THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE AND CHARISMATIC LEADERSHIP

Having established the people as a homogeneous entity at odds with the ruling elites, radical right populism calls for the restoration of popular sovereignty, and demands that politics should express the immediate will of the people (Arditi, 2005: 76; Canovan, 1999: 4–5). In relation to this, Canovan has additionally noted that the question of popular sovereignty triggers the crystallisation of boundaries, both between the people whose sovereignty radical right populists claim to restore and the elites, and between the rest of the world and the polity over which radical right populists attempt to assume power:

Popular sovereignty implies boundaries of two kinds. As legitimate sovereign, ‘the people’ is distinguished from, and counterposed to, the power elite, from whom power is to be retrieved. But its sovereign independence of external powers also gives its territorial definition, linking its borders to the boundaries of the polity, while its essential unity narrows down its identity, making it equivalent to the nation.

(Canovan, 2002: 34) Oftentimes the people’s will appears to attain the ultimate level of political intelligibility once embodied in the person of radical right populist leader. This is founded on the populist proclamation of unmediated relationship between the people and the radical right populist leader, which is built on plebiscitary processes and mutual trust (Barr, 2009: 40; Betz, 2002: 199). In this context, radical right populism plays the emancipatory card, claiming to be in favour of improving the people’s status in the political system (Mudde, 2004: 546).

However, people’s emancipation does not imply a change of their values or their

‘way of life’; rather, the daily problems are to be dealt with, and solutions of

‘common sense’ are to be identified by the person to whom they have willingly entrusted their future. Even more so, Manuela Caiani and Donatella della Porta have argued that radical right populism entails an exclusionary hierarchy and a

high degree of elitism on behalf of its leaders that results in envisioning the people merely as a passive mass of disciples:

[T]here is a rather exclusive vision of the people, which refers to a strongly hierarchical and elitist conception of the society. Indeed, not only corrupt political elites but also other political and ethnic adversaries are excluded from this conception of the people, which is, furthermore, relegated to a passive role in politics.

(Caiani & della Porta, 2011: 185) Because of the establishment’s incapacity to reconnect with the mundane needs of the people, salvation often resides in the person of charismatic leader, who can speak and act on behalf of the people (Abts & Rummens, 2007: 408;

Bornschier, 2008: 88–89; Mudde, 2004: 560). The term ‘charismatic leadership’

was first coined by Max Weber at the beginning of the twentieth century in his tripartite classification of authority. It was intimately related to a certain style of leadership that challenged what Weber considered to be the more established forms of political legitimacy – the traditional (patrimonialism and feudalism) and the legal–rational (bureaucratic rule and legalism) (Weber, 1991). The concept has been later employed by such historians as Emilio Gentile to explain the rise, and assess the nature of fascist dictatorship in interwar Italy (Gentile, 1998). Herbert Kitschelt has applied it in his analysis of the emerging cleavages in the post–1989 Central and Eastern Europe, and Hans–Georg Betz and Stefan Immerfall have argued that charismatic leadership plays an important part in the rise of radical right populist parties in Western Europe (cf. Kitschelt, 1995; Betz & Immerfall, 1998). Such a stance has been further discussed by Paul Taggart, who noted somewhat ironically that populism ‘requires the most extraordinary individuals to lead the most ordinary of people’ (Taggart, 2000: 1). In other words, ‘followers of populist movements are said to surrender easily to the “charms” of a charismatic figure who they believe can represent their grievances and immediately give voice to their needs’ (Albertazzi, 2006: 136).

Even more so, this salient preference for a direct leadership, which goes past the intricate network of representative institutions, has been noted by scholars to open up the possibility for a concentration of personal power that is often hard to reconcile with democratic processes (Canovan, 1999: 14). Going one step further, Vladimir Tismaneanu has argued that ‘despite its anti–elitist pretence, radical populism treats the masses as a mob and endows the leader with quasi–mystical, demiurgic attributes’ (Tismaneanu, 2000: 17). The prophetic, warrior–like, or demagogic nature of the charismatic leader enacts a relationship between followers and leaders inspired by faith (Van der Brug & Mughan, 2007: 31).

Consequently, the figure of the leader is seen as highly symbolic in radical right populism, even though calls for more detailed analyses of the ‘charismatic’ nature of the radical right populist leadership have been voiced by several researchers in

the field (Art, 2011: 8; Barr, 2009: 41; Eatwell, 2002: 17–21; Norris, 2005: 205).

Among others, Roger Eatwell has analysed the issue of charisma and the rise of European radical right populism (Eatwell, 2002; 2005). It is noteworthy that he depicted in his analyses the two genders in a schematic and antagonistic manner.

Eatwell plainly noted that while charisma ‘has usually been a male form of narrative/symbolism, associated with action and heroics, the modern tendency to view politics in terms of business (with its “mission statements”) and economics offers opportunities for females’ (Eatwell, 2005: 107) (Italics in original). In my view, Eatwell applied a reductionist conceptual apparatus that disregarded the complexity of the gendered aspect of power relations and how identities are construed and conditioned by these relations. Although he acknowledged that some radical right parties are led by women, he simply maintained that these women leaders have ‘courted the image of ordinary housewives’ and concluded that such an image ‘clearly can appeal to men as well as women’ (Eatwell, 2005:

107). Under these circumstances, I maintain that he uncritically associated men with ‘heroics’ and ‘action’ and assigned women the role of ‘housewives’ since these

‘clearly’ could appeal to both men and women who managed to read the ascribed gendered hierarchies in aforesaid descriptions.

Identification with, and abandonment to the radical right populist leader’s volition, are envisioned to ‘produce an effect of virtual immediacy, that is, an imaginary identification that suspends the distance between masses and authorities’ (Arditi, 2003: 23). Such process, according to Cuperus, takes place in the name of ‘plebiscitary democracy’ but in fact enforces the replacement of the now established democratic culture of debate between equal peers with the highly personalised leadership ‘with a democratic mandate’. This tendency becomes even more pronounced in the modern communication age that is marked by the media’s dominance of democratic processes and media’s increased demands for a politics of ‘personification without consultation’ (Cuperus, 2003: 93–94). A similar argument has been developed by Panizza. He noted that the populist leaders pursue a politics based on personal allegiances and clearly defined top–

down representations that go past institutional debate and party support. Panizza maintained further that ‘in contrast with the political forms of political democracy based on strong institutions and checks and balances, populist leaders are a disturbing intrusion into the uneasy articulation of liberalism and democracy, and raise the spectre of tyranny with popular support.’ (Panizza, 2005: 18) In a similar vein, Mudde has approached the issue of leadership and discussed the role of authority and authoritarianism. According to him, ‘authoritarianism is […] the belief in a strictly ordered society, in which infringements of authority are to be punished severely. […] It does not necessarily mean an antidemocratic attitude, but neither does it preclude one’ (Mudde, 2007: 23). Authoritarianism thereby makes reference to a punitive interpretation of conventional ethics and appeals to a strict law and order enforcement.

2.2 THE PROBLEM OF GENDER–BLIND RADICAL RIGHT