Steven Pfaff - Nationalism Charisma and Plebiscitary Leadership

Nationalism, Charisma, and Plebiscitary Leadership:
The Problem of Democratization in Max Weber’s

Political Sociology
Steven Pfaff, University of Washington
Max Weber has typically been regarded as a central thinker in the liberal tradition of
social analysis. At the same time, critics have long noted how his democratic commitments
were compromised by his nationalism. Drawing on existing criticism, I discuss the
importance of charismatic leadership in Weber’s thought and its implications for his
understanding of the process of democratization. Reconstructing core concepts in Weber’s
political thought, I analyze how Weber’s concept of plebiscitarian leadership unites
charismatic domination with nationalism and skepticism concerning effective democratic
politics. I show how Weber’s concept of plebiscitarian rule grew from deeply held political
values and his engagement with German politics. I then generate propositions regarding the
problem of democratization in regime transitions and apply them to contemporary
charismatic leaders and ethno-nationalist mobilization in post-Communist transitions. I
argue that as much as it anticipates the central dilemma of charismatic solutions to political
crisis, Weber’s thought favors nationalist and plebiscitarian responses to democratization
that have been largely discredited by historical experience.
Introduction1
Why do societies that seem poised for democracy in the wake of the
collapse of an authoritarian regime sometimes turn away towards personalistic
dictatorship? What accounts for the frequent reversal of intellectuals from calls
for liberalization to a new form of authoritarian control? In such cases why are
so many intellectuals, as well as ordinary citizens, prepared to switch their
support from democratization and parliamentary government to embrace
vaguely defined conceptions of plebiscitarian leadership? One of the most
enlightening attempts to work out these questions is found in the political
sociology of Max Weber. Weber’s engagement with these problems was not
only abstract and theoretical, but practical and direct through his own
participation as a writer and critic in German political life. Indeed, Weber
himself went from making forceful calls for democratization and parliamentary
control to advocating a plebiscitarian ‘‘leader democracy’’ in the context of
German defeat in the First World War. Was it Germany’s defeat in the war or
the November revolution in 1918 that caused his reversal? Or was it a symptom
Sociological Inquiry, Vol. 72, No. 1, Winter 2002, 81–107

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82 STEVEN PFAFF
of a more general dilemma in modern politics? Does Weber’s turn reflect

deeper antinomies buried within his political and social thought?
In exploring answers to these questions I put forward the argument that
Weber came to articulate a political vision that might be best described as
authoritarian liberalism. This seemingly paradoxical formation combines
authoritarianism, which Juan Linz describes as ‘‘limited, not responsible, political
pluralism, without elaborate and guiding ideology, but with distinctive mentalities,
without extensive political mobilization, except at some points . . . and in which a
leader or occasionally a small group exercises power within formally ill-defined
limits’’ (quoted in Linz and Stepan 1996, p. 38), with a commitment to economic
liberalism, formal political integration, and the rule of law (see also Cristi 1998).
This hybrid political form proved appealing not only to Weber and the nationalist
intellectuals of his day, but continues to have appeal in contemporary processes of
political transition. This combination of liberal and authoritarian political ideals
emerged out of longstanding currents in Weber’s thought. However, it was given
its particular form in response to the events surrounding the revolution that led to
the collapse of the German Empire in the First World War and its replacement with
an unloved and unstable republic. Working from deep-seated tensions in Weber’s
thought, I try to reconstruct how Weber’s engagement in Wilhelmine and Weimar
Germany led him to a position on democratization that reflects an uncomfortable
compromise between liberal pluralism and plebiscitarian dictatorship. His
‘‘plebiscitarian leader democracy’’ skirted the division between democracy and
dictatorship, between a liberal and authoritarian order.
This argument draws on an ongoing debate within studies of Weberian
political thought.2 Max Weber has been generally regarded as a central thinker in
the liberal tradition of social analysis (Gerth and Mills 1946; Bendix 1962;
Wrong 1970; Seidman 1983; Bellamy 1992; Schroeder 1998). At the same time,
critics have long noted the tensions between his liberalism and his nationalist
commitments and the ways in which Weber’s democratic convictions were often
compromised (Aron 1970; Lukacs 1980; Bottomore 1993; Mommsen 1981a,
1984; Beetham 1985; Pearson 1996; Breiner 1996). Expanding on these
criticisms, I reveal the importance of charismatic leadership in Weber’s thought
and its implications for the process of democratization. Weber’s theory of
charisma and his concept of plebiscitarian rule reflect both his deeply held
political values and his engagement with German politics.
