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Political charisma — why is it both powerful and perilous?
Wednesday, 28 October, 2026
Over the last decade, large majorities of voters in advanced democracies like the United States, the UK, France, Germany and Australia have come to feel that their elected representatives are not responsive to their needs, do not put the interests of people over politics, are not capable of delivering on their promises, are not truthful, and are, generally speaking, “corrupt”, or at least “in it for themselves”. (Compare, for instance, the remarkably similar findings in the OECD’s 2026 “Trust in Government” survey, the recent “Australian attitudes towards government and democracy” report commissioned by the Centre for Policy Development, and ANU’s “Political and policy attitudes in an age of pessimism” report from March this year.)This trend has led even some democratic theorists to conclude that the problem with modern politics is, well, politicians. It’s an easy sentiment to sell, and its appeal has been a boon for those “political entrepreneurs” who are particularly adept at harnessing underlying popular resentment and disrupting the status quo, only to find themselves subject to the same laws of electoral gravity when in government.Before taking the leap and advocating for citizen rule by means of “lottocracy” or some other form of sortition, it is worth asking ourselves what we actually want from politicians. Is competence and effectiveness in the delivery of vital public services enough? Or do we both expect and need more? For there seems to be a troubling paradox lying beneath the popular discontent: either politicians function as idées fixes, as mere things upon whom the people can obsessively heap blame for all that has gone wrong, who are exempt from ordinary human consideration and thus “fair game” for harassment, abuse, even violence; or politicians bear a weight popular expectation that verges on the messianic. In other words, there is a tendency to view politicians as either sub-human or super-human.This is where the fraught question of the nature of political charisma comes to bear. While there have been occasions where voters have reverted to normalcy, stability, a “safe pair of hands” after a period of mercurial or chaotic governance — the obvious examples here would be Joe Biden in 2020, Anthony Albanese in 2022 and Keir Starmer in 2024 (with the pandemic being a major factor in each case) — by and large the direction of electoral traffic has gone toward the more strident, passionate, “authentic”, disruptive, norm-busting, in a word, charismatic candidate. In so doing, what is often being chosen is not so much political idolatry and political participation: the charismatic figure holds out the possibility of connection with the voters, whereby, by voting for this figure, they are themselves taking part in some larger project, whether that be of restoration, reclamation, purification, regeneration or “Justice”.As Richard Sennett argues, political charisma is necessarily performative and unpredictable insofar as the figure seems to embody and obey some “higher” (or at least “other”) law. Proof of their charisma is their ability to defy the ordinary laws of political propriety. The problem comes, of course, when charisma gets “routinised”, flattened out, rendered predictable, and when the figure becomes “human, all too human”. (Though the attendant problem arises when their charismatic authority effectively authorises lawlessness, such as political violence.)But another danger is that political charisma gets reduced either to provocation (“speaking one’s mind” or the “telling of unpopular truths”), on the one hand, or to mere “rizz” (or what has been called “aura farming”), on the other. Which is to say, what does political charisma amount to in a social media saturated age? After Keir Starmer’s terminal lack of charisma contributed massively to his own demise — much like Friedrich Merz now in Germany — UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham has constructed a sophisticated social media persona design to achieve something of the connection with the public that his predecessor lacked. But does such visibility either so trivialise or personalise political office that it ceases being a “trust”, a vocation, and becomes something more like a gig? Does the same risk apply to Anthony Albanese’s decision, in his second term, to frequent skits, comedy podcasts and influencer streams?Charisma suggests a degree of passion, of commitment — it invites others, not just to believe, but to believe in the charismatic figure’s belief. There can be no democratic politics that doesn’t enjoy some connection between the people and their representatives (for what does connection denote other than responsiveness, answerability?). How, then, to balance that reciprocity with Max Weber’s unglamourous sense of the vocation of politics as like a “strong and slow boring of hard boards” which demands “both passion and perspective”?Guest: Ben Wellings is Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations at Monash University. His most recent book is English Nationalism and British Disintegration.
