Political Charisma Research Articles

MODI ‘Wave’-Leadership Legitimation and Institutionalization in Indian Politics

‘Wave’ is a political phenomenon that leads to a major electoral gain or loss for a political party, an expression of pro or anti-incumbency public mood. ‘MODI-wave’ is an electoral manifestation depicting the hegemonic leadership of Narendra Modi that scripts victories in elections based on political charisma, social legitimacy and cultural nationalism. His critics question the legality of his regime in terms of democratic deficit, incompetent governance and unrepresentative of ‘will of the whole people’. However, the saffron party’s victories in national elections 2014 and 2019 is a reflection of ‘will of the majority’ that institutionalized and routinized Modi wave. ‘There is No Alternative’ to Modi’ is deeply entrenched in minds of voters as they rewarded him with successive leadership renewals and re-legitimations. Modi’s leadership will once again attempt to obtain validation in national elections 2024, but the absence of a competitive adversary strongly augments his chances of getting yet another political mandate, provided there are no ‘election surprises’ in store.

Political Legitimation and Charismatic Routinization of Modi ‘Wave’ in India

Modi ‘Wave’ is a political phenomenon that describes a strong hegemon (Prime Minister Narendra Modi) who scripts landslide victories in Indian elections based on political charisma and electoral legitimacy. The consecutive victories of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in national elections 2014 and 2019 is a testimony of charismatic routinization of Modi ‘Wave’. ‘There Is No Alternative’ to Modi seems to be ingrained in the conscious psyche of the electorate (will of the majority), which provides successive leadership legitimacy renewals. The political momentum of Modi’s charisma is a discursive dynamic, but it continues to institutionalize right-wing ideology and expand saffron electoral footprints in India.

Charisma's Birth from the Bottom Up: Lula, ABC's Metalworkers’ Strikes and the Social History of Brazilian Politics

AbstractIf David Bell in his book Men on Horseback (2020) focuses on what is political charisma, how it functions, and what it means ‘to write its history’, this article examines how Brazil's ex-President Luís Inácio Lula da Silva (‘Lula’) acquired charisma during the dramatic 1978–80 metalworkers’ strikes in the industrial ABC region of São Paulo, Brazil. While generating a vast literature, scholars of the ABC strikes have evaded the question of how Lula, the gifted organiser, emerged as a recognisably charismatic figure. This article explains where, when and why this happened and how a charismatic bond was forged as 100,000 stigmatised, fearful, self-doubting ‘peons’ came to constitute themselves as a locally articulated social actor, a group in fusion, whose boldness and creativity led to extraordinary feats of organisation and mobilisation. Arguing against conflating charisma and populism, it also establishes the utility of the theorisation of group-making advanced in the Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960) by Jean-Paul Sartre.

Political power, performance and ritual: Cultural policy as a framework for the construction of political charisma in the city of Valencia (1991–2015)

The cultural dimension of politics is not secondary but rather a constitutive element of its social dynamics and of the logic of power, which must be visualized to be effective. Some authors, including Jeffrey Alexander and Randall Collins, have elaborated upon this dimension: the former with the concept of political performance, and the latter with rituals and social domination. The combination of the two perspectives is useful for us to look at the use of the inaugurations of momentous events and festivities with a new light – as a privileged instrument to legitimize a narrative of power and to create symbols of dominance embodied by political figures. This fabrication of narrative charisma in politics could be observed in Valencia (Spain) between 1991 and 2015, during the long political domination of conservative regionalism. Likewise, this case is a clear example of how almost absolute political dominance can fall apart, partly because of deficient performances and failed political rituals. This fact highlights the fragility, contingency of power and dependence on its symbolic performativity.

