Democratic Vs Destructive Leadership: The Comparative Analysis of Foreign Policy Successes and Failures, President Trump vs. PM Dr, Abiy Ahmed

Leadership is a very elusive and “general concept and one of the uncertain categories in social science”, and its study include the subjects of “political theory, history, psychology and management studies”. As old as human civilization, leadership contemporarily is identified as Democratic or Destructive leadership, and Democratic leadership is “the performance of three functions: distributing responsibility among the membership, empowering group members, and aiding the group’s decision-making process”, and Destructive leadership is “the systematic and repeated leadership style by a leader that violates the legitimate interest of the organization by undermining and/or sabotaging the organization’s goals, tasks, resources, and effectiveness and/or the motivation. This study emphasized on political leadership, i.e., “one of the many categories of leadership”, which is “central to understanding political processes and outcomes”, having the major objective of forwarding the comparative foreign policy achievements of president Donald J. Trump and PM Dr. Abiy Ahmed since 2017-19. The basic rationales for conducting this study are: – the US (globally) and Ethiopia (regionally) is hegemonic powers, and both leaders were unexpectedly coming to power reversing the political status-quo (anti-establishment/populist vs progressive). Methodologically, this study employed exploratory, explanatory and descriptive qualitative approach by collecting both qualitative and quantitative data, using text analysis method. The findings of the study analyzed how democratic and destructive political leadership affected the foreign policy of both leaders and states in their overall international relations in the global politics.