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Max Weber, Charisma, and Nationalist Leadership

Article  in  Nations and Nationalism · May 2011

DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-8129.2011.00487.x

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 NATIONS AND J O U R N A L O F T H E A S S O C I AT I O N AS
NATIONALISM
FOR THE STUDY OF ETHNICITY
A N D N AT I O N A L I S M EN

Nations and Nationalism 17 (3), 2011, 477–499.

Max Weber, charisma and nationalist

leadership1
JOHN BREUILLY
London School of Economics

ABSTRACT. One of Max Weber’s most well-known achievements was the formula-
tion of three concepts of legitimate authority: traditional, legal-rational and charis-
matic. However, there are particular problems with the last of these, which is not
historically grounded in the manner of the other two concepts. The charisma concept
originated with Weber’s sociology of religion, was pressed into service in pre-war
writing on the sociology of domination, shifted focus in his wartime political writings
and changed meaning again in his post-war writing on basic sociological concepts. To
use the concept in historical-political analysis, I argue, one must distinguish between a
pre-modern and modern form of charismatic domination. I argue that doing this
enables us to understand features of the leadership of colonial nationalist and fascist
movements.

KEY WORDS: colonial nationalism; fascism; leadership; political sociology

Introduction

. . . the environment within which man now lives is unified into a single
continuous Nature, assumed to be law-bound and homogeneous, devoid of
privileged (‘sacred’) elements, open to sustained and never closed exploration,
tending towards ever more general and conceptually centralised explanation
. . . [however] the sensitivity of earlier men to an outside world was not unified
into a single system; such considerable unity as they did possess, those earlier
‘worlds’ owed to their linkages to social needs, and not to external data.
(Gellner 1988: 68)
Like Max Weber, Gellner was preoccupied with the problem of modernity:
what it is, how and why it came about and what makes it different from what
went before (Hall 2010). As the passage above demonstrates, Gellner asso-
ciated modernity with ‘the disenchantment of the world’.2 Gellner understood
nationalism as a mundane by-product of the process by which modernity
constructed standardised national cultures. For Gellner, nationalism did and

This is a revised version of the ASEN/Nations and Nationalism Ernest Gellner Nationalism
Lecture, delivered at the London School of Economics and Political Science on 12 April 2010.

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478 John Breuilly

could not exist in the pre-modern world where the sacred and the mundane
interpenetrated but only in the modern world, which had drawn a sharp divide
between them (Gellner 2006).3
Most writing on nationalism has followed Gellner, with the significant
exceptions of a brief flirtation with the concept of charisma in relation to
colonial nationalist leaders and, more enduringly, in studies of fascism. Even
then, such charismatic leadership was frequently linked to the eruption of pre-
modern beliefs and practices, a reaction against rather than an expression of
modernity.4
I will argue that there is a contradiction between Weber’s understanding of
modernity and his concept of charismatic domination presented as a uni-
versal, a-historical ideal type, a contradiction implicit in his writing where one
encounters two very different notions of charisma. I suggest we build on this
implication by distinguishing between a pre-modern and a modern concept of
charisma. I relate these arguments to colonial nationalism and fascism and
draw some general conclusions.5

Weber’s concept

Weber borrowed from a study of the early Christian church investigating St

Paul’s use of the word charisma – ‘gifts of grace’ – to justify leadership claims
by himself and others.6 Weber used the word in his ‘sociology of domination’
(Herrschaftssoziologie), in which he developed an understanding of power
framed in terms of the subjectively meaningful relationships that human
beings form with one another. I will summarise the main steps in his
argument.
Power is the capacity of A to enforce commands upon B. We can identify
such power by observing a regularity in this relationship. There can be many
reasons for this: fear, material interest, belief, habit. However, such power will
disappear as quickly as such grounds for compliance. To be stable, domina-
tion must be converted into legitimate authority. A command is legitimate
when obeyed because of its intrinsic validity.7
Weber outlined three types of legitimation: traditional, legal-rational and
charismatic.8 Traditional authority is validated by custom; legal-rational
authority by impersonal rules; charismatic authority by the extraordinary
qualities of the leader.9
Weber conceived legitimation as a social relationship, not a psychological
state or ideological claim. Each legitimacy claim had a sociological correlate
embodied in the relationship between the ruler and those who implement rule,
whom Weber variously called the ‘staff’, ‘following’ or ‘administrative
apparatus’. Courts, bureaucracies and war-bands are typical followings for
the three types of domination, respectively. It is not what individual followers
believe or official rhetoric claims that matters but the social relations between

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Max Weber, charisma and nationalist leadership 479

rulers and their followings that constrain everyone to act ‘as if’ they believed
such claims.
Weber referred to such concepts as ideal types. Ideal types do not mirror
reality but are needed to gain purchase on the infinite complexity of the real
world. These particular concepts are what Weber called genetic ideal types, by
which he meant that they do not merely describe but suggest a dynamics of
change, the typical patterns of emergence, operation, persistence and decline
of types of legitimate domination.
There are three distinct bodies of writing in which Weber uses the concept
of charisma. Firstly, in his writing before 1914, posthumously published as
sections of Part Two of Economy and Society, he provides many examples,
taken mainly from pre-modern societies, considering such figures as warlords,
hunting chieftains, magic men and city-state demagogues. There is detail on
the relationship between charismatic and traditional leadership, for example
how Popes possess ‘charisma of office’. Secondly, in his political writings
during and after the war, Weber focused on modern charismatic leadership,
especially of elected leaders of political parties, partly in his efforts to work
out where a dynamic leadership of Germany might be found. His interest also
shifted from domination generally to the modern state. Thirdly, in his post-
war writing, published as Part One of Economy and Society, Weber developed
charisma as one of many universal ideal-types to be used to analyse social
relationships in any historical setting.
I define nationalism as a political doctrine or ideology accompanying
political movements that seek or use state power. I regard it as modern.10 If
Weber’s concept of charismatic domination is to help us understand nation-
alism, we need to rework it because his most detailed elaboration of the
concept only works for pre-modern contexts while his claims about modern
charismatic leadership are fragmentary and detached from a broader political
sociology.
I will present such a reworking in relation to the two kinds of twentieth-
century nationalism where the idea has been applied extensively: colonial
nationalism in European overseas empires and fascism in inter-war Europe. I
will suggest that there were opportunities for charismatic leadership to play a
significant role in some of these cases, but that it did so in two distinct ways
that require two distinct notions of charisma.

