The effectiveness of a country's leaders is best measured by examining the well-being of that country's citizens.Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position

It is popularly believed that the efficiency of a state's leaders should be estimated via examining the well-being of that country's population. Although this idea has many proponents I cannot agree with this claim because it seems that there is no direct causation between effectiveness of a leader and prosperity of a society. The reasons of my stance will be discussed in more details below.

To begin with, many of us deeply believe that efficiency of any leader should be measured by conditions of life of the state's people. Perhaps, this belief is based on the fact that many of us live in democratic societies where leaders are elected by demos. Consequently, we tend to estimate the work of our leaders by examining our life-standards because we can see a correlation between the leaders' actions and our prosperity. For example, if we take a look at the history of the USA the most beloved presidents brought the nation prosperity. However, may we extrapolate this experience on all countries?

Unfortunately, the answer on this question is "no" due to the fact that the history of humankind possesses many examples when actions of an efficient leader do not lead to people's well-being. Perhaps, the best illustration to this stance may be found in the recent history of Russia. After Lenin died, the power in the USSR was usurped by Stalin who is considered as one of the most efficient leaders of the polity. In fact, during his rule, the country which was mainly agricultural turned into an industrial one, a free public education was implemented throughout the country and the level of literacy skyrocketed. Those are names of a few of his achievements. At the same time, under his control labor camps were organized and purges were fulfilled. The victims of those actions are uncountable but more than two millions of citizens were victimized. In other words, an efficient leader may not bring prosperity to the citizens.

Furthermore, well-being of population does not inevitably signalize that leaders are efficient. For instance, we may take a look at Norway or Sweden. Those countries have one of the highest standards of living but may we attribute this achievement solely to their leaders? Perhaps, the answer on this question is "no" because some unstated reasons may lead to the prosperity. For instance, Norway has huge number of oil and gas deposits and relatively small population, Sweden has not entered any war for at least four hundred years, moreover it has one of the highest percent of millionaires who inheres the wealth. In other words, the prosperity of people who live in the countries is not explicitly connected with the efficiency of leaders.

In conclusion, although many of us believe that efficiency of a leader is directly connected with the prosperity of state's citizens, we have demonstrated that although a correlation between those events exists, the correlation is not causation. Consequently, an efficient leader may bring hardships to his or her people and prosperity may be achieved without a decent leader as well. As a result, I cannot agree with the claim.