Populism, Counter-Liberalism and Charisma

Abstract This paper attempts to deploy - and adapt - the classical concept of charisma in the context of contemporary populism. The current wave of populisms of various kinds in Western representative democracies throws up challenges for political sociology in understanding how leaders seek to legitimize themselves; for instance through eccentric, often loud-mouthed, highly-opinionated behaviour, or what has been called ‘bad manners’. In deploying and extending the concept of charisma, the paper seeks to understand some of these developments; seeing in them not so much the expression of particular kinds of disposition on the part of such leaders, but as counter-tendencies to ‘establishment’, liberal, representative kinds of politics, and as signalling strategies for demonstrating what is here called idiot power .