Colonial nationalism

Firstly, a generalisation about modern overseas European colonial rule. An

extensive and powerful state dominates a number of small-scale, less powerful
societies. Beyond the generalisation is huge variation. Where a large-scale
state already existed, notably China, imperial powers tended to avoid formal
rule because that state could itself serve as an instrument of control and could
offer strong resistance to formal conquest. Sometimes, less resistant societies

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480 John Breuilly

were a product of earlier, informal imperial domination, such as that

produced by the slave trade in sub-Saharan Africa.11 Empire depended
greatly on indirect rule. One might think that making small-scale rulers
imperial agents would undermine their authority but, if the colonial state
made few demands upon their subjects, this need not be so.
Such demands were increasingly made. Economically, there were demands
for labour and resources through mining and plantation agriculture; dis-
placement and expropriation through white settlement; transformation
through commercialisation. Some indirect rule was instituted to assist these
demands – for example, designating rural homelands to which workers were
returned during economic downturns.
There were cultural impositions, most notably Christian mission activity,
even if these were sometimes restrained by colonial officials so as not to
undermine indirect rule. There were politico-military measures such as
violently repressing open opposition to imperial rule and introducing codified
criminal laws, property rights and fiscal regimes. These impositions – with
their social products such as urban workers, literate clerks and committed
Christians – provided the basis for recruitment to and support for modern
political elites who stood in a tense relationship with the indigenous agents of
indirect rule.
Such changes frequently generated tensions between a modern politics
focused on urban areas and a traditional politics in rural areas where indirect
rule was practised. Tensions transformed into more explicit conflicts after
1945 as the prospects of independence emerged. There were combinations of
co-operation and conflict involving modern elites, traditional leadership and
imperial power. This produced the complex dances between collaborators and
non-collaborators detailed so lovingly by the Cambridge school of Indian
historiography.12
Such complex relationships could be disrupted as crises altered the colonial
bases and perceptions of imperial power. This opened up space for charis-
matic nationalist leadership. The space can be seen as a gap between the small-
scale everyday authority and large-scale networks of imperial domination. I
will briefly consider four cases where charismatic leadership became signifi-
cant: Gandhi in India, Sukarno in Indonesia, Nkrumah in the Gold Coast
(renamed Ghana on achieving independence) and Kenyatta in Kenya.13
These were all modern men, whatever their public personae. Sukarno was a
college-educated engineer. Nkrumah had degrees from US and British
universities. Gandhi had trained as a lawyer in Britain and practised law in
South Africa. Kenyatta, like Nkrumah, had studied at the London School of
Economics. In relation to indigenous holders of traditional authority, these
men were outsiders. As such, they could have no influence. They had to find
ways of tapping existing sources of power, either embodied in traditional
authority networks and/or among modern indigenous political groupings.
Kenyatta primarily took the first route, marrying into chiefly families in the
Kikuyu. He also played a key role in early urban associations in Nairobi

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Max Weber, charisma and nationalist leadership 481

(Muigai 2004). Nkrumah tilted more to the second route (Rooney 1988). On
his return to the Gold Coast, after an absence lasting decades, he became
secretary to the major nationalist political organisation of the time, the United
Gold Coast Convention – a town-based, moderate notable association. He
also sought symbolically to participate in traditional politics, washing his feet
in ritual blood at auspicious moments. Nevertheless, whatever the precise
combination of traditional and modern politics, such combinations on their
own would leave these figures confined within the legitimations of traditional
or legal-rational authority.
Gandhi is somewhat distinct: he was able to access the highly developed
Congress Party structures very soon after 1918, but combined this with a
charismatic link to large numbers of people (Brown 1972, 1977). In Sukarno’s
case, nationalism remained confined to modern elites barred from most
sources of power by the late 1930s but the transformation wrought by
Japanese conquest in 1942 enabled him, like Gandhi earlier, to communicate
with large numbers of people across a wide range of small-scale societies
(Kahin 1952).14
Sukarno’s case makes it clear that colonial nationalist leaders need to work
with the imperial power. He accepted a leading position in government under
the Japanese following their conquest of the Dutch East Indies in 1942.
Sukarno had been imprisoned by the Dutch. The Japanese interned most of
the Dutch and Eurasian populations who had not fled, were intensely
suspicious of influential Chinese minorities that they believed supported
China in its war with Japan, and lacked the resources to impose direct rule.
Finding collaborators among the small existing nationalist opposition to the
Dutch was an obvious path to take. Nkrumah, though in prison during the
first mass election campaign in the Gold Coast, was released as soon as the
party he led – the Convention Peoples Party – won those elections. Until the
formal assumption of independence, Nkrumah then worked closely with the
colonial government. Gandhi exercised enormous authority within the Con-
gress Party, which, by the later 1930s, was a junior partner in the running of
the British Raj, having taken over many of the new provincial governments.
Once Kenyatta was released from prison, he became the principal negotiator
with the British for independence. ‘Collaboration’ had moved beyond local,
everyday administration to regional or national participation in imperial rule.
Alone, these three kinds of politics cannot explain charismatic leadership
but only how a potentially charismatic personality can juggle the roles of
collaborator and opponent, traditional and modern politician. To understand
how such a person can, if only for a brief but crucial moment, escape these
routine positions, we need to look at the impact of new kinds of mass appeal
with both a traditional and a modern face.
Let us begin with modern politics. Gandhi could only use mass media and
organise mass campaigns given the prior development of the Congress Party
as a national movement. Sukarno was given access to radio broadcasting by
the Japanese and could speak to large public meetings. Nkrumah not only

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482 John Breuilly

tapped popular support in the coastal towns of the Gold Coast but also
mobilised youth movements in inland areas. Youth movements are an
important ingredient in many colonial nationalist movements with charis-
matic leaders (Brennan 2006). The marginalisation of youth in ‘patrimonial’
regimes continues to be a major source of mobilisation, political and
paramilitary (Richards 1996). Urban migration, new occupations and the
modern phenomenon of unemployment freed young people from parental
and other authority, indeed turned youth into something more than an age
cohort. However, these social changes alone could not generate new sources
of authority.
These modern followings alone cannot explain charisma. They were rarely
blind believers but elements in factionalised, articulate movements, constantly
criticising their leaders. There were always other potential leaders to whom
they could turn if the principal leader at the time pursued the ‘wrong’ policy.
The image of charisma projected at this stage of their careers upon these
leaders is a function of later success. To take a more recent example, many
activists in the African National Congress (ANC) were intensely suspicious of
Mandela in the period 1990–94, even as ANC propaganda sought to project a
charismatic image of him. Even rank and file members worried about the
deals he might make with apartheid reformers while in prison, isolated from
other ANC leaders. One slip in the wrong direction would have marginalised
him. Success, of course, ‘confirmed’ the charismatic image and Mandela’s
authority within the ANC.15
A final ingredient is required: the capacity to tap traditional belief systems
about extra-mundane powers that an individual can concentrate upon
himself. We return to Weber’s depiction of pre-modern charisma.
In his essay, ‘The idea of power in Javanese culture’, Benedict Anderson
(1990)16 suggested that power was seen as finite and, like light, could be
diffused or concentrated. Individuals concentrated power upon themselves by
such disciplines as fasting and celibacy, living in sacred places and controlling
sacred objects. Javanese words used to describe the qualities of these
individuals – wahyu and teja, which Anderson translates as divine radiance
and radiance, respectively – have close affinities with the Greek word
charisma.
The belief of followers in this radiant power, when embodied in their
relationship to a leader, is what constructs charismatic domination. It was
related seamlessly to beliefs that sustained traditional authority, which one
could imagine as diffused light in contrast to the concentrated light that was
charismatic authority. Edward Shils had earlier suggested that, rather than
seeing charisma as confined to special situations and extraordinary indivi-
duals, we should regard it as ever-present, often diffused across groups,
practices, symbols and objects instead of being concentrated upon indivi-
duals.17
In a remarkable speech in 1963, Sukarno refers to his possession of teja and
how others – he mentions Hitler – might also possess it, although there is an

