Part III - The Supply Side

6 The Politics of Succession in Charismatic Movements

In previous chapters, I have argued that understanding the striking persistence of charismatic movements requires careful analysis from the perspectives of both the movement’s followers and its leadership. In Part II, I focused on the demand side of charisma, identifying from the followers’ point of view how their charismatic attachments to leaders form, survive, and become politically reactivated by new politicians. Chapter 3 analyzed public opinion data from Venezuela to demonstrate how followers’ powerful, affective bonds to the charismatic founder emerge and overpower alternative (programmatic and organizational) types of linkages. Chapter 4 turned to focus groups conducted in Venezuela and Argentina to illustrate how the followers’ ties cultivate a deeply personalistic identity that persists for years after the founder’s disappearance. Chapter 5 provided additional evidence from survey experiments in both countries underscoring the resilience of the followers’ personalistic identity. Moreover, the chapter showed that new leaders who signal their potential to fill the founder’s shoes by enacting bold policies and symbolically associating themselves with the founder cause the followers to express their identity more strongly and have more support for the new leader. In short, my investigation from the demand side of charisma illustrated that citizens’ profoundly emotional attachments to the founder and movement form, persist, and become politically reactivated through a personalistic mechanism.

Part III places this micro-level analysis in a historical context by turning to the supply side of charisma, incorporating the perspective of leaders who have attempted to tap into followers’ bonds to revive charismatic movements and consolidate power. To that end, the present chapter analyzes how some leaders succeeded while others failed to reactivate citizens’ attachments and become new standard-bearers of the movement. Whereas existing literature argues that such leaders must invest in building an institutionalized party, I argue that they are more successful when they leverage conditions and strategies that conform to the movement’s preexisting, personalistic nature.

As indicated in the previous chapter, successors who enact two strategies can reactivate citizens’ attachments and garner support: (1) achieving bold performance to “prove” their extraordinary abilities and (2) symbolically tying themselves to the charismatic founder to appear as heroic reincarnations. In reality, however, many leaders have attempted to implement these strategies and have failed. Under what conditions can successors effectively apply these tactics to revive the movement and consolidate their own personalistic authority?

This chapter demonstrates that three conditions shape successors’ capacity to reactivate citizen’s attachments. The first, crucial condition involves when and how the new leaders emerge. Anointed successors, who are often directly handpicked by the founder and immediately take over afterward, encounter formidable obstacles that almost always prevent them from becoming effective leaders of the movement. Conversely, self-starters, who rise on their own years after the founder’s death, have greater latitude to convince the followers of their heroic powers and assume the founder’s mantle. Thus, self-starter status greatly increases the successors’ probability of success.

Yet, simply becoming a self-starter is insufficient to ensure successors’ victory. In fact, many self-starters attempting to embody the movement founder’s legacy have failed. Instead, two additional factors condition whether self-starters can return the movement to power. First, these leaders need a crisis that generates widespread suffering and makes citizens more likely to crave a new savior capable of rescuing them from their problems. Second, self-starters’ willingness and ability to adopt a style that plays into the movement’s personalistic nature, rather than focusing on party-building and programmatic development, are crucial for their capacity to access the followers’ deep, emotional attachments and portray themselves as champions of the people.

To illustrate the importance of these conditions for successors to revive charismatic movements politically and consolidate power, I trace the process through which six successors across three charismatic movements – Peronism, Chavismo, and Peruvian Fujimorismo – attempted to reanimate their predecessors’ legacies. Specifically, I rely on interviews with former leaders, analysts, and campaign strategists; focus groups with movement followers; and secondary literature to assess the experiences of two anointed successors (Isabel Perón in Argentina and Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela), two failed self-starters (Keiko Fujimori in Peru and Antonio Cafiero in Argentina), and two successful self-starters (Carlos Menem and the Néstor and Cristina Kirchner couple in Argentina).¹ In addition to cross-sectional variation provided by the three charismatic movements, this analysis incorporates an overtime component within a single movement by examining at least one successor from Argentina within each paired comparison. In light of this study from the perspective of the leaders, Chapter 7 examines the trajectories of charismatic movements focusing on Argentine Peronism. By investigating the rise and fall of successive charismatic leaders within a single movement over the course of several decades, the chapter reveals how charismatic movements hinder the development of institutionalized party systems over the long term.

6.1 A Theory of Charismatic Revival

As stated in Chapter 5, new leaders can politically regenerate a charismatic movement by achieving bold, impressive performance and symbolically associating themselves with the founder. In the following section, I analyze three conditions that impact successors’ ability to enact these strategies and reanimate the movement’s original, charismatic ethos: their mode of selection, the eruption of a crisis that makes citizens crave a savior, and the successors’ adoption of the founder’s personalistic style for claiming power.

6.1.1 Mode of Selection

The first condition that shapes successors’ capacity to become new standard-bearers of the movement concerns their mode of selection. Some successors depend on the founder’s direct anointment. These leaders, who appear to have no choice but to rise up as “chosen ones,” typically take power in the immediate aftermath of the founder’s disappearance. In contrast, other successors seek a more independent path to power, rising on their own accord when they feel the conditions are conducive to their success – often several years after the founder has gone. Unlike their anointed counterparts, self-starters do not enjoy the founder’s explicit blessing. Instead, they must earn the followers’ loyalty by using their own tools and strategies to portray themselves as genuine heirs.

On the surface, the founder’s direct endorsement would seem to provide anointed successors with a formidable advantage over self-starters. This is because the followers trust the founder’s judgment and therefore provide anointed successors with an automatic base of support even before coming to power. In contrast, self-starters must independently gain national recognition and popular approval. Additionally, elites are more likely to back the founder’s chosen successor to minimize costly uncertainty and avoid the instability of a power vacuum (Brownlee 2007, 597).² Conversely, self-starters usually have to compete against other candidates to earn these elites’ support.

However, despite these apparent advantages, I argue that anointed successors rarely succeed. Instead, paradoxically, it is the self-starters – who must rely on their own resources rather than directly inheriting the founder’s power – who are better equipped to pick up the founder’s baton and rise to greatness.

6.1.1.1 Anointed Successors

The struggles of anointed successors stem from the inevitable reluctance of charismatic leaders to select a replacement. As Weber stresses, the charismatic founder considers himself an extraordinary individual with unmatched power (1922/1978, 241–46). For this reason, throughout his rule, the founder insists on his own superiority, concentrates rather than shares power, and demands unwavering loyalty from his staff. Moreover, when forced to face his own mortality, the founder often refuses to groom a successor to take his place. Although a talented successor could safeguard the survival of the founder’s movement, training a worthy replacement would threaten the founder’s superiority. Therefore, to shield his predominance from potential competitors, the founder prefers to designate a loyal and unintimidating successor rather than a skilled heir.³ As faithful disciples accustomed to pleasing the founder, anointed successors stand little chance of outshining him. At the same time, however, these handpicked replacements are typically weaklings who lack the independent ambition and authority necessary to lead the movement in the founder’s wake. Thus, while the selection of an inadequate successor protects the founder’s superior charismatic image, it also places the movement in a precarious position after his rule has ended by leaving it in the hands of a weakling successor who lacks the founder’s skill, willpower, and magnetic appeal.

In addition to anointed successors’ lack of skill, willpower, and appeal, the situation they inherit from the founder complicates their prospects for success. This is because, by the end of the founder’s rule, his audacious policies are likely to be nearing exhaustion. Since these haphazard and personalistic programs are designed to prove the founder’s heroic capacities, they tend to lack the infrastructure to endure. While the performance of the policies may begin to decline during the founder’s tenure, he can stave off the negative consequences by draining available resources and using his charisma as a shield (Merolla and Zechmeister 2011, 30). Yet, neither of these tools is available to anointed successors. By the time the disciples take power, the country’s resources are likely to be depleted; furthermore, anointed successors have no charisma of their own to protect their reputation. Consequently, these new leaders – rather than the adored founder – are likely to be blamed by followers for the policy failures.

Given the collapse of the founder’s policies, anointed successors would do well to initiate drastic reforms. However, the extraordinary initial success of these policies, which remains fresh in the followers’ minds, pressures the new leaders to become excessively risk averse. Indeed, the fearful prospect of disappointing the followers and sacrificing fragile legitimacy, which rests entirely on their connection to the founder, prompts handpicked successors to cling to the status quo rather than implementing drastic reforms. To make matters worse, these successors struggle to convincingly blame other actors for the policy failures and resultant crisis. To avoid blaming the beloved founder, even though the fault for these problems lies predominantly with him, they may attempt to place blame on classic enemies of the movement. However, this is unlikely to win much sympathy from the followers. From the followers’ perspective, the founder successfully warded off threats from these malevolent opponents; anointed successors’ inability to do so only further substantiates their weakness. In short, while the founder’s endorsement may initially boost anointed successors’ support, multiple obstacles related to skill, timing, and resources prevent these individuals from becoming successful new leaders of the movement.

Existing studies of charisma support the notion that anointed successors struggle to uphold their predecessors’ movements. Yet in contrast to my theory, scholars tend to interpret this as evidence that the movements must routinize to survive. For example, Kostadinova and Levitt state, “When [the founder] withdraws from politics or dies, the organization faces an enormous challenge: it either replaces the leader with a functionary who is not remotely comparable with the predecessor, or else it splinters or simply dissolves. In either case, electoral loss is a more likely outcome than revival” (Kostadinova and Levitt 2014, 500–1). Similarly, Madsen and Snow claim, “the ability of any [anointed successor] to maintain a direct tie with his/her following is very much diminished.” Thus, “charismatic movements, if they are to survive for an extended period, will inevitably develop structure and with that structure will come some decentralization of influence” (Madsen and Snow 1991, 25–28, emphasis added).

I argue that this logic of routinization underestimates the resilience of followers’ affective attachments to the founder, which – as demonstrated in Chapter 4 – cultivate a remarkably stable identity (Huddy 2001, 127–56; Meléndez and Rovira Kaltwasser 2019, 3). Even in the absence of the founder, cultural symbols – such as images of the founder and stories of his/her heroism – can help sustain the identity among the followers (Huddy 2001, 143–4). In fact, these symbols may trigger especially intense feelings of sadness and yearning when the founder dies, making it very difficult for proponents of routinization to replace the followers’ identity with depersonalized partisanship. As I will illustrate in subsequent sections, successors who adopt a strategy of routinization – including Antonio Cafiero in Argentina – overlook the intensity of the followers’ enduring, charismatic attachments and therefore fail to tap into this reservoir of deep emotional support.

In sum, anointed successors face overwhelming obstacles that almost always preclude success. But, the resilience of citizens’ affective attachments to the founder and movement signals the potential for self-starters to reactivate those bonds, revive the founder’s transformative mission, and consolidate independent authority when conditions are more apt. Even so, success is anything but guaranteed. In fact, most self-starters who attempt to revive the movement in their own name fall short of establishing themselves as powerful heirs. The next section assesses the conditions under which self-starters can achieve this objective and carry the movement forward.

6.1.1.2 Self-Starters

Self-starters circumvent two obstacles faced by anointed successors and therefore have greater possibilities for successfully reviving charismatic movements and consolidating power. First, because they have greater freedom to seek power on their own timeline, self-starters can bypass the “status-quo bias” that encumbers handpicked successors; they can also avoid inheriting the crisis caused by the founder’s collapsed programs. Thus, not only can self-starters seek power unencumbered by the burdens shouldered by anointed successors, but they can also convincingly blame the crisis on someone else – such as the unfortunate leader who immediately replaced the founder. Second, because these leaders choose when they seek power, they often rise years after the founder’s rule, and can sidestep the founder’s desire to appoint an underwhelming replacement. While this fact alone does not ensure self-starters’ success, it encourages the emergence of more talented and promising candidates capable of exercising greater individual agency and appearing as strong leaders reminiscent of, rather than beholden to, the founder.

Scholars of routinization would claim that these two factors could not revive charismatic movements. Indeed, Weber, who perceives charisma to be fundamentally unstable, would argue that the movement could not live on without transforming into a more stable – traditional or bureaucratic – form of authority during the founder’s rule or shortly after his death (1922/1978, 249–51). Shils, who contends that charisma can survive only through inanimate objects, would likewise doubt the possibility that an individual leader could reactivate the movement in personalistic fashion years after the founder’s disappearance (1965, 205). Finally, Jowitt, who claims that the charisma of programs – but not of leaders – can persist, would find it unlikely that a self-starter could claim the founder’s mantle. In short, these scholars would contend that charismatic movements’ lack of organizational structure would cause disintegration before self-starters could bring them back to life.

By contrast, I argue that charismatic movements can tolerate much more leadership volatility than institutionalized parties precisely because of their weak structure and their firm emotional foundation. As shown in Chapter 4, unlike conventional partisanship, the profoundly affective and personalistic nature of citizens’ identification with the movement, which is rooted in the founder’s legacy, can endure even if the movement suffers an organizational decline. While the intensity of charismatic attachments may fade during such periods, ambitious leaders who “embody the prototype” of the movement – that is, leaders who signal their likeness to the founder – can politically reactivate citizens’ ties and earn their loyalty as new standard-bearers (Haslam, Reicher, and Platow 2011, 137; Hogg and Reid 2006, 19; Huddy 2001; Meléndez and Rovira Kaltwasser 2019). Indeed, while it is difficult to change the personalistic nature of citizens’ identity, the evidence in Chapter 5 suggests that, in some contexts, talented successors can strategically “shift the intensity” of the followers’ identity to increase its political significance (Huddy 2001, 148).

6.1.2 Conditions for Self-Starters’ Success

Many self-starters emerge, but few succeed in reviving the movement and becoming its preeminent leader. One reason for this failure is that success requires the emergence of a severe crisis, which is an exogenous condition over which self-starters have little control. Similar to the founder’s initial rise to power, a crisis is important because it makes citizens hungry for a savior to rescue them. Not only does a crisis intensify existing followers’ longing for such a leader, but it also makes citizens who were not previously followers of the movement – such as newly marginalized groups and younger generations who may not have directly experienced the founder’s rule – look for an exceptional leader to provide them with relief (Madsen and Snow 1991; Merolla and Zechmeister 2009a; Weyland 2003). Just as with the initial rise of the charismatic founder, the eruption of a crisis provides a crucial opportunity for self-starters to prove their independent capacity to establish a heroic image and an impressive base of support.

However, the existence of a crisis does not guarantee the success of self-starters. To connect with and earn the devotion of the followers, these leaders must also adopt the founder’s personalistic style. To do so, self-starters must use the crisis – they must “perform” and “mediate” it – to prove their heroic power and write themselves into the founder’s symbolic narrative as true heirs who are destined to pick up the founder’s baton (Moffitt 2015, 189). To achieve this, self-starters must exercise individual agency by relying on their own leadership skills and charisma. Rather than investing time and energy into party-building, as the routinization thesis would suggest, self-starters must use superb communication skills and magnetic appeal to reignite followers’ emotional attachments and claim those bonds for themselves.

Moreover, self-starters must use symbolic tactics to play up the crisis and increase the political relevance of the founder’s narrative under new circumstances. Specifically, in addition to portraying themselves as heirs of the founder, self-starters must revive the personalistic cleavage and intensify the polarizing dynamic of the movement by blaming their opponents for the crisis and framing them as menacing enemies of the people. This enhances cohesion among the followers while alienating the self-starters’ critics as evil adversaries. Additionally, self-starters must use speech, dress, gestures, and other symbols to restore the relevance of the founder’s mission of salvation and frame their actions as necessary for fulfilling this noble promise.

To recapitulate, I claim that the revival of charismatic movements requires a combination of structural conditions and new leaders’ agency. Structurally, successors must arise as self-starters to emerge from the founder’s overbearing shadow. These leaders must also seek power after the eruption of an acute crisis in order to convincingly portray themselves as saviors capable of meeting the people’s needs. Once these two structural conditions have been met, self-starters must then rely on their own skills and charisma to embody the founder’s personalistic style. By fulfilling all three of these conditions, successors are much more likely to return the movement to power and declare themselves true heirs and heroes in their own right.

6.2 Testing the Theory: Charismatic Successors in Latin America

To test my theory of charismatic revival against the routinization thesis, I focus on Peronism, Chavismo, and Fujimorismo, the three most prominent charismatic movements in recent Latin American history. Specifically, I examine three sets of successors from across these movements: two anointed successors, two failed self-starters, and two successful self-starters.⁴ To begin, I analyze Isabel Perón and Nicolás Maduro, the only two anointed successors from these movements. Subsequently, I explore the paths of two failed self-starters: Keiko Fujimori and Antonio Cafiero. While many self-starters have attempted and failed to revive charismatic movements, I analyze Fujimori and Cafiero because their candidacies were widely considered as viable and competitive. Finally, I analyze the complete set of successful self-starters from these cases: Carlos Menem and the Kirchners in Argentina.

Using interviews with former leaders and campaign experts, original campaign materials, newspaper articles, and secondary sources, I trace the process through which each set of leaders failed or succeeded to return the movement to power and assess the relevance of the three conditions outlined in my theory. Next, I return to the focus groups discussed in Chapter 4 to highlight followers’ personal impressions of the founder and subsequent leaders.⁵ While the focus group participants do not constitute a representative sample of followers, their discussions provide multiple accounts that corroborate my leader-focused research regarding the strengths and weaknesses of different types of successors (Cyr 2016, 247).

As outlined in Chapter 2, I use three criteria to distinguish “success” from “failure.” First, to embody the founder’s legacy, I argue that successors must publicly associate themselves with the founder; otherwise, they may be perceived as independent leaders keen to start a new movement that threatens to overshadow the beloved founder. Second, like the founder, successors must rise to the chief executive office. Crucially, declaring themselves as heirs of the founder and becoming the nation’s leader is insufficient; after all, most anointed successors achieve this without any real accomplishment of their own. To become true heirs of the founder, successors must also establish a strong popular mandate by drawing mass support in a sustained way once they are in office. To indicate the establishment of mass support, I turn to executive approval ratings.⁶ In particular, I argue that successful leaders must secure the approval of a majority of the population (at least 50 percent) for at least one year in executive office. Table 6.1 displays the six successors analyzed here with their scores for each of the three criteria.

Table 6.1. Scoring of successors under analysis: Anointed successors, failed self-starters, and successful self-starters

Successor Type	Leader Name (Country)	Public Tie to Founder	Chief Executive	Highest Annual Exec Approval
Anointed Successor	Isabel Perón (Argentina)*	Yes	Yes (1974–76)	–
	Nicolás Maduro (Venezuela)	Yes	Yes (2013–present)	37.91 (5/2013–4/2014)
Failed Self-Starter	Antonio Cafiero (Argentina)	Yes	No (1989 campaign)	–
	Keiko Fujimori (Peru)	Yes	No (2011, 2016 campaigns)	–
Successful Self-Starter	Carlos Menem (Argentina)	Yes	Yes (1989–99)	60.13 (8/1989–7/1990)
	Néstor Kirchner (Argentina)**	Yes	Yes (2003–7)	69.00 (6/2003–5/2004)
	Cristina Kirchner (Argentina)***	Yes	Yes (2007–15)	58.84 (1/2011–12/2011)

^* As her husband’s vice president, Isabel Perón became president upon his death rather than being elected. Her approval numbers are not listed due to the scarcity of public opinion data from this tumultuous period in Argentine history. Nevertheless, her broad unpopularity as president is widely documented (e.g., Madsen and Snow 1991, 134; McGuire 1997, 165–70), suggesting that her approval numbers would have fallen below the 50-percent threshold.

^** Néstor Kirchner and Carlos Menem advanced to a second round of presidential elections in 2003. Due to Kirchner’s overwhelmingly superior numbers, Menem dropped out of the race before elections were held.

^*** Though Cristina immediately succeeded Néstor as president, I consider her as a self-starter rather than an anointed successor because, from their initial rise to national executive power in 2003, the two ambitious leaders planned a joint project to become Argentina’s new saviors.

6.2.1 Anointed Successors: Isabel Perón and Nicolás Maduro

I begin by assessing the trajectories of two anointed successors: Isabel Perón, who inherited the Argentine presidency in 1974 from her husband, Juan Perón; and Nicolás Maduro, whom moribund Hugo Chávez handpicked as president of Venezuela in 2013. While both Isabel and Maduro became chief executives of their respective countries, their support rapidly diminished shortly after they took office. After two disastrous years, Isabel was ousted by a military coup in 1976, while Maduro became an authoritarian leader who managed to cling to power using repression rather than charisma. While both leaders assumed the top office, they projected an uninspiring symbolic image and failed to reform their predecessors’ collapsing policies. The weak leadership of these anointed successors led to the temporary deflation of the movement; however, citizens’ charismatic attachments survived, setting up the future possibility of movement revival by self-starters – an outcome that routinization would not predict.

6.2.1.1 Isabel Perón

As will be described in further detail in Chapter 7, Juan Perón rose to the presidency in 1946 and consolidated a powerful charismatic movement alongside his second wife, Eva, by granting unprecedented benefits to millions of socioeconomically and politically excluded citizens. Though Eva died of cancer in 1952 and a military coup exiled Juan to Spain in 1955, outlawing Peronism for nearly two decades, Perón remained Argentina’s most prominent political figure throughout his lifetime. Indeed, during his exile (1955–73), he influenced politics through proxy leaders and his unmatched support base.⁷

Perón frequently spoke of creating an “organized community” of followers, suggesting that his movement might one day routinize (Perón 1974). In practice, however, he undermined the organizational dimension of his movement by allowing the proliferation of ideological rifts within it and maintaining unchallenged personalistic control over it (McGuire 1997, 50; Page 1983, 161). These tactics deepened the “chameleonic” nature of his political brand and prevented the rise of powerful protégés while reinforcing his position as supreme leader (Ciria 1974, 30). Indeed, personal loyalty to Perón constituted the only thread uniting his otherwise bitterly divided followers. Upon returning to Argentina to serve a third presidential term in 1973, he displayed reluctance to share his power. Despite old age and a delicate political and economic context, he appointed his most faithful servant, Isabel, as his vice president and eventual successor (McGuire 1997, 164). By nominating a complete political novice rather than a more experienced leader, he showed his desire to dominate the movement.

As her husband’s reluctant successor, Isabel lacked the political familiarity and skill to maneuver her government out of the crisis and claim her place as the new leader of Peronism. Instead of reaching out to console the devastated masses, she failed to take ownership of the deep bonds her husband had cultivated. Thus, while followers expressed euphoria upon Juan’s return to Argentina in 1973, they viewed Isabel as weak and out of touch. In fact, her presidency was widely perceived as a “leaderless situation,” and voters “assumed that she would not be able to remain, even as a figurehead” for the movement (Di Tella 1983, 69).

Isabel’s failure to inspire the followers was compounded by her inability to reform her husband’s dysfunctional policies of economic nationalism. While these policies had once created impressive growth and delivered prosperity to millions of Argentine workers, they were already approaching exhaustion when Perón was exiled in 1955. Because Perón had prioritized the short-term impact of the policies over their sustainability, the policies were inherently “self-limiting” (Waisman 1987, 256). Thus, as the economy began to stagnate in the early 1950s, the policies generated a distributional conflict between the productive agricultural sector and the unproductive industrial sector; this, in turn, created a crisis of “illegitimacy and political instability” (ibid.). Because subsequent regimes struggled to implement adequate reforms, they were held responsible for the declining trade, expanding debt, increasing inflation, low growth, and political volatility that resulted.

This inability of non-Peronist regimes to address the crisis in the 1955–73 period provided Perón with a second opportunity to prove his heroic power upon returning to Argentina in 1973. At the time, he proposed the “Social Pact,” a series of bold programs – enhancing Argentina’s economic independence from the United States, freezing inflationary prices, and increasing workers’ wages – to return the country to the prosperity of his prior rule (Pion-Berlin 1983, 59). As before, these policies initially delivered favorable results and sustained Perón’s superhuman reputation for the rest of his life, which lasted just nine months, until July 1, 1974. Shortly thereafter, the policies quickly imploded, causing a grave crisis that Isabel was forced to shoulder (ibid., 59–60).

Despite the urgent need for reform, Isabel feared that altering her husband’s policies would impose a painful cost on the followers and demonstrated little desire to undertake this challenge. Instead, in a half-hearted effort to maintain the support of her husband’s increasingly fractious rank and file, she promised to continue rather than reform his deeply problematic platform of economic nationalism through wage hikes and industrial expansion (Waisman 1987, 280). This strategy soon shattered the economy, forcing Isabel and her closest advisor, José López Rega, to enact a series of stabilization plans that substantially decreased workers’ real incomes (McGuire 1997, 167). Consequently, Lorenzo Miguel, the leader of the General Confederation of Labor (Confederación General del Trabajo – CGT), launched a crippling, two-day general strike against Isabel’s government. Unable to recover from this political and economic disaster, Isabel was ousted by a military coup on March 24, 1976 (ibid., 170).

Isabel’s weak image and utter lack of leadership led Peronist followers to view her as a tremendous disappointment rather than her husband’s genuine heir. Thus, while their loyalty to Perón and Eva survived, their attachments never transferred to Isabel. In fact, “Isabel is not Perón” and “there is only one Evita” became common refrains among the Peronist left during Isabel’s administration (Gillespie 1982, 164). Decades later, in 2016, followers in focus groups with the author emphasized their distaste for Isabel. They stated, “I am Peronist of [Juan] Perón”; “I am an original Peronist”; “I follow Eva and her masses, but Isabel was a disaster”; and “Isabel was chaos.” Crucially, while her rule gave way to a military dictatorship in March 1976, these statements suggest that followers disassociated Isabel from Perón, thereby preserving their attachments to his heroic legacy.

