‘All Right, I Will Do as You Say’: Leadership and Followership in Ibsen’s Pillars of Society

Abstract

The inverted relationship between leaders and followers is the product of the false consciousness that Henrik Ibsen presents in Pillars of Society. To the playwright, this relationship has been a disruptive phenomenon as it excludes, rather than includes those whose perceptions are different from the leader's personal view. The result is unprecedented levels of failure in security, economy and welfare policies. This failure, as I argue in this article is also blamed on the followers who seem not to know the role, they are to play towards the success of the political system they support. The few who understand the concept of followership see their efforts thwarted and frustrated by the leaders in place. Ibsen therefore questions the political environment, and presents the authorities in place and their followers as responsible for the poverty, injustice and exploitation in their society. By paying attention to what constitute the landmarks, stages or watersheds of nineteen century Norwegian and European politics, and by focusing on the question: ‘Who leads the work of government?' this article analyses Ibsen's characters (leaders) who use their power of appointment and election to maintain a broadened support, not by working under the advice of experts who have a better grasp of national agenda, but by turning to close friends and associates who sympathize with their own hopes and plans. The article therefore aims at carrying out a literary analysis of Pillars of Society as a strategic technique to de-centre the dominant rhetoric that ‘to lead, one must induce followers to permit him or her act for goals that represent his motives and motivations'.