‘Emotion that Goes Around Comes Around’. Political Charisma and the Emotions Conveyed through Social Media

‘Emotion that Goes Around Comes Around’. Political Charisma and the Emotions Conveyed through Social Media

Introduction

This introduction outlines an anthropological concept of ‘theopolitics’ emergent from ethnographic engagements with the oldest site of European colonialism—the (Latin) Americas. Defined as a query into the sensorial regimes enabling incarnate forms of power, theopolitics focuses on the sovereignties from below that are immanent in struggles between the universalisms of Christian imperialisms and the autochthonous forces they seek to police and unmake. The articles comprising this special issue advance this query by exploring processes of attunement to the prophetic voices of the dead and life itself, of the elasticity of incarnate forms of political charisma and crowds, and the potencies of precious matter and touch as domains for rethinking relationships among political anthropology, political economy, and political theology beyond a focus on the state.

CHARISMA AND SOCIAL MEDIA IN INDONESIAN POLITICS

The ability to exploit social media to develop political charisma has become essential for aspiring Indonesian politicians. Social media is even more crucial for those who competes in urban areas, where its citizens has better access on digital technology. Nevertheless, despite the entanglement, study on the function of social media to develop political charisma is still relatively nascent. In this regards, the article explores the way politicians employ social media to get and maintain their power. How do social media affordances enabled politicians to manufacture political charisma? To what extent, political charisma developed on social media enabled politicians to influence their followers? To answer these problem, the article draws from the political trajectory of Ridwan Kamil, Governor of West Java, whose political persona relies heavily on his personal use of social media. Based on digital observation and several in-depth interviews, the article proposes three arguments: First, social media affordances enabled politician to construct political charisma based on multiple representations within a short period of time. Second, the infrastructure of social media has reinforced the blurry lines between personal and public matters in politics. Third, the influence of charisma developed through social media is constrained by social and political contexts.

Charismatic Leaders in a New Perspective: Reality in Estonia and Italy

The purpose of this explorative study is to put the existing theories on charismatic political leadership in a current post-web media context. It also seeks to better understand why “charismatic politicians” seem to have success in present-day cyber politics. The paper considers political charisma in a Weberian perspective and aims to explain what elements it includes in a current electoral environment characterized by a fast-changing media landscape. The paper places the existing theoretical models in the context of two European societies, by comparing Estonia and Italy as case studies. Estonia, a small ex-Soviet country has emerged in recent years as an advanced e-society with highly “internetisized” media. At the same time, Italy became known by the phenomenon of the “Berlusconization” of the media, a popular subject of study in political communication. The analysis considers existing research, mostly based on the work of Max Weber, and aims to test the index of charisma, developed by Pappas (2011), in the two observed countries. The paper concludes with a discussion on if and how charismatic political leaders fit a deliberative democracy. Finally, attention is drawn to the need for further systematic comparative research to better understand the phenomenon of charismatic leadership in the post-web media environment.

ALKHAIRAAT POLITICAL KHARISMA

Abstract.Alkhairaat, founded in 1930, is the largest social organization (CSO) in Central Sulawesi Province, which has regional and branch managers in various provinces in Eastern Indonesia. Charitable business is engaged in education, preaching, social, cultural, media, economic and health. The educational institutions managed by this mass organization number 1,596, starting from the level of Early Childhood Education to Higher Education. Existing in Dutch and Japanese colonial times, Alkhairaat has a heroic history that gave birth to organizational charisma. The foundation of organizational ideology comes from the charism of Sayyid Idrus bin Salim Aldjufri as the founder of Alkhairaat. The scientific heritage of the Muslim community has led to massive sympathy for Alkhairaat. Alkhairaat's massification has become a political momentum since the opening of Indonesia's democratic reform taps in 1998. Several political parties have come to the Alkhairaat organization to recruit political cadres in the face of general election events.Alkahiraat's political charisma in the frame of political communication includes the participation, consolidation, and partnership of Alkhairaat politicians who spread in various political parties to win the election contestation. Election of members of parliament, regional heads, to the President and Vice President of the Republic of Indonesia. Alkhairaat’s charisma becomes an image commodity (popularity) to get elective support in every political contestation.
 
