Max Weber,demagogy and charismatic representation

Abstract

Political thought has long identified demagogic leadership as one of the key pathologies of democracy. Unusually among political thinkers, Max Weber not only accepts the inevitability of demagogy in democratic politics but also appropriates the figure of the demagogue for democratic thought, praising certain kinds of ‘responsible’ demagogic leadership. This paper examines the role of demagogues in democracy through the lens of Weber's political thought. It critically reconstructs Weber's view of demagogy in terms of the kind of representation charismatic leaders can offer. Demagogues articulate images of ‘the people’ that express a group's deep values and identities. However, Weber worried that demagogues often act irresponsibly, exacerbating dangerous divisions, given their ability to overcome legal and normative constraints. For Weber, democracy requires institutions that encourage an ‘ethic of responsibility’ in leaders while also holding them accountable. Weber's partial defence of demagogy provides useful perspectives on representation and on the institutional prerequisites for responsible leadership that neither deliberative nor minimalist models of democracy sufficiently appreciate.

Introduction

In the history of political thought, ‘demagogic’ leadership has long been seen as a pathology of democracy. While the figure of the ‘demagogue’ – literally, the leader of the demos – did not initially have a negative connotation (as Max Weber notes, Pericles was one of the first to bear this title, Weber, [1919] 1994d: 331), it eventually became a key term in critiques of democracy. The opposite of the genuine statesman – Cleon, rather than Pericles – the demagogue easily exploited the passions of the people to undermine the common good. The beginnings of this change in meaning are found as early as Plato and Aristotle (Lane, 2012); and discussions of democracy up until the 19th century routinely warned of the dangers of demagogic leadership. ¹ Even today, when political theorists have begun to positively re-evaluate many aspects of democracy that had until recently been considered negative, such as partisanship (Muirhead, 2014; Rosenblum, 2008; White and Ypi, 2016), demagogic leadership (often under other names, such as ‘populism’) is routinely understood as a problem for democracy (Signer, 2009).

Unusually among major political thinkers, Max Weber not only accepts the inevitability of demagogy in democratic politics but also appropriates the figure of the demagogue for democratic thought, praising certain kinds of ‘responsible’ charismatic and demagogic leadership (e.g. Weber, [1918] 1994a: 218–220; [1919] 1994d: 331, 339, 342). Weber's atypical position on the role of demagogues in democracy is rooted in his ‘agonistic’ conception of democracy. Because, for Weber, we cannot decide rationally among ultimate values (Weber, [1919] 1989: 22–27), no external measure of the goodness or morality of political action is available to distinguish between statesmanship and demagogy. Political leaders nevertheless must choose coherently among these ultimate values. Effective leaders must be able to fight for such ‘causes’ beyond the narrow immediate interests of economic groups or party organisations (Weber, [1919] 1994d: 330), and thus to struggle against the impersonal forces of bureaucratisation that threaten to drain meaning from modern society. They must therefore have a charismatic form of authority – the only form of authority capable of overcoming the constraints of organisation, legality and tradition (Weber, [1922] 1978: 245, 1116–17) – in order to make the state responsive to their commitments (Shaw, 2008: 37, 41). And wherever politics becomes mass politics, with its dependence on mass persuasion, charismatic authority manifests as demagogy (Weber, [1919] 1994d: 312–13; [1922] 1978: 168, 297, 1130).

Charismatic demagogy can thus inject new values and passions into public life and break the hold over the state of elites representing narrow interests. The ‘unruliness’ of demagoguery is an essential part of democratic life. Yet it is also a threat to it. Charisma is, after all, destructive of legal–rational authority, and the charismatic leader brings forth passionate commitments and emotions into the public sphere that can prevent reasoned deliberation. This applies even more to the charismatic demagogue, whose authority is, as we shall see, relatively disconnected from the production of tangible benefits and is instead tied with the success of his claims to represent ‘the people’. Indeed, demagogy and what we now call ‘populism’ are intimately related (though not identical), and demagogic representations of who constitutes ‘the people’ and how their interests should be championed can be exclusive and institutionally damaging. Moreover, the charismatic demagogue is never fully controlled by the people he claims to represent. Is there a legitimate place for charismatic demagogues in modern democracies?

I argue in this paper that Weber's conception of charismatic authority allows some demagogues to play a genuinely democratic role in modern societies when viewed through contemporary theories of representation. While not all forms of demagogy are good for democracy – Weber himself is contemptuous of ‘mere demagogues’ (Weber, [1918] 1994a: 142, 182; [1919] 1994d: 344) – a few demagogues are able to represent compelling images of ‘the people’, and thus to articulate vital ‘national’ interests. We might even say that ‘the people’ – the demos of democracy – is constructed through political competition between demagogues. And while charismatic demagogues can be manipulative, the images of ‘the people’ they produce are neither arbitrary nor under their complete control. Weber's understanding of the sources of charismatic authority implicitly gives ordinary citizens an important role in determining which values are ultimately essential to any conception of ‘the people’, enabling them to check the authority of these demagogues.

Weber's appreciation of the necessity and even the desirability of demagogy in modern democracy is nevertheless tempered by the worry that political leaders must also be responsible. This is so in a twofold sense: objectively, a political system must be able to hold leaders accountable for their actions; and subjectively, leaders must display an ethics of responsibility, and thus be able to ‘take responsibility’ for their actions. Both forms of responsibility require rational scrutiny of the consequences of political action; the ‘ethic of responsibility’ balances passion and conviction with rationality at both the individual and the social levels. Accordingly, democracy works well to the extent that demagoguery is situated in a social and institutional setting that induces responsibility by (e.g.) subjecting demagogic claims to rational scrutiny by other leaders and enabling various publics to hold demagogues to account for their actions. Weber's positive models of demagogy in democracies – e.g. Pericles and Gladstone – all make sense to the extent that the context of these leaders promoted both the social and the individual aspects of the ethic of responsibility through particular mechanisms of political competition.