Reconstructing core concepts in Weber’s political thought, I analyze how
Weber’s concept of plebiscitarian leadership unites charismatic domination with
nationalism and skepticism concerning effective democratic politics. I then
generate propositions regarding the problem of democratization in regime
transitions and apply them to contemporary charismatic leaders and ethno-
nationalist mobilization in post-Communist transitions. The contention here is
NATIONALISM, CHARISMA, AND PLEBISCITARY LEADERSHIP 83
that as much as it anticipates the central dilemma of charismatic solutions to

political crisis, Weber’s thought favors nationalist and plebiscitarian responses to
democratization that have been largely discredited by historical experience.
Unraveling the problem of democratization in Weber’s political thought is
thus not only of historical interest. With the end of the Cold War Weber’s
sociological theory is again being turned to the political problems that he
addressed, among them nationalism, citizenship, and democratization. Demo-
cratic transitions around the world have brought new purpose to Weber’s
thought, especially in the wake of the divergent political and economic paths
taken by various post-Communist countries. Indeed, a decade after the collapse
of Communism in Eastern Europe, many of the links between democracy and
liberalism that were taken-for-granted elements of transition theory may need to
be reconsidered in light of Weberian sociology. The capacity of dictatorial
leaders claiming plebiscitarian mandates to exploit the transition crisis in the
name of the nation, in particular, points to the contemporary relevance of
Weber’s political sociology and the perils of authoritarian nationalism in
democratic transitions.
Scholarship on Max Weber has generally been divided between those who
interpret and evaluate Weber’s theoretical corpus on the one hand, and, on the
other, those who draw from Weber key theoretical concepts that are applied in
social and political analysis. But there has been too little dialogue between the
two approaches, especially where Weber directly applied his sociological
thought to specific political problems. As Anthony Giddens has recently
argued, ‘‘A satisfactory critique of Weber’s political sociology must itself be
both political and intellectual. That is to say, it must examine, in detail, as
related questions, the dependence of his ideas upon a specific historical context,
and the logical weaknesses of his theoretical formulations’’ (1995, p. 5). In this
paper I link the two approaches to Weber’s thought to reveal how he arrived at
specific conclusions regarding leadership during periods of regime transition
and how his political thought can be used to generate theoretical propositions to
explain politics in similar contexts. The persistent question to be addressed is:
to what extent did Weber put his thought at the service of democratization in
Germany and to what extent can it be employed in an analysis of contemporary
political transitions?
Nationalism, Democracy, and Charisma in Weber’s Sociology
Weber’s intellectual development occurred as part of a more general crisis
of modern political culture that was especially keenly felt among German
intellectuals at the turn of the century. This crisis included a reaction to the
supposed ‘‘ungovernability’’ of liberal states and revulsion against the
instrumentalism of politics in mass (as Weber termed it, ‘‘democratic’’) society
84 STEVEN PFAFF
(see, e.g., Ringer 1990; Eley 1980; Sheehan 1978). Weber’s intellectual roots
were firmly in the liberal nationalist tradition in Germany that stressed a unified
state, economic development, and constitutionalism (Schulze 1990; Alter 1989;
Meinecke 1970). A core feature of German liberalism —as opposed to the
Anglo-American model — was the tradition of national-economy. This held that
it was the nation-state’s task to lead rapid industrial and commercial expansion
while mitigating or suppressing social conflict in the interests of development
(Szporluk 1988).
One of the most fascinating aspects of Weber’s thought is its attempt to work
out the antinomies between conflicting foundational concepts. In various areas of
his sociology, Weber demonstrates how a single key concept may be at once
implied in and in conflict with others (Sica 1988; Brubaker 1984; Mommsen
1981a). Nowhere is this tendency more apparent, and in places troubling, than in
his political sociology. This can be illustrated by reconstructing Weber’s political
sociology through its reliance upon three core concepts: nationalism, democracy,
and charisma.
Nationalism. For Weber, nationality is a political achievement cemented
through economic development, political integration, and emotional attachment.
In Weber’s view modern societies are national societies to the extent that the
‘‘people’’ are regarded as sovereign and united in the pursuit of collective
political interests. Nationality belonged to a democratic era that saw the shift from
traditional to legal and rational forms of domination. Weber’s theory of
nationalism was thus ‘‘democratic’’ without having any normative commitment
to democracy or popular involvement in government.
The nation is not only a community of interests, but also of sentiments; a felt
community linked by emotional and psychological ties and status investments. In
this sense, one can say that Weber saw nationalism as an ‘‘imagined community’’
(Anderson 1983), but as Tönnies (1963) originally observed, all societies above
the immediate communal level are in some sense ‘‘imagined communities.’’
Weber understood that there is a charismatic core in even many large-scale
communities, such as nations, in which feelings of union transcend immediate,
face-to-face bonds. Weber noted, for example, that feelings of national affinity
are not simply objective reflections of interests but based in part on that which
‘‘affects the individual’s sense of honor and dignity.’’ Among all modern
ideologies, nationalism is uniquely suited to provide the ethical values and
personal commitments that a modernizing society needs as it shifts the basis of
political legitimacy from an elite enshrined by tradition to the people more
generally. A common national project promises to define shared values and goals
in the emerging political community.