 Keywords: participation, popularity, and electability.

A Wolf in the City: Tyranny and the Tyrant in Plato's Republic by Cinzia Arruzza

Reviewed by: A Wolf in the City: Tyranny and the Tyrant in Plato's Republic by Cinzia Arruzza Kevin M. Cherry ARRUZZA, Cinzia. A Wolf in the City: Tyranny and the Tyrant in Plato's Republic. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. 296 pp. Cloth, $74.00; ebook, $72.99 In this clearly argued work, Cinzia Arruzza focuses on the presentation of the tyrant—the titular wolf—in Plato's Republic. [End Page 132] Maintaining that tyranny is, if not "the heart of the dialogue," then at least "one of its main threads," she traces its influence from the opening argument with Thrasymachus to the concluding Myth of Er. Arruzza's approach to the dialogue is thus a holistic one. She takes seriously both its literary and philosophical dimensions as well as its political and ethical arguments, highlighting "the reciprocal interaction between moral corruption of the individual and political and moral sickness of the city." In the first part of the book, Arruzza provides valuable context for readers of the Republic, exploring the political and philosophical context in which Plato wrote and the dramatic personae and setting of the dialogue. She argues that Plato does not intend his description of tyranny to match a particular historical tyrant. To be sure, the tyrant reflects the political context of Athens during and after the Peloponnesian War, with some specific traits that clearly recall Alcibiades. Plato's intention, however, is to adopt a wide range of literary and philosophical tropes critical of tyranny, appropriating "the democratic critique of tyranny and turn[ing] it into a weapon against democratic principles" by showing how tyranny arises, perhaps naturally, from democracy. There are two reasons for this connection. The first of these is institutional: Although the demos possesses political power, it is simply unable to use that power well, leaving it susceptible to "the political charisma of ruthless and self-interested politicians." More important, though, is the way that "tyrannical natures are literally created" by democracy insofar as that regime emphasizes freedom, understood as "the indiscriminate satisfaction of all their desires." The latter, ethical problem of democracy leads to the second part of the book, which is likely to be of greater interest to specialists. Arruzza develops Plato's account of the way in which the soul of the tyrant is deformed, concluding that the tyrant is "a man with a philosophical nature gone astray." Although persuasive, this conclusion is not, as she acknowledges, wholly original. More original, though, is her account of what the deformed rational and spirited parts of the tyrannical soul are like. Without the guidance of reason and "inflamed" by lawless desires, the spirited part of his soul behaves savagely in the pursuit of "absolute power" in order to satisfy those desires. Despite its savagery, the tyrannical soul is also fearful because of the constant need for its calculating part to assess threats to the tyrant's position. The tyrannical soul is therefore incapable of satisfaction: Not only does "spatio-temporal existence" limit the tyrant's ability to pursue all pleasures at once, but "prudential considerations—primarily, concerns for self-preservation and for the preservation of his power" will also frustrate some of the appetites he has. The result of the domination of the appetitive part of the soul over the spirited and rational parts is not the desired freedom but rather slavery for both the tyrant and those whom he rules. It is only in the conclusion that Arruzza alludes to the contemporary interest in tyranny, suggesting that Plato offers a "faithful psychological portrait of a number of contemporary tyrants." She denies that Plato can [End Page 133] ever be reconciled with democracy, although she is more open to the possibility of reconciling him with liberalism insofar as Plato's dialogues value "diversity, openness, freedom, and common inquiry." Her Plato is thus "anti-democratic" without being "proto-totalitarian." Although most philosophic natures will, in democratic times, be corrupted, Arruzza insists that a genuine philosopher must be ready and willing to take control "whenever the appropriate circumstances allow it." Left unsaid is what such a philosopher would do once in power in order to bring about the "radical political transformation" she envisions...

