Over a century has passed since Max Weber first proposed “charisma” as a type of political legitimation based on the perceived quasi-divine attributes of a leader. In more recent years, charismatic linkage has been suggested as one of a few basic types of political representation, alongside programmatic, clientelistic, and organizational linkages. However, while programmatic and clientelistic linkages have received considerable scholarly attention, charismatic linkage has remained relatively neglected, with few careful studies of the phenomenon at the level of a monograph.

This volume by Caitlin Andrews-Lee breathes new life into the study of charismatic linkage, moving the literature forward in two productive directions. First, it revisits the definition and measurement of charismatic linkage, arguing that these should be rooted in attributes of the leader. For years scholars have argued that charisma can only be measured in relational terms, as an attribute of followers and how they view the leader. Andrews-Lee argues persuasively that this relational definition is unnecessary and scientifically counterproductive, as it prevents us from analyzing the decisions and attributes of leaders that facilitate or prevent them from winning support. Specifically, charisma should be defined as efforts by a leader to do three things: (1) openly recognize the suffering of their followers as unjust, (2) work to resolve this suffering through a distinctly personal effort, and (3) craft a narrative of social transformation with emotional and quasireligious rhetoric. While the volume’s efforts at measuring charisma in these leader-centric terms are ultimately a bit imprecise, they show that textual analysis of a leader’s words can be harnessed to these tasks.

Second, the volume challenges the routinization thesis. This is the argument, initially popularized by Weber, that a charismatic movement is fleeting and can only persist as a shadow of itself, by becoming a more routine set of relations bound up in a permanent, hierarchical organization. Not only do the cases in this volume show that the routinization thesis is untrue, in that several of these movements have persisted and renewed themselves in highly charismatic forms, but the volume offers a detailed theory we can call the persistence thesis. Charismatic linkages—more specifically, the charisma of the movement’s founder—are not immediately given up by followers, especially when the leader dies without having to deal with the fallout from their ill-conceived policies (and, Andrews-Lee argues, these policies are usually ill-conceived). Instead, the leader’s policy successes and narrative remain a deeply emotional reference point for followers—a unique political identity—that is expressed in the words and symbols of the community. Charismatic leaders solidify these linkages by sidelining ambitious successors or weakening independent government agencies.

Furthermore, Andrews-Lee argues that the founder’s charisma can be revived by successors if at least two conditions are met. First, would-be leaders must articulate their own charismatic message unconstrained by the founder’s policy choices; accomplishing this requires that they not be blamed for the inevitable failure of the founder’s policies. Second, successors are more likely to succeed at rebuilding charismatic movements when these movements arise during moments of policy failure that recreate a sense of crisis. The need to meet all these conditions explains why anointed successors fail at much higher rates than newcomers who appear years later, as anointed successors are more likely to lack talent and ambition while having to face the immediate consequences of the leader’s policies. But even newcomers must combine the right strategic decisions and talent with the right conditions, showing that agency and structure matter for charisma’s persistence.

The first part of the volume presents a condensed version of these arguments in chapter 1 and then a more detailed version in chapter 2; both are worth reading. But the empirical contribution is equally strong. As the title suggests, the volume focuses primarily on a series of charismatic leaders in the Peronist and Chavista movements, histories that allow the author to examine the rise and fall of these movements. She employs a rich variety of methods for the task.

Specifically, part II explores the theory’s implications for charismatic demand, or the attitudes and behavior of followers. Chapter 3 examines public opinion data from Venezuela to show the dominance of charismatic linkages over programmatic or organizational linkages among Chavez supporters at the time he was alive. Chapter 4 uses focus groups to identify evidence of charismatic attachment among contemporary Chavistas and Peronists. Chapter 5 presents the results of a face-to-face survey experiment in both countries, finding that referencing the charismatic qualities of a fictitious candidate increases charismatic support for the movement (albeit results are not as strong in Venezuela as in Argentina, due to ceiling effects). This combination of evidence is one of the most persuasive parts of the book.

Part III explores the implications of the theory for the supply of charismatic leaders. Chapter 6 uses mostly historical data and interviews with surviving party leaders and activists to trace out the reasons for the success or failure of successors. Chapter 7 shifts to highlight the negative consequences of charisma for state-building and democratic consolidation, which it attempts to demonstrate with a historical analysis of the Peronist experience. Andrews-Lee concludes (ch. 8) by restating the book’s argument and findings and reviewing four shadow cases that affirm the persistence thesis: Alberto Fujimori in Peru, Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, Thaksin Shinawatra in Thailand, and Mao Zedong in China.

Interestingly, while the shadow cases in the conclusion reinforce the book’s point that charisma is a measurable and enduring form of linkage, the effort at a broader, comparative perspective also highlights two gaps in the author’s theoretical framework. To be clear, these are not fundamental flaws, but scope conditions that deserve further specification.

The first is the author’s decision to focus primarily on populist charismatic movements, that is, charismatic movements whose leaders frame their mission in Manichaean terms of a cosmic struggle between a virtuous common people and an evil, conspiring elite. In the introduction, Andrews-Lee deliberately defines populism as a subtype of charismatic linkage. It is correct that some charismatic movements are populist, but her categorization implies that some other charismatic movements are not. Indeed, earlier studies of charisma (pre-2000) frequently included normatively positive cases such as the US civil rights movement under Martin Luther King Jr. or the Indian independence movement under Mahatma Gandhi—movements that avoided demonizing their opponents and strengthened liberal democracy. What of these other, more pluralist types of charismatic leadership?

Likewise, while Weber and followers such as Robert Michels were wrong to argue that specific charismatic movements inevitably fade, the bulk of the movements that inspired their work—such as Communism and Social Democracy in Europe—became highly institutionalized parties. This process has continued in the wealthy democracies, where protest movements have given rise to new party families, such as the Green and the Radical Right. Indeed, one gets the feeling that these voters mistrust charismatic leadership and expect revolutionary leaders to build institutions. Rather than arguing that charismatic movements always become routinized or that they always persist, the broader evidence suggests that we should be asking why charismatic linkage is dominant in some countries but not others, a question that motivated the work of political sociologists such as Edward Shils. A more comparative study could answer this question.

Ultimately, though, the strength of this volume is precisely its ability to move forward a more productive, empirically based discussion of charisma that helps us identify these questions. The leader-centric definition and the author’s causal arguments are worked out in impressive detail, in a way that invites further analysis and testing. Andrews-Lee has made a remarkable contribution to the study of charisma and political representation that sets a high standard for future research.