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Max Weber, charisma and nationalist leadership 483

ironic distancing by Sukarno from his original point.18 Willner has argued
that Sukarno was identified with a mythical figure from a Buddhist epic who
figured in popular street theatre and shadow puppet shows (Willner 1984).
Willner also suggests that this was why Sukarno’s notorious promiscuity
contributed to his charismatic power. Anderson argues that such association
between current leader and mythical hero does not take the loose, modern
form of analogy but was imagined as literal identification.
Such an argument is weaker for Nkrumah and Kenyatta. Nkrumah was
too oriented to modern political forces and Kenyatta to traditional sources of
authority to be able to occupy a charismatic position bridging the gap
between them, although in the tense moments leading to independence they
could appear briefly in such a light.
The most compelling example of charismatic power is Gandhi. This is
brought out vividly in Shahid Amin’s study of the aftermath of Gandhi’s brief
visit to the Gorakphur district of the eastern provinces of the United
Provinces in February 1921 (Amin 1984). People attributed to Gandhi special
powers that they used to explain extraordinary events, what we might call
miracles, events that shaped local politics. This weakened existing authority
and stimulated direct peasant action. This was not simple manipulation
(although local nationalists and collaborators became involved) or sponta-
neous upsurge. What Amin lays bare is a complex of events that can only be
understood through a detailed knowledge of popular Hindu beliefs and the
material culture of the peasantry. Nationalism might tap these beliefs and
cultures, although most of what Amin portrays has nothing to do with
nationalism. Such exemplary research is rare, requiring a combination of
disciplines and the imaginative use of difficult evidence. Amin’s work throws
up rich suggestions for how popular charismatic leadership can form in
colonial situations, but only more of such research can move us beyond
speculative claims.
Gandhi deployed many of the charismatic techniques identified by Weber,
such as celibacy and poverty. By exercising so overtly power over the self,
Gandhi was able to make others accept that disciplined self as a source of
special power.
This tapping of traditional beliefs – teja in Javanese Buddhism, dharsan in
Indian Hinduism, charisma in early Christianity – combines with an extensive
and mass politics made possible in the modern colonial situation. Gandhi
used the Congress Party for this purpose, Sukarno his collaborating role with
the Japanese and his subsequent leadership of the resistance to the Dutch
when they sought to restore their power. However, so long as leadership was
exercised primarily within distinct political parties and associations, there
were always other leaders, debates and disagreements on policy matters. Gifts
of oratory and other public qualities might help but, within the confines of
nationalist movements, there appears to be little disposition to follow one
leader uncritically. It was the capacity of the particular leader to appear above
a range of factions that gave him a special profile.

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So the key point was a capacity to use modern mass and extensive politics
to tap traditional beliefs in small-scale societies. This was strongest in the case
of Gandhi and weakest in the two African examples, with Sukarno occupying
an intermediate position. In India, dependence on a large and diverse class of
indigenous collaborators co-ordinated increasingly with formal institutions to
provide vehicles for the path to independence. This meant that Gandhi had an
apparatus available to him that enabled mass appeal – as one sees in his
campaigns, where he utilises rail and road transport, print and visual media.
Many people in difficult circumstances projected their beliefs onto Gandhi,
beliefs that had little or nothing to do with nationalism and that were at odds
with the rationalist values of nationalists like Nehru. Popular appeal gave
Gandhi power over other Congress leaders such as Nehru. Yet Gandhi lacked
an organised following within a calculating, pragmatic Congress Party made
up of diverse factions. It is no coincidence that Gandhi never sought office
once independence was gained, although his assassination shortly after means
we cannot know what power he might have exercised over a longer period.
Sukarno did not possess a distinct personal authority within the fledgling
nationalist movement of the 1930s. It was riven by factions, and many other
individuals seemed equally likely (or rather unlikely) to emerge as the
dominant figure. Imprisonment by the Dutch removed Sukarno from much
of this factional struggle and helped him take a leading position as colla-
borator with the Japanese. He skilfully walked a fine line between collabora-
tor and nationalist and used this brokerage position to gain access to broad
strata of the population, especially through radio. His gifts of oratory, rather
like Gandhi’s disobedience campaigns, helped establish an independent,
charismatic authority that could be used to enhance his power within more
confined nationalist political networks.
Imperial power was more in control in Kenya and the Gold Coast, and
played a larger role in steering those colonies towards independence. Conse-
quently, the capacity of nationalist leaders to make independent contact with
broad strata of the population was more limited. This meant that Nkrumah
and Kenyatta soon faced a choice: to confront or join traditional authority.
Nkrumah, much more the outsider and with a popular base in the coastal
towns and youth movement, chose the former course and failed to hold onto
power in the long run. Kenyatta, with his standing among the Kikuyu and
pragmatic connections with non-Kikuyu traditional power-holders, took the
latter course and remained in power until his death. The shift back to such
‘traditional’ power is explored in a large literature on the dominance of ‘neo-
patrimonialism’ in independent African states in sub-Saharan Africa (Jackson
and Rosberg 1982).
Charismatic leadership arises in colonial nationalism because of the special
relationship between a myriad of small-scale traditional authorities, incapable
of engaging directly in extensive and mass national politics, and smaller
modern political elites that can negotiate with the imperial centre but cannot
exercise political authority directly throughout the colony. Although an

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Max Weber, charisma and nationalist leadership 485

unstable charismatic leadership can fill the space between traditional society
and modern state, it will not necessarily do so; when it does, it will in distinct
ways be linked to leadership within political movements or to direct access to
broad strata of the population.
By comparison with other types of nationalism, including fascism, these
leaders do not expound elaborate nationalist ideology framed as beliefs and
myths about the nation. This is partly because there are internal and external
pressures to expound a ‘civic’ case for territorial independence. That requires
diverting attention away from divisions within colonial society and using a
language congenial to the imperial powers and their public opinions, as well as
to the new superpowers of the USA and the USSR. However, another reason
was that the popular beliefs that charismatic leaders tapped were located
mainly in small-scale societies and did not lend themselves easily to nationalist
translation. Indeed, popular charisma and nationalism could contradict one
another. Gandhi insisted, no doubt sincerely, that he pursued a secular India
that tolerated non-Hindus and aimed radically to reform Hinduism itself, but
the image on which his popular charisma was based was that of a Hindu holy
man. Charismatic power, like all socially organised forms of power, con-
strains as well as enables.

