.”

The question I often raised was why was this man not being brought to justice? He was, after all, not hiding in a cave somewhere on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Quite the contrary – somehow everyone knew, or at least strongly suspected, that Karadzic was sticking close to home, out of sight perhaps, but still, somewhere close by. Now we know that most of the time he was in fact very close by, disguised by a full white beard and distinctive garb, but nevertheless out and about and hardly impossible to identify. So even now I wonder how it happened that fully a decade passed during which Karadzic was able to avoid being caught. Is this anyone’s idea of having the punishment fit the crime?

Along similar lines, though the development is less dramatic, is the reining in of long time tyrant, Robert Mugabe. After all the hue and cry (including from this blogger) about the stolen election in Zimbabwe, not to speak of its catastrophic circumstance more generally, there was an announcement that Mugabe had agreed to power-sharing talks with his longtime rival, opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai. The agreement between the two men was brokered by outsiders and it is, at best, fragile, as in both preliminary and tentative. Still, it’s something and it’s better than nothing, better than either a miserable stalemate or, heaven forefend, than allowing Mugabe to continue to rule with an iron fist.

The international community would make a mistake, however, if it backed off, slacked off from keeping close vigil. Bad leaders never ever backtrack of their own volition. Their feet must be held to the fire without fail – which is why Mugabe should be watched at every turn, lest he return, which he would if he could, to the bad old days.

Finally, time to accentuate the positive - to shine a light on a man by the name of Peter Singer. Singer is the most important and influential of all kinds of leaders – he is an intellectual leader. A philosopher by trade, in 1975 Singer published a book titled, Animal Rights. The impact of this work, outlandish as its ideas seemed at the time, is by now impossible to overestimate. The animal rights movement is one of the most important socio-political movements in our recent history. Its impact has been worldwide, and on how we do business, and on what we legislate, and on how we conceive of creatures other than those that are human.

Singer did not, of course, accomplish all this alone. He has been aided and abetted by countless activists, led by, among others, the formidable Ingrid Newkirk, longtime head of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). One of the most significant of their collective triumphs occurred just a week or two ago: the passage in Spain of a resolution granting to great apes some legal rights.

Suffice it here to say that whatever your opinion on animal rights, and on how far they should be extended, it’s worth recalling that some non-human animals are not so different from you and me. Great apes in particular are biologically very close to humans – chimpanzees and humans have in common fully 98 percent of their DNA. So a bow to Singer the leader, who provides proof positive there is nothing so powerful as a great idea whose time has come.

Personal note: Having blogged regularly for the last half year, this, for the moment, is my final post. (Time for me to turn full blast to my next book.) Thanks to all of you who read what I wrote, and especially to those of you who wrote back. Till next time!

Those of you who occasionally read my blog, or who in some other way are familiar with my work, will not be surprised to learn that every time there’s a story about the powerless intruding on the powerful, I get interested. For in the last couple of years I have become convinced that those who are usually thought of as followers - that is, those without obvious sources of power, authority, or influence - are edging out those who are usually thought of as leaders.

This is not to say that leaders no longer matter, they do. But I have got to the point where I consider the study of leadership pure and simple simply old-fashioned, grist for the 20th century but not for the 21st. In today’s world leaders everywhere are vulnerable in ways they have not been before. And conversely – as the result of changes both in culture and technology - followers everywhere are empowered in ways they have not been before

Each week I could point to numbers of stories that illustrate my point which, given our love affair with leaders, remains counterintuitive. But here’s my favorite recent example. In an item that hit the front page of the New York Times, but that nevertheless remained under the radar, it was reported that an all-important decision rendered by the Supreme Court a couple of weeks ago was based on a factual flaw.

The Court had ruled that the death penalty for raping a child was unconstitutional. In reaching this decision, the Court relied on an inventory which seemed to reveal that only six states currently permitted capital punishment for child rapists, while the other thirty states that had the death penalty did not permit it to be used in these kinds of criminal cases. The Court further took into account the various jurisdictions of the federal government, finding that none extended the death penalty to child rapists.