The paper is organised as follows. I first explicate Weber's view of the demagogue as a type of charismatic leader in contrast to other kinds of leaders in modern democracies. I further argue that there is a plausible interpretation of charismatic authority in Weber where ordinary citizens retain some control over the charismatic leader in ways that are not incompatible with forms of instrumental rationality or democracy. Drawing on contemporary theories of representation, I then reconstruct the charismatic authority of the demagogue in modern democracies in terms of his ability to represent certain values, and in particular in his ability to produce compelling portrayals of ‘the people’. I then assess the dangers of this form of charismatic representation and show how institutions of accountability and an ethic of responsibility enable the charismatic demagogue to play an important role in the articulation of vital interests in democracy. Finally, I conclude with an appreciation for Weber's ‘unruly’ model of democracy, arguing that it provides us with resources to understand when demagogy and populism are democratically productive or genuinely dangerous.

Democracy and leadership in Weber

Weber did not think democratic ‘self-rule’ was genuinely possible in complex societies (Weber, [1922] 1978: 948–49; Weber, 2005: 139–40). In common with Pareto, Michels and other ‘elite’ social theorists of the early 20th century, he argued that economic differentiation produced a general tendency to concentrate administrative power in the hands of an elite (Thomas, 1984: 229). In any case, the growing complexity of modern states made it difficult for ordinary people to intentionally direct their operation; the ‘burdens of judgment’ required to exercise power intelligently under modern social conditions were far beyond their capacities (Shaw, 2008: 37). Nevertheless, this same growth of the modern state, with its formally rational legal order, destroyed the sorts of status distinctions that had sustained earlier forms of non-democratic politics and eventually resulted in irresistible demands for equal suffrage (Weber, [1917] 1994b: 103). The politics of the resulting ‘mass democracies’ then became structured by competition for the mobilisation of voters and interest groups. In the context of mass politics, two kinds of political leaders became especially prominent: the ‘party boss’ and the ‘charismatic demagogue’.

The party boss emerges from the development of modern political parties, which displace the first ‘parties of notables’ whenever traditional status links lose their strength through capitalist development (Weber, [1919] 1994d: 338–39). As the competition for votes intensifies, bureaucratised parties with ‘professional’ politicians gain an advantage over the parties of ‘amateur’ politicians (i.e. notables). These professional politicians acquire ‘personal’ authority – obedience to their person, rather than just to an office defined by tradition or legal rules – but their authority is not necessarily charismatic. They instead secure obedience primarily through patronage arrangements that grant them discretionary control over important resources (Weber, [1922] 1978: 948, 960–61), while pursuing the narrow interests of specific social groups, as befits their transactional form of leadership (Beetham, 1974: 226–40). Their authority is further sustained by the instrumental rationality of benefit exchanges (e.g. providing benefits to constituents, who vote for them or their protegés in return). They do not attempt to represent larger causes, but are primarily interested in power and the rewards power brings (Weber, [1918] 1994a: 229) and take ‘the interests of the electorate’ into account ‘only so far as their neglect would endanger electoral prospects’ (Weber, [1922] 1978: 287). Weber worried that the more such party leaders became dominant, the more parties would represent narrow material interests, and parliaments would become dominated by ‘closed, philistine minds’ (Weber, [1919] 1994c: 306) rather than develop into places for ‘free, rational debates’ (Mommsen, 1990: 398), as they did not represent ultimate value projects.

The need to appeal to mass publics in modern democratising societies, however, also selects for leaders who have a talent for mobilising large groups of people through rhetorical means, or ‘demagogy’ (Weber, [1919] 1994d: 331; [1922] 1978: 1129–33; 218–20). ² While these ‘demagogues’ may also be professional politicians, they need not be tightly integrated into the bureaucratic structure of political parties, or derive personal authority from their ability to distribute valued resources (Weber, [1922] 1978: 1132). Instead, they command personal obedience because their followers recognise in them some quality that makes them especially well suited to act in the interests of the group or the nation. Weber stresses that what makes such leaders effective is their ability to fight for a cause, to ‘represent a case’ (Weber [1918] 1994a: 191, emphasis in the original); and he notes that people who have been trained as lawyers, for example, will have a comparative advantage in this regard.

Though not every demagogue is necessarily a charismatic leader (indeed, the ‘demagogues of the press’ do not always even aspire to political power), successful demagogues are. These are the ‘exceptional demagogue[s] in the ecclesia or in parliament’ whose followers are devoted to them, and who can exercise ‘“charismatic” rule’ (Weber, [1919] 1994d: 312). Charismatic leaders are thought by their followers to have a special ‘gift’ that signals their superior ability to champion a value, ³ providing reasons for obedience that go beyond, and can override, the reasons for obedience provided by law or tradition (Weber, [1922] 1978: 242; see also Márquez, 2016). In Economy and Society, the paradigmatic examples of the pure form of charismatic authority are religious prophets and warlords (Weber, [1922] 1978: 242; cf. Klein, 2017: 189 on the centrality of the prophet to Weber's understanding of charisma). But charismatic authority also appears in the demagogic forms of leadership Weber calls plebiscitarianism and Caesarism (Weber, [1919] 1994d: 312; [1922] 1978: 1126, 1129–33), which are common in contexts with electoral politics and parliamentary institutions. ⁴ The main distinction between demagogic leadership and other forms of charismatic leadership is its reliance on persuasive speech (Weber, [1919] 1994d: 331; [1922] 1978: 1129–30): the Periclean demagogos has ‘a charisma of the spirit and the tongue’, which is ratified by election as a strategos (Weber, [1922] 1978: 1126–27), and Weber similarly understands some of the Ancient Jewish prophets as demagogues, their charisma deriving from their public and unmediated speech (Weber, 1967: 267–68).

