Of course, electing young politicians as well as old and experienced people is vital to keep the variety of representation, to provide diversity of views and to strike a balance between experience and initiative. However, when trying to answer the posed question unequivocally I must admit that I would prefer to say that we need to elect young politicians rather than old experienced ones. Why is that? Well, there is quite a good number of reasons. First of all, young people politicians are children of their own generation, they have been brought up in the same world they are supposed to govern when they become politicians. It is not the case with old but experienced ones, though – the time their values were formed and the time in which they may happen to have to govern a state may differ dramatically. That is why the latter may not feel the up-to-date specific societal needs as much as young politicians can. The second reason is that age usually adds up to reluctance. This is also true about being a politician. OF course, old politicians have experience but it does not mean that they still have enough zeal to conduct active politics. Or they may just as well not have enough strength in virtue of their age to do that. Also, as they grow older they start caring more about their families and household than about the entire society, and this is no wonder – feeling that they are reaching the end of their lives they try to make it more comfortable first. Thirdly, old politicians tend to be more and more conservative. Of course, conservatism is a full-fledged political approach and philosophy and I don’t mean to say that it is inherent of only the elderly people to be conservative but it works the other way round – older people usually do not have enough risk and, to some extent, recklessness, representatives of the young generation would have. Fourthly, being a politician is a great responsibility. It is the responsibility or people’s aspirations, hopes, their welfare, dreams, purchase parity, economic good, social security, physical security and such other things. Older politicians hardly can focus on that too effectively, or at least as effectively as politicians of younger generations can. Fifthly, old politicians do not tend to think about the youth as the target social group of their politics. Whereas youth has always been and is the driving force of every nation and of every state, old politicians, in the best-case scenario, treat these young people just like everybody else in the society. There are rarely programs to provide youth with work or something from which the entire society would eventually benefit. Finally, the last thing I would like to mention is that older politicians, I think, prefer not to promote some values but to concentrate on specific everyday problems of the society. They may work on technological advancement but fail to work on what could be called bringing up the nation. They rarely resort to instilling fundamental values in people, changing their minds, changing the nature of the society for the better. Rather, their activities are usually limited to more commonplace problems.
Now that I have briefly laid down what major drawbacks old politicians I think have in comparison with the young generation politicians, I think it’s high time for me to maintain every point I stipulated and provide some evidence for each case. I will try to use real life examples to that end.
Starting with the first argument specified above I think some states in the post-Soviet space could serve as striking examples. The thing is that for a very long time there have been pre-requisites for this comparison to be very telling. Since Soviet times the average age of state leaders was very high. For instance, Khrushchev was almost sixty when he was elected Secretary General of the Communist party that ruled the country. This was also the case with every successive leader of the USSR: Brezhnev (became the leader at 61), Andropov, Chernenko, others. Michael Gorbachev became the Secretary General of the Communist party when he was only fifty four and back at that time it was considered by many to be even dangerous to give power to such a young politician who was therefore anticipated too liberal and too much of what they called “voluntarist.” Now, we know what were the life standards in the USSR. This country experienced several famines, already in the post-war period. This country lived in autarchy that constantly resulted in lasting deficit. There were no political rights, nor even any effective reforms. Why is that, you would ask? I think this is because, apart from ideological reasons, old governors not only failed to perceive the needs of the nation but even failed to understand that there were such needs. Of course, there can be a strong counter-argument to this – you could say that the problem was not the age of politicians but the ideology that had been instilled in them. But that’s what I am namely trying to prove! Ideology during the last several decades of the seventy-one-year old existence of the Soviet Union did not influence the nation that much already. Communist ideology became more of a tradition than an instruction. But due to the fact that virtually all the leaders of the Soviet Union I have mentioned above were brought up in the spirit of their own, pre-war generation, they were used to doing everything in accordance with the ideology. These leaders did not understand that eighties and seventies were different from Stalin times before the Second World War broke out. Therefore, all of them could not bring any relief into the life of the younger generation that contrary to their aspiration could not travel abroad, do any business, or just generally do what they wanted to do but not what the each subsequent five-year plan wanted them to do.
However, even within the framework of talking about the Soviet Union there is enough room for comparison. I mentioned above Michael Gorbachev who became the leader of the party and the leader of state a little bit earlier than the previous general secretaries. So, we cannot really say that he was a representative of the next generation, as we was just six or seven years younger than, say, Brezhnev or Khrushchev, when these latter came to power. But even so, he managed to revolutionize the Soviet Union. He introduced transparency in government, he loosened the tight grip of state on every sphere of people’s lives he started implementing reforms that boosted economic development and launched the process of adoption of legislation so badly needed by the nation to meliorate its life. Therefore, we can see how great of an achievement even the slight switch of generations can make.
However, even after the collapse of the Soviet Union there were good examples for the argument I outlined. The most striking one is Georgia, especially of we consider two periods of its development – from 1991 to 2004 and 2004 to 2013-14. These are the two periods during which the country was governed by two different people, representatives of different generations, worldviews and what not. The first one was Edward Shevardnadze, who had previously happened to be the Minister of foreign affairs of the USSR. He was a person of the similar formation that Khrushchev, Brezhnev and others. He was the son of the Communist generation and, to be frank, this could be felt so much in how he governed his state during more than a decade. First of all, Georgia did not know any development. At the beginning of the twenty first century the most of the country still was not electrified, the economy was lagging behind in all the world rates, it was impossible to launch business due to immense bureaucracy, infrastructure was very ramshackle. This list could be carried on. However, a thing I would like to emphasize is that on to of everything I have enumerated there was also the absence of any political freedom. I cannot say that Georgia was a totalitarian state – far from being that. It is just that there were no room for political development of those who could present some alternatives that were so obviously needed.