According to the Times, this inventory was a “central part of the court’s analysis” and “the foundation for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s conclusion in his majority opinion that capital punishment for child rape was contrary to the ‘evolving standards of decency’ by which the court judges how the death penalty is applied.”

There was just one small problem – the Court was wrong. Justice Kennedy’s assertion about the absence of any federal law applying to cases of child rape was misplaced. In fact, as a military law blog pointed out, Congress had revised the Uniform Code of Military Justice as recently as 2006 to add child rape to the military death penalty. Who was the blogger who publicly humiliated and indeed bested the justices of the Supreme Court? He was Dwight Sullivan, a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve, who now works for the Air Force on death penalty cases.

Here’s my point. No doubt that Colonel Sullivan is a man of great distinction. But, whatever his accomplishments, he does not rate right up there alongside the nine men and women who have lifelong appointments to the highest court in the land. Did his lesser status stop him? Did it deny him access or preclude him from taking on arguably the most august leaders in the land? Not on your life. Not in this day and age. Sullivan posted his blog - and in the process gave the Court one of its worst black eyes ever.

During the last week the tut-tutting morphed into screaming and yelling. But it was too little too late. Despite all the recent hand-wringing and blame-gaming by many of the world’s most powerful and prominent leaders, Zimbabwe’s longtime despot, Robert Mugabe, received 85.5 % of the vote in Friday’s sham election. So without further ado he went ahead before the weekend was over and had himself sworn in, for the sixth time, as president.

The question now is what can be learned from this experience. What happened in Zimbabwe is not, of course, idiosyncratic. Human history is chock full of examples of bad leaders, even evil leaders, who do what they want when they want in spite of what others think or say.

Let’s be clear-eyed then. Let’s admit that Mugabe got away with murder. He reminded us, because apparently we still need reminding, that leaders who have power and authority, and who are determined at all costs to keep what they have, can do so. More precisely, they can and they will do so unless and until someone from somewhere, from inside or outside, stops them.

Bad leaders, especially the really bad ones, do not wake up one fine morning, see the light, and on their own volition reform. Not on your life. In fact, history teaches just the opposite. The worse leaders are, and the more deeply embedded they are, the more willing and able they are to defy their enemies and squelch the opposition.

What, then, is to be done? Are we destined, doomed to be bystanders? Are we destined, doomed, even when faced with the worst of the worst, to being ineffectual altogether? Or are there some things that can and should be done, some things that we, as followers, can and should do to stop or, at least, to slow, bad leadership? Recall that though I am talking here about a tyrant, bad leadership in its various guises is ubiquitous.

So the question of what to do is not exactly exogenous. It arises in everyday life, in the workplace and in the market place, as well as in world affairs. Here, then, are some rules to effect, in so far as humanly possible. They can guide all of us who encounter bad leadership, be it in public or private settings, and whether we are participants or simply observers.

• Have the punishment fit the crime. Mugabe, for example, could be tried at some point in The Hague, at the international tribunal which has been increasingly empowered by public opinion to consider cases resembling his. Nor should corporate leaders be exempt from this general rule. They too must be held to account for wrongdoing.

• Institutionalize checks and balances. Again, this applies not only to the public sector, but also to the private one, in which agents such as boards and shareholder activists are, in fact, being emboldened to take on errant chief executives.

• Institutionalize term limits. Whether a large group or a small organization, this is a simple enough device, intended to preclude people in positions of authority from abusing their authority over a long period of time.

• Obtain independent information. Never take the party line at face value. The party line is just that, no less and decidedly no more. Those of us lucky enough to be free agents owe it to ourselves and to others as well to take the time and trouble to secure information that is relatively objective, as opposed to subjective.

• Find allies and if necessary take collective action. Going out on a limb to take on the powers that be is generally risky, and mostly ineffective. Better to act in concert, than to be a lone ranger.

• Act early. The more deeply entrenched the bad leader, the more difficult he, or she, is to uproot. Timing, then, is all. Waiting to spring into action until things trend from bad to worse is a mistake, nearly without exception.

It’s among the worst places in the world to live. In recent years the situation’s gone from very bad to even worse. And in recent months it’s hit rock bottom.