6.2.1.2 Nicolás Maduro

As described in Chapter 3, Hugo Chávez took Venezuela by storm upon rising to the presidency in 1999. During his fourteen-year rule, he took drastic measures to destroy the unpopular, corrupt, and dysfunctional regime he replaced and establish his image as a true champion of the poor. Although the dramatic impact of his reforms depended on unsustainably high oil prices and drastic overspending, they provided unmatched benefits to millions of citizens and solidified Chávez’s status as their everlasting savior. Correspondingly, when he revealed that he had cancer on July 1, 2011, he assured his followers that he would combat the illness; in the meantime, while undergoing treatment in Cuba, he promised he would continue to personally govern the country rather than appoint a successor, emphasizing his irreplaceability (Primera 2011). Thus, when he announced his cancer was terminal in December 2012, he appeared as surprised and devastated as his followers that he would not live on to serve as their immortal protector. As though resigned to the fact that any successor would be inadequate, Chávez anointed Nicolás Maduro, an obsequious follower with scant ambition or domestic political experience, as his heir. The choice surprised many within and outside of Chavismo. However, the anointed successor’s lack of skill made Chávez appear even more impressive; furthermore, Maduro had devoted years of service to Chávez – a characteristic of paramount importance to the founder (Corrales and Penfold 2015, 160).

Since becoming president in 2013, Maduro has utterly failed to claim true leadership of Chavismo. His attempts to legitimate his authority have hinged exclusively on his appointment by Chávez rather than the establishment of an independent charismatic image. For instance, he has declared himself the “son of Chávez,” referenced the founder constantly in speeches, and covered public spaces with images of his predecessor. Perhaps as a result, support for Maduro remains at about 28 percent – a surprisingly high figure, considering his catastrophic mismanagement of the economy and society in general (GBAO Strategies 2019). Nevertheless, whereas Chávez relied on his captivating charisma to consolidate support, Maduro has used despotic tactics to remain in power, including jailing opposition politicians, outlawing (or holding fraudulent) elections, and repressing civilians (Freedom House 2018). Furthermore, his claims to have assumed the founder’s mantle appear absurd to many followers, who have been forced to endure hyperinflation, extreme shortages of basic goods, and even starvation (Corrales and Penfold 2015, 171; Gill 2017).

Like Isabel Perón in Argentina, Nicolás Maduro has also proven unwilling and unable to transform his predecessor’s foundering policies. To sustain the flow of benefits to his followers during his rule, Chávez squandered the state’s oil profits and recklessly interfered with the economy. Maduro therefore inherited an administration that severely undermined economic production and embraced drastic overspending, triggering inflation, shortages, corruption, and crime. Despite these problems, the successor’s only political asset – Chávez’s personal endorsement – made him unwilling and unable to introduce desperately needed reforms, which has caused a devastating crisis. Furthermore, Maduro’s attempts to blame the domestic opposition politicians and foreign “imperial” powers, such as the United States and Europe, have appeared thoroughly unconvincing – even to followers, who have long distrusted these “enemy” groups. Consequently, many Chavistas view the new leader as responsible for their suffering. As several followers expressed in focus groups conducted in 2016, “Maduro is a bad Chavista”; “we are more Chavista than Maduro is”; and “what a shame that Maduro is the one representing Chavismo today.” Because of Maduro’s refusal to reverse policy failures, about half of Chávez’s followers opposed Maduro in 2015, two years into the anointed successor’s rule (Briceño 2015a).

Several scholars have taken Maduro’s failure as evidence that Chavismo has died – a testament to the fleeting nature of charismatic movements (e.g., López Maya 2014, 68–87; Rondón 2017). Conversely, I argue that the stark contrast between Chávez and Maduro has caused many followers to reinforce their attachments to the former while distancing themselves from the latter. Indeed, half of Chávez’s most devoted followers – about 16 percent of the electorate – identify as “Chavistas no Maduristas” (Briceño 2015a). Moreover, a 2020 poll by Venezuelan firm Datanálisis indicates that while Maduro’s approval rating stands at a dismal 13 percent, fully 62 percent of voters maintain favorable views of Chávez (Datanálisis: Encuesta Nacional Ómnibus 2020). And in focus groups conducted with Chavista followers in 2016, participants expressed disdain for Maduro while declaring their love for Chávez and expressing faith that a more competent successor will appear someday: “I am with the future, and we are going to get it with Chavismo”; “one looks to the future and one sees Chávez.” Others declared that their future leader should be “charismatic,” “honorable,” “capable of restoring order,” and “100 percent Chavista.” Contrary to the logic of routinization, wherein citizens’ bonds must transform into depersonalized organizational linkages, the survival of citizens’ affective ties to Chávez suggests the potential for his movement to one day reemerge in its original charismatic form under a more appealing successor.

6.2.2 Failed Self-Starters: Keiko Fujimori and Antonio Cafiero

Self-starters are more likely to restore charismatic movements to power because they control their own timeline and can therefore steer clear of the founder’s desire to marginalize skilled leaders who might steal the limelight and escape blame for the collapse of his policies. But, being a self-starter alone does not guarantee success. These leaders must also rise during a crisis to appear as new saviors and portray themselves symbolically as new standard-bearers devoted to reviving the founder’s mission to transform society. I analyze two self-starters who failed to fulfill one of these two conditions: Keiko Fujimori in Peru, who tried to rise in the absence of crisis conditions, and Antonio Cafiero in Argentina, who chose a strategy of routinization rather than adopting a personalistic approach.

6.2.2.1 Keiko Fujimori

In June 1990, political outsider Alberto Fujimori was elected president of Peru during a period of hyperinflation and insurrection. He immediately implemented drastic policies of economic stabilization, bringing hyperinflation to a screeching halt, and soon launched a campaign to combat the insurgent groups (Weyland 2002, 150–58). Combined with his personal allure and his inspiring mission to “reengineer Peru,” these bold initiatives helped him consolidate impressive popular support (Carrión 2006, 126–49). Devotion to Fujimori proved especially strong among the poor, who had suffered the most from the economic crisis and political violence prior to his rule. Indeed, his popularity remained well above 50 percent in 2000, ten years after his rise to power, when he won a third (unconstitutional) term (Arce and Carrión 2010, 37–38).

While he retained a large and devoted following, Congress threatened to depose Fujimori following his electoral victory in 2000, citing accusations of corruption and misconduct. Reluctantly, he resigned that November while in Japan and remained in self-imposed exile until 2007, when he was imprisoned for human rights abuses committed during his rule (ibid.; Levitsky and Zavaleta 2016, 433). When he was forced to step down in 2000, Fujimori’s personalistic legacy left the country in a leadership vacuum. In fact, in subsequent years, Peru endured a series of disliked presidents characterized by “broken promises” (Dargent and Muñoz 2016, 147).

Over time, however, Keiko Fujimori, Alberto’s daughter, demonstrated her potential to return Fujimorismo to power and become its new champion.⁸ When she competed in presidential elections in 2011 and 2016, she built a larger and more consistent support base than any other political party. In fact, in 2016, she claimed 39.9 percent of the vote in the first round – nearly twice as much as the runner-up candidate (Dargent and Muñoz 2016, 145–47).

To build this support, Keiko first established herself as a self-starter. As the daughter of the exiled founder, in some ways she appeared to be her father’s handpicked heir. Indeed, she made her political debut as First Lady of Peru during her father’s presidency, after her parents had separated. Years later in 2011 when she first sought the presidency, many speculated that Alberto had helped orchestrate her campaign from prison (Romero 2011). In turn, Keiko leaned heavily on her flesh-and-blood connection to Alberto throughout the 2011 campaign to enhance her popularity among his followers, calling him “the best president in Peruvian history” (Loxton and Levitsky 2016, 127).

Despite her close relationship with her father, however, Keiko’s experience in the 2011 and 2016 presidential campaigns indicates that she earned her status as a self-starter. First, while she took advantage of her familial connection to boost her popularity, her father never explicitly designated her as his successor. Rather than leaning on his overt endorsement, she sought the presidency on her own, a full decade after his resignation. Moreover, Keiko ran under a party label of her own creation, Popular Force (Fuerza Popular – FP) (Levitsky 2011).⁹ In doing so, she injected fresh energy into the movement and added her own “personal stamp” to expand its political influence (Meléndez 2019; Vergara 2018, 67).

In contrast to anointed successors, Keiko also navigated an increasingly tense personal relationship with her father during her quest for power (Meléndez 2019). Indeed, unlike political advisers who had faithfully served Alberto and continued to display sycophantic tendencies throughout the 2000s – such as Martha Chávez, his handpicked candidate for the 2006 presidential election – Keiko exercised independent ambition that sometimes conflicted with and threatened to overshadow her father. For instance, whereas Chávez unabashedly praised even the most unsavory aspects of Alberto’s legacy, Keiko carefully tied herself to his most popular accomplishments – namely, stabilizing the economy, restoring law and order, and lifting up the poor – while distancing herself from his more violent and authoritarian tendencies (“Martha Chávez Aplaude Ataque a Monumento ‘Ojo que Llora’” 2007; Meléndez 2019).

In the most overt demonstration of her independence, during her 2016 campaign, Keiko publicly vowed not to pardon her father for his past crimes and release him from prison if elected (Vergara 2018, 83). In contrast, Keiko’s brother, Kenji, remained faithful to his father, fiercely advocating for his release from prison – which finally occurred in December 2017 (ibid.).¹⁰ While this family drama added to the growing rift between Keiko and Alberto, it helped the former secure her hard-won position as the movement’s new leader. Indeed, the number of “Keikistas” within the movement – who support both her father’s legacy and her new leadership – continued to grow even as she distanced herself from him (Levitsky and Zavaleta 2016, 436–37).

While positioning herself as a self-starter, Keiko also fulfilled the second condition for successful movement revival by adopting key elements of her father’s personalistic style to win over traditional Fujimoristas. For example, rather than campaigning on a specific platform, she made sweeping promises to reverse economic stagnation and meet the needs of citizens “tired of waiting for solutions to their pressing problems” (Dargent and Muñoz 2016, 152). She also donned her father’s approachable, “down-to-earth” style and traveled the country to forge direct ties with voters as Alberto had years earlier.

Importantly, even as she consolidated personalistic appeal, Keiko also tried to establish a party organization more than any other presidential candidate. Her new party, FP, organized local-level committees throughout Peru, and nominated candidates for subnational elections under its label (Meléndez 2019). Perhaps as a result, FP achieved some electoral successes, including an absolute majority in Congress in 2016 with 36 percent of the legislative vote (Birnbaum 2017; Tegel 2017).

Despite these efforts, Keiko prioritized her charismatic allure over her party-building efforts at crucial moments. During her presidential campaigns, she created a “personalistic vehicle” that overshadowed her nascent party (Dargent and Muñoz 2016, 152). Her supporters also came to call themselves “Keikistas” rather than FP partisans, indicating their loyalty to the individual over the party. In short, Keiko’s “success at party-building [was] far from guaranteed,” whereas her image as a fresh leader capable of delivering prosperity to the suffering masses – as her father did two decades earlier – played to the personalistic foundations of Fujimorismo (ibid., 155).

Though Keiko achieved self-starter status and adopted an engaging personalistic style, she narrowly lost the elections in both 2011 and 2016, failing to secure the presidency. Contrary to the successful self-starters discussed subsequently, she did not manage to win an impressive, landslide victory over her opponents. Thus, she was unable to restore her father’s movement and exercise power as the people’s new savior.

I argue that Keiko failed due to the absence of a crisis – another crucial condition for self-starters’ success. An economic boom in the mid-2000s, driven by international demand for Peru’s copper, gold, and natural gas, generated substantial growth and acted as a “buffer against social malaise” (ibid., 147). Indeed, this boom, combined with solid macroeconomic policies and structural stability, enabled the country to achieve high growth, low inflation, and substantial poverty reduction in the post-Fujimori period. Peru’s average GDP grew at an annual rate of 6.1 percent between 2002 and 2013, while poverty fell from 52.2 percent to 26.1 percent between 2005 and 2013, and extreme poverty fell from 30.9 percent to 11.4 percent during the same period (The World Bank in Peru: Overview, April 2019). Consequently, while Peruvians expressed disappointment in their political leaders, they did not desperately crave a hero as they did prior to Alberto’s rise in 1990. Keiko’s promises to once again “reengineer Peru” and restore prosperity did not resonate enough with the public to catapult her into power.

6.2.2.2 Antonio Cafiero

In Argentina, Antonio Cafiero, a talented and experienced leader, had the potential to become a successful self-starter when he competed in the presidential primaries for the Peronist Justicialist Party (PJ) in July 1988. By then, memories of Isabel’s failures had been overshadowed by the even-worse performance of the military during the 1976–83 dictatorship. Moreover, seeking power fifteen years after Perón’s death, Cafiero rose as an independent leader and not as a submissive protégé of the founder. Without the inherent weaknesses of anointed successors, Cafiero’s path to power seemed more promising than that of his Peronist predecessor.

Additionally, Cafiero sought power amidst a terrible economic crisis, further enhancing his prospects for becoming the new leader of Peronism. The outgoing president from the (non-Peronist) Radical Civic Union (UCR) party, Raúl Alfonsín, had failed to stimulate growth, reduce inflation, or ameliorate the country’s ballooning debt. Despite Alfonsín’s attempts to stabilize the economy, unemployment worsened, wages stagnated, and prices soared, increasing social conflict while destroying his popularity (McGuire 1997, 185–86). This provided a unique opportunity for Peronist self-starters such as Cafiero to seek power: with Alfonsín delegitimized and the crisis worsening every day, citizens grew eager for a new leader to rise up and relieve their misery (Weyland 2002, 138). As Cafiero’s grandson, Francisco Cafiero, stated, Argentines were desperate for “a leader to put an end to the economic cancer…to take action to confront the crisis.”¹¹

Despite these advantages, Cafiero failed to reactivate followers’ attachments and secure the Peronist presidential nomination. I argue that this is because he did not play to the movement’s charismatic foundations. Rather than promising to save his people through whatever means necessary, as Perón had done, Cafiero committed himself to the “Peronist Renovation,” an effort to transform Peronism into a strong, institutionalized party (Cafiero 2011).¹² He adopted this approach because, in line with scholars of routinization, he believed that “Peronism could only survive … to the extent that it clearly assumed the form of a party, detached itself from authoritarian traditions, and stopped trying to center itself around a plebiscitarian leadership that had not existed since Perón’s death” (McGuire 1997, 167–68, emphasis added).

While Cafiero’s attempt to transform the movement into an institutionalized party appealed to middle-class intellectuals, it distanced him from traditional, popular-sector (lower- and lower-middle-class) Peronists, who simply wanted a strong leader to resolve their pressing problems.¹³ Furthermore, Cafiero’s lack of affinity with Perón’s personalistic legacy caused the followers to perceive the successor and his team as “a bunch of urbane intellectuals mesmerized by an exotic leftist ideology perhaps appropriate for Sweden or Germany but alien to Argentina’s nationalist tradition” (McGuire 1997, 211). Cafiero’s dry communication style also projected “formality, wordiness, and lukewarm progressivism,” further alienating him from traditional Peronist followers (ibid.). In fact, compared to his alluring competitor, Carlos Menem, Cafiero was so unpopular with the masses that, a week before the July 1988 primaries, pundits predicted that his victory over Menem would depend on low turnout among Peronist voters (“Evita votaría a Cristina, Perón votaría a Taiana, y los dos juntos a Unidad Ciudadana” 2017). In the end, Cafiero suffered a humiliating defeat: to the chagrin of PJ elites, he lost in 19 of 24 electoral districts, by a total margin of more than 100,000 votes (“Menem, Candidato Presidencial Del PJ” 1988).¹⁴ As the incumbent Governor of the Province of Buenos Aires – a traditional Peronist stronghold – Cafiero even lost his own province to Menem by over 23,000 votes! (“Replanteo en el Justicialismo tras el triunfo de Carlos Menem” 1988).

In brief, Cafiero’s failure to win the Peronist nomination for president demonstrates the unviability of routinization for reviving charismatic movements. His commitment to party institutionalization over the cultivation of an inspiring, charismatic image prevented him from appearing as Perón’s heroic descendant. Though he was a self-starter in a time of crisis, he attempted to create a programmatic organization rather than simply playing to Perón’s personalistic legacy. This strategy of routinization alienated followers and marked Cafiero as an elite politician rather than a hero capable of reviving Perón’s ambitious mission to transform society.

As the experiences of Keiko Fujimori and Antonio Cafiero illustrate, self-starters fall short of reanimating charismatic movements when they fail to meet both of the essential conditions. First, as Keiko’s unsuccessful quest for power shows, leaders who emerge in the absence of crisis cannot leverage citizens’ desperation for a new savior and thus struggle to establish a charismatic image reminiscent of the founder. Second, Cafiero demonstrates that self-starters who attempt to routinize the movement into a structured party rather than filling the absent founder’s shoes fail to tap into supporters’ profound, affective bonds and thus struggle to cultivate their own charismatic allure.

6.2.3 Successful Self-Starters: Carlos Menem and the Kirchners

I now turn to two sets of Argentine self-starters who successfully revived Peronism: Carlos Menem, who governed from 1989 to 1999, and Néstor and Cristina Kirchner, who ruled from 2003 to 2015. Both Menem and the Kirchners dominated the movement, kept its organization weak, and demonstrated through stark policy reversals that they had little interest in programmatic routinization. Instead, these self-starters focused on embodying the movement’s preexisting, personalistic nature and linked themselves symbolically to the founder. Consequently, both sets of leaders convincingly portrayed themselves as genuine heirs of the founder, reinvigorated citizens’ attachments, and restored the movement to power under their own charismatic authority.

6.2.3.1 Carlos Menem

Carlos Menem defied the expectations of party elites by securing the PJ presidential nomination in July 1988 against Cafiero, the favored candidate, and becoming president the following year. Subsequently, Menem established a new chapter of Peronism, giving the movement new life and becoming the most beloved leader of Argentina since Perón. Indeed, Menem swept the May 1989 elections by more than ten points; enjoyed approval ratings as high as 70 percent within two years of assuming office; successfully revised the constitution to allow for reelection; and won a second term in 1995 by a margin of more than twenty points (Carlin et al. 2016).

In addition to consolidating impressive popularity, Menem’s charismatic leadership revitalized Peronism as the country’s predominant political force. In fact, while deliberately undermining the efforts of Cafiero and the “Peronist Renovation” to institutionalize the movement – a process I will discuss in greater detail in Chapter 7 – he inspired followers to express their attachments with renewed strength. This is reflected by the dramatic increase in the proportion of citizens who expressed their identification with the movement after his rise to power. According to public opinion surveys from local firms, whereas about 16 percent of citizens openly identified with Peronism in 1985, more than 40 percent identified themselves with the movement in 1992, just three years into Menem’s presidency. In contrast, over the same period of time, the proportion of citizens who identified with the UCR – the main opposition party and the party of Menem’s predecessor, Alfonsín – declined precipitously, from about 32 percent in 1985 to 20 percent in 1992 (Consultoria Interdisciplinaria En Desarrollo 1985; Romer & Associates 1992).¹⁵

Like Cafiero, Menem’s presidential candidacy was aided by his self-starter status and his rise during a severe crisis. The difference in the two leaders’ fates, I contend, lies in their contrasting leadership styles. As described in the previous section, Cafiero’s efforts to routinize the movement led to his downfall. He believed that working through the party’s nascent institutional channels, establishing a platform for effective programmatic governance, and accumulating the support of party elites would lead to victory. In reality, however, this approach alienated Cafiero from the Peronist rank and file, effectively cutting him off from the movement’s most powerful asset.

In contrast, Menem’s deliberate effort to revive Perón’s personalistic approach and apply his own charisma resonated deeply with the followers. By portraying himself as a hero in times of dire crisis, he explicitly recognized and promised to address the hopes and fears of the people. As summarized by the major national newspaper, La Nación, in the aftermath of the 1988 primary election, “The Cafiero … ticket represented rationality. It had a structure behind it and a more homogenous project. Menem worked principally on folklore and the emotional content of Peronism” (“Replanteo en el justicialismo tras el triunfo de Carlos Menem” 1988). For this reason, Menem was able to politically mobilize Peronist voters, vanquish his opponent, and restore the movement to power in his own name for a full decade.

Consistent with my theory laid out in Chapter 5, I argue that Menem’s successful adoption of a personalistic approach depended on a combination of symbolic and material strategies. To begin, the leader established direct, affectionate communication with Peronist supporters, reinforcing his symbolic image as the founder’s authentic and charismatic heir. In contrast to the elitist appearance of his opponents – including Cafiero in the 1988 primary election and the UCR’s Eduardo Angeloz in the 1989 general election – Menem embraced a “swashbuckling personal style,” donned casual clothing and sideburns that rivaled those of historic caudillo Facundo Quiroga, and traveled tirelessly to personally connect with ordinary people (McGuire 1997, 208). Alberto Kohan, a close advisor who would become Menem’s chief of staff, recalled how massive crowds would greet Menem as his campaign bus pulled into each town. After years of suffering under disappointing leaders, Kohan stated, citizens felt inspired by Menem’s charisma.¹⁶ Carlos Corach, who became Minister of the Interior, explained that, like Perón, Menem could “interpret the sentiments, both good and bad, of the people,” and used this understanding to “tell the people what they wanted to hear.”¹⁷

Additionally, during his 1989 presidential campaign, Menem promised citizens relief from the crisis and a return to the prosperity of Perón’s rule, rather than articulating the programmatic details of his proposals. On the surface, the candidate’s platform seemed consistent with Perón’s policies of economic nationalism. For instance, he proclaimed he would increase workers’ wages through his “Salariazo” and would reignite Perón’s state-sponsored “productive revolution” (Arias 1995). Despite these vague programmatic references, however, Menem focused primarily on his promise to save the people from their suffering – a duty he claimed that the outgoing radical administration had failed to uphold. For example, two weeks before the May 1989 elections, he stated, “The current government has been unable to resolve [the country’s] problems, and has made them even worse. There is even more hunger, and [the government] has failed to guarantee the right to health, to a dignified home, to social protection, and the rights of the elderly” (“Menem: ‘No ofrezco falsas promesas, sino trabajo y más trabajo,’” 1989).

Moreover, rather than focusing on the details of his own policies, Menem pledged to do whatever was necessary to reverse the failures of the outgoing regime and “pulverize the crisis” (“Hay que enfrentar la crisis y pulverizarla, dijo Menem” 1989). In doing so, he became the first leader to bring Perón’s mission of salvation back to life. As he stated on the campaign trail:

[I have no commitments] to unions or business people. The only [commitment] I have is to the people, and with your support, we are going to pick up the productive revolution. We are going to create the conditions and the infrastructure for development and growth. I’m not here to promise anything, I only pledge to work hard, which is the only thing that can lift Argentina out of stagnation and weakness.

(“Menem: ‘No ofrezco falsas promesas, sino trabajo y más trabajo’” 1989)

In addition to assuring the people that he would resolve the crisis and deliver prosperity through whatever means necessary, Menem implored Peronists to have faith in his leadership, as demonstrated by his campaign slogan, “Follow me! I will not let you down.”¹⁸ Through these tactics, he shifted the public’s attention away from programmatic substance and successfully embodied the charismatic spirit of Perón.

Shortly after coming to power in July 1989, Menem performed a programmatic about-face by implementing stark free-market policies. The new president fearlessly launched unconventional alliances with private companies and business elites long demonized by Peronism, namely the multinational corporation Bunge y Born; enacted structural adjustment measures that were even more extreme than the recommendations of international financial institutions; and committed Argentina to a fundamentally liberal economic model. Then, in 1991, Menem followed these adjustment programs up with the Convertibility Plan, a “highly risky” policy that pegged the Argentine peso to the US dollar (Weyland 2002, 112–15).

Predictably, most PJ elites criticized Menem’s bold gestures as brazenly anti-Peronist (Cafiero 2011, 464–65; Levitsky 2003, 148–49). Yet, while the substance of these policies contradicted those of Perón, they provided tangible evidence of Menem’s charismatic power by putting a swift and seemingly miraculous end to the hyperinflationary crisis that the new president had inherited from his predecessor, Alfonsín. Indeed, by straying from the substance of Perón’s original programs, Menem embodied the founder’s daring spirit and, in the short term, rescued the followers from their misery. For example, the Convertibility Plan reduced inflation from 1,344 percent in early 1990 to 17.5 percent in 1992 and to 3.9 percent in 1994 (Weyland 2002, 158). The plan also increased the purchasing power of poor Argentines – many of them Peronist followers – in an extraordinary fashion (Gantman 2012, 338). Menem’s audacious structural adjustment policies also paved the way for impressive economic growth, achieving an annual rate of 7.5 percent between 1991 and 1994, as well as a substantial decline in poverty, from 21.6 percent in October 1991 to 16.1 percent in May 1994 (Weyland 2002, 158).

The impressive, stabilizing impact of his policies on inflation and prices granted Menem overwhelming popular support, even if the policies ultimately hurt poor Peronists by generating high unemployment, social spending cuts, and a devastating economic crash in 2001. Crucially, both Menem and his supporters interpreted the remarkable, though short-lived, success of his programs as evidence of his genuine Peronist roots. In fact, throughout his presidency, Menem skillfully invoked Perón to justify his actions in the name of protecting the people from harm. As he declared in 1993, “This country, this president, is doing exactly what Perón would have done if he had to govern Argentina today” (Comas 1993). Ten years later, during his third (and ultimately failed) campaign in 2003, he declared, “Carlos Menem is the best and most authentic disciple of Juan Perón and of Eva Perón” (Sued 2003). Even today, long after his fall from power, many Peronists personally attribute their 1990s prosperity to him. As followers reported in the focus groups, “thanks to Menem, I bought my first house, there was credit available, and there wasn’t inflation”; “Menem was good to my dad”; “with Menem, we could eat well.” While some leaders strongly opposed Menem, followers praised him for quickly resolving their problems and fulfilling Perón’s mission to deliver prosperity.

By communicating in a direct and emotive fashion, tying himself to Perón, and rescuing citizens from hyperinflation-induced suffering, Menem embodied Perón’s most alluring traits. His policies eventually collapsed and unleashed an even deeper crisis. Indeed, beginning with Menem’s second presidential term in 1995, unemployment, inequality, and crime steadily increased (Gantman 2012, 338–44). Moreover, in the aftermath of his presidency, from 1999 to 2002, the economy sharply contracted, hitting rock bottom in December 2001. The dollar-to-peso convertibility came to a halt with a devaluation of the peso in January 2002, which led to an economic contraction of 11.74 percent that year (ibid., 332, 339–44). In spite of this implosion, the impressive short-term effects of Menem’s policies, combined with the leader’s captivating appeal, had successfully reactivated citizens’ charismatic attachments to Peronism for several years and had expanded his base to include the business-oriented middle class. Consequently, Menem achieved tremendous personalistic authority that endured for a decade. More importantly, by embodying the charismatic legacy of Perón, he successfully returned the Peronist movement to power and demonstrated its capacity to reemerge as a predominant political force without shedding its deeply personalistic nature.