Democratic charisma

Weber emphasises that this ‘charisma of rhetoric’ is particularly influential under modern conditions of free suffrage (Weber, [1922] 1978: 1129–30). In these circumstances, rhetorical (demagogic) appeals for votes are tightly linked to emotion and the disregard of complex calculations of interest; they are simply intended ‘to convince [the masses] of the leader's charismatic qualifications’ (Weber, [1922] 1978: 1130). Such appeals result in ‘emotional’ or ‘affective’ action from the followers, rather than instrumentally rational action (Weber, [1922] 1978: 24–25), and (when successful) produce emotional links between leaders and followers that cement the strong ‘trust’ that followers place in the leader (Weber, 2013: 492; Weber, [1922] 1978: 242, renders Vertrauen zum Führer in this passage as ‘absolute trust’, which is probably too strong, even if implied by the context). Strong trust in the leader also makes charismatic or quasi-charismatic authority resistant to refutation or argument; since charismatic leaders are thought to have extraordinary gifts there is always a reason for what they do, even if the followers cannot identify it. Charismatic authority, and trust in charismatic leaders, thus appears to be irrational.

The emotionality and irrationality of charismatic authority implies a ‘passive’ view of the masses, which would hardly support a genuinely democratic role for charismatic authority. Like Le Bon, Weber thinks of the masses as unorganised and irrational (Baehr, 2011: 95; Weber, [1918] 1994a: 230), and argues that the plebiscitary leader, though ‘democratically’ elected, leads a ‘dictatorship which rests on the exploitation of the emotionality of the masses’ (Weber, [1919] 1994d: 343). The charismatic leader is presented as controlling the masses, rather than the other way around: ‘it is not the politically passive “mass” which gives birth to the leader; rather, the political leader recruits his following and wins over the mass by “demagogy”’ (Weber, [1918] 1994a: 228). Charisma seems thus to go hand in hand with a lack of accountability, driven by the instrumental irrationality of the relationship, and accordingly to be a poor fit with even minimal ideals of democratic control.

Yet Weber's understanding of the sources of charismatic authority suggests a more nuanced view of its rationality, and accordingly of its democratic potential. Begin with the fact that for Weber, charismatic authority in the broadest sense tends to appear in moments of deep, even existential crisis, where the charismatic leader performs a ‘miracle’ for a group that feels otherwise impotent and deeply threatened, and can sustain itself only when the leader can provide such ‘miracles’ (Weber, [1922] 1978: 242; Wunder Weber, 2013: 492). But evidence of success in such crises is a reason to follow a leader; it is not irrational to do so. By the same token, without real successes, charismatic leaders are eventually abandoned by their followers (Weber, [1922] 1978, Vol 1, 242–243). Even the charismatic demagogue's immediate following still expects ‘“spoils” – the exploitation of the ruled through the monopoly of public offices, profits tied to political power, and prizes to satisfy their vanity’, i.e. material and non-material rewards, or they eventually drift away (Weber, [1919] 1994d: 314). To paraphrase Renan ([1882] 1996), charisma is a daily plebiscite; a sufficient accumulation of failures (or one big failure) may lead to a complete loss of faith in the leader. Thus, though the strong trust the followers put in the leader provides a cushion against setbacks, belief in the charisma of a leader is not impervious to evidence, and despite the emotionality of charismatic action, it is not clearly inconsistent with a certain kind of instrumental rationality. ⁵

To be sure, for Weber, submission to charismatic authority is not experienced as rational in an instrumental, cost–benefit sense; the authority of the leader is not subject to such calculations, unlike the authority of other professional politicians. On the contrary, he stresses that charismatic authority is experienced as deep emotional attachment and complete submission to the leader (Weber, [1922] 1978: 242). I also do not mean to imply that trust in a charismatic leader is always rational, much less that it is fully instrumentally rational. Charismatic leaders can be successful in the short term at the expense of the long-run sustainability of their policies, for example; their successes can be ‘mirages’ rather than ‘miracles’ (Andrews-Lee, 2020). And charisma can be more or less ‘rationalized’, ranging from a pure and ephemeral form that is ‘foreign to all rules’ and indeed to all ‘economic considerations’, and thus inconsistent with the material interests of the ‘charismatic community’ (Weber, [1922] 1978: 244, 246), to more routinised forms where material interests and instrumental considerations are paramount. ⁶ But given the general Weberian understanding of charisma as requiring tangible successes (whether material or symbolic) for particular groups, we must therefore assume a certain amount of instrumental rationality at the social (not individual) level for its emergence and persistence. It is precisely this implicit instrumental rationality that allows Weber to reconstruct charisma ‘in a democratic [herrschaftsfremde, non-authoritarian] direction’ (Weber, [1922] 1978: 266; Weber, 2013: 533).

As Weber acknowledges, because ‘the validity of charismatic authority rests entirely on recognition by the ruled … when the charismatic organization undergoes progressive rationalization, it is readily possible that, instead of recognition being treated as a consequence of legitimacy, it is treated as the basis of legitimacy: democratic legitimacy’ (Weber, [1922] 1978: 266–67). The main mechanism of such democratic legitimacy in modern states is the election. While all charismatic leadership is sustained by the recognition of the leader's charisma, elections provide a formal, institutionalised way of validating this recognition, and, crucially, enable a situation where the loss of recognition of the leader's charisma can be translated also into a loss of other forms of authority. Thus, in a formally democratic context, a leader who has lost the trust of followers can be voted out and thus lose his legal authority in an orderly way, an important consideration in favour of democratic institutions (Weber, [1918] 1994a: 222).

