Sociological research has overlooked the political consequences of charismatic leadership that arises in existing democratic political bureaucracies. In this article, we theorize the consequences of charismatic leadership in democratic nations by revisiting Max Weber's theory of charismatic authority. Our extension of Weber's theory of charismatic authority helps to address a gap in the political polarization literature concerning the role of charismatic leadership. This article provides a foundational link in the research on charismatic authority–bridging the literatures on charisma and cross-national comparative sociology. This bridging is enabled by advances in data collection that include information on charismatic authority in cross-national context. This article makes use of a Driscoll and Kraay fixed-effects analysis across 76 democracies from 1960 to 2009 to explore the relationship between charismatic leadership and political polarization. Our findings suggest that nations with higher levels of charismatic leadership tend to have higher levels of political polarization. These results contribute to both the literature on political polarization and charisma—as well as support our extension of Weber's theory of charismatic authority.

中文翻译：

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魅力权威与支离破碎的政体：跨国分析

社会学研究忽略了现有民主政治官僚机构中出现的魅力型领导的政治后果。在本文中，我们通过重新审视马克斯·韦伯的魅力权威理论，对民主国家中魅力领导的后果进行了理论化。我们对韦伯的魅力权威理论的扩展有助于解决政治两极分化文献中关于魅力领导作用的空白。本文提供了魅力权威研究的基础链接——将魅力权威文献与跨国比较社会学联系起来。这种桥接是由数据收集的进步实现的，这些数据收集包括跨国背景下有关魅力权威的信息。本文利用 1960 年至 2009 年对 76 个民主国家的 Driscoll 和 Kraay 固定效应分析来探讨魅力型领导与政治两极分化之间的关系。我们的研究结果表明，魅力型领导水平较高的国家往往政治两极分化程度较高。这些结果有助于关于政治两极分化和魅力的文献，并支持我们扩展韦伯的魅力权威理论。