Charisma in Right-Wing Populism: Comparing the view of the Leader and Followers within the Swiss People’s Party

Within the scholarly literature on populism, we find an ongoing debate about the significance of charismatic leadership and its relevance for populist parties’ development, arguing that charisma is important for the success of these parties. Most populism research treats leadership charisma as an innate feature of populist leaders. However, as originally conceived by Max Weber, charisma has to be understood as an affective bond between the leader and his followers. In this concept, the charismatic qualities need to be perceived as such by the leaders’ followers to award them with authority. A few existing studies attempted to conceptualise those charismatic leadership qualities, including personal presence, sense of a mission, a symbiotic hierarchy with followers, and the ability to target enemies. These approaches, however, provide no assessment of the motivations and self-reflected views of the leaders on their own role. Most researchers on populist radical right wing parties further agree that these charismatic leadership qualities and party institutionalisation are somewhat incompatible. Charismatic leaders struggle to maintain a durable political system. They exhibit strong external leadership skills to attract electoral support and they play a crucial role during the formation of the party organisation, but they may become a liability if the party seeks to become an institution. Once the party institutionalises, it needs to build a bureaucratic structure and articulate goals and objectives. However, we have only scarce information if and to what extent the associated transfer of loyalties from the leader to the party leads to internal divisions and electoral decline. In short, previous analyses tell us little about whether and how perspectives on charisma differ between the populist leader and their followers and if the leader’s charismatic grip weakens or disappears with the institutionalisation of the party organisation. To explore this puzzle, this paper takes a novel approach and extends the Weberian understanding of charisma. It includes not only the followers’ perspective on but also the view of the leader. I argue that a comparative assessment of the supply and demand side of charisma provides a more comprehensive understanding of leadership and party institutionalisation. Structured along a set of charismatic key features, this article explores the features of charismatic leadership within the populist right wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP). As a successfully institutionalised party, the SVP offers an interesting case to assess perspectives on charismatic key features for internal leadership and the stability of the leader’s charismatic appeal. To address the research question, the study draws on interviews with the so-called charismatic leader of the SVP – Christoph Blocher – and 32 party representatives. The article shows that the perceptions of charismatic authority largely depend on the leaders’ sense of mission and his authenticity. However, the perceptions differ not only between the leader and his followers but also within the group of followers, depending on their individual political socialisation in sub-national party branches. Additionally, the article demonstrates that charismatic leadership indeed weakens over time due to shifting understandings of loyalty and personal views about the party’s internal organisation.