In these formally democratic contexts, charisma tends to be experienced in a non-authoritarian way:

The personally legitimated charismatic leader becomes leader by the grace of those who follow him since the latter are formally free to elect and even to depose him … Correspondingly, the recognition of charismatic decrees and judicial decisions on the part of the community shifts to the belief that the group has a right to enact, recognize, or appeal laws (Weber, [1922] 1978: 267; see also Breuer, 1998).

To be sure, Weber thinks that ‘the voluntary nature of such confidence is only formal or fictitious’ (Weber, [1922] 1978: 267). Given his view of ‘the masses’ as irrational, he was unable to see this transformation of charismatic authority as genuinely democratic. Because the demagogue ‘exploit[s] … the emotionality of the masses’ (Weber, [1919] 1994d: 343) through persuasive techniques, their choice of leader is not really autonomous, and the ‘democratic’ experience of charisma enabled by the existence of formal mechanisms for the recognition of leadership is an illusion. Yet as we have seen, Weber also argues that charismatic leaders must provide evidence of benefiting their charismatic community if they are to retain their authority. The implicit ‘bargain’ between leaders and followers that exists even in cases of strong charismatic authority allows us to speak of a degree of accountability and influence; and in other passages of Economy and Society (drafted before what is now Part I in the standard Roth–Wittich translation) Weber grants that the election of officials does provide the demos (or at least ‘social circles from its midst’) with a ‘measure of influence … upon the content and the direction of administrative activities by means of “public opinion”’ (Weber, [1922] 1978: 985).

Charismatic representation

Charismatic demagogy nevertheless remains puzzling, since initially it seems to violate even this minimal instrumentality, whereby the charismatic leader performs miracles for his followers in order to acquire or retain authority. After all, the charismatic demagogue cannot, ex hypothesi, rely on material successes to gain authority; he can at most provide ‘spoils’ (Weber, [1919] 1994d: 314) only once he achieves office. While demagogues do obtain ‘symbolic’ victories in rhetorical or ‘cultural’ struggles, it is not obvious how such victories should result in the formation of the deep emotional ties characteristic of the charismatic relation or provide them with authority. The missing element here is representation. We can go beyond Weber to argue that the charismatic demagogue acquires authority (and not merely temporary influence) when he succeeds in credibly representing an important value that other political leaders have failed to represent. In particular, charismatic demagogues, at their best, articulate a value project that illuminates in meaningful ways the experience of a particular group and ‘resonates’ with them, identifying the group with the people and providing meaning to their suffering.

Representatives are people who make claims to represent others – and in particular claim to act for them, furthering their interests ‘in a manner responsive to them’ (cf. Pitkin, 1967, chap. 6) – more or less credibly before particular audiences. Representative claims are twofold: on the one hand, they are ‘representations’ – depictions – of a person or group (the represented) as having certain characteristics (e.g. certain interests or values); and on the other hand, they are representations of the person making the claim as a vehicle for furthering the group's interests or values (Saward, 2006). ⁷ To the extent that these claims are evaluated as credible by those who are being represented, then the person making the claim will successfully represent that person or group. ⁸

The ‘professional politician’ and the ‘charismatic demagogue’ engage in representation in different ways. The professional politician will typically ‘represent’ their constituents in an instrumentally rational fashion, by (e.g.) promising specific goods to them, and acting to provide such goods if elected. These ‘representations’ imply some view of what the relevant group is, what their interests are, and how these interests can be satisfied; if the representative claims are found credible, professional politicians can then renew their authority by (e.g.) being re-elected or retaining their positions in patronage networks. Moreover, while such claims may present larger views of ‘the people’, they are typically narrower in scope (cf. Weber, [1918] 1994a: 229). The politician is not seen as exceptional, and his representations are assumed to refer to particular ‘interest groups’ (cf. Weber, [1922] 1978: 285).

While charismatic demagogues also make similar claims, their authority is not primarily maintained by means of this instrumental logic. Instead, the charismatic demagogue ‘represents’ by creating compelling images of himself and those he represents. To be sure, demagogic claims can be credible by achieving success in actually furthering the material interests of a distressed group in the short term (e.g. providing ‘spoils’; see Weber, [1919] 1994d: 314); the charismatic claim to be the saviour of the group is obviously credible if the leader engages in bold action that seems to immediately improve their situation in a crisis. But historically, charismatic leaders – and in particular charismatic demagogues – have done more than simply further the material interests of a particular group during a crisis. Successful charismatic demagogues construct and communicate narratives that resonate with the values of a group whose identity feels severely under threat, either through marginalisation or loss of status (Andrews-Lee, 2019, 2020; Madsen and Snow, 1991; Merolla and Zechmeister, 2011). By acknowledging and providing meaning to collective suffering, as well as promising to relieve it, the demagogue engages in a classically charismatic task (Weber, [1922] 1978: 245).

The kinds of symbolic claims that can produce strong and enduring emotional connections with a leader and thus generate genuinely charismatic authority must tap into values that are central rather than peripheral to a group's identity. The charismatic demagogue draws on the followers’ feelings of belonging to a particular ‘moral community’, unified by their belief in a common fate and common values; his depiction (his ‘representation’ of the group) is highly credible because it draws on deep rather than superficial attachments. Part of what makes such claims appealing to a particular group, especially a group whose status is declining or that has been historically marginalised, is the representation of their community as a charismatic community, a ‘chosen people’ whose recognition is the flip-side of the followers’ recognition of the leader's charisma. There is often flattery and self-deception in such a depiction, yet members of identity-threatened or politically marginalised groups may find these claims credible to the extent that they in fact feel empowered through the leader's representations; their self-recognition in the leader's representations feels wondrous or miraculous. ⁹ The leader may provide them with recognition and esteem that they are otherwise denied in the polity, recognition that is all the more significant because it comes from the commanding heights of the state. ¹⁰ For example, the charisma of Hugo Chávez derived in part from his ability to craft narratives that linked marginalised groups to a grand genealogy of independence figures, moving them to the center of Venezuela's political history, and described their marginalisation as the result of evil forces operating on a grand scale (Andrews-Lee, 2019; Michelutti, 2016; Zúquete, 2018). He depicted them as simultaneously wronged and powerful, a ‘charismatic community’ or chosen people unified by their descent from particular historical and mythological figures embodying certain values and empowered through his actions.

