The Spellbinders: Charismatic Political Leadership

224 Pages·1984·5.238 MB·English

by  Ann Willner

The Spellbinders

The S p e llb in d e r s
Charismatic Political
Leadership
ANN RUTH WILLNER
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW HAVEN AND LONDON
Copyright © 1984 by Yale University.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole
or in part, in any form (beyond that
copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108
of the US. Copyright Law and except by
reviewers for the public press), without
written permission from the publishers.
Designed by Sally Harris
and set in Zapf International type.
Printed in the United States of America by
BookCrafters, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Libraiy of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Willner, Ann R. (Ann Ruth)
The spellbinders.
Includes index.
1.Leadership. I. Title.
HM141.W523 1983 306'.2 83-5914
ISBN 0-300-02809-1
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
To the memory of Norbert Willner
and Bella Richman Willner

Contents
Preface lx
1— Clarifying the Concept of Political Charisma 1
Core Characteristics
Dispelling Some Common Confusions
Political Charisma—Virtuous or Wicked?
Contemporaiy Charisma—Real or Counterfeit?
Charisma—Personality or Perceptions?
Charisma as Leadership and/or Authority
2— Identifying Charismatic Political Leaders 18
The Leader as God or Savior
The Leader as Seer or Magician
He Says Unto Us
Indicators of Emotional Commitment
Evidence and Interpretation
Charismatics and Probable Charismatics
Consort Charisma and the Passionate Charismatic
Marginals and Misnomers
3— Political Charisma: Contexts and Catalysts 42
Social Crisis and Psychic Distress
Psychological Susceptibility
Doctrine, Message, or Mission
The Leader as Catalyst
4— Charismatic Legitimation: The Invocation of Myth 62
Sukarno as Mythic Warrior and Semidivine Lover
Castro as the Apostle Returned
n•u • • Contents
Sukarno as Universal Monarch
The Ayatollah Khomeini and the Once and Future Imam
5— Charismatic Conversion: Heroes, Saviors, and
Miracles 89
Hitler as Hero of the Rhine
Mussolini as Defiant Restorer of Honor
Roosevelt as Savior from Fear and Want
Gandhi and the Conquest of Self and Other
6— Charismatic Legitimation: The Prodigies of Person128
Sukarno and Sexuality
Gandhi and Abstinence
Some Attributes in Awesome Measure
7— The Rhetoric of Charismatic Invocation 151
Roosevelt and the Great Tradition
The Folk Tradition
Landon and Roosevelt: The Plain Phrase versus the Founding
Myth
Willkie and Roosevelt: The Boardroom versus the Arena of
Histoiy
8— Political Strategies in Aid of Charisma 172
Invocation of the Glorious Past
The Demigod Steps Down
The Éclat of Innovation
The Suspense Tactic
Organizational Overlap and Competition
9— The Impact and Legacy of Political Charisma 182
Charisma and the Road to Power
Charisma and the Consolidation of Power
Charisma in Aid of Purpose and Policy
The Limits of Political Charisma
The Legacy of Political Charisma
Appendix: Weber and Charisma as Concept and
Theory 202
Index 209
Preface
Almost half a centuiy has passed since a small child saw the spell­
bound faces of adults who listened to a confident, reassuring voice
coming from the radio in a “fireside chat.” During the same period,
Pathé News at the movies showed that child a single rapt expression on
the many faces in crowds of people whose right arms stretched out
toward a posturing figure with a small mustache and a voice that
regularly rose in a raucous crescendo.
Roosevelt and Hitler were dead before I reached maturity. But those
childhood memories may have served as the subconscious stimulus for
the long intellectual journey I have taken in the effort to unravel, under­
stand, and explain the spells exerted by political leaders who have
succeeded in inspiring, swaying, or seducing multitudes and holding
their minds and emotions in thrall. Watching the political magic per­
formed by Sukarno in the Indonesia of the 1950s probably provided a
more direct stimulus.
Some of the details, detours, and bypaths of that journey may be
worth a brief recounting. This work was originally begun in 1964 as a
comparative study of the leadership strategies of Sukarno, Nasser, and
Nkrumah. Reluctance to add another term or concept to the already
overlapping and overburdened repertoire of political science led me to
select Weber’s concept of political charisma as the general theme relat­
ing these three leaders.
ix
Preface
X
Comments from colleagues sent me in seemingly contradictory di­
rections. A suggestion to focus my efforts on a single case study of
Sukarno produced a more extensive (and still unpublished) study of his
leadership than is included in this work. Advice to enlarge my sample
combined with a suggestion to discard the “weak concept” of charisma
led me to try to develop the latter by examining available material on
fifteen apparently charismatic political leaders. Part of the results of
that effort was published somewhat prematurely in 1968 in order to
protect my “pioneer rights.”*
Projected publication of the whole was postponed as I faced up to
one reader’s comments concerning the limitations of the comparative
method for conveying in “full-bodied” fashion the process of charis­
matic legitimation and conversion replete with the “fear and trem­
bling” surrounding it. The subsequent delay in time-consuming perusal
of old newspapers and microfilm, sometimes on a day-to-day basis,
had its compensations. Even with the ex post facto knowledge of the
ultimate outcome of a suspenseful crisis, I sometimes felt like a traveler
in a time capsule, sharing with people of the past the sensations of
having lived there and then. I hope that chapter 5 succeeds in commu­
nicating some of this.
Less time-consuming but somewhat painful was the decision to dis­
card considerable material on leaders in the original sample and limit
the number to six. The cost of having developed some fairly rigorous
standards for identifying charismatic politicial leaders was having to
drop those for whom my evidence could not meet these standards.
As the revised and expanded manuscript circulated widely in the last
six years, other additions were made. One reader’s comment that the
explanation for the rise of political charisma seemed incomplete with­
out some discussion of its consequences produced chapter 9. Events
involving the Ayatollah Khomeini added to chapter 4 a contemporaiy
case serving to verify the theory. To my editor I owe my last extension of
the journey. Her skepticism concerning the nonexistence of nationally
recognized women charismatic political leaders since Joan of Arc add­
ed a new section to chapter 2. The additional chapter I did not add is
*Ann Ruth Willner, Charismatic Political Leadership: A Theory, Research Monograph
no. 32 (Princeton: Center of International Studies, I960).