Locating Madawaska: Lessons on the Corporate Economics of Contemporary Nationalism

The residents of the town of Madawaska, Maine are historically French-speaking. Moreover, the town – far from any sizeable English-language anchor – lies cradled against the significantly larger and solidly French-speaking population of the Canadian city of Edmundston, New Brunswick. Nevertheless, although many of the residents of Madawaska are dual-citizens, the majority are currently shifting toward English-language use with a corresponding re-calibration in imagined community that increasingly privileges the US to the exclusion of Canada. Existing scholarship cannot explain this shift. Given its distinct characteristics, Madawaska therefore serves as a rare site for examining theories of nationalism and community, uncontaminated by the typically contested forces of power struggle, political charisma, and media influence. My analysis reveals key links between the systematization of corporate global supply/value chains and the socially contingent relationships that cause and follow those monetary concatenations, shedding light on nationalist/community trends worldwide. In this case, the transformations in Madawaskans’ language use – and their concomitant change in national cultural identity – stem from a two-element process involving: (1) the corporate-driven economic relationships that connect the residents to the English-speaking US/Maine rather than to the often-closer French-speaking Canada/New Brunswick; and (2) the pre-existing “fit” of US cultural identity such that the residents of Madawaska are imagining themselves into a community in which they already recognize themselves.

“Patriotism Begins with a Love of Courtyard”: Rescaling Charismatic Landscapes in North Korea

Moments of developmental commemoration seem acutely important within the political articulations of North Korea. National Tree Planting day and other days in which political institutions engage with the nation’s landscapes and topographies are seen as vital with Pyongyang’s narrative of political charisma and theatrics. Sometimes elements of these articulations and campaigns appear with a distinct local or historical focus, and whose narrative subjectivity seems somewhat removed from the grander or more contemporary political thematics.This paper seeks to engage and consider with these possibly more abstract and diffuse moments of political narrative, utilising a methodological framework supported by the work of Heonik Kwon and Byung-ho Chung and their reconsideration of Clifford Geertz and Max Weber’s analysis on the place of charisma and theatre within political interactions, by Denis Cosgrove and Noel Castree in their articulation of landscape and terrain as symbolic and socially or politically constructed and finally by recent reconfigurations of the nature and utility of the scale as process from the work of Geographers such as Neil Smith and Erik Swyngedouw.In particular the paper encounters the courtyard of a Mr Ri Song-ryong and his family and a number of other participants and terrains within North Korea’s political narratives and campaigns. With methodologies and conceptual structures in mind it analyses the substructures and transformative powers present in these political-social manifestations, assessing the impact on landscape and terrain and the utilities of scale, scaling and re-scaling in the transference of charisma from one temporality or terrain to another.

From precious to polluting: tracing the history of camphor in hinduism

ABSTRACTRecently some Hindu temples stopped using camphor lamps because of the soot and pollution they produce. In this article I explore this contemporary problem, tracing how a network of plants, geography, physico-chemical qualities, traders, perfumers, celluloid factories, and ancient scriptures came together to construct camphor, first as a precious perfume, and later as a polluting chemical. In the medieval period, rare camphor was imported from Southeast Asia and camphor lamps would have been extremely luxurious. In religious texts that discuss lamp fuels we see the prestige of exotic, costly camphor as a material associated with the wealthy and powerful. At this time camphor was only available to the cosmopolitan elite, including gods in temples, for whom it was a necessary, luxurious adornment. As a result of the early plastics industry, in the twentieth-century camphor was synthesized and became far cheaper. What was once an exotic luxury is now a cheap commodity, yet camphor remains pungent with the associations of religious (though no longer elite) traditions. Ubiquitous “unnatural” camphor was eventually dropped from certain rituals because of new concepts of pollution and health. Changes in trade and technology restricted and expanded access to camphor, and fluctuations in the exclusivity of this aromatic material altered its power to articulate political and religious charisma, and to signify tradition and orthodoxy. The consequent rejection of, or nostalgic attachment to, camphor has in turn had social, political, economic, and environmental repercussions.

