Submissive monkeys take cocaine, whereas the powerful monkeys are happy with banana pellets. This doesn't quite seem to match with my experience of human powerful people. The research that's been done on baboon hierarchies is really, really interesting and shows there is actually a biological effect tied to hierarchy. As you go down to the bottom, it's the most stressful because you don't have access to resources, mates, food. You're being picked on all the time. So as you go up, you age al but slower. And then when you get to the apex, when you getting to the alpha male, you age a lot.
All societies grant more power to some citizens, and there is always a temptation to use that power for the benefit of themselves rather than for the greater good. Power corrupts, we are told — but to what extent is that true? Would any of us, upon receiving great power, be tempted by corruption? Or are corruptible people drawn to accrue power? Brian Klaas has investigated these questions by looking at historical examples and by interviewing hundreds of people who have been in this position. He concludes that power can corrupt, but it doesn’t necessarily do so — we can construct safeguards to keep corruption to a minimum.
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Brian Klaas received his D.Phil. in Politics from the University of Oxford. He is currently Associate Professor in Global Politics at University College London and a columnist for The Washington Post. His new book is Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How it Changes Us. He is host of the Power Corrupts podcast.
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