Weber regarded the intellectual classes (Bildungsbürgertum) as the chief
historical proponents of the idea of the nation, rather than traditional state elites.
Nationalism thus contained a radical, even revolutionary moment in its demands

for wider political inclusion on the basis of national membership. The embrace of
nationalism by the intellectuals could be understood, at least partially, in status
terms: ‘‘The significance of the ‘nation’ is usually anchored in the superiority, or
at least irreplaceability, of the culture values that are to be preserved and
developed only through the cultivation of the peculiarity of the group. It therefore
goes without saying that the intellectuals. . .are to a specific degree predetermined
to propagate the ‘national idea’, just as those who wield power provoke the idea
of the state’’ (Weber 1994a, p. 25). Indeed, Weber argued, it was the prestige
interests of the educated bourgeoisie, rather than material interests of big capital,
that made nationalism such an emotionally mobilizing force in German politics.
Weber’s concept of the nation thus posits the achievement of nationality in
the conjuncture of collective identity, prestige, power, and economic interests.
Nationalism is neither primordial nor culturally determined but represents the
voluntary association of the individual with the greater ethical and political
project of the nation. Neither a common ethnicity nor coercion would be enough
to constitute it. Weber also rejected conceptions of the ‘‘popular spirit’’
(Volksgeist) —arguing that there was no mystical or transcendental foundation
of a nation (Weber 1994a) — alongside reference to ethnic and cultural likeness as
a sufficient condition of national community. In this the emblematic German
intellectual had much in common with what is usually taken as the typically
French position on nationality (see Brubaker 1992).
Owing to the essentially political definition of nationality in Weber’s
thought, it was impossible for him to separate the concept of the nation from the
state as an earlier generation of German intellectuals had been able to do. 3 In
rejecting ethnic essentialism, Weber claimed that ethnicity is a subjective feeling
of collective identity, noting that ‘‘ethnic membership does not constitute a group;
it only facilitates group formation of any kind, particularly in the political sphere’’
(1978, p. 389). Pointing to cases such as the Serbs and Croats, who in spite of
shared linguistic and ethnic characteristics had developed national hostility,
Weber argued that ‘‘In reality the concept of ‘nationality’ shares with that of the
‘people’ (Volk) —in the ethnic sense — the vague connotation that whatever is felt
to be distinctively common must derive from common descent. In reality, of
course, persons who consider themselves members of the same nationality are
much less related by common descent than are persons belonging to different and
hostile nations’’ (p. 395). This aspect of nationality seemed clear to Weber when
he considered the very different political commitments of the Alsatians and Baltic
Germans, who although ethnically and linguistically German, had neither strong
cultural nor political bonds with the German state.
Weber’s conception of the nation was essentially a political one, but mere
political unity in a common territorial state was not enough to constitute a nation.
86 STEVEN PFAFF
Rather, Weber believed that a fully realized nation had to be willing to project its
power. In a sense, political communities became nations when they projected
their power in the world. It was a failure of will, rather than their multiethnic
character, that led Weber to discount the nationhood of Belgium or Switzerland,
noting that ‘‘Time and again we find that the concept of ‘nation’ directs us to
political power’’ (Weber 1978, pp. 397–8). A country such as the United States
was no less a nation by virtue of its ethnic pluralism, so long as it achieved
political integration and had a collective will to greatness. At the same time,
however, Weber was dismissive of the ‘‘pathetic pride in the power of one’s own
community’’ evidenced by the Slavic minorities in the Habsburg Empire, largely
because they ignored practical political and economic considerations that favored
confederation in favor of cultural chauvinism and secessionist demands. In short,
Weber favored a nationalism in the service of strong, consolidated nation-states,
not one that would lead to a Babel of secessionist movements and ministates.
A socially unified nation-state of Germany’s size and prosperity, Weber
argued, had the ethical responsibility to project its power in Europe and the
world. Germany had to shoulder the double burden of being both a great cultural
and military power; a world-historical mission, Weber thought, that was to offer
continental leadership in the face of expanding Anglo-American and Russian
influence throughout the world. Germany, unlike its smaller and less prosperous
neighbors, ‘‘had the duty to be a Machtstaat (world power)’’ and stand in
opposition to ‘‘Anglo-Saxon convention and Russian bureaucracy’’ (Schluchter
1996, p. 14). The price of national failure, Weber believed, would be social
instability at home and exclusion from the global stage. A number of
sympathetic critics have suggested that Weber’s nationalism was intended to
lay the foundations for a democratic Germany (see, e.g., Breuer 1998; Eliaeson
1998; Breiner 1996; Bellamy 1992; Seidman 1983). It is true that Weber’s
analysis of nationalism is certainly not without progressive content. Weber
criticized the racist and essentialist nationalism so prominent in turn of the
century Europe and exposed its faulty interpretation of politics and culture.
