Leadership in The Walking Dead: Comparing the Governor, Negan and Rick

Negan’s style: The megalomaniac dictator

Negan is a megalomaniac, in a much more obvious way than the Governor. He enjoys dominating people, and doing so openly and publicly. While the Governor doesn’t use his name, Negan not only uses it but also makes everyone else say they are “Negan” – thus metaphorically making all these people extensions of himself. He also demands that people kneel in his presence, as if he were some kind of feudal lord.

Negan is obsessed with the “rules” and applies them tyrannically, claiming that this very extreme “law and order” approach is in everyone’s best interest. Though we have seen very little of the Sanctuary’s workers so far, we already know that Negan has organized a very strict points system.

One interesting point, though, is that for all the talk about rules being rules, Negan is very inconsistent. The Sanctuary may be a place where there are rules and a system of points, but it is also a place where the higher-ups can decide to ignore the rules.

Negan himself, as the supreme leader, is the only one who has a harem of wives, while the other men are held to a very strict “no rape rule” and the wives are not allowed to have multiple partners. Similarly, Negan’s lieutenants, like Dwight, and later Eugene, seem to enjoy privileges that allow them to trample the rules and take whatever they want from ordinary “workers” in the Sanctuary.