Among the different countries on the African continent, Zimbabwe is, or should have been, among the most advantaged. After it gained independence – formerly it was Rhodesia – there was reason for optimism. The English had left behind a good infrastructure, arable land was plentiful and producing surplus for export, and natural resources were in abundant supply.

Instead, under the ghastly leadership of Robert Mugabe, the now 84-year-old liberation hero who has been in power for almost three decades, Zimbabwe has dropped slowly but certainly to the bottom of the heap. Since 2000 well over five million people have left the country. There is nearly nothing to eat and no work to be had. Despair and decay are everywhere. Life expectancy is the lowest in the world (mid thirties). Inflation is the highest in the world. And there are more orphans per capita in Zimbabwe than anywhere else on the planet.

Moreover in his old age, Mugabe has gone mad. How else to describe a leader who is so desperate for power that he will do whatever it takes to keep it, up to and including murder and mayhem. As the New York Times summarized the situation, the presidential runoff election scheduled for Friday has been preceded by “a calculated campaign of bloodletting meant to intimidate the opposition and strip it of some of its most valuable foot soldiers.” Things got so bad that Mugabe’s main rival quit the race, saying he could no longer take part in the “violent, illegitimate sham of a process,” nor could he ask of others that they risk their lives on his behalf.

But this grim and grisly story is much less about Mugabe, who is a fiendish freak of nature, than it is about other leaders, who years ago should have weakened and even disabled him. Highest on the list is South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki, who stood by and watched as the situation next door deteriorated. To be sure, Mbeki was in good company - other African leaders did no more. But South Africa is the strongest country by far in the region. So Mbeki’s passivity sent a signal to those who ended up his equally passive counterparts: Being a bystander is being presidential.

Western leaders - presidents, prime ministers, cabinet secretaries – followed suit. To a person they flunked leadership. Oh sure, there’s been lots of tut-tutting. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said recently that it was time for the “leaders of Africa to say to President Mugabe that the people of Zimbabwe deserved a free and fair election.” England’s Prime Minster Gordon Brown went on to caution that the “eyes of the world” were on Zimbabwe. And United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon insisted just a few days ago that the election in Zimbabwe would not be credible unless the government brought to a halt its harassment of the opposition.

Meantime more anti-Mugabe activists have been killed, more injured, and more jailed. No getting around it: While Zimbabweans burned, others fiddled, none more achingly than those at the top.

Leaders and managers in government and business tend to mind their own business. They occupy themselves with those who are, most obviously, their followers, their subordinates, their constituents. But in this day and age, when the planet has shrunk, and when the technology is such that everyone knows everything, that’s just not good enough any more. The time is now for a more expansive view, for a view of leadership that transcends the group or organization for which we are directly responsible. In the mad, sad case of Zimbabwe such inter-group leadership, exercised in a smart and timely manner, could have made all the difference.

Yikes! What a response! All I did in my most recent blog was point out the obvious: that when Hillary Clinton ran for president she had certain advantages. The fact that some of these advantages – widespread name recognition, for example, and lots of money in her political pocket – grew out of her previous position as First Lady seemed to me to be clear. My mistake. What was apparent to me was not apparent to every one else.

OK, so let me ask you this: Would the response – both pro and con – have been so strong had I written not about Hillary Clinton but about Nancy Pelosi? In 2002 Nancy Pelosi was elected by her colleagues as Democratic Leader of the House of Representatives, and in 2007 she was elected Speaker. In both cases, she was the first woman in American history to be so honored.

It does not detract one whit from Pelosi’s accomplishments to point out that, like Clinton, she could capitalize on her close relationship to a powerful politician. For Nancy Pelosi is Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi. She is the daughter of Thomas D’Alesandro, Jr., who for several decades was one of America’s most prominent Democrats. D’Alesandro was elected to Congress five times. Then, for twelve years (1947-1959), he served as Mayor of Baltimore. Given that Pelosi was born in 1940, it’s clear she grew up in a household suffused in Democratic politics. And it’s equally clear that from an early age she used her connections to pursue her interests – which not incidentally mirrored those of her father.