Weber’s political conception of the nation remained liberal in that it would allow
for the integration of ethnic minorities and subordinated social classes into the
national community so long as they made the necessary political commitments
and conformed to national standards. Under the rubric of ‘‘social imperialism,’’
liberal nationalists like Weber hoped to enlist the working class in a national
project that would not only discourage militancy, but also provide better living
standards and welfare for workers.
Nonetheless, we should be wary of seeing in Weber’s nationalism an
opening to democratization. Certainly Weber hoped that the nation-state project
could provide political consensus and integration, but democracy itself was never
the intended goal, it was only a secondary effect of the process of nationalization.
As he repeatedly emphasized, national power was an end in itself that should not
be sacrificed for the sake of democracy. In his view the primary responsibility
for achieving national consensus and German greatness resided with political
leaders independent of the masses, not with popular mobilization or with an
active democracy.
Democracy. In Weber’s view, the drift towards bureaucratization of
government imperiled the vital political will he saw as a necessary foundation
of successful nationalism. Weber feared that rationalization was smothering
political agency, noting the paradox that in practice the ‘‘all powerful’’ legal–
administrative apparatus was actually radically constraining political choice in an
iron cage of instrumental rationality (Bendix 1945, 1962). Although modernity
offered the possibility of individuality and political autonomy as had no social
system before it, the key political question had become the direction of the
bureaucracy, which was the ‘‘really inescapable power,’’ in a bureaucratic state
and in a highly monopolistic economy (Weber 1978, p. 1403).
The bureaucratization of politics was nowhere more apparent than in the
mass electoral parties that had emerged with the enfranchisement of the lower
classes. Not only did this lead to the demise of the ‘‘politics of notables’’ that
had characterized high liberalism, but it created mass parties which were
directed by a ‘‘caste’’ of professional politicians. These ‘‘democratic’’ parties
were vehicles for the class interests of the electorate, had little commitment to
genuine political values, and lacked the vision to pursue the common national
interest. The mass party, which should be nothing more than ‘‘a means to an
end,’’ had become a self-interested machine controlled by party bosses and
demagogues who simply ‘‘lived off’’ politics. Rather than actually advancing
popular participation, modern democracy had succeeded only in ‘‘the division of
the citizens with the right to vote into politically active and politically passive
elements’’ (1946a, p. 99).4
Weber’s skepticism regarding democracy was influenced by the work of his
protégé Robert Michels (Mommsen 1981b). In his famous study Political Parties
(1911), Michels argued that the ‘‘iron law’’ of oligarchy, or democracy’s
‘‘inherent preference for the authoritarian solution of important questions’’
(Michels 1962, p. 342) inevitably separated the mass from the instruments of
power. Regardless of ideology, the modern party would tend towards an
oligarchic organization that would suppress substantive democracy. Michels
noted the paradox that ‘‘when democracies have reached certain stage of
development, they undergo a gradual transformation, adapting the aristocratic
spirit. . .against which at the outset they struggled so fiercely’’ (p. 371). Weber
echoed this claim, maintaining that participatory democracy was impossible in
large-scale political organizations and that every polity entailed domination by
some manner of political elite. Democratization could be seen as nothing more
88 STEVEN PFAFF
than the process by which states and institutions could be legitimated by

reference to the masses. Weber claimed,
Of course, one must always remember that the term ‘democratization’ can be misleading. The
demos itself, in the sense of a shapeless mass, never ‘governs’ large associations, but is rather
governed. What changes is only the way in which the executive leaders are selected. . .by means
of ‘public opinion’. ‘Democratization’, in the sense here intended, does not necessarily mean an
increasingly active share of the subjects in government. (1978, pp. 985–6)
Weber’s theory of democratization was primarily concerned with the problem of

legitimation, rather than with popular government per se. Save for in ‘‘aristocratic
republics,’’ Weber saw little actual role for the citizens of the state in government.
‘‘Democratic legitimacy’’ is thus little more than the ‘‘reference to the mass’’
(1978, p. 245ff.)— amounting only to a shift in elite strategies of domination.
Given the irrationality, emotionalism, and political myopia of the masses, Weber
ultimately concluded that Caesarist figures might provide effective political
direction in a democratic age.
Charisma. The problem of leadership in an age of bureaucratization and
‘‘democratization’’ was partially resolved in Weber’s thought by the introduction
of charisma. Weber employed the concept of charisma to describe the sense of
divine authority that made certain individuals (or institutions) appear
extraordinary, vital, and capable of generating emotional attachments in a
community of adherents.5 For the followers of the charismatic leader, the radical
power of charisma came from its ability to break through tradition and
emancipate individuals from the routine aspects of everyday life (Alltäglichkeit).
