Working paper title: 'Charismatic leaders and democratic backsliding'

By: James R. Hollyer, Marko. Klasnja and Rocio Titiunik

Abstract

Charismatic politicians pose interesting dilemmas for democratic governance. Political parties tend to benefit electorally from charismatic politicians' popularity. However, we demonstrate theoretically that parties may also pay a cost. When they become reliant on a leader's charisma, parties grow less able to sanction their behavior in office and more prone to catering to their will. We show that this is particularly likely in contexts of high ideological polarization and strong institutional foundations of democracy. This inversion of the power dynamic between parties and politicians provides more room for charismatic leaders to enact anti-democratic policies, if so inclined. We further model to what extent this link between a leader's charisma and democratic backsliding results from selection (party's acquiescence at the nomination stage) versus incentives (party's inability to discipline a sitting incumbent). We use data on leader backgrounds, party illiberalization, democratic backsliding, and autocratic reversion to illustrate the empirical plausibility of our theoretical claims.

Photo: Vitalii Vodolazskyi, Shutterstock