This is one reason why the discourse of ‘populism’ – pitting ‘the pure people against the corrupt elite’ (Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2013: 6) is so commonly associated with modern charismatic political leaders (Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2017: 4). Populism is a particular kind of appeal to ‘the myth of the people’ (cf. Markoff, 2015: 18) that can be associated with a multiplicity of ideologies, but is only credible when ‘the people’ provide the ultimate basis of legitimacy in a society. To say today that a group is the people par excellence is to recognise it as the charismatic community, possessing special attributes though under threat from ‘the elite’ and in need of salvation. The charismatic leader fills a need for meaning in this respect.

The charismatic demagogue does not only produce a wondrous or miraculous representation of the people as a charismatic community but also a ‘wondrous’ representation of himself, intentionally turning into a spectacle to be gazed at (cf. Green, 2010: 162–63). The demagogue's breaking of norms, his unusual presentation, his partly calculated spontaneity all contribute to the creation of this spectacular image, and make him subject to the judgement of his audience. At the same time, the demagogue's credibility as a representative of the people is tied to his spectacular self-presentation. ¹¹ To be sure, this is not all that the demagogue does. In Weber's view, demagogues also make emotional appeals about particular issues or policies – including policies that ordinary people are not equipped to judge (Weber, [1918] 1994a: 220) – and thus make it difficult to have an ‘orderly democracy’ (i.e. a rational discussion of particular courses of action). Indeed, in his view, this is what ‘ordinary’ demagogues for the most part do. But to the extent that the demagogue is charismatic, the source of his authority is not to be found in the petty confusions and misleading statements commonly associated with demagogy, but in his construction of a particular persona representing a charismatic community. As Weber himself intimates when discussing Gladstone's ‘“grand” demagogy’, this kind of construction led to a ‘firm belief of the masses in the ethical content of his policies and above all in the ethical character of his personality’ (Weber, [1919] 1994d: 342); Gladstone was ‘the people's William’.

Belief in these representative claims about the people and the leader does not demand the kind of implicit instrumental rationality that sustains belief in a leader's ability to bring immediate material relief in a crisis. Since the successful charismatic demagogue illuminates some deep structure of value that partly constitutes a community, to follow the leader is to opt to belong to a particular community, not to make a tacit calculation about the ability of the leader to resolve the crisis. The rationality involved here is what Weber calls ‘value rationality’ (Weber, [1922] 1978: 24–25): it is rational to submit to the leader's authority insofar as he best represents values that underpin the group's sense of identity – values that are in turn evident in the representations or images of ‘the people’ and of himself that he produces. But in articulating a conception of ‘the people’, the demagogue also implicitly articulates a conception of its interests, and hence a further instrumental criterion for evaluating his actions. In any case, representations of the people deeply rooted in pre-existing values are the only kinds of representation that can give rise to credible ideas of those ‘vital interests’ that Weber claims as the primary concern of the responsible national leader.

To be sure, in Weber the charismatic authority of the demagogue is primarily sustained by emotion, so it may seem odd to attribute value-rationality (or any rationality) to his representations. But affectual action for the sake of the values embedded in these representations (and even for the sake of pure personal loyalty) shades into value–rational action. The main distinction between these action-types lies in how systematic the pursuit of these values is. ¹² To the extent that the charismatic demagogue systematically leads the followers towards the achievement of the values intimated in his representations of the people (i.e. the ‘national interests’ implied in a credible representation of the people), their action partakes of value-rationality, and the value-rationality of the demagogue's activity as a politician provides us with a partial standard for evaluating it, as we shall see later.

From the point of view of a normative theory of democratic representation, there are nevertheless at least two worries about admitting charismatic representation as a legitimate form of representation in democracy. First, there is a worry about agency, classically expressed by Pitkin. If ‘real representation is charisma’ (Pitkin, 1967: 107), and the demagogue actively shapes a group's ‘belief, loyalty, satisfaction’ to the point of robbing them of agency (cf. also Schumpeter, 1950: 263–64), there seems to be little space for values of democratic accountability: ‘representation may be a matter of consent, but this consent is created by the leader's energy, intelligence, and masterful personality’ (Pitkin, 1967: 108). At the extreme, this view shades into what Pitkin called a ‘fascist’ theory of representation (Pitkin, 1967: 107), in which the leader ‘force[s] his followers to adjust themselves to what he does’. Second, there is also a worry about division or polarisation. If the charismatic demagogue acquires authority by producing certain images of ‘the people’, there is no guarantee that the ‘charismatic community’ is inclusive, or that the divisions created by demagogy will not lead to extreme polarisation.

Regarding the first worry, we have already seen that despite Weber's understanding of the masses as politically passive, his own view of the sources of charisma is more nuanced, and he admits that the masses retain some measure of influence on the charismatic demagogue insofar as they can drift away if he does not eventually provide them with some symbolic or material benefits. Accordingly, though the charismatic demagogue need not even be formally authorised by those he claims to represent, and there may not be any formal or legal mechanism to hold him to account either if they believe the demagogue has failed to represent them adequately, ¹³ there is an implicit authorisation relation in the fact that recognition of the leader's charisma is always voluntary, and the leader can be held to account (in the sense of losing their personal authority, though not necessarily their legal or other institutional authority) by the loss of this recognition.