In Weber’s thought, charismatic leaders are endowed with ‘‘distinctive moral
fervor’’ that opposes conventional morality and rational calculation and shatters
habitual forms of social organization and economy (Eisenstadt 1995).
The conception of charisma as revolutionary force informed Weber’s
broader vision of history (Mommsen 1965). Indeed, Weber stressed that
charisma, rather than rationalization, is the truly revolutionary force in world
history: ‘‘‘reason’ works from without by altering the situation of life. . ..
Charisma, on the other hand, may effect a submissive or internal reorientation’’
(1978, p. 245). Although Weber’s analysis of capitalist society demonstrated that
the West had been dramatically transformed by rationalization, he emphasized
that truly creative historical moments are initiated by the charismatic revolution
‘‘from within’’ (Weber 1978, p. 114).
Though modernity undermined the sacred sources of charisma, its
unpredictable and universal qualities nevertheless made it a force prone to
sudden ‘‘eruptions’’ that could reverse historical inertia. Weber argued
‘‘Charismatic authority is specifically irrational in the sense of being foreign to
all rules. . .charismatic authority repudiates the past, and is in this sense a
specifically revolutionary force’’ (Weber 1978, p. 244). Still, Weber feared that in
an overly bureaucratized political system mass political parties would consolidate
their power so tightly that charisma itself might be extinguished. Fearing the
threat that true charismatic leadership posed to their interests, party functionaries
would attempt to ‘‘castrate’’ the rise of charisma in order to protect their own
interests (Beetham 1985, p. 231).
It is this line of Weber’s social theory that points again in the direction of
Caesarism. The best form of ‘‘democracy’’ in Weber’s view is a charismatic
regime that owed its legitimacy to popular acclamation but was able to employ
the party machine and the state bureaucracy as rational means to political ends.
In practice, effective government in this kind of democracy would preserve
formal democracy and individual rights while freeing the leadership from
everyday reliance on either the masses or the parties. Weber acknowledged this
when he endorsed modern government which ‘‘rests in general upon the
position of the ‘caesar’ as a free trustee of the masses’’ who can select officials
and policies ‘‘without regard to tradition or any other impediments’’ (1978,
p. 961). Of course, Weber also recognized the dangers of charismatic rule that
might lead to unrestrained abuses of authority, periodic crises, and the daunting
problem of succession. Parliament, the rule of law (Rechtstaat), and, at least,
‘‘formal democracy’’ thus remain essential in order to check the plebiscitary
leader and provide mechanisms of political selection. Consistent with this
perspective, Weber contended modern states could only be democratic to the
extent that they institutionalized charismatic selection and developed mechan-
isms to restrain its excesses.
The concept of charisma has important implications for Weber’s political
sociology. If creativity and freedom are vanishing in an increasingly rationalized
society, then one could only expect charisma to offer the only genuine political
challenge to the seemingly inevitable descent into the ‘‘iron cage.’’ Yet, since
charismatic authority is inevitably unstable, an enduring conflict will arise
between the authority of the charismatic leader and that of rational–legal
organizations. Weber’s theory predicts that the charismatic leader will replace
traditional or legal authority with his own, but also that this rule will in time be
routinized and reabsorbed into organizations.
Even the mass party, long after it has been reorganized as a professional
organization, can still reflect the original charismatic tendency. As Gramsci
observed, leading political figures are often deified, either before or after their
deaths, in order to provide an image of greatness from which the party can carry
on. Gramsci notes in his critique of Weber’s political sociology that charisma
gradually moves from being a means by which leaders are selected to the true end
of parties and political movements (Gramsci 1991). Attachment to the party’s
ideology or political program is by an emotional and sentimental attachment to
90 STEVEN PFAFF
the movement and its leader. As a result, rather than seeking a servant subordinate
to the party and people, the Weberian solution seeks out a leader who can become
the ‘‘infallible pope’’ of politics (1991, p. 320). While the reference point of
charismatic legitimacy is always unmediated popular appeals, it is not necessarily
based upon majoritarian rule, but rather on what Parsons evocatively terms the
‘‘sacred solution’’ offered by the charismatic figure (1949, p. 125).
Weber pinned his hopes for German political development on the emergence
of a political elite capable of overcoming class interests, particularism, and
bureaucratic domination. The priority of this new leadership would be a
nationalism directed at economic development and the social integration of the
nation-state. Despite his pessimistic appraisal of modern democracy, Weber
maintained that a gifted political leadership could transcend class interests and the
pressures of the mass party. As hopes for liberal reform in Germany were eroded,
however, Weber’s political thought increasingly relied on that most revolutionary
and creative social force, charisma. If Weber’s sociology was always, in part, a
diagnostic critique of modernity, in his directly political writings, to which I now
turn, Weber directly confronted the problem of democratization with specific
political remedies.