6.2.3.2 Néstor and Cristina Kirchner

As described earlier, Menem’s unsustainable policies, especially the problematic Convertibility Plan, unleashed a terrible economic crisis in December 2001. In turn, this disaster delegitimized the political system: the government cycled through five presidents in eleven days, beginning with Fernando De La Rúa, Menem’s non-Peronist successor who resigned on December 21, and ending with Eduardo Duhalde, a Peronist who served as interim president from January 2, 2002, to May 25, 2003 (Gantman 2012, 345). During this transition, Peronism fragmented and did not nominate an official presidential candidate for the 2003 elections. Instead, three Peronist politicians – Carlos Menem, Adolfo Rodríguez Saá, and Néstor Kirchner – ran on independent tickets. Menem won the first round of elections with just over 24 percent of the vote but dropped out of the race, fearing he could not win in a run-off against Néstor, who was overwhelmingly the favored candidate. Thus, Néstor, a governor from the far-flung, southern province of Santa Cruz, became president (Mora y Araujo 2011).

While the new leader owed his presidential victory in 2003 in large part to the weak profiles of the other candidates, he and his wife, Cristina, leveraged favorable conditions to redefine Peronism on their own terms and dominate politics for the next twelve years. First, like Menem in 1989, Néstor became president in 2003 as a self-starter rather than an anointed successor. He achieved this by waiting four years after Menem’s fall to seek power and avoiding any association with his defamed Peronist predecessor. Moreover, he distanced himself by turning against Menem. This allowed the former president’s economic policies to break down under De La Rúa, a non-Peronist; softened his once-powerful grip on Peronism; permitted Néstor to frame Menem as a neoliberal traitor; and created the opportunity to reconfigure the movement by promising a return to Perón’s economic nationalism.

Second, Néstor’s rise after the 2001 economic collapse was essential to his reactivation of Peronism. To address the crisis and alleviate citizens’ extreme suffering, Duhalde, Néstor’s immediate predecessor, implemented painful economic stabilization policies in 2002, including a massive devaluation of the peso. This, combined with rapid growth in global commodity prices, produced much-needed relief during Néstor’s presidency. Indeed, between 2003 and 2007, Argentina’s gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of about 9 percent, the value of the peso stabilized, unemployment declined from 21.7 to 8.5 percent, and wages increased by over 50 percent (Damill and Frenkel 2015, Table 1).

Crucially, the self-starter capitalized on this remarkable recovery to frame himself as the people’s savior. To begin, he aggressively attacked others for causing the crisis, including Menem, the International Monetary Fund, and other foreign creditors (Gantman 2012, 345). For instance, during his 2003 campaign, Néstor blamed Menem for intentionally undermining the well-being of the people and weakening Argentina’s democracy, stating that the former president “robbed Argentines of their right to work, then their right to eat, to study, and to hope; then, he came after the last right they had, to vote” (“Kirchner acusó a Menem de dar un ‘golpe a la democracia’” 2003). Subsequently, in December 2005, Néstor canceled Argentina’s debt payments to the International Monetary Fund, blaming the international financial institution for inflicting “pain and injustice” on Argentina during the 2001 crisis through pressuring the country to enact “policies that undermined economic growth” (“Argentina cancela su deuda de 9.810 millones de dólares con el Fondo Monetario Internacional” 2006). This confrontational approach suited Néstor’s “fighting” personality and accentuated his appeal as a strong, charismatic leader.¹⁹ Moreover, his aggressive style connected him to a key dimension of the Peronist legacy: the deep cleavage between the humble people and the selfish elites. Consequently, this strategy established emotional connections between Néstor and the movement’s followers without explicitly tying the new president to the Peronist label, which would have risked associating him with Menem’s disastrous failures.

In addition to deepening the cleavage between “elites” and “the people,” Néstor took personal credit for the economic recovery, even though it resulted largely from the stabilization measures imposed by Duhalde in 2002, prior to his rise to power (Damill and Frenkel 2015). Establishing this impression proved relatively easy for him, as his presidency coincided with notable improvements in employment, wages, salaries, and economic growth (Mora y Araujo 2011). In fact, thanks in large part to the concrete results of this recovery, Néstor’s approval soared to 74 percent by July 2003, just two months into his presidency (Carlin et al. 2016), and Peronists seemed convinced that he would become a heroic reincarnation of the founder. Indeed, as evidenced in the focus groups conducted by the author in 2016, many followers went beyond positive evaluations of Néstor’s performance to worship him as a savior. “The world was sunken, and he saved us,” one participant declared; “the people began to believe in their president once again”; another stated, “Néstor brought love back to the people, he brought the return of Peronism,” a third said, “I had purpose in my life again when Néstor came to power”; a fourth confessed; “Perón’s legacy [was] alive in Néstor,” fifth expressed. Yet another participant claimed, “My father said that, since Perón, nobody had been capable of filling his eyes with tears until Néstor. When I saw [Néstor] on television, I felt butterflies in my stomach, I wanted to hug him and thank him [for touching my father].” In short, because the new president depicted himself as responsible for the seemingly miraculous economic recovery, he consolidated impressive, personalistic power and revived Peronism on his own terms, as a separate chapter from that of Menem (ibid.; Ollier 2015).

Once Néstor proved himself worthy of the people’s adoration, he and Cristina set about consolidating their symbolic image as charismatic heirs of Juan and Eva Perón. To do so, the leading couple behaved in a deeply personalistic fashion and resurrected components of the Peronist narrative that played to their strengths while further separating them from their Peronist predecessor. For example, as mentioned earlier, the Kirchners adopted a polarizing, openly confrontational attitude toward their opponents, including Menem, agro-industrial elites, figures associated with the 1976–83 military dictatorship, international financial institutions, and supporters of the neoliberal development model in general (Wortman 2015). This strategy recharged followers’ enthusiasm for the movement by reminding them of Eva’s defiant attitude toward anti-Peronist “oligarchs” and it differentiated the Kirchners from Menem, who had a much more conciliatory leadership style.²⁰

The Kirchner couple also portrayed themselves as unparalleled champions of human rights. This appealed to young, middle-class, and leftist Peronists whose relatives and friends had suffered persecution and repression during the 1976–83 military dictatorship (Wortman 2015). Interestingly, while President Alfonsín had courageously defended human rights and democracy in the immediate aftermath of the dictatorship, the Kirchners downplayed the contributions of this non-Peronist leader and instead “considered themselves to be the authors of human rights in Argentina.”²¹ By consolidating an image as passionate defenders of victimized people, Néstor and Cristina boosted their charismatic appeal, especially among middle-class and leftist Peronists.

Finally, upon becoming president in 2007 in what was intended to be a strategy of alternation in power with Néstor, Cristina focused on rekindling direct, emotional ties with Peronists from the popular sectors. This strategy solidified the Kirchners’ symbolic position as true Peronists and, in combination with the extraordinary economic recovery under Néstor, curried favor with the movement’s traditional rank and file. Indeed, several Kirchner-affiliated political strategists stressed that, especially once the initial euphoria brought by the economic recovery began to fade, forging affective linkages with Peronist followers in this fashion was essential for the leading couple to “return Peronism to power,” “interpret and refresh the identity,” and consolidate their position as the undisputed heirs of Juan and Eva.²²

As president, Cristina reconnected with Peronist followers by portraying herself as “Evita reloaded,” mirroring the founder’s wife in speech, dress, and interactions with voters (Wortman 2015). This activated followers’ passionate, visceral connections to the movement and associated Cristina with Eva’s saint-like image – “a combination of Christ, Che, and Robin Hood.”²³ After Néstor’s unexpected death from a heart attack in 2010, Cristina also portrayed him as a martyr alongside Juan and Eva, drawing explicit comparisons between the two leading couples. Consequently, Cristina won reelection in 2011 with an overwhelming 54 percent of the vote. Reflecting on this period, followers declared in the focus groups, “Perón is embodied by Néstor, and Eva by Cristina”; “for me, Cristina is a reflection of Eva”; “Perón and Eva, Néstor and Cristina, they are the most important leaders in Argentina.”

During Cristina’s second term, the Kirchners’ policies of economic nationalism began to deteriorate, resulting in rising inflation, poverty, and crime (Salvia 2015). Correspondingly, similar to Menem at the end of his presidency, some followers came to view Cristina as a failed Peronist leader. As non-Kirchner Peronists in the focus groups stated in 2016, one year after her fall from power, “I didn’t like Cristina at all, I hope she never returns, she makes me so mad because of the things she did”; “Cristina spoke about being ‘national and popular,’ but the government was a cash register for her”; “the era of Cristina was terrible, she disgusts me.” Other followers expressed frustration with Cristina’s attempts to portray herself as the contemporary Eva. For example, one participant stated, “Cristina wanted to be like Eva, but she didn’t have a single hair in common.” Another declared that Cristina’s attempt to imitate Eva “was a costume she used to keep robbing the people.” A third stated, “she tried [to be like Eva] but she didn’t succeed by a long shot.” A fourth said, “She tried to dress and speak like [Eva], but she didn’t actually imitate her.” A fifth stated, “she wanted to be like Eva but she didn’t ever succeed.” A sixth explained, “Evita was a common woman. Cristina wanted to be like that, but she fell victim to her own selfishness and ego.” As reflected by these statements, Cristina’s declining performance led Peronist followers to view her as a fraudulent Peronist, and symbolically excommunicated her from the movement while reaffirming their own attachments to its founders.

The Kirchner administration receded from power in 2015 with the presidential election of Mauricio Macri, a non-Peronist. Yet, while the leaders’ government ultimately fell, I argue that Néstor’s rise as a self-starter; his policies, which became associated with dramatic growth and economic prosperity; and both Néstor and Cristina’s symbolic strategies to reignite the followers’ emotional attachments to the movement enabled them to establish a formidable new episode of Peronism. In doing so, the Kirchners – like Menem before them – deepened the widespread perception in Argentina that Peronism is the only force capable of governing the country.

6.3 Conclusion

This chapter has argued that charismatic movements persist to dominate politics long after their founders disappear. Contrary to existing studies, which suggest that survival depends on routinization, I claim that many such movements endure by retaining their personalistic core and welcoming new leaders who recharge their charismatic nature. Thus, rather than establishing stable development trajectories like more conventional parties, these movements unfold in a “spasmodic” pattern. After their founders disappear, charismatic movements become latent and the whole country seems adrift. Yet new crises enable subsequent leaders to emerge, reactivate citizens’ emotional attachments, and restore these movements to power. This process does not rely primarily on party organizations, as scholars of routinization would argue. Rather, it depends on successors’ ability to convincingly portray themselves to the followers as charismatic saviors who have come to revive the founder’s mission to rescue society.

As illustrated in this chapter, successors must fulfill three conditions to revive the movement in new contexts: achieve self-starter status; rise up amid a crisis; and play to the movement’s personalistic nature. While many politicians have attempted to restore charismatic movements to power in Latin America and beyond, it is the leaders who have leveraged these conditions, such as Carlos Menem and Néstor and Cristina Kirchner, who have been able to consolidate independent authority as heirs of the founder.

Importantly, the power of successful self-starters is temporary. Like charismatic founders, their bold performance eventually collapses. Unless they leave power before this implosion, it dampens their heroic image and dilutes their connection to the founder. But these failures do not destroy the movement because citizens’ attachments remain rooted in charismatic founders, not in successors. Indeed, followers label disappointing successors as “traitors” to the founder. The movement then enters a period of leaderless fragmentation until conditions ripen once more for a new self-starter to rise and pick up the founder’s baton.

Based on the findings discussed in this chapter, the next chapter investigates the long-term trajectories of charismatic movements and assesses their negative impact on democracy. The analysis focuses on the rise and fall of charismatic successors in the context of a single movement: Argentine Peronism. In contrast to the conventional wisdom, which suggests that surviving charismatic movements routinize and therefore have a stabilizing impact on democracy, the chapter demonstrates that enduring charismatic movements make for political systems characterized by pernicious personalism, perpetually weak institutions, and frequent crises.

7 The Spasmodic Trajectories of Charismatic Movements

The preceding two chapters demonstrated that leaders who seek to revive charismatic movements in their own name must leverage specific strategies and conditions to reactivate the followers’ fervent attachments and consolidate independent authority. Chapter 5 indicated that new leaders must combine material and symbolic cues – impressive performance to demonstrate heroic capacities and symbolic ties to the founder and his mission of transcendence – to reinvigorate the followers’ identification with the movement and enhance the new leaders’ charismatic appeal. In turn, Chapter 6 demonstrated that, to effectively implement these strategies, successors must fulfill three conditions. First, they must achieve self-starter status by rising to power years after the founder’s disappearance; second, they must emerge following the eruption of a crisis that makes people once again feel the need to be saved; third, the new leaders must adopt a personalistic style reminiscent of the founder in order to establish unmediated, affective connections with the followers.

Given the strategies and conditions required to revive charismatic movements, the present chapter investigates the pattern in which these movements unfold over time and indicates the negative consequences for democracy. To do so, I examine the trajectory of a single charismatic movement – Argentine Peronism – over the course of seven decades. This historical analysis reveals how the personalistic mechanism identified in the previous chapters generates a spasmodic and self-perpetuating cycle of politics in which periods of predominant charismatic leadership alternate with periods of leaderless fragmentation. I demonstrate how this mechanism of movement revival weakens democracy by diluting the quality of citizens’ representation, repeatedly subjugating democratic political institutions to the hegemonic authority of charismatic leaders, and undermining the development of a robust programmatic party system.

This chapter challenges the conclusions drawn by scholars of routinization regarding the pattern in which charismatic movements unfold and influence democracy. Existing literature states that the survival of charismatic movements requires institutionalization – a process in which the movement loses its personalistic nature, intermediaries within the movement establish a programmatic brand, and they develop an organizational network to sustain the support of loyal partisans (Jowitt 1992, 107; Madsen and Snow 1991, 29; Shils 1965, 202–5; Weber 1922/1978, 246). Because these components of routinization are positively associated with democracy (Campbell et al. 1960; Converse 1969; Lupu 2014; Samuels and Zucco 2014), this argument implies that, by setting in motion a process of routinization, charismatic movements can actually lead to the development of stable, democratic party systems.

In contrast, I claim that the personalistic core of charismatic movements remains intact over time and continues to shape key characteristics of the political system. Successors adopt the founder’s charismatic style of leadership in order to claim the followers’ preexisting attachments and consolidate power. To prove extraordinary capacities and appear as the symbolic reincarnations of the founder, self-starters enact bold initiatives that overtake party politics and disregard institutional constraints. During this process of approbation, these new leaders mimic the founder by engaging in top-down, authoritarian behaviors, overriding mechanisms of vertical and horizontal accountability, and marginalizing those who question their authority. This personalistic approach makes the successors appear triumphant, but only temporarily. Indeed, the nearsighted nature of their audacious policies, combined with the weakness of institutional safeguards, also set the leaders up for eventual failure. Through this erratic, up-and-down process, charismatic movements perpetually inhibit programmatic and institutional development.

The following section presents a theoretical discussion that integrates the perspectives of movement followers and leaders to explain the spasmodic trajectories of charismatic movements. I argue that, while generating tremendous political and economic volatility, the spasmodic pattern in which these movements develop reinforces rather than dilutes the personalistic nature of the movement. I then discuss the consequences of this process for democracy at the individual and system levels. Next, I illustrate this self-reinforcing cycle using the case of Peronism, which has experienced four distinct waves of charismatic leadership over its eighty-year history. The first wave rose with Juan Perón’s ascension in the 1940s and receded with his forced exile in 1955; the second culminated in Perón’s return to power in 1973 and faded with his death in the following year; the third arrived with Carlos Menem’s rise in 1989 and retreated with the end of his second administration in 1999; the fourth transpired with Néstor Kirchner’s presidency in 2003 and declined with Cristina Kirchner’s exit in 2015. I conclude by briefly discussing the fifth wave of Peronism, which recently emerged with the election of Alberto Fernández to the presidency (and Cristina to the vice presidency) in 2019.¹ While a comprehensive account of this period lies beyond the scope of this chapter, for each wave I highlight key events and processes that have contributed to the charismatic revival of the movement.

Through this investigation, I illustrate how each wave of Peronism reinvigorated citizens’ charismatic identity and temporarily strengthened each leader’s personalistic control while simultaneously sowing the seeds for the leader’s demise. The results underscore the endogenous nature of charismatic movement revival and stress its deleterious impact on democracy. The findings also illustrate how, paradoxically, such movements generate periods of political strength and coherence as well as periods of recession and political fragmentation, the latter of which, in turn, helps ready the soil for the movement’s re-emergence.

7.1 The Fits and Starts of Charismatic Movements

The survival of charismatic movements hinges primarily on the resilient nature of citizens’ emotional attachments to the founder and his eternal promise of transcendence. While the political salience of these attachments waxes and wanes depending on the circumstances, the personalistic nature of the bonds persists, even during times in which there is no leader to guide the way (Huddy 2001, 49). Thus, when favorable conditions return, self-starters who convincingly portray themselves as heirs of the founder can inject the followers’ latent attachments with renewed energy. The capacity to mobilize these followers into political action grants self-starters a formidable advantage over other candidates and paves the way for the movement’s revival.²

In contrast to the stable nature of the followers’ charismatic bonds, the influence of new leaders is contingent and time-bound. One reason for this is that these self-starters – like the founder – must seek power under conditions of crisis. Without a crisis, citizens would not feel the need to be saved and would therefore be less likely to view even compelling self-starters in a heroic light. Additionally, to substantiate their extraordinary abilities, new leaders must enact policies that trade sustainability for an impressive, short-term impact. Accomplishing this requires successors to exercise their own skill and appeal, but it also depends on factors that lie beyond the leaders’ control, such as an amenable geopolitical environment, a favorable socioeconomic context, or natural resource windfalls available for exploitation. Because these conditions occur intermittently, the revival of charismatic movements unfolds in an episodic manner that contrasts with the stable, linear development of institutionalized parties.

Ambitious self-starters who successfully leverage the abovementioned conditions, achieve heroic performance, and tie themselves to the founder’s mission of salvation to consolidate remarkable authority. Yet their personalistic victory also plants the seeds for their eventual demise, deepening the erratic nature of charismatic movements. First, the bold policies of self-starters are inherently unsustainable. To achieve an impressive impact, these policies weaken institutional checks designed to safeguard the policies’ sustainability (Bersch 2016, 207; Levitsky and Murillo 2013, 100). Additionally, because the early success of the policies temporarily alleviates popular suffering, citizens’ intense need for a charismatic savior also fades away. Self-starters’ symbolic association with the founder therefore becomes increasingly strained, especially as their extraordinary performance begins to wane.

Self-starters further limit their own power by surrounding themselves with faithful confidants rather than experienced bureaucrats and party leaders. Upon rising to the presidency, these successors tend to establish these personalistic ruling coalitions – which consist of loyal friends, family members, and other sycophants – to overcome party constraints and limit institutional checks on their authority. Initially, such yes-men help pave the way for self-starters to dominate politics. But as conditions grow more challenging and performance begins to decline, these advisers’ lack of experience and inability to challenge the opinions of the self-starters, no matter how imprudent, further jeopardize the leaders’ prospects for continued popularity and success. Moreover, because underlings often enjoy kickbacks in exchange for their loyalty, accusations of corruption can further erode the legitimacy of the once-popular self-starters.

In short, the combination of followers’ resilient personalistic attachments and successors’ dramatic but short-lived power causes charismatic movements to develop oscillating trajectories that contrast with the steady path of routinization. At the outset, the charismatic founder establishes a heroic legacy as an everlasting savior by providing the suffering masses with unprecedented recognition and tangible, seemingly miraculous benefits. Crucially, the founder disappears before his policies fully collapse, exonerating him and protecting his legacy. Soon after, the combination of his disappearance and the exhaustion of his policies unleash a crisis and power vacuum. This causes the movement to recede from power and ushers in a period of leaderless fragmentation. However, the disintegration of parties, the weakness of democratic institutions, and the followers’ ongoing devotion to the movement make it difficult for unaffiliated leaders and parties to rise up, coalesce around a meaningful identity that reaches beyond mere opposition to the movement, and stabilize the country on their own terms. Consequently, the country can languish for years under conditions of crisis, uncertainty, uninspiring leadership, and institutional weakness.

Under these circumstances, scholars of routinization contend that it is virtually impossible for charismatic movements to regenerate themselves (Kostadinova and Levitt 2014, 500–1; Madsen and Snow 1991, 25–28). Conversely, I argue that citizens’ suffering and frustration with weak leadership during such periods make them yearn for a new hero to rise up and resolve the situation in a manner reminiscent of the founder. Thus, paradoxically, the “leaderless” period following the founder’s disappearance eventually creates the opportunity for self-starters to revive the movement by playing to its personalistic roots. In particular, when the context shifts to favor self-starters – when the crisis has erupted and conditions realign to enable these new leaders to avoid blame and rise independently – the followers are likely to find the self-starter’s personalistic style, as well as her promise to provide them with much-needed relief, reminiscent of the founder. Thus, leveraging the combination of crisis conditions and personalistic tactics, self-starters can catapult the movement back into power.

Even so, because the legitimacy of self-starters rests on the movement’s charismatic foundation, these leaders can only restore the movement to power temporarily. When the performance of their audacious policies inevitably crests, their loyal advisers are unable to provide guidance; political institutions, which have been starved of power, cannot easily correct these policy failures; and the successors’ symbolic influence erodes. Yet because the followers’ loyalty remains grounded in the founder’s heroic legacy, the fall of self-starters – while disappointing – does not compromise these citizens’ underlying faith in the movement. Rather, many supporters come to view failed self-starters as fraudulent representatives of the movement. As these citizens suffer from the resultant crisis, they begin to look for another, more convincing savior to pick up the founder’s baton. Eventually, this search for a new hero positions the movement to surge back to power on another wave of charismatic leadership, led by a different self-starter who can don the founder’s mantle.

In sum, charismatic movements unfold in fitful waves. After the founder has gone, self-starters rise to power and consolidate authority using favorable conditions and personalistic tactics, which ultimately lead to their downfall. In turn, the failures of these leaders generate crises that cause suffering citizens to long for a new savior who seems capable of resolving the situation. Therefore, the movement swings back into power under new and momentarily compelling self-starters. The rise of the new personalistic leader causes the cycle to repeat, generating a self-reinforcing pattern of political and economic volatility.

7.2 The Consequences of Charismatic Movement Revival for Democracy

7.2.1 Individual-Level Consequences

The spasmodic trajectories of charismatic movements undermine democracy in several ways. At the individual level, the personalistic nature of followers’ attachments dilutes the quality of their programmatic and organizational representation. First, the followers expect new leaders to achieve seemingly miraculous performance to prove themselves worthy of the founder’s mantle. In the short term, the followers receive benefits such as food, medical care, jobs, homes, and even toys, all of which tangibly improve their lives. However, this expectation motivates self-starters to achieve early success at great expense, compromising the programmatic integrity and sustainability of their policies (Bersch 2016; Levitsky and Murillo 2013). To take personal credit for these policies, charismatic leaders carry them out in a direct and impromptu fashion rather than working through institutional channels, which further undermines the policies’ effectiveness and durability (Bersch 2016, 207). In short, by incentivizing new leaders to implement daring, irresponsible reforms without regard for substantive content or sustainability, charismatic movements weaken vertical accountability and compromise citizens’ programmatic representation.

In addition to programmatic concerns, the intimate nature of followers’ unmediated bonds to the movement’s leaders hinders the development of strong organizational linkages. On the surface, charismatic leaders frequently tout their movements as driven by a strong grassroots spirit. Indeed, both Perón and Chávez publicly declared their movements to be propelled by an “organized community” of followers. In reality, however, charismatic founders and their successors exercise direct authority and cultivate paternalistic, top-down attachments with their supporters (Kampwirth 2010, 12). Moreover, as I will illustrate in the following section, followers tend to openly embrace the top-down nature of their attachments with these leaders: while perceiving themselves as lowly and humble, these citizens view their leaders as superior. Thus, the rank-and-file profess ongoing loyalty to the movement not because they feel empowered to become politically active, but because they wish to maintain close ties to their beloved leaders. This intensely hierarchical relationship between charismatic leaders and their followers suppresses the development of organizational ties that inspire followers to become empowered, politically engaged citizens.

7.2.2 System-Level Consequences

At the system level, charismatic movements undermine democracy by encouraging authoritarian behaviors in their leaders and weakening political institutions crucial to sustaining democratic accountability. Charismatic leaders seek to personally dominate the party (or parties) affiliated with the movement in order to ward off internal threats to their power and demonstrate that they answer directly to the people rather than to self-seeking party operatives. To achieve this, they often appoint themselves or their close confidants to serve as head of the party once they have risen to power; they also take measures to keep the party bureaucracy weak and drown out potential voices of contention from within. Additionally, charismatic leaders often create new parties and party labels that are more directly associated with their personal image – while maintaining control over the original, movement-affiliated party – to enhance their individual power. As a result of these efforts to increase personal influence, parties tied to the movement tend to remain weak, fragmented, and dependent on the individual leader. This outcome contrasts with the routinization thesis, which holds that charismatic movements that survive the death of their founders lead to the emergence of depersonalized parties that accumulate institutional strength over time.

In addition to weakening parties aligned with the leader, charismatic movements make it difficult for opposing actors to coalesce and develop a coherent, well-institutionalized alternative. The symbolic narrative crafted by the charismatic founder and reinforced by subsequent leaders accentuates the personalistic cleavage defined by citizens’ allegiance or aversion to the movement while suppressing the relevance of more traditional political divides (Ostiguy and Roberts 2016, 26). Furthermore, the leaders’ intolerance of dissent – expressed through acerbic rhetoric, discriminatory legalism, and even occasional repression – marginalizes opposing voices and curtails the resources of potential rivals (Weyland 2013). Consequently, the opposition to charismatic movements tends to be comprised of programmatically heterogeneous actors that struggle to unite and rally voters based on principles beyond their shared aversion to the movement. Thus, over time, interactions between movement leaders and their adversaries reinforces the personalistic division of society into followers and opponents of the movement while continually undermining the development of coherent principles and programs crucial to programmatic parties.