Moreover, convincing representative claims, especially in competitive contexts where multiple such claims are made, must be in tune with at least some of the pre-existing dispositions, values and understandings of individuals, and be reasonably plausible in light of available information and cultural frames of reference. ¹⁴ To be sure, there is a sense in which the charismatic demagogue (like other political leaders) ‘brings into being’ his own constituency through his representative claims. As Laclau and others have argued (Disch, 2011; Laclau, 2005), represented groups come together when otherwise disconnected individuals find that particular ‘representations’ of their identities, interests or values resonate with them. These individuals may then become conscious of themselves as part of a group that has been called into being by particularly resonant ‘representations’. Political leaders thus do not simply respond to the pre-existing interests and values of naturally occurring groups in making representative claims, but attempt to construct the groups they address themselves to, and themselves as agents of these groups, in particular ways. But the kinds of extremely credible claims that sustain charismatic authority must appeal to deep and enduring values and identities; the charismatic demagogue does not have arbitrary power to shape a group's values and interests, especially in relatively open societies.

Nevertheless, the constraints on the persuasiveness of demagogy are always loose at any given moment in time, and given a sufficient capital of charismatic authority, charismatic leaders do have more latitude to make representative claims than other politicians, since they are highly trusted by particular groups. This is especially the case when other leaders, capable of challenging the representations of the charismatic demagogue, have been discredited by what are sometimes called ‘crises of representation’. In normal democratic circumstances, claims to represent are made in competitive contexts where some leaders can point to a record of achievement in promoting the interests and values of particular groups in more or less plausible ways; standard, ‘instrumental’ representation is credible. Demagogues then compete with other leaders in making representative claims, and their claims to represent can be checked by those of other leaders, while their images of the people are only one of many. While demagogy will still be possible in these circumstances, other political leaders, including non-charismatic leaders, will be able to credibly subject demagogic claims to scrutiny and to articulate counter-claims, even counter-images of the people. ¹⁵ The authority of charismatic demagogues is thus effectively checked by the authority of legal institutions and unwritten traditions (or ‘norms’, in the contemporary terminology). In this sense, when representation is working ‘well’ – that is, when many leaders can make credible claims to representation – demagogues are easily held accountable by other political leaders, and they can only rarely become fully charismatic. ¹⁶

But the worry about division or polarisation remains, especially in times of crisis. In such times, representative claims that appeal to real achievements become much less plausible, since the crisis situation is evidence of the failure of leaders with otherwise long records of achievement (the ‘establishment’). ¹⁷ Establishment leaders cannot appeal to past records of performance to build up their credibility, since they have failed; but neither can demagogic outsiders, who have not yet been tested. Accordingly, the credibility of a ‘performance’ of representation becomes less a function of the outcomes previously attributed to a leader's actions than of narratives articulating identities and values. Credible representative claims then depend less on plausible attributions of causal responsibility for past outcomes (on the ‘transactional’, non-charismatic model of representation), and more on their ‘symbolic’ and ‘descriptive’ aspects (cf. Pitkin, 1967, chap. 4 and 5). Moreover, precisely because these charismatic representative claims tend to be most convincing when a group feels symbolically under threat, they require constant defense against alternatives. The charismatic leader thus needs constant struggles and victories in this symbolic domain to reinforce his credibility and prove his charisma (see, for a useful example, Zaretsky, 2019 on Trump). These are thus times when competing conceptions of ‘the people’ are difficult to test, and the lines separating the ‘charismatic’ community from the rest of society can harden, enabling leaders to exacerbate division and weaken its institutions. Only responsible political activity can prevent this outcome, but paradoxically these are precisely the conditions where responsibility is least likely to flourish.

Charismatic leadership and responsibility

On Weber's understanding of ultimate values (Weber, [1919] 1989: 22–23), politics in modern society is necessarily agonistic. Modernity is ‘polytheistic’, and life ‘an unending struggle between … gods’ (Weber, [1919] 1989: 22, 27). These gods represent Weltanschauungen (Weber, [1919] 1989: 25), world views that battle for hegemony, not merely policy differences. There is no external position from which to judge ultimate values, yet political leaders must take a position in this contest. Charismatic demagogues are especially well placed to participate in these agonistic contests, insofar as they represent a particular set of important values – indeed a particular conception of who counts as ‘the people’ – and are able to fight for them in the public sphere.

But the importance of charismatic leadership for Weber goes deeper. The general tendency towards ‘rationalization’ in modernity – the subsumption of politics under bureaucratic and technical imperatives, and the transformation of all authority into legal–rational authority – can only be overcome through the apparently extra-rational authority of the charismatic leader, who articulates values otherwise ignored by other leaders. Charismatic authority is a ‘revolutionary’ force in this context (Weber, [1922] 1978: 1115–18) because charismatic leaders derive authority not only from their legal or traditional position but also from the free recognition of their ‘gift’ by their followers, and thus can sometimes overcome the authority of law, rationality and tradition. In more contemporary terms, we can say that modern society tends towards depoliticisation and technocracy, smothering (rather than overcoming) the deep pluralism of ultimate values; and the key agent of politicisation is the charismatic demagogue, who can vividly embody these values and make them meaningful for particular groups. We might say that the demagogue brings ‘the people’ (or rather, a particular and contested vision of ‘the people’) into being and gives it a sense of agency and of its interests, even as its members remain mostly passive spectators (Green, 2010, chap. 4), except to the extent that they can exercise their ‘veto’ by losing trust in the charismatic leader and voting them out.