Weber, Germany, and the Crisis of Modern Transition
Beginning with his famous inaugural address at the University of
Freiburg in 1895, Weber began a career as a well-known political analyst and
critic (Mommsen 1984; Beetham 1985; Seidman 1983; Bellamy 1992; Dibble
1968). Much of his work was directed at what he saw as the mistaken path of
political development in Germany and the causes of the decline of liberalism.
In his political engagement, the logic of Weber’s political thought directly
confronted an eroding authoritarian system and the problems of democratic
transition and consolidation.
Weber’s critical diagnosis of German politics and political culture was
drawn largely from his analysis of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck’s (1815–1898)
‘‘caesarist’’ style of rule (see also Baehr 1988). Weber argued that Bismarck —the
vaunted ‘‘founder of the Empire’’ (Reichsschmiede) —had actually done more to
divide the nation than establish a consolidated, modern nation state. Bismarck’s
success in unifying Germany after the failure of the Frankfurt liberals in the
Revolution of 1848 had contributed to a belief in power as the driving force in
history and engendered a blind hero-worship in the German middle classes. His
strategy of ‘‘negative integration’’ had united the middle classes and the Prussian
aristocracy— groups Weber saw as properly having opposing interests — by
waging campaigns against various internal ‘‘enemies of the state’’ (Reichsfeinde).
But, as Weber noted, Bismarck’s antisocialist laws and his Kulturkampf against
the Catholics failed to eliminate these groups —indeed, by the start of the First
World War the Social Democrats had become the largest single party in
parliament — while compromising core liberal political values. Bismarck’s
authoritarian strategy may have succeeded in blunting the radical potential of
the workers through a combination of repression and welfare measures but also
left behind a politically divided polity dominated by obstructionist Socialist and
Catholic movements.
It was clear to Weber that negative integration and political unification from
above (by ‘‘blood and iron,’’ in Bismarck’s famous phrase) could not hope to
forge the social and emotional ties that unite a nation. It was this realization,
more than any other, which led Weber to the conclusion that the German
bourgeoisie had failed in its historic mission by ceding control to the monarchial
bureaucracy (Ehmke 1985). Germany’s Caesar had left behind a weak
parliament, an oversized and domineering Prussia, a stricken liberalism, and a
divided nation. Bismarck’s antiliberal legacy could also be detected in a number
of others ways. Not only was Bismarck behind the constitutional arrangement
that favored the monarchy over parliamentary democracy, but Bismarck’s
personal rule and Caesarist manipulations had also left the German political
classes immature.
The imperial government Bismarck created also relied on the direct rule of
the chancellor ensuring the ‘‘political impotence of parliament and of party
leaders,’’ rather than allowing parliament to become the ‘‘proving ground for
leaders’’ as would be the case in a parliamentary regime (1978, p. 1386). Fearing
threats to his own power and unwilling to compromise, Bismarck had left the
parties weak and even crippled some that were loyal to him and the new state.
Foremost among Bismarck’s political victims were the National Liberals,
Weber’s original political home.
Perhaps the most distorting effect on German political life was that
Bismarck’s continual plebiscitary appeals to the nation and the celebration of his
genius by the press and the literati had created a dangerous and naive ‘‘cult of
Bismarckism,’’ a cult which adored Bismarck not for his political realism or
brilliant diplomacy, but for ‘‘the admixture of violence and cunning, the seeming
or actual brutality of his political approach’’ (p. 1385).6 Weber thought that this
adulation encouraged irresponsible extremism and the dangerous desire for a new
Caesar once Bismarck was forced into retirement in 1891. Because, as Weber
noted, ‘‘at best, a genius appears once in several centuries’’ (p. 1387), the right’s
hope for a new Bismarck to rescue Germany from a generation of incompetent
political leadership was dangerously misplaced.
Weber’s criticism of Bismarck’s Caesarism is so devastating and his analysis
of the pathological consequences of charismatic rule so convincing that it makes
it all the more curious that Weber himself came to invoke a new Caesar during the
transition crisis of 1918–1920. By the time of the First World War, Weber and
92 STEVEN PFAFF
other liberal intellectuals had lost their political home as the German liberal
movement fragmented in the face of Social Democratic, Catholic, and extreme
right-wing parties (Sheehan 1978; Eley and Blackbourne 1984; Chickering
1984). Furthermore, Weber’s hopes for a broad left-liberal consensus had been
seriously undermined by Socialist radicalism, the continuing hostility of the
Protestant middle classes to the labor movement, and by Catholic political
autonomy. Still dominated by the image of Bismarck’s greatness, German
political culture was seriously underdeveloped and the middle classes continued
to long for a ‘‘new Caesar at any price’’ (Mommsen 1984, p. 37).
