LEADERLESS GENERATIONS AND THE POLITICAL MACHINE

Across diverse political contexts, Generation Z has emerged as a consequential—often explicitly leader-averse—agent of contentious politics. Yet the empirical record suggests a persistent puzzle: decentralised, digitally networked mobilisation can be extraordinarily effective at agenda disruption and rapid scaling, while often struggling to convert street power into durable policy change. This article develops a coherent analytical architecture for studying Gen Z as a “leaderless body politic” with real political impact, without romanticising spontaneity or reducing leaderlessness to organisational absence. Integrating: contentious politics as a mechanism–process approach, connective action and networked protest, a political mediation account of movement outcomes, policy-process frameworks for “conversion” (Multiple Streams and Advocacy Coalition logics, complemented by punctuated equilibrium), and multidimensional theories of power (visible, hidden, and invisible; symbolic power), The article advances four testable propositions: leaderless resilience tends to increase mobilisation success while lowering conversion success; conversion depends on institutional “absorptive capacity” and rapidly activatable entry points; state securitisation strategies mediate both short-run outcomes and long-run regime trajectories; and leaderless movements convert better when they develop legitimate interfaces rather than personalised leaders. The framework is illustrated through structured case analyses of Kenya, Morocco, Serbia, Bulgaria (including the December 2025 protest cycle), and Tanzania. The conclusion specifies concrete pathways by which Gen Z can counter entrenched political machines—clientelist networks, party-state apparatuses, and “gatekeeper” institutional configurations—through interface-building, venue diversification, coalition engineering, and institutional design that preserves horizontal legitimacy while enabling accountability and negotiation