Finally, the emergence and revival of charismatic movements undermine the development of other political institutions, including the legislature, courts, and government agencies. To tighten their grip on power and take personal credit for impressive performance, movement leaders often override the legislature and rule by emergency decree. They also attack institutions that threaten to check their power, such as Congress, the courts, the Census Bureau, and the Central Bank. For example, charismatic leaders often stack these institutions with loyalists; distort information to discredit institutions that threaten their authority; revise existing laws to limit the power of those institutions; and create new institutions to tighten their personal grip on power. Because each self-starter that revives the movement adopts these destructive behaviors, charismatic movements repeatedly erode the transparency, effectiveness, and stability of institutions from across the political system that are vital to the development of a healthy democracy.

The recurrent damage that charismatic movements inflict on political parties, opposition actors, and institutions establishes a vicious cycle of political and economic volatility. Each successive leader must demonstrate superhuman capacities by implementing bold, irresponsible, and short-lived policies with little infrastructure. To ensure the success of these policies, the leader suppresses dissent and bulldozes institutional constraints from within the party and across the political system. Thus, when the self-starter’s policies collapse and crisis erupts, the country’s weak institutional foundation does little to mitigate the consequences. Thus, the burden of the leader’s failure falls on the citizenry.

Remarkably, however, while citizens may blame particular successors for each collapse, their faith in the charismatic founder and his mission of salvation endures. Moreover, the widespread suffering caused by the crisis, combined with the powerless state of institutions, cause citizens to seek out yet another savior capable of rescuing them from their desperate situation. This desire creates the opportunity for a new self-starter to ascend to and consolidate power based on the promise to embody the founder’s mission to provide the people with a more prosperous future. Thus, the volatile cycle of charismatic leadership repeats, intensifying problems of executive aggrandizement, institutional decay, and recurrent crises.

The remainder of this chapter demonstrates the spasmodic nature of charismatic movements by examining the historical trajectory of Argentine Peronism. As shown in Figure 7.1, I analyze four waves that Peronism has completed in which leaders surged to power, dominated the political system, and subsequently receded, leaving economic and political crises in their wake. I also briefly discuss the beginning of the movement’s fifth wave, which emerged with the election of Alberto Fernández in October 2019.

Figure 7.1. Waves of Peronist revival

As I illustrate subsequently, during each wave of the movement, the leader used charisma to establish a magnetic cult of personality, concentrated executive power, exerted hegemonic control over the movement, marginalized opposition parties, and successfully overpowered political institutions. Between each of these waves, society suffered a serious crisis, opposition administrations failed to govern effectively, and the movement endured extensive fragmentation. By stringing these waves together, I demonstrate how charismatic movements can perpetually harm democracy and generate an endogenous cycle of economic and political booms and busts.

7.3 The Revival of Charisma and the Tumultuous History of the Peronist Movement

7.3.1 The First Wave Rises: Juan Perón and the Foundation of the Movement

Juan Perón made his political debut in Argentina in the wake of the Década Infame, a ten-year period following the Great Depression of 1930 in which a repressive authoritarian government called the Concordancia ruled. During this time, the country’s agricultural economy collapsed, leading millions of poor citizens to flee from the countryside to overcrowded cities in search of jobs in the growing industrial sector (Madsen and Snow 1991, 44; Page 1983, 41–43). While many found employment in the Federal Capital and surrounding Province of Buenos Aires, rapid urbanization and the absence of workers’ rights caused these newly urban laborers – who constituted a majority of the population – terrible suffering in the form of low wages, long hours, job insecurity, and deplorable living conditions (James 1988, 8; Kirkpatrick 1971, 30–34; Madsen and Snow 1991, 47; McGuire 1997, 47–48).

The suffering endured by the masses, combined with their right to vote, provided the impetus for Perón to found a powerful charismatic movement.³ Whereas the military and conservative politicians discounted and even repressed these citizens, Perón perceived them as “a ready reservoir of support” (Page 1983, 66). To win their favor, he became Secretary of Labor after participating in the 1943 military coup that toppled the Concordancia. His fellow officers ridiculed him for assuming this modest position, which oversaw the decrepit National Labor Department that workers referred to as the “elephants’ graveyard” (Corach, author interview, 2016; Page 1983, 63). But Perón used his new post to forge profound, unmediated connections with the neglected masses, who had been searching for a savior to improve their desperate circumstances (Madsen and Snow 1991, 46–48).

7.3.1.1 Establishing Charismatic Attachments

Perón fulfilled the first condition for the establishment of charismatic attachments by using his position as Minister of Labor to reach out to the neglected masses and grant them a role in politics for the first time in the country’s history. Thanks to his leadership, poor and working-class Argentines underwent a transformation from voiceless outsiders to dignified citizens who occupied a meaningful role in society (James 1988, 17). In addition, Perón satisfied the second condition by implementing bold and extensive reforms on behalf of his descamisados (shirtless ones). Due to his reforms, millions of Argentinians enjoyed unprecedented material benefits, including newfound job security in urban factories, a 40-percent wage increase, paid vacation, and new homes (Ascher 1984, 51; Madsen and Snow 1991, 52). Grateful for their elevated status and material prosperity, these people came to worship Perón as their savior (ibid., 46–48).

Over the next two years, some factions of the military came to resent Perón’s rapidly increasing power (Page 1983, 112–19). On October 12, 1945, in an attempt to curb his power, they came together to arrest the Colonel with the naïve hope that removing him from politics would diminish his influence. However, the military vastly underestimated the political capital Perón had gained through his working-class supporters. Days later, on October 17, millions of poor Argentines flooded the plaza in front of the presidential palace to demand his release from prison – a day that would henceforth be commemorated annually as “Loyalty Day” (ibid., 127). A few months later, in February 1946, Perón went on to win the presidential election (James 1988, 9).

During two presidential terms (1946–55), Perón deepened the direct, emotional bonds he had cultivated with his followers by recognizing the suffering and exclusion they endured prior to his rise to power and vowing to resolve their misery. Perón’s second wife, Eva, accentuated her husband’s appeal by portraying herself as his humble servant and quickly establishing her position as the poor’s most passionate advocate (Madsen and Snow 1991, 52; Page 1983, 79). Together, the leading couple continued to deliver new rights and material gains to the popular sectors through labor reforms, economic growth stimulated by import substitution industrialization (ISI), and social assistance channeled through the Eva Perón Foundation (Madsen and Snow 1991, 52). Perón also fulfilled the third condition of charismatic attachment and solidified his bonds with the people by crafting a powerful symbolic narrative that glorified him as a hero and “Evita” as a saint, attacked his opponents as selfish oligarchs and “defenders of class privilege,” and instilled a profound hope in Peronist followers for a more dignified and prosperous future (James 1988, 18–21; Page 1983, 144). As a result of these actions, millions of Argentines developed steadfast affective connections to Perón and pledged quasi-religious devotion to him.⁴

7.3.1.2 Concentrating Hegemonic Authority

During his first two presidencies, Perón used the charismatic bonds he established with his followers to launch his paradigm-shifting movement concentrate power. Indeed, though he gave workers some political voice, he never relinquished significant control to union leaders. Thus, while some have suggested that Perón intended to establish a corporatist political system (e.g., Waisman 1987, 117; Wiarda 1973, 2009), which structures society into a rigid hierarchy under the State, in reality he maintained a direct relationship with his constituents in labor and industry. As Wynia states, “Perón was a very impatient and ambitious leader … who jealously guarded his authority from business and industrial leaders who sought to limit it” (Wynia 1978, 54, 60). Rather than ceding authority to unions, as a corporatist model would have required, the founder empowered the state (and, thus, himself) through an aggressive program of economic nationalism and ISI. With his bold policies, he gained personal control over commodity trading and lucrative industries, which enabled him to construct state institutions through which to distribute impressive benefits directly to his rank and file (ibid., 47).

Between 1946 and 1949, Perón’s daring reforms produced a “golden age” in Argentina. The GNP grew by 25 percent and the working and popular sectors experienced unprecedented upward mobility (Wynia 1978, 52). This period of growth resulted in immeasurable gains for poor citizens, including a newfound sense of respect, dignity, and material prosperity (James 1988, 18). Yet by deepening citizens’ adoration of Perón, these victories also accelerated his executive aggrandizement. In fact, the apparently miraculous impact of his policies caused his followers to perceive him as “the ultimate guarantor” of their well-being and thus reinforced the emotional depth and political asymmetry of their relationship with him (ibid., 99).

Emboldened by the fervent loyalty of his supporters, Perón dominated the political system for several years, undermining the development of parties and overpowering political institutions that threatened his superior status. Within his own “Peronist party,” a loose conglomeration of conflicting factions, he “cultivated contention and disarray,” such that unwavering allegiance to him constituted the only thread uniting his fractious constituents (Page 1983, 161). He also filled his administration with personal confidants who pledged unwavering devotion to him. Most prominently, he relied on Eva, his most trusted servant, to run many important affairs – including the Ministry of Labor, arguably the most important branch of his administration (Madsen and Snow 1991, 51–52). From her position next to Perón, Eva played a crucial role in sustaining and deepening his emotional connections to his followers, while always openly subordinating herself to his authority (Page 1983, 198–99).

In addition to consolidating his influence over his own supporters, Perón stifled leaders and parties who opposed him. For example, he quickly smothered attempts by the Labor Party, namely the powerful union leader Cipriano Reyes, to maintain independence from his movement (McGuire 1997, 161). He also fragmented the main opposition party, the Radical Civic Union (UCR), by enticing some of its prominent leaders to join him while repressing others (ibid., 108, 208–9). To Perón’s delight, the UCR facilitated his efforts by adopting a strategy of obstruction that accelerated its own disintegration. Radical leaders used obscure legal tactics to attack Perón and publicly question his political legitimacy. Rather than tarring Perón as a criminal, this strategy accentuated the UCR’s reputation for “intellectual snobbery” and demonstrated how out of touch the party had become with the general public, who adored the new president (ibid., 162–63).

Beyond opposition parties, Perón limited the influence of other political institutions that threatened his power. For example, in 1945, even before he was elected president, he began issuing executive decrees such as the Aguinaldo – which increased nearly all workers’ wages, provided an annual bonus equal to a full month’s pay, and protected workers from being fired for unjust cause (Page 1983, 143). After becoming president, Perón treated Congress as an extension of his personal will, relying on the “unquestioning obedience” of inexperienced and faithful legislators, who constituted 69 percent of the Chamber of Deputies and 93 percent of the Senate (ibid., 162–64). He also frequently bypassed actors and institutions that questioned his bold actions, ranging from economic advisors to the Central Bank to the Supreme Court (Wynia 1978, 68–70). In fact, he “Peronized” the entire judicial system by stacking courts with loyalists and impeaching those critical of him on grounds of “malfeasance” (Page 1983, 165–67).

In sum, the combination of Perón’s charismatic appeal and his efforts to silence competing voices within his own ranks and across the political system granted him “virtually limitless power” (Page 1983, 228). The steadfast devotion of his support base was crucial to this concentration of his hegemonic authority. In turn, his profoundly personalistic influence helped reinforce his glorification. His single-handed initiation of bold economic programs to “rescue” the people made him seem even worthier of his followers’ adoration. The shortsighted and self-serving character of these policies would eventually cause them to implode, destabilizing the system and harming Perón’s own supporters (McGuire 1997, 59–60). Nevertheless, driven by their thirst for recognition and their charismatic perceptions of the leader, Peronist citizens would remember the initial, extraordinary success of the policies as part of a “golden age” and would blame others for the policies’ eventual failures. As I will illustrate subsequently, the founder’s legacy – combined with the military’s violent intervention, which attempted to destroy that legacy – would help the movement survive during Perón’s exile and eventually establish the conditions for his return nearly two decades later.

7.3.2 The First Wave Recedes: Coup, Exile, and Chaos

7.3.2.1 Policy Exhaustion

During Perón’s second presidential term (1952–55), the immediate payoffs of his shortsighted economic policies began to fade as structural weaknesses surfaced. By this time, his aggressive ISI program had drained the state’s reserves of gold and foreign currency, while industrial growth had slowed and agricultural exports had plummeted (Wynia 1978, 66–68). The economic slump that followed affected the popular sectors – his rank and file – in the form of stagnant wages, inflation, and shortages of basic goods such as meat and grain (Page 1983, 269). To protect his magnetic appeal, Perón responded to the downturn by firing his economic advisors and blaming them for problems of corruption and mismanagement. The fact that many of these individuals, including Central Bank President Miguel Miranda, had been personally appointed by Perón and had simply been following his orders did not implicate him in their guilt (Wynia 1978, 69). To the contrary, their dismissal actually vindicated Perón in the eyes of his followers and reinvigorated their support for him (Page 1983, 271–72).

Having preserved his heroic image, Perón reluctantly addressed the crisis through his Economic Plan of 1952 (Wynia 1978, 70). Composed in secret, the Plan reversed many of his prior pro-labor policies by opening Argentina to foreign capital, inviting private investors, and initiating an anti-inflationary monetary policy to stabilize the economy. Perón justified these ideological reversals using the same promise of political, economic, and social justice that he declared during his initial presidential campaign, underscoring the personalistic – rather than programmatic – nature of his leadership (Page 1983, 287). He also blamed selfish rural interests and “foreign imperialists” for attempting to thwart his righteous effort to transform Argentina, even though his excessive state intervention had generated many of the problems in the first place (Wynia 1978, 70–71). Thus, as circumstances began to improve, Perón did not suffer for reneging on his earlier policies. Instead, from the followers’ perspective, his about-face reinforced his reputation as the ultimate problem-solver and corroborated his “genius” (ibid., 288).

Nevertheless, while Perón successfully redirected blame for the downturn and temporarily salvaged the economy, he failed to address the fundamental weaknesses of his state-centered policies, resulting in a saturated market, sluggish growth, a weakened agricultural sector, and low entrepreneurial confidence (Waisman 1987, 121; Wynia 1978, 73). Furthermore, his brazen refusal to cooperate with entrenched elites – including opposition politicians, agricultural exporters, industrial and financial leaders, elements of the military, and the Catholic Church – placed his regime on increasingly precarious ground, even though his charismatic appeal and popular support remained strong. Consequently, an elite-backed military coup ousted Perón in September 1955, forcing him to flee the country and remain in exile for eighteen years (McGuire 1997, 72–75).

7.3.2.2 Resistance to Routinization

Based on the routinization theory, Perón’s sudden disappearance should have caused his movement to fade away or transform into an institutionalized party. Yet his abrupt and violent ouster by the military only enraged his followers and deepened their affective attachments to him. Moreover, the timing of the coup – after Perón had achieved a modest economic recovery, before the complete deterioration of his policies – helped protect his legacy and generated in his followers an intense nostalgia for the prosperity they had experienced in prior years thanks to his leadership. Throughout Perón’s exile, his supporters expressed “elements of a regressive fantasy for ‘the good old days’ of a ‘golden era’ – a plaintive reflection on a glorified, utopian past” (James 1988, 98).

As I will describe subsequently, similar to routinization scholars, both the backers of the 1955 coup and subsequent democratically elected presidents underestimated the resilience of citizens’ devotion to Perón. This miscalculation, combined with the intractable challenges of governing an economically dysfunctional and politically fragmented society, undermined non-Peronist actors’ efforts to achieve political legitimacy. The failure of the opposition to achieve independent legitimacy, in turn, facilitated Perón’s efforts to maintain his personal grip over the movement and established the conditions for his eventual resurgence in 1973.

To maintain control over his movement during his exile, Perón began by reinforcing the loyalty of his followers. His eventual successor in Argentina’s presidency, General Pedro Aramburu, facilitated this task by proscribing the Peronist party, banning Perón’s inner circle from participating in politics, and outlawing the use of proper names for parties (McGuire 1997, 80). Aramburu assumed that these measures would diminish Perón’s influence and re-route followers’ support to more traditional parties who offered “bread-and-butter unionism” (ibid., 81–82). Had Peronism routinized by this juncture, Aramburu’s strategy would likely have been effective. However, the new leader’s efforts only emphasized the enduring charismatic appeal of Perón – whom poor citizens viewed as single-handedly responsible for their newfound prosperity (Ciria 1974, 25). Perón took advantage of Aramburu’s oversight by rallying his followers to resist the military government and fight for his return to power. Perón’s supporters from across the country responded by mobilizing in a wave of “ill-defined … insurrection” to demand his homecoming (James 1988, 83). Thus, the proscription of Peronism actually reinforced the followers’ identification with the movement and deepened their resistance to the new regime.

To further tighten his grip on his movement while legally barred from power, Perón undermined attempts by politicians within his own ranks to reestablish his movement without him. His followers, who had never been organized into a “well-institutionalized Peronist party,” facilitated this effort by refusing to support leftists and “neo-Peronist” leaders who proposed anything “less than the complete return of Perón” (James 1988, 83; McGuire 1997, 79). Capitalizing on this unmediated support, Perón also invoked a tactic that had served him well during his presidency: he encouraged divisions between the different factions of his movement, including hard-liners who promoted an aggressive strategy of resistance against the military regime, soft-liners who sought to negotiate with the new government, and a third group who preferred a middle path (McGuire 1997, 87).

Beyond Peronism, the opposition struggled to establish independent legitimacy and thereby contributed to Perón’s position of strength. In 1957, the UCR divided into two factions: Arturo Frondizi’s Intransigent UCR (UCRI), which proposed allying with Peronists to defeat Aramburu, and Ricardo Balbín’s UCR of the People (UCRP), which refused to partner with Peronists and sought power independently (McGuire 1997, 84). Perón deepened this fissure by backing Frondizi’s candidacy in the 1958 presidential election and calling on his supporters to vote for the UCRI candidate. Not only did this strategy further divide the UCR, but also thwarted efforts to institutionalize Peronism, as it drew a significant proportion of Peronist votes toward Frondizi and away from neo-Peronist leaders (Corach 2011).

As president, Frondizi inherited an ungovernable situation. The Peronist voters to whom he owed his victory expected him to continue the founder’s bold and beloved redistributive policies. Instead, the saturated domestic market, combined with pressure from the military, led him to enact a program of strict stabilization (Wynia 1978, 87–92). This “astounding about-face” caused an uproar among workers, resulting in a series of debilitating union strikes over the course of the new leader’s presidency (Ascher 1984, 187–89). Furthermore, because Frondizi failed to inspire the cooperation of industrial and agricultural leaders, his painful structural adjustment program attracted little foreign investment and fell short of providing a satisfactory economic recovery (ibid.; Wynia 1978, 96–98). The president’s massive unpopularity and lackluster performance strengthened the campaign for Perón’s return. The military capitalized on Frondizi’s failure as justification to oust him in March 1962 and call for new general elections to be held in July of the following year (Ascher 1984, 193).

With Peronists banned from the ballot and the UCRI delegitimized by Frondizi’s disastrous performance, the UCRP candidate, Arturo Illia, won the 1963 election with a meager 26 percent of the popular vote (Wynia 1978, 112). Because he rose under more favorable economic conditions than Frondizi, Illia managed to enact more popular expansionary policies. In stark contrast to Perón, however, the new president enacted these policies in a cautious and gradual manner, “reinforcing the … impression that Argentines had elected a man with no program at all” (ibid., 116). Moreover, because Peronists viewed his election as illegitimate, Illia failed to earn the support of the movement’s rank and file, even though his redistributive policies produced modest, short-term improvements in their wages. To make matters worse for the president, his policies alienated the country’s other major actors, including agricultural and industrial elites. Thus, when labor protests erupted in 1964 and 1965, the military intervened again, removing yet another unpopular president with a coup in 1966 (ibid., 122–27).

The failures of Frondizi and Illia strengthened Perón’s reputation as the only leader capable of effectively governing Argentina. To sustain his favorable position, however, Perón also had to minimize threats from within his movement, which had gathered strength during Illia’s presidency. Most importantly, Augusto Vandor, an experienced union leader, sought to build a routinized Peronist party during this period that would sustain the movement’s traditional, pro-labor policies while leaving the founder behind (James 1988, 162). A passionate defender of Argentine workers and a pragmatic leader, Vandor would likely have protected Peronist followers’ interests more effectively than Perón himself (McGuire 1997, 133). Yet the founder deliberately sabotaged Vandor’s attempts to carry Peronism forward without him. To do so, Perón empowered the radical left wing of his movement – the Revolutionary Peronist Movement – a faction with which he had very little in common ideologically (Gillespie 1982, 42; McGuire 1997, 91). While emboldening this radical branch, Perón constantly shifted his support between it and the labor branch, the latter of which was sympathetic to Vandor, throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. This “deliberate strategic ambiguity” incited chaos and violence between the factions, compromising the well-being of Perón’s own followers (Gillespie 1982, 45). Crucially, however, it also safeguarded his personal control over his movement, further demonstrating his preference for charismatic power over programmatic substance.

In short, chaos, fragmentation, and instability defined the interregnum between Perón’s ouster in 1955 and his return to power in 1973. Both opposition and neo-Peronist parties failed to grow roots and attract sufficient political support to establish a stable, democratic party system. Instead, the military, obsessed with erasing Peronism while unconfident in other parties’ capacity to govern, regularly interfered. In fact, Frondizi and Illia, the only democratically elected presidents who served during the period, were ousted by military coups; the third, Héctor Cámpora, served only as a stand-in candidate for Perón and was replaced by the founder just months after his election in 1973 (Wynia 1978, 14).

I argue that citizens’ charismatic attachments to Perón, combined with the exiled leader’s ongoing interference, helped sustain his image as the only person capable of rescuing the country from crisis and turmoil – even though he played a direct role in generating the upheaval. With his charisma intact, the triumphant Perón therefore returned to Argentina in 1973 to begin his third presidential term amid throngs of fervently loyal followers.

7.3.3 The Second Wave Rises: Perón’s Brief Return to Power

7.3.3.1 Recharging Charismatic Attachments

Like his first rise in the mid-1940s, Perón relied on his enduring personalistic appeal to return to power in 1973. In a conciliatory gesture, the military regime permitted the Peronist party – though not Perón himself – to participate in elections scheduled for that March. The regime invited the participation of the Peronist party in the hopes that “the ‘Perón myth’ would have eventually vanished during his long exile” (Ciria 1974, 30). As in 1955, however, the military once again underestimated the depth of citizens’ affective ties to their leader. By 1973, the charismatic founder had not just sustained the devotion of his original followers, but he had also grown his base by incorporating middle-class and leftist activists (Page 1983, 453). While the interests and values of these new supporters starkly contrasted with those of his working-class rank and file, he appealed to all of them: to his traditional followers, he symbolized a return to the “golden age” of his prior rule; to his new constituents, he appeared as an inspirational and revolutionary figure, “almost a local version of Mao or Fidel” (Ciria 1974, 29–30). Regardless of their interpretations, however, all of Perón’s supporters became convinced that their vision of the future required his personal resumption of power.

7.3.3.2 Reasserting Hegemonic Authority

Harnessing the faith of his followers, Perón revived his movement in typical charismatic fashion. His handpicked proxy, Héctor Cámpora, ran in the March 1973 presidential election. A “staunch supporter and personal representative of Perón,” Cámpora posed little threat to the founder and vowed to immediately step down upon winning the election to restore Perón to power (Ciria 1974, 32). With Perón’s blessing and the campaign slogan, “Cámpora to the presidency, Perón to power,” the proxy candidate won in a landslide (“Triumph for Perón” 1973). True to his word, Cámpora welcomed Perón back to Argentina and stepped down from power in July, just four months after being elected. Perón won a newly scheduled election that September with 62 percent of the vote and, on October 12, greeted masses of jubilant – if internally divided – followers from the presidential palace (Page 1983, 477).

7.3.4 The Second Wave Recedes: Death, Dictatorship, and the Return to Democracy

7.3.4.1 Policy Exhaustion

As discussed earlier, Perón resumed the presidency after nearly two decades of exile by leaning on his charismatic authority and fighting attempts to destroy or institutionalize his movement. These efforts facilitated his comeback, but they also presented him with intractable challenges, including an unstable political situation, a disjointed movement, and a fragile economy. Perón temporarily sidestepped these issues by condemning the failures of the prior military regime and making vague promises to restore independence, prosperity, and social justice to Argentina through projects such as the “Social Pact” and the “Reconstruction and Liberation Project” (Ciria 1974, 34; Wynia 1978, 252). Given the perilous state of the economy and explosive divisions – not only within his movement, but also across other sectors of society including opposition parties, the revolutionary left, and the military – his grand gestures would not last long. Fortunately for his legacy, he died before disaster ensued, just nine months after assuming office (Pion-Berlin 1983, 54). Rather than blaming him for the dark period that followed, his devotees sustained their glorified perceptions of their beloved Conductor.

As described in Chapter 6, during Isabel Perón’s short-lived and disastrous presidency from July 1974 to March 1976, she reinforced her husband and predecessor’s dysfunctional economic policies while using repression to quell popular dissent. Subsequently, the military ousted her and instilled a brutal dictatorship under General Jorge Videla. Over the next six years, the military dictatorship increased state-sponsored repression to horrific levels in its quest to “annihilate” the revolutionary left – and anyone even remotely associated with the left – in the name of reestablishing order (McGuire 1997, 170–71). The regime “disappeared” tens of thousands of civilians, killed thousands more outright, and pushed more than two million others to flee the country (Haberman 2015).⁵ Economically, Videla sought to stabilize the country by demobilizing the working class and aggressively reenacting a free-market model to curb inflation and stimulate growth. Although these extreme measures led to a modest economic recovery during the first three years of the dictatorship, the regime – despite claiming to be a beacon of economic discipline and efficiency – indulged in “gargantuan borrowing” and destroyed industrial productivity, leading to widespread implosion of financial institutions (McGuire 1997, 171–73). The resulting economic collapse, combined with a last-ditch effort to shore up political legitimacy through a failed invasion of the British Falkland Islands, forced the regime to usher in a caretaker government and restore democratic elections in 1983 (ibid., 178–79).