Sons of Krishna and sons of Bolivar

This article uses the analytical tool of divine kinship to explore political charisma across Indian and Venezuelan democratic social revolutions. In both contexts, charismatic elected political leaders build their image of strength and action on a wide repertoire of cultural and religious resources that are legitimated by divine kinship. The juxtaposition of the Indian and Venezuelan political ethnographies shows how charismatic kinship inflects lived understandings of popular sovereignty and opens up spaces for holding personality politics accountable.

Book Review: Britain and Ireland: Political Leadership, Nations and Charisma

Book Review: Britain and Ireland: Political Leadership, Nations and Charisma

Political psychology

In Hungary one can mostly find references to the psychological processes of politics in the writings of publicists, public opinion pollsters, philosophers, social psychologists, and political analysts. It would be still important if not only legal scientists focusing on political institutions or sociologist-politologists concentrating on social structures could analyse the psychological aspects of political processes; but one could also do so through the application of the methods of political psychology. The authors review the history of political psychology, its position vis-à-vis other fields of science and the essential interfaces through which this field of science, which is still to be discovered in Hungary, connects to other social sciences. As far as its methodology comprising psycho-biographical analyses, questionnaire-based queries, cognitive mapping of interviews and statements are concerned, it is identical with the psychiatric tools of medical sciences. In the next part of this paper, the focus is shifted to the essence and contents of political psychology. Group dynamics properties, voters' attitudes, leaders' personalities and the behavioural patterns demonstrated by them in different political situations, authoritativeness, games, and charisma are all essential components of political psychology, which mostly analyses psychological-psychiatric processes and also involves medical sciences by relying on cognitive and behavioural sciences. This paper describes political psychology, which is basically part of social sciences, still, being an interdisciplinary science, has several ties to medical sciences through psychological and psychiatric aspects.

Enoch Powell: The lonesome leader

IntroductionBy all accounts Enoch Powell was not someone you would warm to, but his personal awkwardness was offset by his enduring popular appeal - a charisma that enabled support for his political causes to cross class boundaries and party affiliations. Despite his education and erudition - or perhaps because of it - he appealed to the working classes and Labour voters, and appeared as a man speaking truth unto power, unafraid to break the political taboos of the day and thereby appealing to individuals who similarly felt silenced by political developments. Therefore his mass appeal lay in his projection of himself as an outsider: the middle-class parvenu surrounded by Tory grandees; the spokesman for the oppressed white majority; the lone voice against Europe in the Conservative Party; the defender of Protestant Ulster's freedom. Support for such causes may have been the death knell for his leadership ambitions, as he was unable to make the enduring connections necessary for such a role; however, his leadership existed in a less formal sense than through a political party or government. Powell's political appeal lay in the fact that he was a selfconsciously lonesome leader.We can view Powell as both an exemplar and an articulator of a post -imperial English nationalism, but one deeply rooted in the experience of empire. Here, then, is what Jonathan Hearn has referred to as the 'ecology' of Powell's national identity and indeed his nationalism. Hearn argues that 'the relationship between categorical and personal identities will always be mediated by intervening forms of social organisation'.1 For Powell, these social categories meditating his sense of national self were empire, state and locality. But here we run into a difficulty in examining English nationalism through a biographical approach to Enoch Powell: Powell not only identified strongly with England, but he also expressed it for others. To paraphrase Hearn, he fused his individual agency with the larger agency of the nation.2 But this was not merely an individual quest for power within one's life. Powell sought to mobilise the English and British nation for political ends at a distinct moment in political time when previous national narratives were in flux. Powell self-consciously moved 'against the historical flow', talking of England as a nation nearing the end of its natural life and crucially under threat. But he also cast himself 'against the flow' of other social categories, notably party, in order to increase his popular appeal. Thus, his political charisma - in distinct contrast with his personal charisma - lay in an ambivalent relationship to the 'ecology' in which he operated: strongly influenced by a brief experience of empire, a deep veneration of the English state, but breaking free of the confines of party and living the life of a political loner in order to speak for the nation.The Myth of PowellOn 25 February 1974, John Enoch Powell rose to address an audience in Saltaire in Yorkshire. On this occasion he commanded an audience of an estimated 1000 people with another 1000 having been turned away. One older member of the audience claimed to have walked six miles to see Powell speak.3 This was a large audience for someone who was formally outside politics, having stood down as MP for Wolverhampton South-West at the beginning of the month. But in the previous six years, Powell had become one of the best-known and most controversial political figures in British politics. The audience cheered him and chanted his name as he rose to speak for the second time in a week on his decision to oppose the party he had been a member of only weeks before. The issue was Britain's membership of the European Economic Community (EEC), the advent of which Powell could not reconcile in his conscience. This was the issue that led to his decision not to stand for re-election and indeed to advocate voting for the Labour opposition on polling day. …