Fascism

I will focus on Italy and Germany but also mention Romania to develop my
argument about differentiating pre-modern from modern charismatic dom-
ination. Above all, I consider the persuasive interpretation of Hitler as
charismatic leader and its bearing upon the use of the concept of charisma.
Different approaches to fascism have stressed ideas, psychology, economic
crisis, social upheaval and political organisation.19 Following Weber and
treating domination as the concern of political sociology, I concentrate on the
last of these but need to consider fascist ideas. I define fascism as an extreme
form of nationalism (Breuilly 1993: chapter 15). Ideologically, it gives a
radical emphasis to the priority of the nation over other values, justifying this
with detailed myths, rituals and symbols. Politically, it is extreme in its policies
of internal cleansing and external assertion, and in its cult and use of violence.
This extremism is linked to the fascist rejection of prevalent institutional
forms of rule.
Fascists reject traditional rule such as hereditary monarchy as well as legal-
rational rule such as the parliamentary republic of Weimar. They reject the
novel form of rule that was established in the USSR. Assuming Weber’s three
ideal types as exhaustive, this would suggest that only charismatic domination
is regarded as legitimate for fascists. Fascism does indeed make a cult of the
extraordinary leader.
As with the analysis of colonial nationalism, we need to see how a ‘space’
can open up for such leadership to emerge and become significant. European

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486 John Breuilly

fascism after 1918 began as marginal, idealistic opposition. No careerist

would be tempted by fascism: they would be subject to state repression and
heavily outgunned by established political parties, especially those of orga-
nised labour. Only within passionate and splintered sects could individuals
come to exercise personal sway over others. By their very nature, most of
these sects have no future. How does political space open up so that one can
expand, absorb the others, break into mainstream politics, develop popular
appeal and take power?20
Part of the answer is linked to the weakness of traditional and legal-
rational authority. War and revolution destroyed or weakened hereditary
monarchy, especially in developed societies like Germany and Italy. Legal-
rational forms of authority lacked legitimacy. Many Germans regarded the
Weimar Republic as the imposed result of military defeat, at best a practical
arrangement for the time being. Political elites in Italy saw not a democratic
public but poorly educated first-time voters requiring strong leadership.
Authoritarian monarchy and local power in Romania blocked wide accep-
tance of government based on parliamentary elections.
However, weakness took different forms. In Italy and Romania – both on
the winning side of the First World War – the major weakness concerned the
transition from elite to mass politics. New voters lacked political identity,
which is essential for stable party politics. New entrants into politics favoured
other modes of action: armed gangs acting as strike-breakers, urban workers
favouring industrial action, peasant collectives seizing land. They all took up
parliamentary politics. Workers could follow socialist and communist elites,
peasants could link with Catholic populism, paramilitary groups built on
close connections to employers, the police and army. This was the basis on
which Mussolini was appointed prime minister in 1922. His party was still
quite small but, along with extra-parliamentary support, especially the
paramilitary, he could be seen as a useful instrument for the traditional right
against the socialists, communists and Catholic populists. However, this
‘early’ seizure of power would set limits to Mussolini’s charismatic power.
In contrast, Weimar was a strong modern state. Universal manhood
suffrage underpinned Reichstag elections from 1867 and, with voting rates
over eighty per cent by 1914, voters had firm political identities. The parties of
opposition – socialists, Catholic centre and left liberals – had a parliamentary
majority in 1913 and increasingly co-operated from 1916 to 1917. This
‘Weimar coalition’ created the new republic and demonstrated its strength
in the comprehensive defeat of violent assaults from both left and the right
between 1919 and 1923, including the Munich putsch attempt in which Hitler
was involved. By 1924, Weimar had weathered the post-war crises even if it
aroused little enthusiasm. Given the lack of consensus on any preferable
alternative, contemporaries might envisage the republic establishing habits
and routines that could create and sustain legal-rational legitimation.
Following his failure in 1923, Hitler – his reputation boosted by the ‘putsch
myth’, his trial, imprisonment and the publication of the first volume of Mein

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Max Weber, charisma and nationalist leadership 487

Kampf – brought together far-right factions into a national party. The leaders
of these factions refused to subordinate themselves to each other, preferring
the personal leadership of Hitler (Nyomarkay 1967). Charismatic domination
was a ‘solution’ to factionalism. How much faction leaders and their
followings ‘believed’ in Hitler is secondary. If the leader and this following
had success, such ‘as if’ beliefs would become elements of a charismatic
movement.
By 1928, Hitler was the unrivalled national leader of the extreme right,
believing in and projecting himself as an extraordinary person chosen to
regenerate the nation. The space to enter mainstream politics opened up with
massive economic crisis. Co-operation with the established right-wing party,
the DNVP, gave Hitler access to mass media. His dynamic personality
appealed to voters looking desperately for answers to a crisis that deepened
with each year. Interest groups and organisations, a mass paramilitary of the
unemployed and many careerists hitched their wagons to the Nazi movement,
intensifying its factionalism and, accompanying that, its orientation to the
personal leadership of Hitler. A complex sequence of events led to Hitler’s
appointment as chancellor on 30 January 1933. The manner of the seizure of
power, how the Third Reich consolidated that power and the sequence of
successful decisions taken by Hitler between 1933 and 1941 added further
layers to Hitler’s charismatic domination (Kershaw 1998, 2000a).
The concept of charisma appears to apply with uncanny accuracy to the
case of Hitler and the Third Reich and has been used to enable detailed
analysis of how the regime worked and its dynamics of change – especially the
radicalisation (rather than stabilisation) of the regime. Yet, counter-intui-
tively, I will argue that closer consideration of this case shows that Weber’s
concept of personal charisma is of little use in understanding modern political
domination generally.
The Third Reich is unique, as is argued persuasively by Ian Kershaw, who
analyses Hitler and his place within the Third Reich as a form of charismatic
domination (Kershaw 2000a: 17–39). The point is not the standard claim by
historians that the particular case in question is particular; that is an empty
tautology. Rather, it is that the principal concepts available for placing
Hitler’s leadership and regime within a comparative framework do not
work. The two concepts Kershaw considers especially are fascism and
totalitarianism.
The problem with fascism as a generic concept is that it works best dealing
with a wide variety of oppositional movements. Only two fascist movements
took power: in Italy and in Germany. Furthermore, even Paxton, who
subscribes to a comparative fascist concept, admits that the two regimes
were differently organised and displayed opposing dynamics, with Mussolini
and his regime losing power and momentum while Hitler and the Third Reich
grew more powerful and radical (Bosworth 2010; Paxton 2004).
The totalitarianism concept, only fully developed after 1945, applies to
regimes, not movements. While Italian fascism is the principal fascist

