School of Social and Political Science

Description

Moving beyond prevalent frameworks of charisma scholarship which highlight antagonism between charismatic leaders and non-charismatic elites, this paper proposes a theory of charismatic ‘soft power’ as a form of cultural influence. We combine contemporary cultural sociology of charisma with Girard’s notion of mimesis to argue that, rather than being in a permanent state of conflict with the charismatic leader, non-charismatic elites often seek to align themselves with the new sources of legitimacy being developed by the charismatic leader, co-opting these new leadership protocols into their own vocabularies of leadership. We demonstrate the usefulness of our model for interpreting the case of the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and his encounters with European leaders. 

Paul Joosse an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Hong Kong.  His work on Weber, political sociology, and culture has been published in Social Forces, Sociological Theory, and Theory and Society, among others.  He is the recipient of the American Sociological Association’s Junior Theorist Award and the ASA’s Clifford Geertz Prize for best article in cultural sociology.  

Dominik Zelinsky is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen and junior researcher at the Institute for Sociology, Slovak Academy of Sciences. He is also associated with the Yale’s Center for Cultural Sociology as a postdoctoral fellow. His main research interest lies in the field of sociological theory, in particular the theory of charismatic leadership, and the sociology of intellectuals and art. His articles have appeared in publications such as Sociology, European Journal of Social Theory, Journal of Cultural Economy, American Journal of Cultural Sociology and the Journal of Classical Sociology.