Still, Weber did not abandon his liberal confidence all at once. As the First
World War dragged on and hopes for a quick and glorious victory faded, both
Liberals and Social Democrats pressed for a negotiated settlement of the conflict
and called for a program of postwar political reconstruction and constitutional
reform (Peukert 1989). Weber’s own part in this movement was extensive,
reflected especially in a number of persuasive articles calling for Germany’s
democratization published in 1917 in the Frankfurter Zeitung.7 These essays
called for a more robust parliamentary democracy in postwar Germany, with
Weber contending that only parliamentary democracy could provide an antidote
to the Empire’s outdated authoritarianism.
Weber argued that parliament needed to have real power in creating policy
and should serve as an effective check on the abuse of executive power. At this
point, Weber believed that democratization could serve the national interest by
encouraging the development of a responsible leadership anchored in the
democratic institution of the mass parties. Given a share of power, party leaders
would be forced to abandon the narrow interests that had previously dominated
their politics and assume practical responsibility. The democratic legitimacy that
these popularly chosen leaders enjoyed could then be transferred to the regime
precisely at the moment when it was most required and the ideologically frozen
politics of ‘‘permanent opposition’’— itself another legacy of Bismarck in his
retirement years — might be overcome (Weber 1978, pp. 1451–2; also see
Frankel 1999).
Weber believed that a parliament properly empowered with responsibility
for national policies could duly check democratic excesses and invest the people
in the fate of the nation. With the Bolshevik Revolution underway in Russia,
Weber realized that the ‘‘confidence of the masses’’ was more essential than ever
for a successful national politics. In evaluating the success of Britain and the
United States, Weber had become convinced that Anglo-American power could
be attributed to the fact that an elected leader with his base in the masses was the
chief of state. Such a figure could ‘‘demand the parties’ unconditional obedience’’
so long as he enjoyed the confidence of the broader populace (Mommsen 1984,
p. 183). Weber had in mind ‘‘dictators of the election battlefield,’’ powerful
politicians such as William Gladstone, Theodore Roosevelt, and Lloyd George as

models for a new politician who enjoyed popular acclaim while defying the
vested interest of the party machines. In Germany, where monarchial leadership
and bureaucratic government had so clearly failed, Weber maintained that
representative democracy was the best way forward.
Weber’s call for parliamentary democracy had as its basic premise a German
victory, or at least a negotiated settlement to the war. But military collapse in the
West and worker’s and soldier’s uprisings in November 1918 ended this hope.
Defeat and the November Revolution shattered the monarchy and terrified the
middle classes. Ultimately, the November revolution with its negotiated transition
to parliamentary democracy ended up disappointing both the left and the right
(Peukert 1989). The left saw its hope of achieving socialism thwarted by the
victory of ‘‘bourgeois’’ democracy and by ‘‘reformist’’ Social Democratic leaders
who choose economic and institutional continuity over social revolution. The
right saw the traditional authority of the monarch and the authoritarian state
overturned and replaced by an unloved republic dominated by Liberals and
Socialists. Following the constitutional settlement in 1919, coup attempts and
armed uprisings from the right and from the left convinced many that civil war
was imminent. Counterrevolutionary, monarchist, and extreme nationalist militias
countered the threat from leftist radicals with their own rightist terror.
Perhaps most damaging for Germany’s democratization was that the strong
sense of German national identity that Weber and other intellectuals shared faced
a crisis in the face of defeat and revolution. Feeling robbed of national pride and
their collective honor, the nationalist middle classes reacted to the disaster with
anger, shame, and resentment (Elias 1996; Scheff 1994). Although a
parliamentary republic was now in power, in the eyes of many Germans this
only proved that democracy was responsible for Germany’s misfortunes and
diminished status. In his study of German liberalism, James Sheehan argues that
defeat in World War I dealt a virtual death blow to democratic liberalism:
‘‘military defeat brought national humiliation and called into question the very
existence of the nation which many in the middle strata saw as the ultimate
political value and the last hope for political cohesion’’ (1978, p. 279). As Elias
(1996) points out, it was now the former ‘‘outsiders’’ in German society,
particularly Social Democrats and Jews, who came to power and could be blamed
for the defeat as ‘‘November criminals’’ bent on betraying the nation. The fact
that a coalition of democrats and socialists presided over the ‘‘shameful’’
Versailles treaty proved fertile ground for the right’s ‘‘stab in the back’’ legend
that the army had never truly been defeated.
In the few years remaining to him after the end of the First World War,
Weber moved from advocating democratization and parliamentary rule to calling
for a more authoritarian system in which strong leaders would dominate political
94 STEVEN PFAFF
life and restrain democratic participation. In light of his political ethics and
nationalist commitments, in some ways it does not seem surprising that Weber
looked to charisma as a force capable of reversing German decline after 1918.