Extrinsic Cues and the Evaluation of Political Candidates

In a political landscape where the content of politics is getting more and more complex and political parties less and less different, voters often base their voting behavior on extrinsic rather than intrinsic cues, a bundle of extrinsic cues constructed as an image and based on perceived personal traits. Based on survey data from a sample of Norwegian voters, this paper tests how a political candidate's credibility, charisma, and physical attractiveness are related to voters’ judgments of suitability for a leading political position. Across three different politicians, the results show that credibility plays a significant role in the evaluations performed by voters. More surprisingly, charisma does not have the expected effect, and to voters, physical attractiveness is found to be more important than charisma.

Labour Identities of the Coalfield: The General Election of 1931 in County Durham

AbstractThis article examines the extraordinary political swing that occurred in the Durham coalfield in the 1931 general election. Having won all eleven county seats in 1929, Labour lost all but two in 1931. This was despite the dominance of the coal industry, the strength of the miners' union, and the increasing pre‐eminence of Durham's Labour organization. While the circumstances of the election certainly motivated a traditional anti‐socialist base, the article suggests that previous explanations have failed to acknowledge the extent to which mining constituents may also have been responsible for the result. Rather than any uniform political identity amongst the mining community, it finds that allegiances were fluid and complex, swayed by factors such as political charisma (particularly with regard to Ramsay MacDonald, re‐elected at Seaham), specific local concerns, and paternalistic loyalties. In doing so, it reveals the fragility of the Labour Party's appeal even amongst its ‘core’ supporters. The National success in 1931 demonstrated that Labour's dominance in Durham remained recent, limited and as yet provisional, a finding that has significant implications for the wider picture of Labour's national advance, revealing that Labour's progress in the inter‐war years was conditional and erratic even in its most ‘natural’ strongholds.

Tunku Abdul Rahman, Charisma, and the Nationalist Movement in Malaya, 1952–1957

AbstractThis article examines the role and importance of charisma in Tunku Abdul Rahman's leadership of the nationalist movement in Malaya in the 1950s. A Cambridge University‐educated prince from the northern state of Kedah, the Tunku turned a disparate group of communal political parties into a potent nationalist movement, the Alliance Party, which secured independence from Britain within five years of its formation. Previous studies have focused largely on his political leadership of the movement and have not examined the element of the Tunku's charisma in the nationalists' campaign. This article examines the political charisma of this leader in the context of recent theories of charisma. Historical evidence indicates that his personal appeal or charisma significantly influenced support for the Tunku's leadership of the nationalist movement, and, at a certain stage, he had almost a cult following. Some of the Tunku's strategies and actions were highly risky and even bordered on the irrational; yet, they were fully embraced by his supporters. The phenomenon of charisma is useful in attempting to understand political galvanisation, such as that instigated by the Tunku, in a way that other theories of political mobilisation (such as legal‐rational or traditional leadership) cannot. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources such as the Alliance Party documents and records of the Colonial Office, this article explores the Tunku's charisma as an explanatory factor in the rise of the nationalist movement in Malaya in the 1950s.