| Summary: | In recent years, charismatic leadership figures—often linked to populist movements—have become a prominent feature of international politics, even in consolidated democracies. However, the political discussion of charisma remains tied mainly to the ideas developed more than a century ago by Max Weber, who characterized this type of authority as extraordinary and ephemeral.
In her latest book, The Emergence and Revival of Charismatic Movements: Argentine Peronism and Venezuelan Chavismo, which received the Leon Epstein Award from the American Political Science Association, Professor Caitlin Andrews-Lee challenges this century-old thesis and proposes an alternative theory. Backed by evidence from experiments, interviews, and focus groups in Latin America, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill scholar suggests that movements founded by this type of leadership can persist and reemerge as powerful political forces, rather than in spite of it, thanks to their personalistic core.
César Morales Oyarvide talks with Andrews-Lee about the difficulty of defining charisma, the dilemmas faced by both, those personalities who succeed—such as Hugo Chávez—and those who oppose them, as well as the role of gender among women who have come to lead these movements, such as President Claudia Sheinbaum.
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