Many movement participants view the idea of leadership with deep and profound suspicion and find the lack of it to be empowering. They have strong historical reasons for this: leaderless movements are less prone to decapitation by co-optation or, as is unfortunately very common, killing of the leaders. It is fairly clear that being leaderless is not a pure disadvantage or irrational in every aspect, either politically or operationally. Yet even if it enhances resilience in other ways, as it did in Tahrir Square, leaderlessness greatly limits movements’ capacity to negotiate when the
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