7.3.4.2 Resistance to Routinization

During the military dictatorship, Peronism fragmented even more than during the founder’s eighteen-year exile. While the regime’s unspeakable acts of torture suppressed the Peronist left, rifts grew in the movement’s more traditional, union-centered base due to disagreements regarding how to confront the dictatorship. Some union leaders, such as Saúl Ubaldini of the beer workers’ union and Roberto García of the taxi workers’ union, adopted a combative approach in which they led general strikes and openly expressed their opposition. Others, including Lorenzo Miguel of the steelworkers’ union and Jorge Triaca of the plastic workers’ union, chose a more conciliatory path that involved negotiation with the regime in hopes of securing a role in the eventual transition to democracy (ibid., 173–74). Like the Peronists, opposition parties also suffered repression and fragmentation, albeit to a lesser extent. Similar to union leaders, Radical politicians disagreed about how to deal with the military regime. For example, UCRP leader Ricardo Balbín endeavored to cooperate with the military in order to gain a more prominent role in a transitional regime, whereas Raúl Alfonsín openly opposed the regime throughout its six-year tenure (ibid., 177).

Despite these divisions, the military dictatorship’s unabashed brutality and failed economic policies ultimately caused the regime to collapse, motivating Peronist and UCR leaders to form a united front to facilitate a transition to democracy. This coalition, dubbed the multipartidaria, played an active role in scheduling elections for October 1983 (Corach 2011). Due to the deep fissures within Peronism, which had intensified due to the absence of its charismatic founder and the unrelenting repression of the dictatorship, the movement failed to present a compelling candidate for the election. Instead, its fractious leaders nominated Ítalo Luder – an unintimidating and perfunctory lawyer with no connection to the movement’s rank and file (Madsen and Snow 1991, 139).

In contrast to the behind-the-scenes politicking of Peronist leaders who all coveted the presidency, the UCR held a transparent, democratic primary election in which candidates had the opportunity to appeal directly to voters. Thus, unlike their Peronist counterparts, UCR leaders overcame internal divisions and coalesced behind Raúl Alfonsín (McGuire 1997, 183). An inspiring leader who promised to restore light, hope, and democracy to the country after years of repression and darkness, Alfonsín swept Luder in the elections and became Argentina’s first post-transition president.⁶

As the first post-transition president, Alfonsín attempted to launch a new political movement, which he dubbed the “Third Historical Movement,” that would rise above the existing parties and movements including the UCR and Peronism (Zelaznik 2013, 424). At the time, many of Alfonsín’s supporters thought he would succeed: endowed with his own charismatic appeal, he seemed to personally embody the light, hope, and democracy that Argentines so desperately craved after several years of darkness, turmoil, and repression.⁷ However, as I will illustrate susbequently, Alfonsín, like many leaders before him, underestimated the resilience of Peronism. Ultimately, this oversight foiled his ambitions to start a new movement and led to his premature departure from the presidency.

Specifically, although problems of leaderless fragmentation prevented Peronism from returning to power during this period, the Peronists capitalized on their enduring influence over the working class to obstruct Alfonsín’s capacity to govern. While unable to return society to the “glory days” under Perón, these politicians could mobilize Peronist workers to undermine the new administration by highlighting how Alfonsín’s proposals to stabilize the economy – which included scaling back benefits Perón had granted decades earlier – betrayed the founder’s legacy. Using this logic, Peronism’s otherwise divided union leaders, including Ubaldini and Triaca, joined forces to oppose the new president’s reforms. In fact, over the course of Alfonsín’s term, these leaders coordinated thirteen general, nationwide strikes (McGuire 1997, 200). These tactics greatly hindered Alfonsín’s success and played a crucial role in the leader’s premature exit from power in July 1989, several months before the official completion of his term.

In short, while no leader emerged as Perón’s clear heir in 1983, the movement’s capacity to mobilize followers and obstruct opposing forces sustained its political relevance throughout Alfonsín’s presidency. Perhaps more importantly, by inhibiting the leadership capacities of Alfonsín, the rebellious behavior of union leaders throughout the 1980s created a deep crisis of governability and demonstrated to Peronist followers the inability of non-Peronists to meet their needs. In turn, the desperate economic and political circumstances that had worsened during Alfonsín’s presidency established a ripe opportunity for a new charismatic savior to arise, pick up Perón’s baton, and save the people from their distress.

7.3.5 The Third Wave Rises: Carlos Menem

7.3.5.1 Recharging Charismatic Attachments

As described in Chapter 6, Carlos Menem rose toward the end of Alfonsín’s chaotic presidency to restore Peronism to power and – temporarily – become Argentina’s preeminent leader. A self-starter seeking power in the midst of a terrible crisis, Menem embraced a personalistic style of leadership that “echoed Perón’s,” revitalizing citizens’ emotional attachments to the movement and restoring their faith in its promise to bring them peace and prosperity.⁸ As I will describe subsequently, Menem’s charisma played a crucial role in reviving Peronism and establishing his authority. But, just as with the first two waves of the movement under Perón, Menem’s personalistic tactics ultimately led to his downfall and yet another period of tumultuous crisis.

In contrast to his failed predecessor, Menem secured the loyalty of Peronist citizens in part because he portrayed himself as a genuine successor of Perón. He boasted a lifelong record as a devout Peronist: he had participated in the party as a young activist during Perón’s second presidential term, endured five years of imprisonment under the military dictatorship, and served three terms as the Peronist governor of the rural Western province of La Rioja (McGuire 1997, 207–8). Leveraging these strong connections to the movement, he rose above political infighting and portrayed himself as uniquely capable of picking up the founder’s baton and restoring the people’s faith in the movement’s promise of redemption.⁹ Thus, Menem distanced himself from Alfonsín’s failed administration; triumphed over Cafiero in the 1988 Peronist primary; handily defeated the UCR candidate, Eduardo Angeloz, in the 1989 general election; and began his presidency backed by a powerful, emotionally charged base of supporters.

As president, Menem solidified his image as a charismatic savior by implementing daring reforms. Most prominently, his Convertibility Plan, which artificially fixed the Argentine peso to the US dollar, attacked and eventually ended hyperinflation, dramatically increasing the purchasing power of ordinary Argentines (see Chapter 6). Menem enacted the Plan in April 1991 after a cascade of neoliberal reforms that directly contradicted Perón’s original, state-centered policies and far outpaced Alfonsín’s proposed structural adjustment plans (Weyland 2002, 20–21).

While Menem’s policies appeared to contradict those of Perón, I contend that his behavior was quintessentially Peronist, as he ended the crisis and provided the suffering masses with much-needed relief. Between 1990 and 1994, inflation dropped from 1,832 percent to 4 percent. Additionally, newly privatized public services – which had been hopelessly dysfunctional before Menem’s rise – became efficient and affordable (McGuire 1997, 219–20). Thanks to Menem’s neoliberal policies, the country achieved sustained economic growth and Argentines enjoyed a higher quality of life than they had experienced in decades. In short, while his audacious programs horrified the principled leaders of the center-left Peronist Renovation – the coalition dedicated to institutionalizing the movement – Menem’s emotional appeal and extraordinary performance during his first presidential term enabled him to revive the movement in all its personalistic glory.

7.3.5.2 Concentrating Hegemonic Authority

Capitalizing on his success, Menem followed Perón’s model by deepening his control over politics. First, the self-starter conquered the Peronist party by marginalizing prominent leaders of the Renovation and replacing Cafiero as president of the PJ. He also filled his cabinet with trusted friends rather than experienced party officials. For example, he appointed three individuals to important posts based on personal rather than party connections: Roberto Dromi (Minister of Public Works), Alberto Kohan (Chief of Staff), and Eduardo Bauzá (Minister of the Interior). He also selected several previously anti-Peronist leaders as prominent advisers, including Alvaro Alsogaray and Octavio Frigerio, further demonstrating that he was not beholden to party officials (ibid., 242).¹⁰ To deepen his control over the PJ, Menem personally endorsed political outsiders ranging from celebrities to speedboat racers to corporate CEOs for legislative and gubernatorial positions rather than supporting party leaders (ibid., 242–43). In doing so, he stifled the efforts of many to routinize the PJ, coopted important opposition leaders, and strengthened Peronism’s personalistic nature.

In addition to overpowering parties within and beyond the Peronist movement, Menem undermined political institutions that constrained his authority. For example, he bypassed the legislature to enact hundreds of emergency decrees that ensured the swift implementation of his free-market reforms, which many politicians found worrisome and irresponsible. By the end of 1993, he enacted over three hundred such decrees – about ten times more than the country had experienced over the previous 140 years combined (ibid, 256).¹¹ Similar to Perón, he also sidestepped legal challenges to his executive power by increasing the number of Supreme Court justices from five to nine and handpicking loyalists to fill the new vacancies. To reinforce his image of indomitable popularity, he meddled in electoral rules to benefit his administration, adding twenty-three new seats to the Chamber of Deputies representing sympathetic districts and, most prominently, pushing through a new constitution to permit his reelection in 1995 (ibid., 255–57). Through these tactics, Menem successfully overcame constraints imposed by the other branches of government and solidified his charismatic power in a manner reminiscent of the founder.

Lastly, to ensure his personal control over the state, Menem allowed corruption to proliferate throughout his administration and often orchestrated illicit activities. When scandals erupted involving his personal advisors and other loyal politicians, he responded by demonizing the press for unjustly accusing these individuals (ibid., 259). Crucially, thanks in large part to his charismatic image and close attachments with Peronist followers, the accusations of corruption failed to reach Menem personally during his presidency. As Kohan, Menem’s Chief of Staff, stated in an interview with the author, opposition leaders “accused Menem of everything … and even then, we continued to win elections. They still haven’t been able to prove anything.”¹² Thus, the president remained popular and exercised largely unchecked power throughout his first and much of his second presidential term.

To recapitulate, like Perón, Menem harnessed the fervent loyalty of Peronist followers and the early success of his economic reforms to achieve hegemonic control over the political system. As with the charismatic founder, his direct appeals to the popular sectors helped catapult him into power. Then, as president, Menem used his personalistic authority to reinforce his heroic image and temporarily provide his supporters with determined reprieve from economic crisis. Ultimately, Menem’s actions undermined his followers’ long-term programmatic interests, destroyed the efforts of the Renovation leaders to routinize Peronism, and weakened political institutions vital to the consolidation of democracy. Nevertheless, Menem’s charismatic leadership strengthened Peronism by reenergizing the followers’ enthusiasm for the movement and causing them to worship him as its new chief. Thus, while his impressive reign would not last, I argue that it played a crucial role in perpetuating the personalistic nature and spasmodic trajectory of the movement.

7.3.6 The Third Wave Recedes: Menem’s Fall and The Convertibility Crisis

7.3.6.1 Policy Exhaustion

During Menem’s second presidential term (1995–99), the structural deficiencies of his audacious policies began to emerge. In particular, it became increasingly difficult to ignore the unsustainable nature of the Convertibility Plan, as the official value of the peso far exceeded its real worth. While Menem refused to publicly acknowledge this disturbing reality, anxiety rose among ordinary Argentines, whose livelihood had become dependent on the artificial exchange rate (Weyland 2002, 187). Adding to this fear were the social consequences of Menem’s neoliberal reforms, which included growing inequality and unemployment (Gantman 2012, 338–41). Although the Peronist rank and file continued to view Menem favorably, these problems directly impacted their lives and began to erode his reputation as a heroic problem-solver.

Unable to run for a third presidential term in 1999, Menem was forced to yield the Peronist candidacy to Eduardo Duhalde. A programmatically principled leader and longtime rival of Menem’s, Duhalde enjoyed the backing of Peronist Renovation leaders who had grown frustrated by the president’s hegemonic behavior and his waning performance (Weyland 2002, 194). Yet, Menem’s influence over the movement remained significant. Furthermore, many of the outgoing president’s conservative supporters backed his former Economy Minister, Domingo Cavallo. This fragmentation deprived Duhalde of valuable votes and ultimately cost him the election. Thus, Fernando de la Rúa, a dreadfully uninspiring candidate aptly nicknamed “baby pacifier” (el chupete), came to power backed by a loose alliance of anti-Peronist parties (ibid.).¹³

As with the recession of the first two Peronist waves in 1955 and 1974, Menem’s delicate economic and political balance collapsed upon his departure from power in 1999. Throughout his presidency, he had enforced political cohesion and economic stability from the top-down using his unmediated charismatic authority. His sudden absence, combined with the exhaustion of his shortsighted policies, ushered in a chaotic period without a leader to guide the way. Indeed, the virtually powerless de la Rúa failed to take charge of the situation upon rising to office and thus resigned in December 2001 (Weyland 2002, 195). The combination of economic collapse and feeble leadership de-legitimized the political system and led citizens to riot in the streets (Krauss 2001).

In the eleven days between de la Rúa’s resignation and Duhalde’s appointment as interim president, Argentina endured a profound leadership crisis in which five presidents rose and fell. Remarkably, the military did not intervene during this tumultuous period – a testament to the country’s commitment to a minimal level of democracy as well as its strong aversion toward violence. Nevertheless, the crisis revealed the disintegrated state of the party system and demonstrated how little the country’s political institutions had progressed over the previous decade.

In terms of political parties, the UCR grew even weaker during the 1999–2003 period than it had been when Alfonsín stepped down from the presidency prematurely in 1989 (Zelaznik 2013, 425). The party’s inability to compete in the 1999 elections without crafting an alliance with several other parties was an illustration of its frailty; De La Rúa’s feeble presidency and resignation in 2001 only exacerbated the party’s failure to thrive. Consequently, in the wake of the crisis, the UCR would play only a minor role in stabilizing the country and would never again present a stand-alone candidate for presidential elections (Roberts 2007, 12).

7.3.6.2 Resistance to Routinization

Peronism remained divided in the aftermath of Menem’s presidency. For his part, Duhalde led a large group of party stalwarts against Menem and his neoliberal policies. The rival’s faction had begun to accumulate strength in 1997, as Menem’s performance had begun to wane. Yet Duhalde’s group encountered several obstacles that prevented it from assuming control over the party. One obstacle is that, as previously mentioned, Cavallo also ran for president under a separate ticket in a blatant attempt to split the PJ (Cassese 1999). In addition, Menem retained control over important factions of the PJ, hindering the efforts of his Peronist opponents to dethrone him. Thus, while constitutionally barred from running for a third presidential term in 1999, Menem managed to get himself reelected as president of the PJ until 2003 (Ventura 1999).¹⁴

When Duhalde scheduled presidential elections for 2003, the PJ refrained from endorsing an official candidate, reflecting the lack of cohesion within the party. As a result, three leaders with Peronist affiliations ran on separate tickets: Menem; Néstor Kirchner, the Governor of Santa Cruz and Duhalde’s preferred candidate; and Adolfo Rodríguez Saá, the Governor of San Luis. Notably, despite running independently, the three candidates did not attempt to break away from Peronism and start new parties. Instead, each depicted himself as a true successor of Perón while targeting the others as frauds threatening to denigrate the founder’s legacy. Most explicitly, Menem claimed throughout his campaign to be Perón’s most faithful successor. He even declared during his campaign finale in the iconic River Plate Stadium in the Federal Capital, “Carlos Menem is the authentic and best disciple of the Lieutenant General Juan Domingo Perón and of Eva Perón” (Sued 2003).

Although Kirchner downplayed his ties to the PJ in order to distance himself from Menem, he also implicitly connected himself to the charismatic founder. For example, just as Menem claimed to reinvigorate Perón’s “productive revolution” during his 1989 campaign, Kirchner promised an economic “model of production and work” – a clear association with the founder’s original platform (Ybarra 2003). Similarly, while less popular than Menem or Kirchner, Adolfo Rodríguez Saá titled his electoral coalition after the founders’ movement, “National and Popular Movement,” and referenced Perón’s promise of salvation by titling his caravan “The March of Dreams” (Colonna 2003). In short, while the infighting between Peronist leaders kept the PJ fragmented and weak during the 1999–2003 period, each candidate’s efforts to associate himself with the founder underscore the ongoing influence of Perón’s charismatic legacy.

In addition to weak parties, political institutions during this period remained frail. The judicial branch remained deeply politicized and the legislature was virtually powerless, as evidenced by its failure to implement much-needed economic reforms and prevent the 2001 collapse (Ventura 1999). With weakling De La Rúa at the helm, the executive office also lost its decisive authority. Given the utter disempowerment of the three major branches of government, the State had little capacity to address the crisis, causing citizens throughout the country to become thoroughly disillusioned with the government and detached from politics in the ensuing years (Quiroga 2005, 322–23).

Despite the discredited status of political parties and institutions, however, Peronism sustained its reputation as the only force capable of governing the country during the transitional period from Menem to Kirchner (Mora y Araujo 2011; Ollier 2015). In fact, I contend that Argentina recovered from the 2001 collapse primarily due to the ongoing legitimacy of Peronism and the strength of the chief executive office relative to other political institutions. Paradoxically, while undermining democratic institutions, the movement’s popular legitimacy and its monopoly over executive power saved Argentina from worse fates. Moreover, while the 2001 crisis made citizens feel utterly fed up with politics, it also reinforced their perception of Peronism as the only force capable of rescuing the country from desperate circumstances. Thus, even while rejecting contemporary politicians, Peronist followers sustained their attachments to the movement and their faith in the founder’s promise to deliver salvation. As I will discuss in the next section, it is for this reason that the followers would come to worship another set of charismatic saviors soon after the crisis, restoring Peronism to its position of power.

7.3.7 The Fourth Wave Rises: Néstor and Cristina Kirchner

7.3.7.1 Recharging Charismatic Attachments

As discussed in the previous chapter, Néstor Kirchner won the 2003 presidential election thanks in large part to Menem’s departure from the race, combined with the wave of economic recovery that Duhalde had initiated in the previous year. Taking personal credit for the reestablishment of prosperity, Néstor – and subsequently, his wife, Cristina – consolidated tremendous popularity and reinvigorated followers’ emotional attachments, thereby ushering in the fourth wave of Peronism.

Initially, the Kirchners tried to establish a unique movement that superseded (but still incorporated) Peronism. For example, Néstor responded to the PJ’s refusal to endorse any candidate for the 2003 election by creating a new party label, Front for Victory (Frente para la Victoria – FPV), which he claimed would be a “transversal” coalition that would incorporate Peronist and non-Peronist actors alike. Julio Cobos, the Radical governor of Mendoza, also served as Cristina’s vice president during her first presidential term (2007–11). Mora y Araujo (2011) indicates that the Kirchners initially pursued this strategy because, when Néstor rose to power, his control over Peronism was anything but guaranteed. Indeed, Néstor won the presidency with less than 23 percent of the vote; Menem, who had gained over 24 percent of the vote in the first round of the election, still enjoyed the loyalty of many Peronist followers. The Kirchners sought to strengthen their position by building a broader coalition that reached beyond Peronism and drew support from opposition groups, such as ideologically moderate and left-leaning Radicals like Cobos.

However, similar to Alfonsín’s attempts to create a “Third Historical Movement” in the 1980s, the Kirchners’ attempts to establish a new movement failed, causing them to double down on their Peronist identity. The leading couple’s renewed embrace of Peronism occurred in large part because they resisted making concessions to the diverse members of the transversal coalition; in turn, the coalition members felt increasingly irritated and alienated by the Kirchners’ domineering style (Mora y Araujo 2011). Thus, as the Kirchners’ joint administration progressed, their non-Peronist alliances fell apart, especially during Cristina’s presidency (Calvo and Victoria Murillo 2012, 151; Mora y Araujo 2011).

At the same time, Néstor and Cristina’s popularity among Peronist followers increased substantially over the course of their joint rule due to Argentina’s impressive economic recovery as well as Menem’s fading prominence (Mora y Araujo 2011). In an especially notable illustration of the Kirchners’ newfound control over the movement, Cristina defeated Duhalde’s wife, “Chiche,” in the 2005 senate race for the Province of Buenos Aires, arguably the most important Peronist stronghold in the country (Calvo and Victoria Murillo 2012, 161). As a result of their increasing dominance over Peronism and the defections of their Radical allies, the Kirchner era became widely perceived as a formidable new chapter of Peronism rather than an independent movement (Ollier 2015).

Interestingly, some scholars and Peronist activists insisted in interviews with the author that the Kirchners brought Peronism back to life using a programmatic approach: namely, by constructing a state-centered, nationalist economy similar to Perón’s original platform.¹⁵ For instance, Santiago Cafiero, a grandson of Antonio Cafiero who would become President Alberto Fernández’s cabinet chief in 2019, stated that, whereas Menem claimed the Peronist label through superficial “iconography,” the Kirchners resurrected the programmatic substance of Peronism through reinstating “concrete policies of state-centered economics and social redistribution.”¹⁶ Based on this reasoning, one might conclude that, in contrast to Menem, the Kirchners successfully transformed Peronism into the routinized, center-left party envisioned by Antonio Cafiero and other leaders of the Peronist Renovation a decade earlier.

Yet, as I argue subsequently, the Kirchners intentionally undermined others’ attempts to routinize Peronism and strengthened the charismatic heart of the movement. They achieved this by adopting the same strategies that Perón and Menem utilized in the past to consolidate decisively personalistic authority. However, to distance themselves from Menem’s tainted administration, they employed the strategies of charismatic leadership in reverse order: they began by enacting daring and initially successful programs, then embraced their roles as the heirs of Juan and Eva Perón.

Whereas Menem stressed his symbolic role as a Peronist before implementing bold reforms, Néstor kicked off his presidency by enacting audacious policies that produced extraordinary, though unsustainable, benefits. The outcomes of his daring reforms reenergized Peronist followers and secured the loyalty of new supporters from the lower and middle classes. His decision to repay Argentina’s massive debt with the International Monetary Fund in one fell swoop in December 2005 exemplifies this approach. This astonishing initiative created a “climate of euphoria” across Argentina by instantaneously liberating the country from the “tutelage” of one of its most detested and powerful overlords (“Histórico: el país saldará en un solo pago la deuda con el FMI” 2005; Ollier 2015). Moreover, it cast Néstor in a heroic light and distinguished him from Menem, whom the public widely perceived as selling out to the IMF in the first place. The loan repayment accelerated the economic recovery, bringing about substantial increases in employment and wages, thereby causing Néstor’s popularity to skyrocket to 74 percent by July 2003 (Mora y Araujo 2011).

As president in subsequent years, Cristina implemented similar state-centered programs to display her own determination and capacity to transform Argentina. For example, in a bold move in 2008, she renationalized the pension system that Menem had privatized in 1993. She presented the decision as a radical effort to “protect our pensioners and our workers,” from the evils of Menem’s neoliberalism as well as the greedy interests of developed countries, “economic conglomerates,” and “large banks” (Arza 2012, 48–49; Datz 2012, 116). In reality, the policy revealed Cristina’s “political short-termism and executive strength,” and undermined “long-term concerns about the stability of the social security system” (Datz 2012, 101). However, the renationalization deepened the enthusiasm of her followers, greatly enhanced her control over the country’s fiscal resources, and enabled her to restructure and temporarily alleviate the country’s large and growing public debt. By the end of her presidency, 1.28 million Argentines received noncontributory pensions thanks to the reform (Nogueira 2015). In short, while complicating the country’s economic stability, this daring fiscal policy strengthened Cristina’s image as the common people’s central protagonist and proved her willingness to stand up on the world stage to defend her supporters against powerful enemies.¹⁷

Once they achieved impressive performance and distanced themselves from Menem, the Kirchners proceeded to portray themselves as symbolic reincarnations of Perón and Eva, thereby reviving the movement’s quasi-religious mystique. Néstor did this implicitly by portraying himself as the champion of Argentine workers (Wortman 2015). He also reanimated the cleavage Perón had emphasized between the privileged and the poor – a dimension of the Peronist narrative that Menem had downplayed. For example, he verbally attacked Menem, human rights abusers from the military dictatorship, and international financial institutions as selfish elites.¹⁸ Conversely, he praised Argentine workers, the progressive middle class, youths, and the poor masses as model citizens (Wortman 2015).

When Cristina rose to power in 2007, she reinforced this cleavage between the “haves” and “have-nots” and explicitly embodied Evita’s persona as the mother of the impoverished masses.¹⁹ Throughout her presidency, she mingled with poor Argentines during public acts, used passionate rhetoric to defend the “people” against the malevolent upper class, and depicted herself as personally responsible for redistributing wealth to more virtuous Argentines via her social programs. She introduced many such programs in the “Evita Room” of the presidential palace, with an image of the founder’s wife projected prominently behind her, as exemplified in Figure 7.2.

Figure 7.2. Cristina Kirchner announces a new bill in the “Evita Room” of the presidential palace, 2012

However, it was Néstor’s sudden death from a heart attack in October 2010 that would catalyze the Kirchners’ most powerful symbolic connection to the Peróns’ charismatic legacy. Following this tragedy, Cristina doubled down on her efforts to create an “idealized image” of her husband that explicitly associated both of them with the founders (Cherny 2014, 156). For example, following Néstor’s death, images proliferated of Cristina and her late husband mimicking the founders’ passionate embrace during massive campaign rallies (see Figures 7.3 and 7.4). Cristina also publicly mourned Néstor’s death for an extensive period of time and continually referred to “Him” as Christ-like during the final years of her presidency, intensifying her allure as a brave and tenacious widow. And just as Perón immortalized Eva’s saintly image upon her tragic death, Cristina solidified Néstor’s charismatic legacy by incorporating his image into propaganda spread throughout the country; renaming streets, public buildings, and neighborhoods after him; and constantly referencing his extraordinary contributions to society (Cherny 2014, 156; Wortman 2015).

Figure 7.3. Cristina and Néstor Kirchner embrace

Figure 7.4. Juan and Eva Perón embrace

7.3.7.2 Concentrating Hegemonic Authority

Contrary to the hopes of some party activists and intellectuals, the Kirchners did not use their charismatic authority to oversee the construction of a leftist, institutionalized party. Rather, the leading couple seized control of the PJ and leveraged their powerful appeal to vanquish threats from the party’s mid-level agents. Initially, Néstor adopted a conciliatory tone to win the support of diverse leaders within and beyond the PJ (Cherny 2014, 150; Mora y Araujo 2011). Yet, as he became more popular, these actors – especially Duhalde – quickly went from critical sources of support to obstacles threatening to hinder the Kirchners’ consolidation of power. As these fragile political alliances grew more strained, the leading couple abandoned their transversal movement and established a new chapter of Peronism that they could define on their own terms (Dagatti 2013; Ollier 2015).

