Departmental Seminar

When a leader is charismatic? And why should anyone care about it?

Not only, like beauty, is charismatic leadership in the eye of the beholder, each of us also believes to recognize it when she sees it. Some even long for it, especially in these crisis-ridden times of ours. But what is there in this concept? And how useful is it in understanding current politics? This presentation tries to reconceptualize political charisma and provide an "index of charismaticness" ready to be used in the comparative investigation of cases. It also shows that there is a remarkably strong correlation between charismatic leadership and electoral performance, which, in turn, helps generate empirical predictions about the success of charismatically-led parties.