Sep 2026· International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society· 0 citations· 13 references
Abstract
This paper attempts to deploy - and adapt - the classical concept of charisma in the context of contemporary populism. The current wave of populisms of various kinds in Western representative democracies throws up challenges for political sociology in understanding how leaders seek to legitimize themselves; for instance through eccentric, often loud-mouthed, highly-opinionated behaviour, or what has been called ‘bad manners’. In deploying and extending the concept of charisma, the paper seeks to understand some of these developments; seeing in them not so much the expression of particular kinds of disposition on the part of such leaders, but as counter-tendencies to ‘establishment’, liberal, representative kinds of politics, and as signalling strategies for demonstrating what is here called
idiot power
.
In this interview, the philosopher Mark Devenney, professor at the University of Brighton and co-director of the Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics (Cappe), discusses the scope and limits of populist theory within post-foundational and post-Marxist thought. He distinguishes populism from democracy and a...
G. Benzaquen, Mark Devenney· Tempo Social· 0 citations
In the minds of many critical theorists, Theodor W. Adorno epitomizes the failure of critical theory to provide any concrete guidance for political practice. His name is almost synonymous with the retreat of the progressive intellectual from the creeping totalitarianism of contemporary mass democracy. This book endeavo...
This article provides a brief response to contributions by Bartmanski and Phillips, and Hewson. While acknowledging the importance of their innovative and quite different deployment of Foucauldian analytical tools to the analysis of culture as a way of life and the possible erasure of humanity, respectively, it also id...
Siniša Malešević· Dialogues in Sociology· 1 citation
This essay intervenes in contemporary debates around neoliberalism and its relationship to both authoritarianism and social democracy. It does so by reconstructing the debate on Thatcherism that took place between Stuart Hall and Bob Jessop in the 1980s. Both authors provide materialist analyses of Thatcherism that p...
Daniel McLoughlin· Historical Materialism· 0 citations
This article deals with the illiberal temptation that arises among the leaders of the French mainstream right party, Les Républicains. Studying what it calls an “insiders’ illiberalism,” it explores the discursive features of the illiberal discourse of four Republican leaders, in opposition to Marlene Laruelle’s four s...
Emilien Houard-vial· Journal of Illiberalism Stud...· 0 citations
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