To establish a formidable and distinctly Kirchnerista chapter of Peronism, Néstor used his overwhelming popular support to demand loyalty from Peronist governors and legislators throughout the country. He also punished PJ leaders who questioned him by nominating parallel lists with his own candidates during the 2005 mid-term elections, and his nominees easily won thanks to their association with him. Furthermore, he weakened dissident Peronist governors by placing loyal mayors (intendentes) with new executive powers in the governors’ districts. When some Peronist officials attempted to create a united front to oppose the president’s aggressive behavior, he responded by pressuring influential members of the PJ to resign, effectively deactivating the party (Cherny 2014, 151–54). Finally, as previously mentioned, Cristina competed against Duhalde’s wife, “Chiche,” in the 2005 elections for senator of the Province of Buenos Aires. Unfortunately for Duhalde, his experience as a two-term governor of the province was no match for the Kirchners’ popularity. Cristina emerged as the victorious senator, delivering a decisive blow to dissident Peronists, extinguishing Duhalde’s influence, and paving the way for the Kirchners’ undisputed control over the movement (ibid.; Mora y Araujo 2011; Ollier 2015).

Throughout the remainder of their combined presidencies, the Kirchners controlled the PJ in a hegemonic manner reminiscent of Menem and Perón. In fact, Néstor became president of the PJ in 2008, less than one year after handing the presidency of the nation to his wife. Time and again, the leading couple overcame internal threats to their power by deepening their direct connections with their adoring followers. Cristina continued to dominate the party on her own in the aftermath of her husband’s death in October 2010, as evidenced by her landslide reelection in the following year. Before Néstor’s death, a group of important Peronists had been plotting to wrest the party from the Kirchners’ grasp (Cherny 2014, 155). Yet his death reinvigorated the followers’ attachments to Cristina and glorified her husband as a martyr. Capitalizing on this emotional support, Cristina won reelection with an overwhelming 54 percent of the vote, smothering threats to her power from PJ challengers and enjoying supreme control over the movement and the country for several more years.

As the Kirchners established hegemonic authority over the nation and consolidated their influence over the Peronist movement, they also helped accelerate the fragmentation of opposition parties. Early on in his presidency, Néstor lured Radical leaders into his transversal coalition, thereby preventing the country’s most influential opposition party from reestablishing a coherent bloc. This, combined with the UCR’s implication in De La Rúa’s humiliating (mis)management of the 2001 crisis, produced a precipitous decline in the UCR’s representation in Congress (Zelaznik 2013). In fact, from 1999 to 2007, the party went from occupying eighty-five seats in the Chamber of Deputies and twenty seats in the Senate to forty seats in the Chamber and thirteen seats in the Senate (Ollier 2015).

When Cristina became president in 2007, her polemic style and actions fomented greater division between the government and the opposition. Most prominently, in 2008, she issued an emergency decree to increase export taxes on agricultural products, namely soybeans – an aggressive challenge to the country’s powerful agricultural sector. This bold gesture deepened the divide between her followers and opponents. For the former group, it strengthened her symbolic image as a true savior of the poor, as she promised to use the resulting funds to finance massive social programs. For the latter group, which included much of the middle class, the action was interpreted as a transparent ploy to enhance the power and influence of the Kirchners themselves (Calvo and Victoria Murillo 2012, 154).²⁰ The increased polarization that resulted from this debacle presented an important opportunity for opposition groups to form a united front against Cristina. However, even in the face of Cristina’s divisive leadership style, the opposition struggled to establish a cohesive force.

Finally, similar to their charismatic predecessors, the Kirchners weakened political institutions in the quest to sustain their personalistic authority. Like Menem, Néstor made ample use of emergency decrees to rapidly and single-handedly enact his policies – a total of 270 over the course of his presidency, an average of one every six days (Capriata 2008). While Cristina passed fewer than 50 decrees during her two presidential terms combined, she also used this tool strategically to enhance her charismatic image.²¹ Like Perón, the Kirchners also interfered with the National Institute for Statistics and Census of the Republic (INDEC) to falsify statistics and mask the rising inflation that had resulted from their unsustainable state-centered economic policies. By 2012, the disparity between real and “official” inflation rates reached nearly 15 percentage points (Streb 2015). To strengthen their appearance as heroes defending the people against nefarious enemies, the Kirchners attacked media outlets critical of their administration and dominated public spaces with propaganda. Most prominently, in 2008 Cristina launched an all-out attack against the media giant Clarín for criticizing her efforts to increase taxes on the agricultural export sector to fund her social spending (Becerra 2015).

In sum, Peronism surged back to power under the Kirchners just as it had under Menem. Had the movement become institutionalized, this impressive comeback would have been unlikely. Yet its persistent charismatic nature enabled ambitious new leaders to restore its position as the country’s predominant political force following the 2001 crisis. Specifically, citizens’ enduring attachments to Peronism and their faith in the founder’s mission of salvation caused them to crave a new hero capable of resolving their misery. The Kirchners capitalized on this opportunity to rise up and demonstrate their charismatic power. They oversaw an impressive economic recovery and boldly reversed Menem’s neoliberal program through reinstating the economic nationalism and state interventionism of the past, reinvigorating citizens’ intense nostalgia for Perón’s golden age. Over time, the leaders also strategically reconstructed the movement’s symbolic narrative by writing Menem out and depicting themselves as the contemporary manifestations of Perón and Eva. In doing so, Néstor and Cristina politically reactivated the followers’ affective bonds, dominated the PJ, and weakened institutions that threatened their executive power.

As with Menem, this charismatic style of leadership allowed the Kirchners to consolidate hegemonic power – but only for a limited period of time. As I will illustrate in the next section, their shortsighted programs eventually imploded, compromising their heroic image. The Kirchners’ collapse would once again usher in a period of leaderless fragmentation. Rather than destroying the movement, this recession, which would occur under non-Peronist president Mauricio Macri, would simply provide the opportunity for Cristina to stage an impressive comeback four years later, this time as vice president under Néstor’s close confidant and Cabinet Chief, Alberto Fernández.

7.3.8 The Fourth Wave Recedes: Another Temporary Fall

7.3.8.1 Policy Exhaustion

Over the course of Cristina’s two presidential terms, unchecked social spending and protectionist economic policies resulted in increasing inflation, rising prices, and shortages of basic material goods (Damill and Frenkel 2015). Rather than addressing these problems, Cristina upheld the policies and used personalistic tactics to try to preserve her power. Speculation blossomed regarding her potential plans to legalize “re-reelection,” which would enable her to serve a third presidential term (Rebossio 2012). Meanwhile, she blamed the economic struggles on “evil” opponents including speculators, international financial institutions, and private corporations (Wortman 2015). She also denied the severity of the looming crisis, distorted inflation statistics, further increased social spending, and relentlessly spread propaganda in praise of her administration’s progress, which she came to label “The Victorious Decade” (La Década Ganada).

As Cristina’s second presidency unfolded, it became increasingly difficult to sustain the illusion of prosperity with these stopgap measures. Moreover, in large part due to her declining performance, her plans for “re-reelection” failed, forcing her to step down in 2015 (Gilbert 2015). As with Menem in 1999, the combination of growing economic woes and the charismatic leader’s inability to remain in executive power caused the Peronist movement to recede from power once again.

Due to economic deterioration and Cristina’s looming departure, Peronism once again suffered a crisis of fragmentation. The 2015 elections revealed these internal divisions. Cristina reluctantly endorsed Daniel Scioli, the lackluster Governor of the Province of Buenos Aires and Menem’s original protégé, as the PJ candidate (Raszewski 2015). As in 2003, two additional Peronist candidates ran on independent tickets: Sergio Massa, a prominent national deputy from the Province of Buenos Aires and Cristina’s former cabinet chief, and Adolfo Rodríguez Saá, the governor of San Luis and perennial presidential hopeful.

Similar to 1999, the fragmentation of Peronism greatly facilitated the opposition. Despite their ongoing struggle to unite, opposition groups managed to coalesce around a single candidate: Mauricio Macri, the center-right, wealthy businessman and Governor of the Federal Capital. Macri won and stepped into the presidency, backed by an ideologically variegated, seven-party coalition called “Cambiemos” (Let’s Change), whose sole unifying foundation was its opposition to Cristina. Notably, Macri won in the second round of the election.²² In the first round, he won a mere 30 percent of the vote; in contrast, the Peronists won a combined 61 percent (about 38.5 percent for Scioli, 20.5 percent for Massa, and 2 percent for Rodríguez Saá). While Peronism clearly remained the country’s most popular political force, its internal divisions permitted Macri to participate in a runoff against Scioli, in which the non-Peronist won by two percentage points. In short, Macri owed his narrow victory to Peronists disillusioned with the Kirchner regime who refused to support her weakling successor.

7.3.8.2 Resistance to Routinization

Macri broke with historical precedent by becoming the first non-Peronist president to complete a full term in office (2015–19) since Perón’s first electoral victory in 1946. Nonetheless, his presidency was marked by struggle and controversy, in large part because the crisis he inherited from his predecessor worsened substantially under his watch. By the end of his term, inflation had soared to 50 percent, GDP had shrunk by over three percent, and his approval dropped from a high of 62 percent after the 2017 mid-term election to a low of 28 percent in 2019 (Gillespie and Do Rosario 2019; Murillo and Rodrigo Zarazaga 2020). Therefore, Macri lost his October 2019 bid for reelection by a full eight points to the Peronist presidential candidate, Alberto Fernández, whom Cristina chose as her running mate (with Cristina as vice president) just three months prior to the election. In short, while Macri temporarily overcame enormous challenges to assemble a successful non-Peronist coalition and complete his presidential term, his weak leadership – marked by his glaring inability to address the worsening economic crisis – ultimately paved the way for Peronism’s fifth resurgence.

As with the presidencies of Alfonsín and De La Rúa, I argue that the persistent, charismatic nature of Peronism severely impacted Macri’s leadership potential and contributed substantially to his political demise. Even while out of power during Macri’s presidency, Peronism continued to shape citizen’s expectations for a strong leader to provide a heroic resolution to the growing crisis. Yet Macri’s non-Peronist background, coupled with his unwillingness and inability to adopt the personalistic style typical of Peronist leaders, prevented him from filling this role. Instead of working to establish a charismatic image, the new president endeavored to project a principled, business-like style. Indeed, while he held influential political roles in the past – most importantly, as the Chief of Government (equivalent to Governor) of the City of Buenos Aires – he leaned on his credentials as a civil engineer and businessman rather than portraying himself as a talented and inspirational leader in his own right. Throughout his campaign and presidency, he also openly criticized the “hyperpresidentialism and … polarizing style” of Peronist leaders, namely Cristina, and depicted himself as the humble manager of a “team” of bureaucrats (Lupu 2016, 47–48). Members of Macri’s political administration insisted that this technocratic approach, which intentionally downplayed any emotional connection between the president and the citizenry, would help the president differentiate himself from his melodramatic predecessor and enhance his capacity to govern.²³

However, instead of strengthening his image, Macri’s strategy of depersonalization demonstrated his grave underestimation of the affective power of the Peronist identity, which hinges on citizens’ deeply emotional bonds to charismatic leaders. Thus, although the president believed his so-called de-dramatization of power would inspire Argentines to invest in a more “horizontal” and egalitarian concept of leadership, his approach appeared to many as a brazen attempt to erase the legacies of Argentina’s most beloved heroes – Perón above all (Rodríguez and Touzon 2020, 55, 70). In other words, by belittling the charismatic style of past leaders, especially Perón and the Kirchners, Macri and his team of technocrats (perhaps unknowingly) insulted the hopes and dreams that many citizens felt those leaders had fiercely defended (Rodríguez 2019). Consequently, Macri failed to connect on an emotional level with ordinary Argentines and fell short of their expectations of strong leadership.

In addition to denying the symbolic power of Peronism, Macri enacted lukewarm policies rather than providing bold and decisive action to confront the economic crisis he inherited from his predecessor. Ironically, during his campaign, he vowed to end poverty, inflation, and corruption while jumpstarting Argentina’s economy – audacious promises not unlike those of Peronist heroes. Yet, as president, he lacked the confidence and support to enact bold structural adjustments and provide the swift relief that many Argentines expected (Kovalski 2019). His cautious approach unfolded into a “meandering road to stability and growth” rather than bringing about miraculous recovery (Sturzenegger 2019). Then, in 2018, the Turkish debt crisis and a terrible drought exacerbated the recession (Kovalski 2019). Desperate to resolve the situation, the president turned to the International Monetary Fund – the most detested institution in Argentina – for help, securing the largest loan in history, at US$5.7 billion; in exchange, he promised to enact much stricter structural adjustment measures (Murillo and Rodrigo Zarazaga 2020, 129). By this time, Argentines had lost faith in his capacity to rescue them from crisis. They also felt betrayed by his decision to sell the country out to the IMF and suffered from the painful adjustment measures.

Similar to his non-Peronist predecessors, Macri’s weak leadership reinforced the maxim that only Peronist leaders are capable of governing the country. His presidency strengthened the cleavage between Peronists and anti-Peronists, injecting Peronism with a much-needed boost of legitimacy. As the “Macrisis” worsened during the final two years of his presidency, the fragile unity of his non-Peronist coalition eroded substantially (Rapoza 2019). Meanwhile, the ideologically heterogeneous array of Peronist leaders grew increasingly motivated to “put aside their differences and coalesce” (Murillo and Rodrigo Zarazaga 2020, 126).

In short, as with Alfonsín and De La Rúa decades earlier, the fall of Peronism in 2015 enabled Macri, a non-Peronist, to rise to power. At the same time, the charismatic ethos of the movement once again largely precluded the non-Peronist from becoming a successful leader. Indeed, Macri’s inability and unwillingness to emotionally connect with Peronist-identifying citizens or miraculously resolve the economic crisis through bold, unilateral action set him up for failure and paved the way for Peronism’s impressive comeback.

7.3.9 The Fifth Wave Rises: Fernández and Fernández

Energized by Macri’s disastrous presidency, the fragmented Peronists managed to reunite and take back the presidency in 2019. To achieve this, Cristina positioned herself as vice presidential candidate with Alberto Fernández, her husband’s ideologically moderate cabinet chief who had defected from her in 2008, at the head of the ticket. This cunning political maneuver enabled the movement’s two major factions – one led by Cristina and the other by her defectors – to unify under a new coalition, “Front for All” (Frente de Todos). In contrast to Macri’s narrow, second-round win over Scioli in 2015, Fernández enjoyed an overwhelming victory in the first round of the 2019 election, with 48 percent of the vote to Macri’s 40 percent. The Peronists also swept the gubernatorial and senate elections, gaining the support of twenty of twenty-four governors and forty-three of seventy-two senators (Murillo and Rodrigo Zarazaga 2020, 132).

At the time of writing in September 2020, Alberto Fernández faces several challenges, including the ongoing economic recession, yawning fiscal deficit, novel coronavirus pandemic, and ideological divisions within its own ranks. However, as with previous Peronist leaders, his position at the head of both the charismatic movement and the country has enabled him to use these conditions of crisis as a launchpad to exert strong, personalistic leadership. Already, he has demonstrated his potential to achieve this. Most importantly, he has confronted the pandemic with decisive policies, including a strict, months-long quarantine. While the economic consequences of the pandemic could be catastrophic, some analysts speculate that the health crisis grants the new president greater leeway to work with (or stop paying) the country’s creditors (Mander 2020). Moreover, Fernández’s policies have slowed the spread of the virus far more than in neighboring countries, earning him international praise and elevating his approval by more than twenty points, from 56.8 percent in December 2019 to 78 percent in April 2020, according to national polling firm Trespuntozero (Horwitz 2020).

In addition to increasing his popularity, Fernández’s courageous response to the pandemic has enabled him to exert greater control over the Peronist movement. In particular, while some wondered during the presidential campaign whether Cristina would use him as a puppet to exert her own power (Jourdan and Raszewski 2019), it has become clear that his political capital far exceeds her own (Di Giorgio 2020). Indeed, like Menem in 2003, Cristina continues to command the fervent support of certain groups – but her disapproval ratings consistently outweigh her approval ratings, the latter of which stood at a mere 27.5 percent as of August 2020 (Mander 2020). In contrast, Alberto’s approval has soared since he became president. While his numbers have receded somewhat since the peak of the pandemic in April, at well over 60 percent they remain higher than that of any other politician in the country (Guadalupe 2020). And whereas Cristina remains a divisive figure tainted by corruption scandals, a majority of Argentines view Fernández as the politician most likely to achieve dialogue and consensus to move the country forward (Di Giorgio 2020). Citizens also generally view Fernández as the leader most capable of rescuing the country from the pandemic and striking a favorable deal with foreign creditors to address the country’s formidable economic crisis (Horwitz 2020).

In sum, the mechanisms through which Peronism recently returned to power under the leadership of Alberto Fernández suggest that the movement’s personalistic core remains intact. He has consolidated impressive popularity by taking bold actions in the face of a global pandemic and a serious economic recession, and has connected on an emotional level with Argentines to a far greater extent than Macri, his technocratic and non-Peronist predecessor. Additionally, Fernández has drawn on his resounding popular approval to begin to impose greater coherence on the Peronist movement, using informal channels to maintain the unity of diverse officials within his Frente de Todos coalition. Fernández’s leadership mirrors that of Néstor Kirchner, who established impressive political capital shortly after assuming the presidency in 2003 and used it to dominate the Peronist movement two years later by overtaking Duhalde. To be sure, Fernández continues to face enormous economic and political challenges, and the future of Peronism remains uncertain. But if he continues to exercise charisma in the face of hardship, it is not unlikely that he will successfully consolidate his position as the new savior of Peronism.

7.4 Conclusion

This chapter has documented the spasmodic pattern in which charismatic movements unfold. Following a crisis, a valiant leader surges to power, promising to rescue the people from their suffering. To substantiate his capacities as an all-powerful redeemer, the leader concentrates authority by cultivating deeply emotional bonds with voters, fragmenting political parties, and overriding institutional constraints. Through this process, the leader establishes a political movement rooted in his charismatic appeal.

Eventually, the founder’s seemingly extraordinary, yet inherently unsustainable, performance begins to falter. Having undermined institutional safeguards in the name of concentrating power, the founder’s government stands on the brink of collapse. Because the founder dies or disappears before the moment of doom arrives, he escapes blame for the ensuing disaster. Nevertheless, the inevitable eruption of a crisis – compounded by the sudden absence of the founder’s charismatic authority – causes the movement to recede from politics. Crucially, this retreat from power is temporary; it does not cause the movement’s permanent demise, nor does it set in motion a process of institutionalization. Instead, the citizens’ profound, affective identification with the founder persists and helps perpetuate his movement in politically latent form.

During this period of crisis, the followers’ worldview remains rooted in the founder’s personalistic authority. The followers mourn the loss of their beloved savior and desperately wish for a symbolic reincarnation to appear and take charge of the chaotic situation. Meanwhile, thanks in large part to the founder’s aggressive quest for supreme power, political parties remain deeply fragmented and political institutions remain weak. I contend that these conditions do not lend themselves to reconstructing a routinized party system. Instead, they create opportunities for new politicians to revive the movement by embodying the founder’s charismatic style.

Thus, out of the ashes of the movement’s first collapse, a new leader has the opportunity to rise and restore the movement to power. Like the founder, the successor accomplishes this by tapping into the followers’ unmediated emotional attachments and implementing daring reforms, which she achieves by overpowering parties and weakening institutions that threaten her executive power. These personalistic tactics help the successor resuscitate the movement, yet their viability rests on short-lived policies and poor political infrastructure. Paradoxically, then, the successor’s victory plants the seeds for another collapse. While this failure may discredit the leader in question, however, the movement – whose legitimacy rests primarily on the charismatic legacy of the founder – survives. The cycle therefore repeats, perpetuating the movement while generating recurrent political and economic volatility. In the following chapter, I reflect on the self-reinforcing nature of charismatic movements and draw broader conclusions about the consequences for democracy.

8 Theoretical Implications and Broader Conclusions

8.1 Theoretical Implications

8.1.1 Central Findings

This book has investigated how two paradigm-shifting political movements founded by charismatic leaders, Argentine Peronism and Venezuelan Chavismo, have lived on and dominated politics for years after the disappearance of their founders. Conventional understandings of charisma would predict that the survival of these movements would require their transformation into institutionalized parties. Yet both movements have persisted by sustaining their original, deeply personalistic nature.

Perón and Chávez established their movements by rising in the midst of serious crises, recognizing people’s suffering, and delivering on the promise to provide swift and thorough relief. In Argentina, Perón granted unprecedented benefits to millions of workers and poor migrants, including stable jobs, decent wages, paid vacation, housing, and healthcare. In Venezuela, Chávez established social “missions” that delivered to poor citizens a tidal wave of aid including food, water, healthcare, housing, and education. Through these impressive actions, the two leaders fostered profound, unmediated emotional attachments with their followers. Furthermore, the leaders used these bonds with their followers to overpower actors, parties, and institutions that threatened their supremacy.

Due to the unsustainable magnitude of their ambitious benefit programs, the founders’ seemingly miraculous performance predictably declined, unleashing economic and political instability that would undermine democracy and harm their own supporters. Nevertheless, the followers would remember the initial, astounding performance of the policies rather than their eventual exhaustion and collapse. Moreover, because Perón was ousted by a coup and Chávez died before the implosion of his reforms, their followers exculpated them from blame, helping solidify the leaders’ charismatic legacies.

Based on the logic of routinization, the affective intensity of followers’ attachments should have dissipated after the founders disappeared. In turn, the depersonalization of these bonds should have transformed the movements into more conventional, institutionalized political parties. Yet in both cases, the deep, affective quality of citizens’ attachments to the founders proved strikingly resilient.

Upon the deaths of Perón and Chávez, the followers’ emotional attachments grew even more intense. When Perón passed away in 1974, his followers stampeded Congress, where his body was displayed, and “succumb[ed] to emotion” at the loss of their savior (Page 1983, 494). While different factions of the movement violently opposed each other in subsequent years, they remained unified in their unwavering loyalty to Perón. Similarly, when Chávez died of cancer in early 2013, the masses thronged the streets of Caracas to mourn his death in an amazing display of public mourning. Afterward, shrines commemorating the founder appeared in private homes and public spaces across Venezuela, evidencing the ongoing sway of his charismatic influence. Even as followers grew increasingly divided depending on their support for Chávez’s handpicked successor, Nicolás Maduro, they all remained devoted to the founder.

Today, at least one-third of voters in Argentina and Venezuela continue to express emotional attachments to Peronism and Chavismo. Moreover, the personalistic character of the two movements remains strong, whereas their programmatic trademarks and organizational infrastructures remain underdeveloped. These characteristics suggest that the followers’ loyalty is still rooted in the movements’ charismatic foundations and cast doubt on the argument that the movements have routinized.

To explain this surprising outcome, my theory of charismatic movement emergence and revival examines the nature and trajectory of followers’ support for the founder and movement (the demand side of charisma), as well as the strategies and conditions used by new leaders to connect with the followers and consolidate power (the supply side of charisma). Drawing insights from political psychology on the nature and behavior of political identities, I explain why citizens’ charismatic attachments persist and demonstrate how new leaders can reactivate those bonds by claiming to be heirs of the adored founder. In turn, I analyze the interplay between structure and agency to determine the conditions under which successors can revive the movement and establish their own charismatic authority. Finally, I weave together the perspectives of followers and leaders to illustrate how charismatic movements can develop self-reinforcing, spasmodic trajectories that weaken democracy. Based on this research, I show that charismatic movements can persist in personalistic form and dominate politics for years and even decades after their founders disappear, rather than disintegrating or transforming into institutionalized parties.

To begin, I contend that the foundation for a movement’s emergence and survival rests on citizens’ charismatic attachments. As shown in Chapter 3, the founder of the movement fulfills three conditions to establish these attachments with his supporters. He directly recognizes the people’s suffering; promises and enacts bold policies that provide the people with desperately needed relief; and crafts a narrative that praises him as a savior, depicts his opponents as enemies, and stresses his quasi-religious mission to provide the people with transcendence. Although existing literature documents the importance of these conditions for the formation of charismatic bonds, it underestimates the downstream impact of these factors on the followers’ political attitudes and behaviors. Conversely, my research shows that the founder’s direct recognition, seemingly miraculous performance, and symbolic narrative form the basis of citizens’ worldview and understanding of politics for years after the founder has disappeared.

The followers’ original, charismatic attachments have a profound and lasting influence on their attitudes and behaviors because these bonds develop into a resilient political identity. As suggested by political psychologists, the nature of this identity is enduring; however, its intensity fluctuates over time. Thus, when the charismatic founder disappears and his policies collapse, the personalistic nature of citizens’ attachments remains intact. Under these circumstances, the political significance of the bonds is likely to decline – at least temporarily. Indeed, struck by the absence of the founder and devastated by the ensuing crisis, the followers are likely to withdraw from politics, causing the movement to retreat from power.

Crucially, as illustrated in Chapter 4, citizens’ fervent devotion to the founder and movement persists because even in the founder’s absence, the followers remain intimately attached to his narrative, which glorifies his heroic leadership and keeps alive his promise of salvation from evil (opposition) forces. Over time, the followers preserve this narrative and pass it to new generations by recounting cherished memories and holding onto symbols that commemorate the founder’s selflessness and extraordinary qualities. This personalistic mechanism preserves the charismatic nature of citizens’ identification with the movement and sustains their hope that a new savior will eventually rise up, assume the founder’s mantle, and restore the movement to power. Thus, while citizens’ attachments become politically latent when the founder disappears, their bonds have the potential to be reactivated by successors who prove themselves worthy of the founder’s role.

To resuscitate the political significance of the followers’ deep, affective bonds and consolidate power, I argue that successors must satisfy symbolic and material conditions similar to those fulfilled by the founder. In particular, new leaders must promise and implement audacious policies that deliver tangible benefits to the followers in order to demonstrate their capacity to take the founder’s place. In addition, the new leaders must weave themselves into the movement’s symbolic narrative to demonstrate their intention to revive the founder’s redemptive mission. As demonstrated in the survey experiments in Chapter 5, successors who achieve these strategies cause followers to express stronger emotional attachment to the movement. Moreover, the movement’s supporters come to view such leaders as more charismatic and worthier of electoral support. Thus, the findings indicate that it is possible to reactivate the intensity of citizens’ resilient, charismatic attachments.