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488 John Breuilly

comparator for Nazism, the USSR provides the principal totalitarian

comparator. I cannot consider the arguments in detail, but not only does
the totalitarian concept ignore the different contexts of regimes (economic
and social structures, ideologies and policies), but even at the level of
leadership it is clear that Stalin achieved power from within an existing
regime – a non-charismatic route – whereas Hitler’s charismatic leadership
was crucial to his assumption of power. Kershaw (2000b) reviews the
arguments and literature.
Another approach is to place the uniqueness of the Third Reich within a
larger temporal rather than spatial setting; to see it in terms of a unique
national history. This has been the main contribution of Sonderweg (special
path) interpretations. There have been three variants of this approach. The
first comes from traditional national historiography which posits a unique
German spirit or character. Apart from the general invalidity of this
approach, it suffers a particular problem in that after 1945 historians in this
tradition argued that Nazism represented a violation of this spirit. One cannot
have it both ways: either Nazism is part of the unique German tradition, or
the concept of a unique German tradition cannot understand Nazism.21
The critical Sonderweg approach has been more significant. The first phase
of this emphasised a peculiar tension between pre-modern and modern
elements in German history, expressed in the way that, by 1900, this leading
industrial and scientific society still had an authoritarian monarchy based on
aristocratic domination in the administration and army that was also able to
influence economic policy and notions of cultural prestige.22 Much of this
interpretation has been undermined by research over the last few decades,
some of it conducted by the historians who developed the original argu-
ments.23 Furthermore, powerful critiques and alternative approaches have
been developed. In response to this, the leading historian of the approach –
Hans-Ulrich Wehler – modified his arguments in later volumes of his Deutsche
Gesellschaftsgeschichte to focus on tensions within modernity rather than
between the pre-modern and the modern. Wehler also argued that there was a
precedent for Hitler’s charismatic leadership in the case of Bismarck. Yet the
arguments about tensions within modernity are too general to gain much
purchase on the specific properties of the Third Reich, and I have argued at
length elsewhere that it is wrong to apply Weber’s concept of charismatic
domination to Bismarck, an authoritarian first minister within a monarchy.24
In terms of a special history, shorter-term perspectives that pick up not
only on late nation-state formation (which Germany shared with others,
notably Italy) but also the unique impact of being a major power and losing
the First World War are more persuasive. One can see how this produced a
late and rapid ‘nationalising’ experience and undermined traditional and
legal-rational forms of legitimation after 1918. However, that can help to
explain the failure of Hohenzollern monarchy and the Weimar Republic but
does not on its own explain the rise of a charismatic leadership. Many states
can exist with weak legitimacy but effective power in such forms as military or

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Max Weber, charisma and nationalist leadership 489

other kinds of authoritarian dictatorship, as happened in Franco’s Spain and

at one point seemed the most likely way that Weimar would end.
However, such weak legitimation provided specific conditions for Hitler’s
rise to power. Firstly, especially after the massive nationalising experiences of
the First World War, the mission or cause to which the charismatic leader
might appeal would have to be a national one. Secondly, nationalism as
ideology appears to lend itself to charismatic use. Nationalism as a transna-
tional ideological movement in the nineteenth century took up the romantic
theme of ‘genius’, transferring it from the field of art to the sphere of politics.
The cult of Bismarck (as opposed to the way he actually exercised power)
portrayed the statesman as artist, imbued with skills and intuitions superior to
those of ordinary politicians. Especially on the right of the political spectrum,
these and other ideas about strong personal leadership were elaborated in the
early years of Weimar. The political culture created a ‘charisma-shaped space’
that led to a search for someone to fill that space (Gerwarth 2005).
However, this is not the same thing as a following with a widely shared set
of beliefs embodied in popular rituals and symbols, which is crucial to the
emergence of charismatic leaders in traditional societies. This absence also
cripples recent interpretations of fascism as ‘political religion’ (Gentile 1996;
Steigmann-Gall 2003). Fascism, with its solemn rituals and symbols, national
myths and heroes, superficially resembles institutional religion. However,
established institutional religion had occupied and continued to occupy much
of this ‘space’, if more obviously in Italy than in Germany. Even in Germany,
apart from an extreme element of the Nazi party, there was no attempt to
substitute Nazism for Christianity. Indeed, Hitler disavowed such attempts
and sometimes cultivated support from the clergy. The lack of one dominant
institutional form of Christianity in Germany, the widespread secularisation
of much of the bourgeoisie and the attractions of Marxist socialism within the
organised labour movement all meant that there was little in the way of widely
shared beliefs – embodied in rituals, ceremonies and institutions – upon which
fascism could draw. As for ‘nationalism’, its widespread appeal was more a
lowest common denominator about such issues as the injustice of Versailles
and reparations on which all shades of opinion could agree, while remaining
in sharp conflict about how to address those issues.
The problem of explaining modern charismatic leadership in Weber’s
original terms can be summarised as follows. The modern ‘disenchantment
of the world’ means that there is little in the way of strong and shared beliefs
in transcendent powers that can be tapped by individuals in ways that enable
them to exert power over others. In so far as there are such shared beliefs they
are divisive, found in rival Christian denominations as well as among
contested post-Christian ideologies like nationalism, socialism and commun-
ism. One can understand how at a sectarian level certain personalities, by dint
of the close ties of domination they form in confined circles, come to exercise
domination. However, the problem is to explain how this can extend beyond
such confines and undermine the dominant political institutions of modernity,

