Followers First: Rethinking the Legitimacy of Political Leadership

The study of political leadership has traditionally focused on leaders, often overlooking how followers actively shape legitimacy through attribution and contestation. In this thematic issue, the focus shifts from leaders to followership and legitimacy, examining how citizens construct and challenge political authority. The first set of articles explores the role of leadership attribution, populism, and negative personalisation, showing how charismatic appeal, ideological predispositions, social identification, and emotional biases influence how citizens evaluate leaders. The second group of articles focuses on different dimensions of legitimacy and investigates how leadership distance, representation styles, and visual de-demonisation affect followers’ assessment of leaders. The final set extends the discussion from the democratic to the autocratic context and shows how legitimacy and followership also play an essential role in autocratic politics. By using different and novel methodologies, introducing conceptual innovations, and applying these to a wide variety of cases and contexts, the contributions collectively advance the relational approach to political leadership and legitimacy. Ultimately, it lays the groundwork for a new research agenda that redefines leader–follower dynamics, highlighting the contested and evolving nature of political legitimacy across democratic and non-democratic contexts.