Charismatic authority erodes when a leader fails to benefit followers

Evidence

Max Weber’s concept of charisma (or the “gift of grace”) as one base of the legitimacy of authority is obviously related to the leader’s personal appeal and performance when structural and traditional factors are held constant. To Weber, the charismatic leader possesses “a certain quality of personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities.” Followers obey out of duty rather than choice or calculation; as Weber put it, “No prophet has ever regarded his quality [of charisma] as dependent on the attributes of the masses around him.” Of course Weber did acknowledge that in the long run the followers’ needs and satisfactions are important. “If [the leader] is for long unsuccessful, above all if his leadership fails to benefit his followers, it is likely that his charismatic authority will disappear” (1947, pp. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1281

Categorization

• DEFINE: Weber’s charisma defined precisely, including the counterintuitive qualifier that even charismatic authority depends ultimately on follower satisfaction.
• XREF: connects to: Charisma is conferred on leaders by followers rather than held as a trait — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 33