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political parties and state bureaucracies, where individuals can, at best,

partake in what Weber termed ‘charisma of office’ or where ‘charisma’ is
an effect of massive state power acquired by other means.
If we agree that the German case is unique, a different line of explanation
opens up. This should not be framed in terms of larger concepts such as
Sonderweg or fascism or totalitarianism. Instead, one should note a unique
sequence of events in which charismatic power took different forms at
different stages, becoming multilayered over time. Interpreting Hitler as a
charismatic leader is not a matter of applying Weber’s ideal type, which was
intended to be used comparatively, but rather of adapting it to plot a unique
trajectory. Within that multilayered use, we can get back to its comparative
elements.
I have outlined the first three stages of Hitler’s rise to power: sect, party and
mass movement. In terms of sociology, we move from sectarian charisma to
personal leader of factions to a broader projection of an image of a leader
with a national mission to a desperate electorate. The relationships between
these different followings of Hitler are very different. We can posit any
number of beliefs and motives for supporting Hitler, ranging from blind
adoration to hard-headed choice of the best option in difficult circumstances.
There is evidence of characteristic differences of political attitude linked to
when individuals entered into the Nazi movement, based on short autobio-
graphical sketches written by a few hundred members of the SA in 1934 (Abel
1938; Merkl 1975). Some of these ‘followings’ were tied weakly to Hitler, such
as the many voters who switched away from voting for the Nazi Party
between the elections of July and November 1932.
After 1933, we can observe further stages in the development of Hitler’s
charismatic power. What Weber would call the ‘charismatic aristocracy’
obtains the spoils that go with conquest of the state. Increasingly, this turned
the movement into a system of patronage, all oriented to personal loyalty to
Hitler and mediated through various leaders such as Himmler, Goering and
Goebbels. Existing elite members of the state apparatus also expressed their
commitment to the state as personal loyalty, most notably in the oath to
Hitler sworn by the army after Hindenburg’s death. The notion of ‘working
towards the Führer’, with all that implies about a personal orientation and a
willingness to display initiative rather than subscribe to bureaucratic routines,
was congenial to the Nazi following and the military, which had encouraged a
similar mode of behaviour for units under battle conditions (Kershaw 2000a;
Knox 2000: chapter 5).
The next ingredient is the continuing construction of a ‘Hitler myth’
undertaken by Goebbels, who was able to use all the instruments of state
power to cultivate and promote the desired images as well as block out
alternative, critical images (Kershaw 1987; Welch 2002). Finally, just as
Weber stressed the importance of continuing success in the maintenance of
charismatic domination, so Hitler chalked up a series of such successes that
‘confirmed’ his genius: the end of mass unemployment, the repudiation of the

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Max Weber, charisma and nationalist leadership 491

Versailles peace settlement, the military reoccupation of the Rhineland, the

union with Austria, the takeover of Czechoslovakia and much of Poland, the
lightning defeat of France and the early successes in the invasion of the USSR.
Yet this staged and multilayered charismatic leadership contained its own
tensions. For example, the Hitler myth was as much a projection from below
as the passive reception of something constructed by the regime. The image of
Hitler as fanatical anti-Semite and racist seeking Lebensraum in Europe that
mattered to his most activist followers clashed with that of Hitler as the good
patriot seeking only to rectify the injustices of Versailles and put his people
back to work.
One can find such tensions in other cases. The mass projection of hopes and
wishes upon the leader, often in ways quite unanticipated by the leader and his
following, can be discerned in many letters sent to Franklin Roosevelt in the
early stages of his presidency. The deliberate cult of personality within a
dictatorship can be seen with Stalin in the USSR and Mao in China. The
personal ties of a factionalised movement to the supreme leader operated in
Italian fascism, along with the sharing of spoils once the movement had
assumed state power. In these other cases, the elements are separate and do
not reinforce each other. Roosevelt could not escape the constraints of
constitutional liberalism; Stalin could dominate but never transcend the
Communist Party, which was the vehicle of his ascent to power; Mussolini’s
movement lacked the scope and power to penetrate state institutions and
convert state officials into one element of his charismatic following. Hitler did
embody charismatic domination, but in a unique way that does not lend itself
to any general account of legitimate domination in modern states.
This charismatic domination functioned until the very end, being destroyed
ultimately from without rather than from within. This capacity undermines
other assumptions of Weber. He had been struck by the power of legal-
rational authority, based on its monopoly of information and expertise. In
despair, he envisaged modern charismatic leadership as a revolutionary
tendency that might check such power and push politics in a new direction.
However, Weber had also noted that routinised bureaucracy has no goals of
its own other than those produced by its routine. It displays what he called
instrumental rationality, not substantive rationality. For Weber, ultimate
goals are values that are decisions taken by individuals and imposed on
situations. Bureaucracy becomes the most efficient, often indispensable,
means of securing externally defined goals. Who sets those goals and what
underlying values inform those goals remains to be established. Here it was
the charismatic authority of Hitler.
We can speculate about limits to the implementation of those goals, for
example a constant radicalisation that must eventually fail, or the problem of
sustaining charismatic domination once the leader encounters setbacks or his
skills decline, or how to pass on charismatic power to another person. One can
trace some of these processes at work in the last years of the regime as well as
the loss of charismatic legitimacy and an increased reliance on terror and

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coercion. These are some of the dynamics associated with Weber’s ideal type.
Nevertheless, Hitler’s charismatic domination was destroyed by military
defeat. The capacity of a charismatic leader to harness bureaucratic power
to his ends, and for that bureaucratic power to be seen as legitimate in its day-
to-day operations, demonstrate how the two forms of authority can combine.
The contradiction is not between charismatic domination and bureaucratic
power; rather, it is between the idea of power as emanating from an
extraordinary individual or as constrained (rather than implemented) by
laws, rules and procedures.
When we survey the different layers of charismatic domination in Hitler’s
case, we can see what is unique and what bears comparison with other cases.
The sectarian and ideological stages are comparable with other cases,
especially other fascist movements. The use of massive state power to impose
a particular image of a genius leader is also comparable, as in the cases of
Stalin and Mao. The intermediate layers, which link particularly well to
Weber’s sociological concept of charisma, relate more to the capacity to lead a
mass but factionalised movement to power and then for the leading elements
in that following as well as elements already in the state apparatus to take over
state power. It is these features that make Weber’s concept of charisma
apparently work so well for Hitler, but its very uniqueness in being embedded
in other kinds of power focused on the person of Hitler creates insuperable
problems for using the concept as Weber intended – that is, for a more general
and comparative analysis of modern legitimate domination.

Moving beyond Weber’s concept of charisma

Weber’s writings suggest two kinds of charismatic domination. One is found

in traditional, small-scale societies with widely held beliefs about the existence
of transcendent powers beyond the mundane world that can be tapped and
concentrated by individuals. As far as modern nationalism is concerned, such
charismatic power can be organised in the space between small-scale tradi-
tional authority and the large-scale colonial state. The second kind of
charismatic domination develops in modern nation-states with strong existing
nationalist sentiments where a massive crisis has undermined the modern
institutions of power. It is on the basis of that nationalist ideology itself,
linked to the notion of genius – a kind of secular, modern equivalent to the
idea of the sacred – that a charismatic leader can emerge. Then the bureau-
cratic apparatus of modern state power can magnify rather than erode such
charisma. However, this is a rare kind of power, developed in a unique
sequence of stages in the case of the Third Reich, where different kinds of
charismatic domination came to reinforce each other while also exhibiting
tensions between these various elements.
The comparative point can be reinforced briefly by reference to the case of
Romania (Iordachi 2004). The charismatic authority of Codreanu was rooted