It all changed in 2003. This was the year when the so-called Revolution of roses took place. It was inspired and led by the young politician called Mickheil Saakashvili. There could be no other person who would be as much different from Shevardnadze as he was. Having only thirty-something years of age, having graduated from the Kyiv University of international relations, Strasbourg institute and an American institute he was not only well instructed – he was also a person of the new formation, he was a representative of the new generation. He was brought up in conditions brought about by his predecessor who did not develop the country since Soviet times. However, to the contrary to those citizens who as well were representatives of the Soviet generation he studied abroad, he could compare, he saw the differences and understood that much of what he could see in Georgia was abnormal. He understood what the country needed. That is why he organized the revolution and became the president of Georgia, two consecutive times. Under his presidency Georgia changed its face completely. It skyrocketed through economic ratings. For instance, it ranked the sixth in the world rating of easiness to open own business. Apart from that, Saakshvili managed to eradicate the principle obstacle of any development – corruption which was the whip of the country (like it keeps to be in many other counties of the post-Soviet space these days) and the cause of its impotence in economic terms. Saakashvili had political will for that, enough of it to overcome bureaucracy and conservatism both of which are the sources of corruption. He used the gained money for the purposes so badly needed by the Georgians – he introduced extensive reforms in literally every sphere: healthcare, education, business, house holding, private property owning rules etcetera. All of these made Georgia attractive for investors and tourists and contributed therefore to the welfare of every Georgian. This is the example of how understanding on the part of a politician of what the people needs is crucial for the welfare of that nation to come about.
Since I have started dwelling on the issue of reforms, I think I could switch to my second argument consisting in the assumption that old politicians are more reluctant to introduce changes and reforms to the society. Apart from the already described example of Saakashvili who can illustrate very well this argument too I can mention the situation in the Middle East. Rulers of the bigger part of countries of the region are elderly people. For instance, let’s take the king of Saudi Arabia or the ayatollah of Iran. Another examples may be the long-standing authoritarian leaders of Maghreb countries, Muammar Gadhafi before he was shot in 2011. All these people do not care very much about reforms for their nations. These leaders may be good enough in their treatment towards their peoples. For instance, monarchs of Gulf states make education, healthcare and many other aspects of life free of charge for their citizens just because possessing oil allows them to do that. However, these monarchs do not implement any further reforms, especially in what touches upon political freedoms. I have never heard about Saudi royal family being to active or Muammar Gadhafi doing anything apart from selling oil. TO the contrary, the ruler of one specific country in the region is younger than all the mentioned. He is Abdullah II, the King of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and he partakes in politics far more than any of the mentioned leaders. To illustrate this statement suffice it to mention several aspects in which he has displayed activity. Primarily, he has made a stake on economic development of the country. He launched the extensive program of privatization of state companies. It was namely him who advocated and eventually brought Jordan into the World Trade Organization in the year of 2000. He was the one to conclude an extensive free-trade agreement with the United States. Also, the United States became a very important ally of the Jordanian Kingdom in political terms. In domestic policy King Abdullah also is very effective and active. For instance, he redesigned and enhanced the number of electoral districts. He abolished the rise of prices on gas, he dissolved parliament several times in the years of crisis, etcetera. Now, this really seems an extensive participation compared to what other Middle East monarchs do.
Finally, in order to provide examples for the rest of the arguments, primarily conservatism of old rulers and their failure to regard youth as a primary target group, let’s refer to comparison of the two prime-ministers of Canada – the penultimate one, Steven Harper, and the incumbent one, Justin Trudeau.
Stephen Harper. First of all, he is a conservative. He has been accused quite often of doing things more out of ideology and almost nothing – out of pragmatic approach. He used to conduct his politics in a hush-hush manner, he was not very open to the public and preferred not to consult it. Secondly, he had quite a lot of failures, primarily in economics. He was quite often blamed for targeting wrong things. Instead of searching for ways to create more jobs or to increase investments he dealt with substances prohibition and suchlike things. He did not understand that it was more vital for the youth to think about their economic welfare and that, therefore, he should ponder more upon how he could help namely this societal group.
All the above being said, I once again reiterate that my opinion stays the same – it is better for us to elect young leaders. Experience is always valuable, but decision-making also needs to be up-to-date in order to meet the actual needs of a given society. I have tried to cite as different examples as I could in order to show that practices all around the world prove the universal truth – young political leaders are more desirable at the steer of the state machine.
Works Cited
Aliev, Huseyn. “The Effects of the Saakshvili Era Reforms on Informal Practices in the Republic of Georgia.” Studies of Transition States and Societies 6 (2014), 1, pp. 19-33.
Goldberg, Jeffrey. “The Modern King in the Arab Spring.” The Atlantic. April 2013. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.
Lagos, Marta. “Young People in Politics.” International IDEA Archive. N.d. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.
Alesina, Alberto et. al. Old And Young Politicians. February, 2015. PDF. 20 April 2016.
“Perestroika and Glasnost.” History.com. 2010. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.