In sum, analysis from the demand side demonstrates that followers’ unmediated emotional attachments to the founder create a base for the long-term survival of charismatic movements. Yet, on the supply side, the capacity of successors to return these movements to power depends on an additional set of conditions related to both structure and agency, as outlined in Chapter 6. First, successors must seek power independently, as self-starters, and often do so years after the founder has disappeared. Unlike the weakling successors whom the founders directly anoint, self-starters have greater autonomy to reshape and update the movement’s narrative without appearing to undermine the founder’s legacy. Second, new leaders must seek power under conditions of crisis, when the followers’ craving for a hero intensifies. Only then does the opportunity emerge for the new leaders to prove their extraordinary ability to rescue the people, thus reviving the founder’s mission of salvation. Finally, because of the charismatic nature of the followers’ identity, successors must conform to the founder’s personalistic style. This final condition is essential for rekindling the followers’ affective attachments and convincing these devotees that the successors are worthy of the founder’s mantle.

By combining the perspectives of movement followers and leaders, my theory demonstrates that charismatic movements tend to develop spasmodic trajectories that are self-reinforcing. To substantiate their charismatic potential, successors implement daring reforms that lack long-term sustainability, but carry a powerful, initial impact. Achieving this impressive material performance is necessary: each successor’s legitimacy as an heir of the founder depends on it. Invariably, however, the unsustainable nature of the policies causes them to break down, which eventually erodes the new leader’s charismatic authority. When the successor falls from grace, the movement recedes from power and the political salience of citizens’ attachments declines once again. But, this temporary slump does not change the resilient, charismatic nature of the followers’ bonds with the movement. In fact, by producing a crisis, this downturn actually creates the opportunity for a new self-starter to rise up and reactivate the followers’ ties to the movement. The new leader achieves this in the same fashion as her predecessor: by implementing impressive, yet shortsighted, policies and tying herself to the symbolic legacy of the founder. This process therefore repeats the abovementioned cycle. In short, the movement lives on, but it unfolds in an erratic pattern characterized by the periodic resurgence of charismatic leadership followed by temporary, leaderless recessions.

In addition to preserving personalistic leadership, the fitful life cycle of charismatic movements perpetually undermines party system development, encourages authoritarian leader tendencies, accelerates institutional decay, and generates economic instability. While charismatic leaders’ policies tend to produce abbreviated periods of impressive economic growth and social well-being, eventually they collapse and unleash terrible crises. These downturns are compounded by the disproportionate concentration of power in the executive branch, the weakness of political parties, and the relative absence of institutional safeguards – characteristics that are reinforced with the rise of each successor. Thus, charismatic movements cause countries to suffer unusually high levels of political and economic volatility.

Argentina’s seventy-five-year experience of Peronism, detailed in Chapter 7, underscores the negative consequences of charismatic movement revival for programmatic development, economic stability, and democracy. Indeed, while the tumultuous character of the country’s history predates Perón, the frequency and intensity of nationwide crises dramatically increased starting with the charismatic founder’s rise to power in 1946. Since then, the economic and political highs and lows experienced in Argentina have been extreme, even in comparison to other Latin American countries known for volatility and institutional weakness (Levitsky and Victoria Murillo 2013; Mora y Araujo 2011).

Although Chavismo has unfolded more recently than Peronism, the political chaos and economic devastation it produced in Venezuela has made the country stand out in Latin America as uniquely unstable and undemocratic. Some scholars and pundits optimistically predict that the failed leadership of Chávez’s terribly unappealing handpicked successor, Nicolás Maduro, has planted the seeds for the movement’s self-destruction (Denis 2015; López Maya 2014; Rondón 2017). Conversely, my theory predicts that, in light of the impressive resilience of the followers’ attachments and the opposition’s monumental struggles to unify and gain the trust of the poor masses, Chavismo has significant potential to endure. In fact, the movement’s current chapter is not unlike that of Isabel Perón, whose failed leadership following the death of her husband precipitated Argentina’s 1976–83 military dictatorship. It is possible that, similar to Peronism, Chavismo will temporarily implode under the strain of Maduro’s authoritarian rule and reemerge years later under a more compelling self-starter, when conditions are more favorable.

In conclusion, my theory provides a novel explanation for the remarkable persistence of political movements founded by charismatic leaders. Rather than transforming into routinized parties, I show that the original, personalistic nature of these movements fuels their perpetuation. Thus, these movements can live on and dominate politics for long stretches of time. However, their fitful trajectories generate perpetual institutional weakness, social upheaval, and economic volatility. Unlike routinization, which encourages the gradual development of programmatic continuity and organizational infrastructure, the revival of charismatic movements infuses democracies with enduring illiberal tendencies and perpetually destabilizes party systems.

8.1.2 Theoretical Contributions

8.1.2.1 Routinization versus Revival

To my knowledge, this study is the first to directly challenge the routinization thesis and provide an alternative explanation for the striking resilience of charismatic movements. While some scholars have produced insightful theories about the survival of charisma, their analyses are firmly rooted in the logic of routinization. Weber’s original theory of charisma and its routinization provides the foundation for these studies (1922/1978). According to Weber, charisma is inherently unstable in its pure form. Yet, he argues, charismatic movements have the potential to transform into alternative forms of authority: namely traditional authority, rational authority, or a combination of the two (ibid., 246). Based on this reasoning, Weber discusses several potential pathways of routinization. For instance, charisma might be “traditionalized” into a form of hereditary succession, in which next-of-kin inherits the original leader’s legitimacy (ibid., 248). Alternatively, charisma might be “rationalized” by transferring from the leader to a series of offices, rules, and procedures used to govern society (ibid.).

Building on Weber, Shils (1965) develops a theory in which the leader’s charisma disperses to a series of inanimate offices, groups, and laws. He claims that charisma survives by detaching from the individual leader and injecting meaning and value into associated “collectivities,” as well as inanimate “roles and rules” (ibid., 205). Citizens’ faith in and attachments to the leader therefore transfer to these institutions, strengthening and stabilizing the bureaucracy that develops in the charismatic leaders’ place (ibid.).

Alternatively, Jowitt argues that charismatic movements and parties can survive if their platform, rather than (or in addition to) their leader, embodies a heroic and transformative mission. Under these circumstances, he states that the “[charismatic] Party is called on to sacrifice, struggle, and exercise continual vigilance to maintain its purpose” (Jowitt 1992, 11). Unlike Shils, who states that the charisma originally associated with an individual leader “disperses” to institutions, Jowitt contends that the institutions can develop a form of “impersonal” charisma from the outset (ibid.; Shils 1965, 205). To illustrate his theory, Jowitt traces the history of Leninism, which he argues was always rooted at least as much in a “charismatic” platform as in Lenin’s personal appeal (Jowitt 1992, 8–12).

Despite the differences across these authors regarding the origin of charismatic authority, they all conclude that charisma can only persist in depersonalized form. In contrast, my theory of charismatic movement revival stresses that charisma lives on precisely by sustaining its personalistic core. The followers help maintain the personalistic nature of their identity with the movement when the founder disappears by recounting their individual experiences of his heroic leadership. This reinforces the citizens’ direct, emotional attachments to the founder and his movement, rather than transforming their bonds into respect for bureaucratic offices and procedures that are indirectly associated with the founder, as Shils would argue. Moreover, whereas routinization theories insist that only depersonalized party organizations can perpetuate charisma, I argue that new leaders who personally embody the founder can revive charisma in its original form. Using this strategy, successors can become powerful charismatic leaders themselves – if only temporarily. By developing this personalistic mechanism of survival, my theory makes a novel and important contribution to the literature on charisma.

8.1.2.2 Structure versus Agency

In documenting and explaining the personalistic revival of charisma, this book also contributes to key debates about the roles of structure and agency in politics. Scholars debate the extent to which charisma relies on one or the other. On the one hand, some define charisma as a fixed personality trait with inscrutable origins (e.g., Antonakis et al. 2016; Hoffman and Hoffman 1968; House and Howell 1992; Keller 2006: Maranell 1970). This interpretation, which underscores the magnetic appeal of individual leaders, focuses disproportionately on agency at the expense of structure. Unsurprisingly, many social scientists have criticized this understanding of charisma as too slippery, ambiguous, and subjective to warrant rigorous analysis (e.g., Bendix 1967; Schlesinger 1960; Smith 2000; Van der Brug and Mughan 2007; Worsley 1957).

On the other hand, some authors stress that structure plays an indispensable role in the establishment of charismatic authority. For instance, Weber states that charismatic leaders must rise “in times of psychic, physical, economic, ethical, religious, [or] political distress” to prove their extraordinary capacities to their potential disciples (Weber 1968, 18). Similarly, Madsen and Snow underscore the importance of a crisis for generating feelings of low self-efficacy, which initiates the process of charismatic bonding between leaders and followers (1991, 9–14). These theories of charisma highlight important structural conditions. However, they risk becoming overly deterministic. Indeed, given the intensely personal and subjective nature of this type of authority, it would seem problematic to overlook the individual agency of charismatic leaders.

My study sheds greater light on the distinct influences of agency and structure on charisma by tracing the long-term trajectories of charismatic movements. I illustrate how structure and agency interact to facilitate new leaders’ ability to reactivate citizens’ charismatic attachments and inherit the founder’s mantle. I show that the capacity of successors to revive the movement depends in part on their agency. Without their own personal appeal, skill, and experience, these leaders could not achieve extraordinary performance reminiscent of the founder, nor could they tap into the followers’ emotional bonds.

Nevertheless, my theory stresses the centrality of structural conditions in the revival of charismatic movements. To begin, the eruption of a crisis provides the indispensable opening for successors to prove their heroic potential because it makes citizens crave a new savior in the first place. The method by which new leaders are selected and the timing of their rise also greatly influence their prospects for success. In addition, the preexisting, charismatic nature of citizens’ identification with the movement structures the way these leaders govern. Specifically, these leaders must use a personalistic style and tie themselves to the founder’s legacy to fulfill the followers’ expectations for a savior. Thus, while charismatic successors often manage to exercise largely independent authority for a period of time, these structural conditions impose crucial constraints on their power. Paradoxically, these conditions also strengthen the movement’s momentum and help extend its survival beyond the abbreviated rules of its successors.

By clarifying the roles of structure and agency in the spasmodic trajectories of charismatic movements, this study also demonstrates that the impact of charisma on politics is far less ephemeral than previously assumed (Eatwell 2006; Jowitt 1992; Kitschelt et al. 2010; Madsen and Snow 1991; Weber 1922/1978). I show that the resilience of citizens’ affective attachments to the charismatic founder underpins the survival of these movements in their original, personalistic form. In turn, the emergence of structural conditions conducive to the rise of a new savior – namely, the eruption of a crisis – encourage new, ambitious, and talented leaders to reactivate citizens’ attachments, return the movement to power, and consolidate a new wave of personalistic authority. As illustrated in Argentina and Venezuela, charisma can therefore exert a profound, destabilizing influence on politics for years or even decades.

8.1.2.3 Political Identity, Cleavages, and Partisanship

In contrast to previous studies that emphasize the short-lived nature of charismatic attachments, my theory indicates that these attachments can develop into a resilient political identity. Although the content of this identity remains rooted in the heroic legacy of individual leaders and therefore differs from more traditional political identities based on programmatic content and/or robust social networks, it has a similar capacity to endure, cross over to new generations, and profoundly shape citizens’ worldviews, attitudes, and behaviors. Whereas programmatic and organizational identities “help bind voters to parties” and therefore facilitate party system institutionalization (Roberts 2014, 20), the charismatic identity tethers citizens to a weakly institutionalized movement that thrives off of, and reinforces, volatile cycles of personalistic leadership. Thus, my theory stresses that the charismatic identity can result in unique consequences for the political system.

Like other forms of partisanship, the charismatic identity establishes a cleavage that organizes society into two groups: the “in-group” constitutes true believers while the “out-group” incorporates individuals who do not belong to the movement (Tajfel 1974). In programmatic settings, these in- and out-groups tend to be rooted in left–right ideology and substantive policies as much as affect; thus, while the people in an out-group possess a negative identification with one party, they often also possess a positive identity with another party. For example, in the United States, many conservative individuals negatively identify with Democrats, but also positively identify as Republicans, and vice versa.

In contrast, the charismatic identity links up with a personalistic cleavage, which organizes in- and out-groups based on profound (positive or negative) emotions toward individual leaders and has little to do with programmatic content. Because the out-group coalesces based exclusively on a strong rejection of the charismatic leader and movement, the group struggles to develop a positive identification with its own group or party. Thus, these individuals’ anti-identification with the movement, defined by negative emotions rather than substantive policies, predominates. Even more than in programmatic party systems, affective (rather than programmatic or ideological) polarization between followers and opponents becomes a defining quality of the political system (Abramowitz and McCoy 2019, Iyengar et al. 2019). As some studies have noted (Ostiguy 2009; Ostiguy and Roberts 2016), the personalistic cleavage generated by a charismatic identity can undermine the relevance of more traditional ideological or social divisions thought to facilitate party system institutionalization (Lipset and Rokkan 1967). By demonstrating how charismatic attachments emerge and develop into a resilient identity, my theory sheds light on the mechanisms through which such a personalistic cleavage can structure the political system in ways that intensify affective polarization and harm programmatic development.

8.1.2.4 A Novel Explanation for Enduring Institutional Weakness

Finally, my theory of charismatic movement revival contributes to the literature on institutional weakness and its consequences for democracy. My analysis reinforces the findings of several important studies that highlight the detrimental impact of personalism, elites’ top-down control of parties, stark programmatic reversals, and severe crises on party system institutionalization (Gervasoni 2018; Kostadinova and Levitt 2014; Lupu 2013, 2014; Mainwaring 2018; Mainwaring and Scully 1995; Roberts 2007, 2014). For example, my finding that charismatic movements can remain dormant for years before suddenly becoming revived by new leaders complements Mainwaring’s observation that, in Latin America, countries with seemingly stable party systems can experience surprisingly rapid institutional and ideological change, at times “unravel[ing] quickly and dramatically” (2018, 35, 62). Furthermore, the fits and starts of charismatic movements emphasized by my study align with Roberts’ analysis of the “ebb and flow of populist waves” in several Latin American countries, including Argentina and Venezuela (2007, 4, 12).

My theory of charismatic movement revival contributes an alternative explanation for recurrent institutional weakness that rests on the self-reinforcing, spasmodic trajectories of charismatic movements. Specifically, as detailed in Chapter 7, I argue that the emergence of these movements sets into motion an endogenous cycle of personalistic leadership that establishes – and subsequently perpetuates – problems of institutional weakness highlighted by the previously mentioned authors. Moreover, because the charismatic core of such movements persists over time rather than succumbing to routinization, my theory suggests that it can undermine democratic development for decades. Indeed, as shown in Chapter 7, the periodic revival of charismatic movements encourages executive aggrandizement, promotes shortsighted policies whose inevitable collapse harms citizens’ well-being, exacerbates affective polarization, hinders programmatic party structuration, and makes it difficult for both citizens and institutions to hold leaders accountable.

Importantly, my explanation of persistent institutional weakness extends only to countries where charismatic movements have taken root.¹ Nonetheless, I argue that its contribution to the broader literature is valid and useful for two reasons. First, while they have hitherto not been very common, my research shows that charismatic movements have a powerful and enduring impact on political systems. Second, the growing trend toward the “personalization” of politics, combined with the recent rise of charismatic leaders in countries around the world, suggest that my theory may become increasingly relevant in diverse contexts (Dalton and Wattenberg 2000; Garzia 2011; Gervasoni 2018; Kyle and Mounk 2018; McAllister 2007; Roberts 2014). It is particularly notable that the recent surge in charismatic leaders and movements has coincided with the alarming global retreat of democracy (Freedom House 2020). My theory suggests not only that these trends are related, but also that the threats to democracy posed by these charismatic movements could be more enduring than previously thought. The next section demonstrates how the central components of my theory generalize to four additional cases within and beyond Latin America.

8.2 Charismatic Movement Revival in Comparative Perspective

Does the theory presented in this book – that charismatic movements survive by sustaining their personalistic nature – provide valid and useful insights for cases beyond Argentina and Venezuela? A brief examination of movements in Peru, Italy, Thailand, and China – a set of cases that approximates a “most different systems” design – suggests that it does (Przeworski and Teune 1970, 34). While an in-depth, multimethod investigation of these cases lies beyond the scope of this study, I rely on secondary literature to assess the relevance of different aspects of my theory across the four cases. First, I consider to what extent leaders in these countries fostered charismatic bonds with their followers. Next, I examine whether these leaders used their authority to establish charismatic movements that overpowered existing parties and institutions. Subsequently, I analyze the trajectories of these movements after their founders’ departure from the political scene, paying special attention to the status of citizens’ attachments and the movements’ impact on the party system.

This short analysis illustrates that, despite emerging in diverse contexts, key characteristics of the four movements under examination appear strikingly similar to those of Peronism and Chavismo. Like their Argentine and Venezuelan counterparts, the founders of all four movements established unmediated, emotional attachments with a large group of citizens and used charismatic authority to dominate politics, weakening (or attempting to weaken) important parties and political institutions along the way. The four founders also remained remarkably popular after stepping down from power. Furthermore, immediate successors – whether anointed by the founder or supported by opposition forces – struggled to establish independent legitimacy and govern effectively. Finally, in some cases, the widespread and persistent public adoration of the followers suggests the potential for revival of the movement when the right conditions emerge. In other cases, movement revival seems unlikely. Nevertheless, I demonstrate that, even in these cases, the charismatic legacies of the movement founder continue to influence politics in important ways that undermine programmatic and institutional development.

8.2.1 Peru

As described in Chapter 6, Alberto Fujimori rose to power in 1990 as a political outsider amidst a severe crisis of hyperinflation and “brutal insurrectionary violence” (Weyland 2006, 14). The urban lower classes and rural poor, who suffered disproportionately from the crisis, saw in Fujimori the potential for miraculous relief. Indeed, unlike Mario Vargas Llosa – Fujimori’s elite competitor who allied with existing parties and proposed a detailed platform for economic recovery – Fujimori rose independently and campaigned on a simple promise that resonated with the suffering masses: “honesty, technology, and work” (Weyland 2002, 102–3). In office, Fujimori followed through on his promise by enacting a series of daring reforms to combat hyperinflation; next, he launched a campaign to defeat Peru’s most violent insurrectionary group, the Shining Path, and soon captured its top leaders (ibid., 150–58). To the poor, Fujimori’s straightforward promises and audacious performance seemed extraordinary – especially compared to the incompetence of past administrations. Thus, although the founder’s emotional appeal was less pronounced than that of Perón or Chávez, he cultivated a powerful narrative that celebrated his reputation for “getting things done,” denounced his adversaries (including Congress and the Supreme Court) as obstructionist, and solidified deep, unmediated attachments with Peru’s underprivileged masses.

By fulfilling the three conditions necessary for establishing charismatic attachments, Fujimori enjoyed tremendous popular support. By 1992, just two years into his presidency, he achieved an approval rating as high as 82 percent (Weyland 2002, 171–72). Even eight years later, when the impressive performance of his policies began to wane and allegations of corruption and wrongdoing surfaced, his approval remained well above 50 percent (Arce and Carrión 2010, 37–38; Wise 2006, 220).² Notably, poor voters offered particularly strong and enduring devotion to the leader. In fact, by 2000, his approval among the very poor was seventeen points higher than among the upper class (Carrión 2006, 130).

Having established his personalistic authority, Fujimori trampled on the already-fragmented party system and dismantled democratic institutions over the course of his ten-year rule. When he rose to power in 1990, Peruvians had already lost faith in established parties. In this context, Fujimori seemed especially appealing due to his lack of affiliation and the fact that “he hadn’t done anything yet” (Weyland 2002, 102). As president, the leader capitalized on public sentiments to concentrate power and further undermine the party system. For example, rather than building a new party, he created four transient coalitions to support each of his election campaigns: “Change 90” in 1990, “New Majority” in 1995, “Let’s Go Neighbors” in 1998, and “Peru 2000” in 1999/2000. He subjugated each of these coalitions to his personal will and let them fade away when he no longer needed their services, extinguishing opportunities to develop them into nascent parties (Carrión 2006, 7; Levitsky 1999, 82).

In addition to accelerating the disintegration of the party system, Fujimori challenged democratic institutions that constrained his power. In April 1992, he orchestrated a military-backed self-coup in which he “closed the Congress, suspended the constitution, and purged the judiciary” (Levitsky 1999, 78). Shortly thereafter, he enacted a new constitution that permitted his overwhelmingly popular reelection in 1995 (ibid.). Like other charismatic leaders, Fujimori reinstated elections to demonstrate his tremendous popular support, the most essential source of his legitimacy. Yet he also maintained a tight grip on other democratic institutions, enabling him to exercise unquestioned authority for eight more years (Carrión 2006, 6). In doing so, he single-handedly carried out policies to sustain his supreme power without fear of reprisal.

In 2000, under pressure from Congress, in the wake of a major corruption scandal, Fujimori reluctantly resigned and fled to Japan after being elected for a third, unconstitutional term (Levitsky and Zavaleta 2016, 433). Crucially, many of his poor followers remained loyal to him even after he was forced from power. In fact, his abrupt departure, which was initiated by politicians in Congress, strengthened the antiestablishment appeal of Fujimorismo for these voters (Meléndez 2019). Conversely, anti-Fujimorista voters did not develop strong political attachments to other parties or leaders in the aftermath of the charismatic leader’s demise. Peru’s subsequent presidents therefore rose to power as “free agents,” garnering support through their negative association with Fujimorismo rather than through building their own parties with positive, coherent identities (Levitsky and Zavaleta 2016, 412; Meléndez 2019). Many anti-Fujimorista voters supported these leaders simply because they represented “the least-worst option” (Meléndez 2019). Because of their incapacity to construct lasting attachments with voters, these presidents struggled to achieve legitimacy and suffered low approval ratings, even though most of them oversaw substantial economic growth during their terms (Dargent and Muñoz 2016, 147; Tanaka 2011, 77). For these reasons, while its charismatic founder has been absent from politics for nearly two decades, Fujimorismo has survived as the country’s only cohesive political identity (Levitsky and Zavaleta 2016, 432; Meléndez 2019; Tanaka 2011, 80).

As discussed in Chapter 6, Fujimori’s daughter, Keiko, made an impressive attempt to restore Fujimorismo to power by running for president in 2011 and again in 2016. Although she invested greater resources in constructing an organized party than her father did, she also revived his personalistic connections to his mass following, relied heavily on her symbolic association with him, and personally embodied his reputation for miraculously resolving the people’s most pressing problems (Dargent and Muñoz 2016, 152; Meléndez 2019). Keiko failed to win the presidency in either year due primarily to the absence of a severe crisis, which tempered voters’ desire for a charismatic savior to relieve their suffering. Even so, her personalistic image and association with her father reactivated the support of many of his followers (Dargent and Muñoz 2016, 155; Meléndez 2019; Tanaka 2011, 81). Thus, in the 2016 election, she won the first round of the elections by more than 18 percentage points and lost in the second round by a razor-thin margin of 0.24 percentage points (Dargent and Muñoz 2016, 145). Moreover, Keiko’s opponent, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, won the election due to his anti-Fujimorista status rather than his own platform or identity. In fact, as an illustration of his weak mandate, the new president resigned less than two years into his tenure, under threat of impeachment, based on accusations of corruption (Vergara 2018, 65).

In sum, Alberto Fujimori’s movement has continued to shape Peruvian politics since the charismatic leader’s departure nearly two decades ago. Millions of followers have continued to express profound attachments to his legacy. Meanwhile, parties have remained extremely fragmented, while non-Fujimorista leaders have struggled to establish independent authority. To be sure, the absence of an economic crisis, as well as multiple corruption scandals and recent rifts between Keiko Fujimori and her brother, Kenji, have threatened the movement’s future prospects. In particular, since Keiko’s loss in 2016, each sibling has hurled accusations of malfeasance at the other – Keiko for accepting campaign money from the corrupt Brazilian construction company, Odebrecht, and Kenji for making backdoor deals with former president Kuczynski to pardon the siblings’ father, Alberto – decreasing the likelihood that Fujimorismo will return to power in the near future (Collyns 2018).

Nevertheless, the resilience of the followers’ loyalty to Fujimorismo and the movement’s ongoing personalistic influence on the political system are impressive – especially in light of the political drama surrounding the Fujimori family. While a future victory for Keiko (or Kenji) seems improbable at the time of writing, the historical trajectory of Fujimorismo since their father’s fall from power in 2000 reflects marked similarities with other charismatic movements – namely in its resilient charismatic nature, its capacity to maintain the emotional devotion of its followers, and its profound and often destabilizing influence on Peru’s fragmented party system.

8.2.2 Italy

Similar to Chávez in Venezuela, Silvio Berlusconi rose to power from the ashes of Italy’s collapsed party system in 1994. From 1948 until Berlusconi’s precipitous political debut, Italy had been governed by a rigid “partyocracy” dominated by Christian Democracy (DC), a party characterized by intense factionalism and deeply entrenched patronage (Koff and Koff 2000, 32–33). Although Italy had a multiparty system during this period, the DC controlled every cabinet and all but two premierships, while the second-largest party, the Italian Communist Party (PCI), perpetually stood in second place yet remained excluded from government power (Koff and Koff 2000, 32–33). In the early 1990s, however, the explosion of a massive corruption scandal called Tangentopoli (kickback city) – which implicated the vast majority of parties and leaders from across the political system – caused Italian voters to abandon the DC along with the entire political establishment. The scandal implicated an estimated 5,000 politicians; over half of parliament was indicted and 400 city and town councils were forced to close down (ibid., 1–3). This scandal, combined with the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and the decline in Communist identification, caused voters to thoroughly reject the political establishment and seek out an inspirational figure to rectify the situation (ibid.).

