Improvised charismatic movements can outperform established organic parties in action

Evidence

The career officers corresponded in the Risorgimento to the regular, organic, traditional, etc. political parties, which at the moment of action (1848) revealed themselves inept or almost so, and which in 1848-49 were overtaken by the popular-Mazzinian-democratic tidal wave. This tidal wave was chaotic, formless, “extempore ” so to speak, but it nonetheless, under an improvised leadership (or nearly so—at any rate not one formed beforehand as was the case with the Moderate party), obtained successes which were indubitably greater than those obtained by the Moderates: the Roman Republic and Venice showed a very notable strength of resistance. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 566

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Ideological movements claim infallibility and simple clarity to outcompete parties — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2616; Elite skills and party cohesion drive successful postcommunist transformation. — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 72
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Ideological movements claim infallibility and simple clarity to outcompete parties — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2616; Elite skills and party cohesion drive successful postcommunist transformation. — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 72

Broader Connections

• Elite skills and party cohesion drive successful postcommunist transformation. #complicates (0.72) — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 72