Like all revolutionary forces, however, charismatic authority is a double-edged sword. The genuinely charismatic leader, unbound by the restraints that tradition or law impose on political contestation, can turn this contest into a destructive struggle, disregarding the consequences of political action. In particular, though the charismatic leader chooses among the various ultimate ends available in social life (and thus is able to represent these), he may not act in full awareness of the constraints on political action in modern society and may thus be unable to intentionally direct the state towards these ends. ¹⁸

This worry is evident in Weber's famous distinction between the ‘ethics of conviction’ and the ‘ethics of responsibility’ (Weber, [1919] 1994d: 357 ff.). The distinction primarily applies to the politician with a vocation, the person who not only lives from politics but also lives for politics; and the pre-eminent example of such a leader is the charismatic leader, who ‘seizes the task for which he is destined’ (Weber, [1922] 1978: 1112). ¹⁹ The charismatic leader, including the charismatic demagogue, will often display an ethics of conviction. But commitment to representing a cause, which is common to all genuinely charismatic leaders, need not always exhibit responsibility for the ‘world’ that political action transforms.

For Weber, the main political vices are a ‘lack of objectivity’ and a ‘lack of responsibility’ (Weber, [1919] 1994d: 354), both of which amount in the end to the same thing, as a lack of objectivity (wishful thinking, extreme overconfidence, ignoring inconvenient information) in assessing a situation leads to irresponsible political action, insofar as it leads to a misunderstanding of the means necessary to achieve particular ends and the physical, social and political constraints on the use of such means (Shaw, 2008: 36, 37). And though all leaders are susceptible to these vices, since most leaders would prefer to have power without responsibility, the situation of the charismatic demagogue, surrounded by adoring followers and capable of summoning the adulation of crowds, makes these vices extremely common occupational hazards (Weber, [1919] 1994d: 354).

Weber's key concern about demagogy is thus how to join together what he sees as its inevitable (Weber, [1918] 1994a: 218–20) and potentially desirable prominence in democracy with responsibility, since genuinely ‘vocational’ politicians will tend to be charismatic leaders. For him, the choice is between democracy with ‘orderly leadership … by responsible politicians’ and ‘unregulated rule by the street and leadership by chance demagogues’ (Weber, [1917] 1994b: 125, emphasis in the original; cf. also Weber, [1918] 1994a: 181–82). Instead of distinguishing between the ‘mere’ demagogue and its antithesis, the statesman, in terms of whether or not they deceive the demos or act for the common good, Weber stresses the ethical distinction between the politician who is responsible for their cause, and thus capable of intentionally and rationally directing state power towards its achievement (in what is, strictly speaking, a value–rational way), and the politician who is not.

The principle of responsibility in question here is incompatible with bureaucratic rationality, which prepares the official only to ‘carry out that instruction, on the responsibility of the man issuing it’ (Weber, [1919] 1994d: 330; cf. the discussion in Rudinsky, 2023: 725). The bureaucratic official can never substitute for the political leader, since for Weber bureaucratic rule is purely instrumental, deriving its purpose from values external to it. Hence, technocratic bureaucratisation is also a threat to responsible action. The charismatic demagogue, however, insofar as he systematically and objectively (i.e. responsibly) pursues the values implicit in his representations of ‘the people’, acts in a value–rational way, transforming these values into genuinely ‘national’ (but contested) interests.

Responsibility is nevertheless twofold: on the one hand, there is the political virtue of leaders who are willing to take genuine responsibility for their actions, up to resigning their office when they fail (Cherniss, 2016; Satkunanandan, 2014; see also especially Rudinsky, 2023: 727, on the duty to resign); on the other hand, there is the institutional infrastructure capable of holding leaders responsible (and thus forcing them to leave office when they fail). Both are important, but insofar as charismatic authority is capable of overcoming the constraints of law and tradition, institutions will often be insufficient to hold charismatic leaders accountable. This is not to say that Weber disregards institutional constraints on leaders; in fact, the main thrust of his political writings in the latter 1910s is to argue for increased powers for parliament so it can hold leaders accountable and prevent parliamentarians from succumbing to the vices of powerlessness – the grandstanding and posturing that accompanies a leader's inability to actually direct the operation of the state or to hold its officials accountable (Beetham, 1974, chap. 8; Mommsen, 1990, chap. 6; Rudinsky, 2023: 727). But parliamentary accountability is always fragile, because successful charismatic leaders (especially those who arise outside of existing institutional structures) can easily take control of their own parliamentary parties, rendering direct accountability ineffective; indeed, ‘tightly organised parties, if they really want to attain power in the state, must subordinate themselves to the trusted representatives of the masses’, those ‘dictator[s] of the electoral battlefield’ (Weber, [1918] 1994a: 230; [1919] 1994d: 342). And this sort of institutional accountability is even more difficult during ‘crises of representation’.

Instead, Weber puts his trust in two ‘gambles’. First, what he calls plebiscitarianism ²⁰ ; and second, the political ‘training’ provided by powerful political parties and parliamentary committees. Weber thinks democratic societies have a tendency towards plebiscitarianism, but plebiscitarianism is a threat to parliamentarism (Weber, [1918] 1994a: 220–222), since the kind of charismatic legitimacy that leaders derive from plebiscitary (electoral) selection undermines the power of parliaments, which is based on legal–rational legitimacy. Powerful parliaments are essential for orderly democracies, since they are one of the key mechanisms for holding both state bureaucrats and political leaders genuinely accountable (Rudinsky, 2023: 728). Yet important decisions concerning national interests must be taken by individuals and not merely by parties, who can credibly claim the trust of the public, not just of narrow interests or parliamentary majorities. But these leaders must always prove that they have the continuing trust of these publics by submitting themselves to periodic election. Opening powerful positions in the state to election by wide publics encourages both ambitious people with a vocation for politics and ‘mere’ demagogues to compete for office by attempting to secure this trust, a risk that Weber is willing to accept in his quest for leaders capable of articulating and effectively fighting for broad national interests and values.