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Max Weber, charisma and nationalist leadership 493

in the beliefs of a poor peasant society. The image of a self-sacrificing

Christian elite was central to his appeal, along with the projection upon
him of magical powers that enabled him to vanquish the enemies of the
peasants and, by sheer willpower, to raise them out of poverty. After his
death, and especially once the Iron Guard was brought into a subordinate
position within the government, such charismatic power degenerated into
corruption and clientage but this early phase is more reminiscent of the kind
of power Gandhi exerted than that of Hitler or Mussolini. It is the social
context of small-scale, traditional authority or large-scale, legal-rational
authority that conditions the kind of charismatic power that can develop,
and it seems as if Weber’s personal charisma forms much more frequently in
the former settings.
The relationship between charismatic power and the dominant form of
routinised power is different in the two situations. There is a tension between
charismatic and traditional authority, to which charisma tends as it fades or is
routinised and against which it occasionally erupts. However, there is also a
continuum between traditional and charismatic domination based on shared
beliefs about transcendental powers and how leaders can tap such powers.
For example, traditional rulers are often deemed to possess healing and other
powers. These shared qualities confer stability upon the shifting to and fro
between traditional and charismatic domination.
In the second situation, there is no such continuum. The beliefs and social
relationships that underpin charismatic power stand in direct contradiction to
those that sustain legal-rational authority. There is no constant shifting
backward and forward between two kinds of domination but a violent
destruction or subordination of legal-rational domination by charismatic
domination or vice versa.
Not all, or even most, nationalist movements have charismatic leadership.
The cases of fascism, and especially the Third Reich, suggest it is the product
of massive breakdowns of impersonal forms of modern authority that opens
up a particular space, although there has to be someone capable of filling that
space and, in Hitler’s case, a unique sequence of events leading to charismatic
power.
Normally, modern state institutions and those holding offices in those
institutions remain dominant. This is not to deny the significance of strong
personalities, who play crucial leadership roles. In 1940, two such strong
figures came to the fore in the wake of the fall of France: De Gaulle and
Churchill. However, both were members of the previous government. Their
followings were not based on an earlier charismatic movement and personal
ties of loyalty. Churchill’s power was based on the office of prime minister –
an authority greatly expanded under wartime conditions. Key supporters such
as the leadership of the Labour Party, which entered the wartime coalition,
entertained no illusions about Churchill’s values and skills but based their
allegiance on the necessity of the situation. Once the war was won, Churchill
was rejected by the electorate. De Gaulle, who had briefly held a minor

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position in the French government, had virtually no following within France

and based his authority on a small group of exiled patriots, continuing French
imperial resources and the decision of Britain and the USA to regard him as
the legitimate government of France. As with Churchill, once the post-war
electorate turned against him, De Gaulle left office. Clearly, these were two
extraordinary personalities, and their own sense of mission and strong
willpower were central to the parts they played as wartime leaders; however,
their standing was based not on a charismatic following but upon structures
of modern legal-rational authority. Personal charismatic domination is rare
under modern conditions and only seems more widespread because of the
loose and expanded use of the term to mean any temporarily attractive and
influential personality (Hoffmann and Hoffmann 1968; Taylor 1973).25
Charismatic authority can only arise because the individual so perceived
embodies beliefs of a wider kind – whether these be traditional notions of the
sacred or modern notions of the nation – and can lead followings oriented to
that individual. There can be such followings in modern situations, for
example as embodied in the presidential institutions established by Yeltsin
and built upon by Putin in the wake of the collapse of the USSR and the
failure of either communist or parliamentary leadership in post-Soviet Russia.
However, even this is a weak form of personal charismatic leadership and has
an almost arbitrary quality to it, as when Putin experimented with the various
forms of legitimation.26
If we left the analysis here, the conclusion would be that charismatic
domination, as a general concept to be applied to a range of recurring
phenomena, only works for pre-modern societies and works for modern
politics only in special and transitional situations, such as certain kinds of
colonial nationalist and fascist movements. That is, indeed, the conclusion to
which Benedict Anderson comes. However, charismatic leadership could be
embodied in something other than an individual. There is an arbitrary quality
to Weber’s insistence on just three types of legitimate authority.
One can classify Weber’s ideal types in terms of combinations from the two
paired contrasts of personal/impersonal and routine/extraordinary authority.
Traditional authority is personal and routine. Legal-rational authority is
impersonal and routine. Charismatic authority as defined by Weber as
personal and extraordinary. This leaves a fourth possibility: impersonal and
extraordinary authority (McFalls 2007: 11). It is not belief in an individual
that constitutes charismatic domination but, keeping strictly to Weber’s
sociology of domination, the existence of a following that is oriented to
leadership seen as extraordinary rather than traditional or legal-rational.
Impersonal charisma would reside in an institution or organisation. Such
an institution would represent beliefs as ideal interests but, as Weber insisted
constantly, there are an infinite number of such beliefs, just as there are any
number of purposes that a state can pursue. It is the sociology of the following
that matters. Kenneth Jowitt has argued that the Leninist party – starting
with its Bolshevik original but extending to other such parties – is a

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Max Weber, charisma and nationalist leadership 495

charismatic institution (Jowitt 1992).27 Jowitt develops the argument to

suggest that such a party is one way of bridging modernity and tradition.
The Leninist party is presented by its modern leadership as embodying
science, reason and the idea of progress, but is perceived by many who join
or support it in peasant societies as having magical powers with leaders able
to achieve miracles by virtue of their willpower and insights. I find
this persuasive, but think the argument can be extended to supposedly
‘modern’ groups such as many organised workers who believed in the
scientific power embodied in the Marxist ideology of socialist and later
communist parties.
This distinction between personal and impersonal charisma draws atten-
tion to a major difference between communism and fascism and helps us
understand why Stalin and Mao were not charismatic leaders in the manner of
Hitler. There is no ‘correct line’ in Nazism, no sacred texts and founders who
embody the true belief to which even a dictator as powerful as Stalin must pay
lip service when justifying a change of policy. It is speculative, but one might
also suggest that fascism, with its nationalist insistence on uniqueness and
difference embodied in a thick web of self-referential myths and symbols, fits
well with individual charismatic leadership while communism, with its claims
to universality, fits well with institutional charismatic leadership. However,
fascists rarely form new kinds of states whereas communism has been the
major source of such new states in the twentieth century.

Concluding points

This notion of impersonal charisma raises many questions that go beyond this
article. Here, my central argument has been that there is a contradiction
between Weber’s concern with modernity as a major change in social
relationships, including those of domination, and his presentation of the
types of legitimate domination as universal categories of analysis. Given these
alternatives, I choose the idea of modernity as a major change that must be
taken into account in the analysis of legitimate domination. Traditional and
legal-rational domination can be related to pre-modern and modern author-
ity, respectively. There remains a problem with a single concept of charismatic
domination.
In his own writings, Weber implicitly outlined two versions of the concept,
elaborately for pre-modern settings and cursorily in late writings seeking a
dynamic alternative to legal-rational authority. Weber’s attachment to
charismatic domination as the domination of an extraordinary individual
has limited purchase on modern political leadership, unless one detaches the
concept from a close engagement with the sociology of the following and
extends it to sectarian leaders and the propaganda effects that can be achieved
by successful modern dictatorships. To do that is to abandon all the insights
that Weber’s Herrschaftssoziologie can and was intended to provide.