As a young woman, Nancy D’Alesandro interned for Senator Daniel Brewster and future House Majority Leader, Steny Hoyer. After she married and moved to San Francisco – where her brother, Ronald Pelosi, happened to be a member of the City and County of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors - she took time off to raise her children. By 1977 she had re-entered politics, serving as party Chairwoman for Northern California, and later joining forces with one of the leaders of the California Democratic Party, Philip Burton. Pelosi waited to run for elective office until her youngest child was a high school senior – then she went full tilt. She was elected to Congress in 1987, and again every two years after that.

Would Pelosi be where she is now had she not been her father’s daughter? Maybe. But who would want to argue that the household in which she grew up, and the experiences it provided, and the connections it afforded, were of no relevance whatsoever to her political career?

To their everlasting credit, Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi did on their own achieve a great deal. Moreover aspects of their journey are instructive, and should be considered by those who would follow in their wake. But there is another truth as well, which is that both women have had benefits the rest of us cannot readily replicate. These include not only family ties, and family more generally, but also money. During the course of their lives Clinton and Pelosi, along with their husbands, became rich, really rich, with assets of many millions of dollars. They are not, in other words, like you and me. Or, at least, not like me.

According to a recent poll, some 69 % of the American people think Hillary Clinton’s run for the White House will make it easier for other women to follow her famous footsteps. Well, some 69% of the American people think wrong.

Clinton’s campaign was so idiosyncratic, so peculiar to her situation in particular, that to assume she is a role model is to make a mistake. In fact, women intending to run for office or, for that matter, aspiring to a leadership role of any kind, would do well to assess Clinton’s candidacy carefully and cautiously. For while the lessons learned are in some ways heartening, in other ways they are sobering.

Here’s why. First, she got to where she is through her husband. This is not to deny Clinton’s competence and capacity. But without having been married to a former president, there is zero chance she would have got as close as she did to being a future president. In this sense Clinton benefited from family ties every bit as much as Queen Elizabeth I (daughter of King Henry VIII), and for that matter more modern women heads of state such as Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (daughter of Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru), Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto (daughter of Pakistani Prime Minister, Zulfikur Ali Bhutto), President Corazon Aquino (widow of Philippine opposition leader, Benigno Aquino), and President Michelle Bachelet (daughter of martyred Chilean Air Force General, Alberto Bachelet).

Why can women capitalize on their relationships to powerful men? Because on some level, primal perhaps, leaders have an aura, one that endows those to whom they are closest, especially their children (male and female) and wives. And because on another level, one that is clear to the naked eye, proximity to power has practical advantages. In her campaign for the American presidency, Hillary Clinton, who became Senator from New York only after she was First Lady, had a running start a mile long. From day one she had national name recognition, coffers filled with money, and an experienced political machine – every one courtesy of her husband.

The second reason Hillary Clinton is the exception that proves the rule is the singular circumstance of her domestic life. When I teach classes on “Women and Leadership,” I find women students especially concerned about work/life family balance. How to combine having children and maintaining a semblance of normal family life, with the extreme demands of being a leader? For women like these Clinton’s example provides cold comfort.

She is married and she does have a daughter. But what a husband - and what a daughter! For better and worse Bill devoted himself for many months to his wife’s campaign; more recently Chelsea did the same. Hillary’s family then is atypical. Her husband and grown child have been ready, willing, and able to support her devotion to her ambition. On the one hand this is no more than the support male leaders typically enjoy. But on the other hand, for most women who aspire to important leadership roles this probably means either having no children or grown children, and a husband prepared to subsume his interests and identity to that of his spouse.

The point is that what Clinton has the rest of us cannot readily replicate. Husbands and children are not always available. Nor can we emulate kinship as connection. No value judgment here - simply the suggestion that women who consider Clinton a model take a deep breath.

Attention readers: Barbara Kellerman responds to your comments and continues the conversation in her next post, "Why Pelosi is No Role Model for Women Seeking Office".

More on women and leadership:

• Do Women Lack Ambition?

• Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership

• Executive Women and the Myth of Having It All