In answer to voters’ cries for help, Berlusconi “burst upon the political scene” with his brand-new personalistic movement, Forza Italia (FI), in January 1994, promising far-reaching change (ibid., 31). By March of that year, he transformed from a political novice into the country’s most popular politician, winning elections and, in May, becoming Prime Minister. Unlike existing politicians, whom voters perceived as complicit in a system of rules that had long benefited the political class at the expense of the people, Berlusconi connected on an emotional level with the masses and “gave voice” to their widespread frustration (Donovan 2015, 12, 19). Drawing on his outsider profile and his status as a wealthy media tycoon, he vowed to “transfer” his fabulous success to ordinary Italians. As he confidently implored, “Trust me, because I can make Italy as rich as I did myself” (Fabbrini 2013, 159). He also appealed to the increasingly middle-class electorate through promises to dramatically cut taxes, slash the unemployment rate, enact massive public works projects, and increase pensions for retirees. Lastly, the charismatic leader created a symbolic narrative that resonated deeply with his followers. This narrative praised Berlusconi for his “mission and sacrifice” to rescue Italy from the grips of selfish politicians and deliver both material success and happiness to the people (McDonnell 2016, 723).

By recognizing the anger and suffering of citizens who felt excluded by the political establishment, promising wealth and other tangible benefits, and crafting a narrative that depicted him as the savior who would rescue the people from the morally bankrupt political system, Berlusconi founded a powerful charismatic movement and consolidated deep, affective bonds with a large base of followers. Riding this wave of support, he served as Prime Minister three times – in 1994, 2001–6, and 2008–11 – during which he achieved high approval ratings that peaked at 63 percent and established “full personal control” over politics (Fabbrini 2013, 154–55; Sexton 2009).³

During his premierships, Berlusconi took advantage of his virtual monopoly over national media to project his personal appeal and showcase seemingly extraordinary (though superficial) reforms (Fabbrini 2013, 159–60). He also constructed a loyal coalition in Congress by weaving together “a complex set of personal deals dressed up in populist appeals to xenophobic nationalism and crude consumerism” (Bellamy 2006, 351). In doing so, the charismatic leader further destabilized Italy’s practically collapsed party system and reaffirmed his supremacy. He also undermined democratic institutions that threatened his power. For instance, he “used his control on national television to de-legitimize independent bodies such as magistrates or newspapers and other critics” (Fabbrini 2013, 160). He also brazenly engaged in scandalous behavior ranging from tax fraud to sexual exploits, trusting that his charismatic appeal and reverent group of followers would nevertheless protect his image as a national hero (Donadio 2018). Finally, like Chávez, Perón, and Fujimori, Berlusconi resisted attempts to institutionalize the FI or share power with a “second leader” or “potential successor” (Koff and Koff 2000, 44).

Over the course of his rule, Berlusconi’s dramatic promises of economic reform failed to fully materialize. As the “Euro crisis” loomed and “ungovernable Italian public debt” threatened the stability of other European states, he faced mounting pressure and ultimately resigned in November 2011 (Fabbrini 2013, 167). Crucially, for his charismatic legacy, the leader’s retreat from power resulted more from external pressure, coming from other European leaders, than from discontent among Italian voters. Moreover, Berlusconi’s departure left a power vacuum that was filled by an uninspiring technocrat, Mario Monti, and “a cabinet composed of university professors, bankers, and high-level public officials” (ibid., 168). Building on his image as a victim bullied by elite European powers (especially Germany) and on the poor performance of the government that succeeded him, Berlusconi was therefore able to make an impressive comeback in 2013 (Reinbold 2013). Indeed, just two years after resigning, he courageously revived his FI movement and campaigned to become Prime Minister for a fourth time.

Ultimately, Berlusconi was barred from running due to allegations of tax fraud and did not return to power. Nevertheless, his movement won about 30 percent of the votes and one-third of the seats in both houses of Congress (Alsop 2013). Moreover, Berlusconi’s supporters continued to express profound faith in him. One follower passionately stated, “Now Silvio is back and I believe again” (Reinbold 2013). Another proclaimed, “I have always loved Silvio; he stands for everything that is good in the world” (ibid.). Based on this outpouring of support, a journalist incredulously stated at the time, “adoration of Berlusconi remains widespread. In the parallel universe occupied by followers, there is no room for doubt about Berlusconi and lines are clearly drawn. Silvio is good and the others are bad” (ibid.).

Throughout the 2010s, Italy continued to struggle with political fragmentation and economic decline (Donadio 2018). Thus, support for parties – especially the bumbling center–left coalition led by Matteo Renzi and, subsequently, Paolo Gentiloni – remained low. Meanwhile, Berlusconi’s followers continued to express deep attachments to their beloved leader, causing him to run for the premiership yet again in 2018. Technically, the charismatic leader’s criminal record barred him from political office; he also failed to win sufficient votes. Nevertheless, Berlusconi did not disappear from politics. In fact, in 2019, with his ban from office lifted, he ran for and won a seat in the European Parliament (“Silvio Berlusconi: Italy’s Perpetual Powerbroker,” 2019).

In sum, Berlusconi founded a charismatic movement that dominated politics in Italy for almost two decades. Rather than fading away or routinizing when the leader resigned in 2011, his legacy and movement, backed by the ongoing devotion of millions of followers, continued to shape Italian politics. Consequently, the political system remains deeply fragmented, personalistic, and volatile (Donovan 2015, 15). In light of the leader’s electoral defeat in 2018, some have declared, “the Berlusconi era is over” (Giuffrida 2018). However, given the leader’s regular reappearances as well as the resilience of his followers’ emotional support, it seems unlikely that his charismatic mark on politics will easily fade. In fact, as the economic crisis deepens and Italian leaders fail to address it, it is possible that voters’ wistful memories of “recent times under Berlusconi when they felt richer” could facilitate the movement’s return to power under Berlusconi or, eventually, another alluring self-starter (Natanson 2018).

8.2.3 Thailand

Similar to the other countries under analysis, in Thailand the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis created favorable conditions for a charismatic leader to rise up and transform politics. The political and economic collapse produced by the crisis discredited the incumbent Democrat Party (DP) and facilitated the meteoric rise of Thaksin Shinawatra, a successful businessman who portrayed himself to his fellow Thais as a “breath of fresh air” (Phongpaichit and Baker 2004, 62). Although Thaksin had previously entered politics, briefly serving as Foreign Minister from October 1994 to January 1995, he abandoned his post after just five months. Then, on the heels of the crisis in July 1998, he founded his own political movement, Thai Rak Thai (TRT – Thais Helping Thais) (ibid., 64). Unlike existing political parties, Thaksin stifled the organizational development of the TRT and instead used it as a personalistic vehicle to launch himself into executive power (McCargo and Pathmanand 2005, 110). In 2001, Thaksin became the most popular Prime Minister in Thai history (Phongpaichit and Baker 2004, 62).

On the campaign trail and during his first years in office, Thaksin cultivated intensely emotional bonds with the poor masses, especially in the long-neglected countryside. First, he directly recognized the two groups who had suffered the most during the 1997 crisis: small business owners and the rural poor. He appealed to the former group, which consisted largely of low- and middle-income individuals operating family owned businesses, by acknowledging their feelings of abandonment by the outgoing government, which had embraced the painful stabilization policies recommended by the International Monetary Fund. For instance, in a public speech in 2000, Thaksin stated, “a lot of my brothers and sisters are still enduring great suffering and my business friends still cannot find money from banks … don’t worry for me but for the country” (in Phongpaichit and Baker 2004, 74). Even more important than these constituents, Thaksin vowed to rescue poor citizens, who resided in the rural north and northeastern regions of the country and constituted 69 percent of the national population, from their miserable living conditions. On the campaign trail, he declared, “Nothing will stand in my way. I am determined to devote myself to politics in order to lead the Thai people out of poverty – I think the people want Thai Rak Thai to take the government’s reins and solve the country’s problems” (in Phongpaichit and Baker 2004, 80).

As Prime Minister, Thaksin followed through on his promise by enacting three audacious policies that delivered immediate relief to his struggling constituents: a three-year debt moratorium for farmers, a development fund of one million baht (approximately US$32,000) for every Thai village, and a healthcare program that provided direct access to services to all Thais for 30 baht (less than US$1) (McCargo and Pathmanand 2005, 89). Many analysts viewed Thaksin’s policies as ideologically vacuous and logistically unworkable (ibid., 90). However, for poor Thais, the swift and impressive impact of the policies – referred to colloquially as “Thaksinomics” – made the leader appear extraordinary (Phongpaichit and Baker 2004, 99).

In addition to his bold programs, Thailand’s new savior wove his appeals and policies into a symbolic narrative that resonated deeply with his followers. Similar to Berlusconi in Italy, he confirmed his heroic status by playing up his extraordinary success as a self-made billionaire – an image that appealed to traditional Thai values and contrasted with the corrupt reputation of established politicians (ibid., 77). Additionally, Thaksin promoted a dichotomous view of the world with good, hardworking people on one side and selfish, backward enemies on the other. He warmly embraced his devotees as members of the former group while lambasting the political establishment, the IMF, and other “outside forces” as members of the latter group (ibid., 76). Finally, he stressed his dedication to a deeper mission to transform Thailand into a peaceful paradise for its humble, deserving citizens (ibid., 64). Unlike his cold and distant predecessors, Thaksin communicated this narrative to his followers in an open and intimate fashion through direct contact, off-the-cuff speeches, and a weekly radio show that was broadcast to virtually every station in the country (McCargo and Pathmanand 2005, 168; Phongpaichit and Baker 2004, 96).

As Prime Minister, Thaksin further consolidated his charismatic authority by weakening institutions that threatened his power. Like his counterparts in other countries, he filled his cabinet with sycophants upon becoming Prime Minister (Phongpaichit and Baker 2004, 92). He also reformed the constitution to make it costly for cabinet members and congressmen to challenge his authority, resulting in a weak and deferential parliament. Meanwhile, he pushed his aggressive policy agenda through by using “cabinet decisions and executive decrees” (ibid., 96–97). He also stifled dissent by launching “blistering attacks” on his critics and maintaining a tight grip on media outlets (McCargo and Pathmanand 2005, 199).

Although Thaksin’s illiberal actions weakened Thailand’s young democracy, his followers’ adoration of him intensified over the course of his premiership. He therefore swept the February 2005 elections, winning 375 of 500 seats in parliament – a full 127 seats more than he had captured in 2001 – and “came to feel virtually invincible” (Pongsudhirak 2012, 47–48). However, the combination of Thaksin’s concentrated power, his overwhelming popularity, and the potentially disastrous consequences of his bold policies led opposing forces – comprised of the military, the crown, and old-guard politicians – to overthrow him a year later, in September 2006 (ibid., 49).

Similar to the junta that ousted Perón in 1955, the Thai military established a caretaker government after forcing Thaksin into exile, outlawed his party, and attempted to eradicate his influence. Yet, as in Argentina, this strategy proved ineffective, and Thaksin continued to exercise his charismatic authority from afar. Despite his physical absence, his movement – represented by a new proxy, the People’s Power Party (PPP) – won elections in 2006 and 2007, both of which the military annulled; when it won again in 2008, the military begrudgingly allowed Thaksin’s hand-chosen replacement, Samak Sundaravej, to serve a brief nine months as Prime Minister (Phongpaichit and Baker 2013, 610; Pongsudhirak 2012, 55).

A typical anointed successor, Samak lacked the appeal and capacity to stabilize the political situation, which was increasingly characterized by chaos and anti-government protests (“Thai Parliament in emergency session,” 2008). This led the military and Constitutional Tribunal to intervene again in September 2008, removing Samak on a legal technicality (Pongsudhirak 2012, 55). In the following month, another of Thaksin’s protégés – his brother-in-law, Somchai Wongsawat – stepped in as Prime Minister, only to be quickly overwhelmed by opposition protests (ibid.). By December, the military and Constitutional Tribunal once again banned the leaders of three pro-Thaksin parties from politics until 2012 and helped usher the unelected DP leader, Abhisit Vejjajiva, into the premiership (ibid., 49).

Abhisit’s tenure as the military-backed Prime Minister lasted for less than two years. Lacking sufficient political legitimacy, the new leader ratcheted up repression, outlawed dissent, and cracked down on (pro-Thaksin) protests to a much greater degree than Thaksin himself had done during his rule (Hewison 2012, 28). In response to Abhisit’s poor leadership, Thaksin’s faithful rank-and-file held massive “red shirt” protests demanding the restoration of democracy in 2010 (Thabchumpon and McCargo 2011, 993). In response, the military called for elections in July 2011 and permitted the participation of the pro-Thaksin party – now called the Pheu Thai Party (PTP) – though not of Thaksin himself. As with each prior election since Thaksin’s initial rise to power in 2001, the PTP won the elections in a landslide due to the massive support of Thaksin’s followers (Hewison 2012, 28).

Unable to personally return to power as Prime Minister, Thaksin once again demonstrated his charismatic style by handpicking a replacement who would not overshadow his authority: his younger sister, Yingluck Shinawatra. Yingluck, who “had no background in politics” and “had previously worked in the family real-estate business,” posed little threat to Thaksin’s power (Pongsudhirak 2012, 50). To enhance her image and ensure her electoral success, Thaksin referred to Yingluck as “his clone,” while his followers demonstrated support by wearing masks with Thaksin’s face during the election campaign (Hewison 2012, 30; Phongpaichit and Baker 2013, 617). The strategy worked: the PTP nominated Yingluck as their candidate in May 2011, and she became Thailand’s first female Prime Minister with the party’s massive victory in the July elections.

As a handpicked successor, however, Yingluck encountered several challenges during her premiership that ultimately led to her ouster in 2014. While she enjoyed the support of the majority of the Thai population upon rising to power, she struggled to control the eruption of opposition (“yellow shirt”) protests, which spread across Bangkok in December 2013 and January 2014 and enjoyed the implicit support of the military, the crown, and several businesses (McCargo 2015, 338). Furthermore, she lacked the political skills and independent authority to navigate the fragile truce between her government and the powerful military–crown alliance. Meanwhile, she failed to meet the grand expectations of her brother’s followers, who hoped that her government would carry out her brother’s transformative mission and, after years of suffering under the military-backed DP rule, deliver peace and prosperity.

In the ultimate demonstration of her weak leadership, Yingluck allowed a dysfunctional and fraudulent snap election to proceed in the spring of 2014, even though the contest was widely perceived to be rigged against her (Mahtani 2014). In contrast to previous elections, which Thaksin’s followers took as an opportunity to demonstrate their fervent support, turnout in the 2014 election was less than 50 percent. Pro-Thaksin candidates up and down the ballot campaigned in a “half-hearted” manner, illustrating their reservations about Yingluck’s leadership (McCargo 2015, 341–42). Thus, in the midst of rising political unrest, the military ousted Yingluck and staged a coup in May 2014. Subsequently, the Army Commander General, Prayut Chan-o-cha, declared himself Prime Minister (ibid., 343–44).

Amazingly, despite Yingluck’s political failure and Prayut’s undemocratic rule, which has persisted from 2014 to the time of writing in 2020, Thaksin’s disciples have continued to profess faith that their beloved leader will return to Thailand and rescue them from their misery. For example, in the lead-up to sham elections held by the military-backed party in March 2019, Thaksin’s followers in the northeast thronged the streets to demonstrate their fervent hope for his return. His symbolic narrative, which claims to “believe in the majority of farmers, in the little people,” speaks to these individuals, who recall that “Thaksin was the first to pay attention to this region” almost two decades earlier (Schmidt and Thanthong-Knight 2019). Furthermore, while the military government dubiously declared victory after the 2019 election, Thaksin’s PTP won more votes than any other opposition party, arousing suspicions that the military artificially inflated its own vote tally (Tanakasempipat and Thepgumpanat 2019). Although Prayut remains Prime Minister today, Thaksin maintains his position as Thailand’s most popular leader – a remarkable feat, given that he has not physically returned to the country since fleeing in 2006. In fact, his charismatic movement appears to be waiting for the right conditions to return to power, perhaps under the authority of its original founder.

In short, Thaksin’s TRT provides yet another example of the remarkable resilience of charismatic movements. Thaksin rose in the wake of a severe crisis and consolidated profound, emotional attachments with millions of poor Thais. When the military and opposition forces ousted him in 2006, his charismatic appeal grew more – not less – intense among his followers. Moreover, his followers’ loyalty has persisted despite the failures of his anointed successors, indicating the intensely personalistic nature of the followers’ attachments. Given their ongoing, fervent support for the charismatic founder, it is possible that Thaksin could return to power in the future, not unlike Juan Perón in 1973.

8.2.4 China

In China, Mao Zedong founded a far more violent, totalitarian, and ideologically coherent party than the other charismatic leaders analyzed in this book. However, from his establishment of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949 until his death in 1976, he also struggled against forces of routinization from within his party and on several occasions subordinated the organization to his personal authority. From the outset, Mao used “extraordinary charismatic powers” to establish deep attachments with millions of Chinese citizens (Pye 1976, 250). Similar to other charismatic founders, he achieved this by recognizing the suffering of rural peasants, launching a transformative program of modernization, and constructing a “romantic vision” of the common man with which the people personally identified (ibid.). To do so, he drew on his peasant background to sympathize with his followers while simultaneously glorifying himself as “the greatest figure in Chinese history” (Schram 1967, 386). He also portrayed his revolution as an all-out war against traditional Chinese society and, more than advancing Marxist–Leninist doctrine per se, promised his followers that he would emancipate them from the evils of old society (ibid., 384). In short, it is Mao’s profoundly personalistic appeal – rather than his position atop the totalitarian CCP – that caused his followers to pledge their fervent devotion to his movement.

Over the course of his rule, Mao battled against the routinization of his movement and insisted on “plac[ing] the leader above the Party as the sole source of authority and the sole source of truth” (ibid., 386). For example, in 1958, Mao attacked the CCP bureaucracy, which had been growing in size and competence, with the Great Leap Forward – an impractical, haphazard, and ambitious program that clearly aimed to subjugate the party to his personal authority. In contrast to the CCP’s prior policies, which had been bureaucratic and modest in scope, the Great Leap Forward “was utopian in substance and chaotic in implementation,” reinforcing Mao’s charismatic leadership style (Teiwes and Sun 1999, 5). The extraordinarily ambitious and poorly organized nature of the program unleashed a catastrophic famine that caused the death of an estimated 15 to 46 million people (ibid.), causing Mao to back down in 1962 (ibid., 183–84). This disaster led Mao to temporarily cede power to other CCP officials, who sought to deemphasize his charismatic leadership and routinize the party.

Despite the massive failure of the Great Leap Forward, however, Mao staged an impressive comeback four years later in 1966 by launching the Cultural Revolution. Similar to his prior effort, he advanced the Cultural Revolution to attack the CCP organization, which had once again given way to the forces of routinization (Andreas 2007, 439). In particular, Mao used his direct, affective connections with students, workers, and peasants across the country to rebel against entrenched party officials in the name of his larger mission of physical and spiritual transcendence. In contrast to the increasingly rigid and institutionalized CCP, the Cultural Revolution had a “fluid and volatile” structure that hinged exclusively on Mao’s charismatic authority (ibid., 441, 451). Unlike the Great Leap Forward, this second violent upheaval was successful: Mao confirmed his position as China’s supreme savior and greatly weakened the party beneath him, effectively reversing the impressive efforts of lower-ranking officials to routinize his movement.

When faced with death in 1976, Mao further asserted his charismatic authority by choosing Hua Guofeng, a sycophant, to replace him. Like other anointed successors, Hua was “a relatively unknown figure with a fairly ordinary political legacy [who] lacked the charismatic authority enjoyed by his predecessor” (Weatherly 2010, 141). Hua attempted to shore up legitimacy by arresting more compelling leaders in the CCP, whom he viewed as threats, and – similar to Maduro in Venezuela – used propaganda to stress his personal connection to Mao (ibid.). To avoid betraying the heroic legacy of his predecessor, Hua also pledged to continue outdated, Soviet-era economic policies rather than embrace the market economy (Vogel 2011, 188). Consequently, Hua ultimately failed to establish independent authority. Instead, his “power stemmed entirely from his selection by Mao and from the official positions he held in the party and governmental bureaucracies” (ibid., 185). Just two years into his rule, in December 1978, the ambitious Deng Xiaoping sidelined Hua (ibid., 200).

Unlike Hua, Deng was a far more experienced and talented leader. He also distinguished himself from Mao: unlike the charismatic founder, Deng strengthened the CCP bureaucracy, deemphasized Mao’s romantic and utopian visions, and embraced a pragmatic political style that integrated socialism with free market policies (Wong and Lam 2017, 37–38). Interestingly, Deng never sought the chief executive office himself, but rather appointed others to serve in the symbolic role as Chairman or Secretary General while wielding de facto authority from behind the scenes (Zhiyue 2017, 124). Ironically, however, while claiming to prioritize party over personal authority, Deng held a tight grip on Chinese politics up until his death in 1997, creating another succession crisis similar to the one following Mao’s death three decades earlier. Indeed, in the aftermath of Deng’s demise, China’s leadership consisted of “a mostly faceless group of longtime party engineers who have scaled the ranks not by fighting in wars or developing political and economic ideologies but rather by cultivating higher-ranking bureaucrats and divulging as little as possible about their ideas and plans” (Kurlantzick 2011).

In contrast to the bland party officials who succeeded Deng, China’s current leader, Xi Jinping, has sought to carve out a new chapter of CCP history based on his own charismatic cult of personality since rising to power in 2012. To do so, he has invoked strategies remarkably similar to the other ambitious self-starters analyzed in this book. For example, Xi has deemphasized the significance of Deng’s legacy and has instead played up his symbolic connections to Mao (Myers 2018), “reinstitut[ing] many of Mao’s norms and ambitions with gusto” (Wong and Lam 2017, 31). Xi has also enacted bold reforms – such as the “Belt and Road Initiative,” an ambitious and expensive project to link China to European countries by building infrastructure along the historic Silk Road. Not only has this initiative bathed the leader in a heroic glow, but also has “been compared to chairman Mao’s bold plans in the 1950s to become the proud leader of the Third World” (ibid., 42).

Additionally, Xi has toured the country to communicate directly with ordinary people and “put himself on a pedestal with Mao Zedong, to rekindle a populist image” (Hernández 2018). He has also used his massive propaganda machine to launch programs of social control, such as “Xi Jinping thought” and “Xi Study Strong Nation,” all of which incorporate symbols of Mao such as the “Little Red Book” (Bandurski 2019; Myers 2018). To be sure, China’s coercive, post-totalitarian setting makes it difficult to parse out popular from coerced support. Moreover, Xi’s personalistic rise has not coincided with a serious crisis – a necessary condition for consolidating charismatic authority. Nevertheless, his efforts to associate himself with Mao’s heroic legacy mimic the strategies of other self-starters in charismatic movements and indicate the broad relevance of these leadership strategies – which appear to be important even in strongly authoritarian settings.

In sum, charismatic movements from across the world have persisted for long stretches of time without undergoing routinization. Although the leaders of these movements have fallen from power or died, their followers have continued to express profound attachments to the leaders’ heroic legacies. Moreover, in most cases, new leaders have attempted to tap into the founders’ legacies and rekindle citizens’ attachments to consolidate independent authority, albeit with varying degrees of success. Although these movements have developed in diverse settings, where variations in regime type (democratic vs. authoritarian), institutional system (presidential vs. parliamentary), and political orientation (from left to right) are marked, the strategies and behaviors of charismatic founders and their successors across these movements seem remarkably similar. Determining the extent to which citizens’ attachments to these leaders and movements persist and become reactivated through a personalistic mechanism requires further analysis. Nevertheless, the preliminary evidence suggests that my theory of charismatic revival has broader validity in a geographically and historically diverse set of political movements.

8.3 Conclusion

This book has illustrated that, rather than fading away or routinizing, charismatic movements can persist in personalistic form for years after the disappearance of their founders. Consequently, these movements can infuse democracies with illiberal qualities. Specifically, followers’ enduring, emotional attachments to the founder and his mission of salvation generate perverse incentives for subsequent politicians to act in similarly heroic ways. To do so, new leaders seek power in times of crisis, when citizens are most vulnerable. Next, to prove they are worthy of the followers’ devotion, the new leaders forgo programmatic objectives to implement more dramatic and impressive, yet irresponsible, policies. The leaders enact such policies by draining resources and overriding constraints imposed by political parties and democratic institutions, including the legislative and judiciary branches. In these ways, successors reinforce authoritarian leader behaviors, undermine the development of parties, and perpetuate problems of institutional weakness.

In addition to undermining responsible leadership and party system development, the bold yet fragile nature of successors’ policies impedes the quality of democratic representation. At the outset, such programs deliver substantial benefits to many citizens. Yet the extreme and programmatically untethered nature of the policies, combined with their inevitable exhaustion, ends up harming those same individuals. Most insidiously, these audacious policies unleash severe crises that are difficult to overcome, especially in contexts of institutional weakness. Yet rather than delegitimizing the charismatic movement, these crises generate conditions for the movement’s regeneration under the leadership of new, yet similarly personalistic, self-starters.

In short, charismatic movements develop fitful but resilient trajectories that perpetually undermine institutional development and democratic representation. The self-reinforcing nature of these movements makes them difficult to overcome. Indeed, my theory suggests that transforming charismatic movements into routinized parties would require a powerful, exogenous force to break the self-perpetuating cycle of personalistic leadership. Future studies should explore the conditions that make such a path of routinization possible.

This book focuses on Peronism and Chavismo. Yet charismatic movements have dominated political systems across the world, including Fujimorismo in Peru, Berlusconi’s FI in Italy, Thaksin’s PTP in Thailand, and Maoism in China. More recently, charismatic leaders including Viktor Orbán (Hungary), the Kaczyński brothers (Poland), Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (Turkey), and Donald Trump (United States) have risen to power and established transformative movements. These movements have posed alarming threats to democracy and have shown few signs of routinizing. My study reveals an alternative pathway such movements can take after the disappearance of their founders: revival in personalistic form. Furthermore, my theory provides a generalizable framework with which to evaluate the behaviors and relative success of new leaders who attempt to replace their charismatic predecessors. Above all, my findings indicate that charismatic movements have the potential to survive, generate instability, and undermine democracy for years to come.