The key point here, as noted above, is that elections formalise the recognition of charisma. If charismatic leaders capable of mobilising and representing broad masses will tend to arise in any case, it is better if the recognition of their charisma is subject to periodic formal tests rather than informal, extralegal events. In particular, formal electoral tests allow the ‘Caesarist dictator who has lost the trust of the masses’ to be ‘peacefully eliminated’ (Weber, [1918] 1994a: 222). ²¹ And as Rudinsky has recently argued (Rudinsky, 2023: 726–27), Weber drew on the American Presidency (through the work of James Bryce) to argue in 1919 for a popularly elected president as an office where the ‘political responsibility of the nation could be concentrated’ but which was nevertheless tied to a mechanism of accountability. But this sort of ‘plebiscitarianism’ remains a gamble, insofar as the charismatically legitimated leader can always use his charismatic authority against the institutions of the state, transforming charisma into other forms of power; the end of Weimar Germany, which of course Weber did not live to see, provides ample warning. ²²

Parliaments and parties nevertheless remain important as sites for selecting, socialising into responsibility and holding accountable potentially charismatic politicians (Rudinsky, 2023: 727). Those who seek ‘the trust of the masses’ should be selected through a process that compels them to ‘work objectively’, that is, to present their case in an adversarial context where information is made available to all contenders and purely ‘emotional’ appeals are insufficient to gain power (Weber, [1918] 1994a: 230). These leaders will still use ‘demagogic’ appeals to gain ‘the trust of the masses’, but Weber's hope is that their training in committee or party work that is governed by long-established norms of what we might call ‘adversarial conduct’ will hone the political judgement of leaders so that they are more likely to see the consequences of their decisions and to take responsibility for them. The ideal committee system in parliament, for example, compels political leaders to seek information and to argue their cases to other politicians who are also trained in argument, and punishes mere ‘grandstanding’ through loss of position (Weber, [1919] 1994d: 343). But the ‘guarantee’ that the training of leaders through party or committee work provides is still only a hope – and a vain hope if positions in parliament are powerless or otherwise reward what Weber dismisses as ‘empty posturing’ (Weber, [1919] 1994d: 348). The development of an ethic of responsibility in political leaders requires giving them genuine power (Shaw, 2008: 37); without power, politics rewards irresponsible posturing. But power is only a necessary, not a sufficient, condition for the development of an ethic of responsibility, which requires consistent accountability; and ultimately, it is only other political leaders with genuine authority (and that may mean other charismatic demagogues) who can hold the charismatic demagogue accountable and socialise him into the ethic of responsibility.

Conclusion

Weber's view of democracy is both bleak and exciting. Democracy is an agonistic contest between people who claim to represent ultimately different values. In this contest, charismatic demagogues play a crucial role, insofar as they are both inevitable – since the need for mass persuasion in democratic politics enables their rise – and desirable – since only political leaders genuinely committed to a cause and possessed of personal authority can overcome the depoliticisation of society and articulate new values for the state. Their charismatic authority, on the view argued for in this paper, ultimately arises from representations of ‘the people’ that give meaning to collective suffering and provide groups with the hope of mitigating it. In turn, the charismatic demagogue who pursues the values embodied in these representations systematically and with a sense of responsibility, transforms them into genuine (but contested) ‘national’ interests. Without charismatic representation, democracy produces only transactional and partial (‘interest group’) representation.

But such demagogues are also dangerous, as charismatic authority is precisely the form of authority that can overcome the constraints of law and tradition. Charismatic representation can bring into being divisive and exclusive conceptions of ‘the people’, and charismatic demagogues can pursue the values embodied in such conceptions without a sense of responsibility, weakening existing institutions or promoting unsustainable policies. The forms of representation that charismatic demagogy provides can only work properly in a democratic context if embedded in institutions that formalise the recognition (or rather, the loss of recognition) of charisma, forcing leaders to lose their legal authority when their charisma ceases to be credible, and socialising them to take responsibility for their failures. Charismatic representations of ‘the people’ and its interests must be contestable. Yet institutions capable of holding charismatic leaders accountable and socialising them into an ethic of responsibility cannot be guaranteed to always function adequately, especially in the context of crises of representation.

Theorists of democracy have often emphasised the importance of certain forms of consensus for its preservation, even if this consensus is described as ‘conflictual’ (e.g. Mouffe, 2011), or characterised in terms of ‘norms’ accepted by all major political actors, uncodified and implicit understandings of correct conduct, including tolerance, loyal opposition and the like (see, e.g. Levitsky and Ziblatt, 2018). From a Weberian point of view, however, consensual understandings and norms of tolerance are insufficient to preserve democracy, given the extra-normative force of charismatic authority and the deep plurality of values in modern society – a plurality of values that is ultimately brought to life in politics by demagogy. A Weberian analysis of democracy therefore points less to the need for citizen education (though Weber himself did not dismiss this), or for deliberative mechanisms (however much these can eliminate some of the opportunities for destructive forms of demagogy), than to the need for strong accountability mechanisms and for institutions that socialise potential leaders into productive habits of adversarial conduct and responsibility, while preventing easy ‘buck passing’ (Rudinsky, 2023: 729). Weber's focus is unabashedly on institutions of leadership selection; in this respect, he is very much the ancestor of the ‘minimalist’ model of democracy that Schumpeter first articulated explicitly (Schumpeter, 1950, chap. XXII). But by supporting the revolutionary charisma of the demagogue while being clear-eyed about its dangers, Weber also provides a stronger sense of democratic possibility.