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Instead, I develop the concept to build on those insights. Firstly, I identify

specific contexts in which the personal concept of charismatic domination can
work for modern nationalist political leadership, notably colonial nationalism
and fascism. Secondly, I argue that the concept of charismatic domination as
applied to Hitler is persuasive but relates to a unique case in which the general
concept is obscured by a unique sequencing of events in which Hitler’s
personal domination becomes multilayered. Finally, I note that the general
model of a modern movement coming from the margins to conquer power
and form a new kind of state comes not from fascism but from communism. It
is for such cases that Jowitt developed a notion of impersonal charisma, a
notion that can be seen logically as Weber’s fourth ideal type.
Finally, I suggest that we see pre-modern charisma and traditional leader-
ship in a constant fluctuating relationship and modern charisma and legal-
rational leadership in a more violent, conflictual relationship. There can be
moments of interaction between the two pairs, as with cases of colonial
nationalism and the crisis politics of fascism. However, for the most part, the
politics of pre-modern leadership operate in one world and those of modern
leadership in another. Distinguishing between a pre-modern and a modern
concept of charismatic leadership can help us better understand legitimate
domination in both worlds.

Notes

1 My thanks to Elliott Green, Ian Kershaw, Omar McDoom, Sam Whimster and David
Woodruff for comments and suggestions.
2 Where possible I refer to English translations of Weber but the authoritative source is now the
Max Weber Gesamtausgabe (MWG), published in many volumes over many years by J. C. B.
Mohr (Paul Siebeck) in Tübingen. A few key texts, notably The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism and Economy and Society: Part One, have not yet been published in the series. As for
specific phrases, one can undertake a word search of Weber’s published works on the CD (Weber
2000). The phrase ‘Entzauberung der Welt’ is used by Weber some dozen times in five different
writings. Four of these deal with religious issues (as in The Protestant Ethic and Introduction to the
Economic Ethics of the World Religions), but perhaps the most well-known usages are in The
Vocation of Science. For a convenient English version of this work, see Weber (2004: 270–87).
3 This is Gellner’s most full interpretation of nationalism. This second edition has an
introduction written by myself, which provides details of the debates and criticisms of his work.
4 For this view of nationalism as atavistic, linked to practices such as the oathing ceremonies of
the Mau Mau in Kenya, see Kedourie (1971). Kedourie inteprets nationalism as both modern (a
feature of modernity) and non-modern (drawing on pre-modern beliefs and irrationally rejecting
much of what modernity brings with it). I consider Kedourie’s arguments in Breuilly (2000).
5 I will be brief about Weber’s use of the concept, focusing instead on the analysis of nationalist
leadership.
6 In her introduction to the relevant volume of the MWG, Edith Hanke identifies Weber’s first
reference to charisma as a sociological concept in a letter of 9 June 1910 (Weber 2005: 54). The
secondary literature on Weber and his three ideal types of legitimate domination is vast. Hanke’s
is the most authoritative introduction. For a brief, recent account in English see Potts (2009:
chapter 6).

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Max Weber, charisma and nationalist leadership 497

7 Weber uses the rather Kantian term ‘as if the ruled had made the content of the command the
maxim of their conduct for its very own sake’. For the original German, see Weber (2005: 135); for
a translation, see Weber (1978: II 946).
8 The detailed arguments can be found in Economy and Society (Part 1, chapter 3 and Parts 10–
16). A short summary by Weber is contained in ‘The three pure types of legitimate rule’, for which
see Weber (2004: 133–45).
9 Elsewhere, Weber suggested a fourth type based on the community of the city-state but took
this no further. The idea is tantalising because it could help flesh out what I will suggest is a
specifically modern, impersonal form of charismatic authority.
10 This is an argument, not a fact. I cannot defend the claim in detail, but for debates about the
modernity or otherwise of nationalism see Ozkirimli (2010) and Smith (1998).
11 The literature is vast and it is pointless to try citing it. One interesting interpretation of the
imperial/colonial relationship from which I draw arguments is Ekeh (1975, 1990).
12 The pioneering work was Robinson and Gallagher (1961). For a pioneering application to
India, which influenced much subsequent historical work, see Seal (1971).
13 I draw upon but do not follow the US literature about ‘nation-building’ that was written in the
1960s and 1970s and deployed the idea of charismatic leadership as an important, if transitional,
component in the work of modernising ‘new nations’. For a clear, recent account with further
references see Derman (2011) – especially the section ‘Charisma and the new states’.
14 One complication I am forced to omit is how these individuals influenced one another. Gandhi
in particular became a significant model for the conduct of other colonial nationalist leaders.
15 That has, of course, in turn been internationalised and has also become one way in which
white public opinion in South Africa can detach Mandela from the ANC generally, and especially
its contemporary leaders. For a brief consideration of this period in Mandela’s life, see Boehmer
and Lodge (2008: chapter 5).
16 The essay was originally published in 1972 and is printed on pp.17–77 in this 1990 book.
17 See his essays on charisma in Shils (1975). Shils belongs to the ‘nation-building’ US
intellectuals who became interested in using the charisma idea, but he develops it in particularly
original and interesting ways.
18 See ‘Further adventures of charisma’, in Anderson (1990: 78–93).
19 The literature on fascism is vast. For a recent attempt at a general understanding in terms of
ideology, see Griffin (2007).
20 For general and comparative work, see Payne (1995) and Paxton (2004).
21 Friedrich Meinecke is the clearest and earliest example of this contradiction. His major works
were in the German historicist tradition but his post-war book The German Catastrophe sought to
exclude Nazism from the national tradition.
22 For a schematic statement of this approach, see Wehler (1985).
23 Jürgen Kocka led a major research project on the bourgeoisie that undermined much of the
original stress on pre-modern aristocratic dominance. For his subsequent balanced interpretation,
see Kocka (2001).
24 See Breuilly (2010). For arguments about tensions within modernity in relation to the Weimar
Republic by an historian who was deeply influenced by Weber, see Peukert (1991).
25 This entire issue of Daedalus was devoted to charismatic leadership and can be linked to the
interest in the subject with the work on leadership in new states. For a short comparative piece
that does treat De Gaulle as charismatic, see Dogan (2007).
26 I have found very suggestive writings by Stephen Hanson (2010) that have looked at Putin and
charismatic leadership.
27 My thanks to David Woodruff for drawing my attention to the work of Jowitt.

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