But as a consequence, he ended up weakening his own call for democratization.
Weber had always despised the ‘‘democracy of the streets’’ that now seemed to
reign in the aftermath of defeat. In the aftermath of the war Weber is reported to
have explained to General Erich Ludendorff, former chief of the German General
Staff, in 1918 that ‘‘In a democracy the people choose a leader in whom they
trust. Then the chosen leader says ‘Now shut up and obey me’. People and party
are then no longer free to interfere in his business’’ (quoted in Gerth and Mills
1946, p. 42). It is true that he declared himself a supporter of the new Republic,
but this was primarily because he saw no workable alternative at hand.8 In
general, he was dismayed by what he regarded as the ‘‘swinish condition’’ of
democracy and viscerally rejected the terms of the Versailles treaty that was the
foundation of the postwar settlement.
Distancing himself from substantive democratization, Weber began to
advocate for ‘‘plebiscitarian leader democracy’’ that he defined as the leadership
by great men above parliament. It is ironic that Weber’s new formulation looked
remarkably like the Caesarism that he had so effectively criticized in the rule of
Bismarck. Weber now argued, ‘‘True democracy means not a helpless surrender
to cliques, but submission to a leader whom they [the masses] have elected
themselves’’ (quoted in Beetham 1985, p. 236).9 This leader would have the
capacity to direct the electorate according to his grander vision without the
‘‘interference’’ of parties (Mommsen 1984, p. 187). Parliament remained in
Weber’s reformulated plebiscitarian democracy, but without the former emphasis
on parliamentary leadership. Democracy would now be limited to suffrage rights
lacking a substantive democratic character.
In Weber’s famous address on ‘‘Politics as a Vocation,’’ delivered in 1918,
Weber argued that Germany faced ‘‘the choice between leadership democracy
with a ‘machine’ and leaderless democracy, namely the rule of professional
politicians without a calling, without the inner charismatic qualities that make a
leader, and in ‘rule of the clique’’’ (1946a, p. 113). According to Weber,
parliamentary democracy was little more than ‘‘horse-trading’’ for offices by
party leaders and interest groups. Reversing his earlier position, Weber now
claimed that only plebiscitary leadership independent of the parties had the hope
of selecting gifted individuals. And while parliament would have to remain in
place if civil liberties were to be secured and the excesses of charisma
restrained, the plebiscitary leader had to have the power to act independently
of it.
By 1919 Weber was clear that the direction of the nation should reside with
charismatically selected leaders, not parliamentary cliques. The elaboration of
Weber’s theory of plebiscitarian leadership came largely in the context of the

formation of the Weimar Constitution (ratified July 31, 1919) for which he served
on the parliamentary advisory committee that proposed a draft constitution. In the
debates surrounding the drafting of the Weimar constitution in 1919, Weber
advocated a model that combined parliamentary government with a directly
elected federal president as a plebiscitary counterweight to the rule by parties
(Weber 1994c).10 Under this formula, the new government should have a strong
executive —in effect an elected monarch —with a long term of office and wide
autonomy from parliament. This president would also have emergency powers to
rule by decree during constitutional crisis. Weber’s central argument in favor of a
presidential system was that it would create a strong state ‘‘resting
unquestionably on the will of the people.’’ He contrasted a president with the
power to dissolve the parliament and appeal directly to the nation with the
‘‘impotent self-abandonment to cliques’’ that characterized liberal pluralism.
Certainly, Weber still favored retaining constitutional government, but parlia-
ment’s role was effectively reduced to that of restraining the excesses of the
plebiscitarian leader and guaranteeing the rule of law.
Weber did not seem to worry overmuch what the consequences might be
of a popularly elected president who was actively hostile to constitutional rule
or to parliamentary democracy. For Weber it was not Germany’s democratic
deficits that needed to be compensated, but its radical democratic tendencies.
This position should not surprise us. Weber was always careful to avoid any
commitment to democracy as a political ethic. As he made clear in an article
from 1917, ‘‘Democracy is never an end in itself for the undersigned. The
possibility of a practical national policy of a strong, outwardly unified Germany
is all that interests and has interested him’’ (quoted in Mommsen 1981a, p. 37).
Indeed, after the war Weber increasingly yielded to his nationalistic sentiments
over his more liberal concepts (Pearson 1996). And Weber made it clear that he
was willing to embrace radical means to restore German power. Echoing
German right-wing nationalists, Weber wrote in late 1918 ‘‘We can have only
one common goal: To turn the Versailles treaty into a scrap of paper. At the
moment this is not possible, but the right of rebellion versus foreign domination
cannot be foresworn’’ (1978, p. ci). If we remember Weber’s concept of the
nation, it is not surprising that Weber wanted to nullify Versailles and restore
German world power since a ‘‘neutralized’’ Germany ceased to be a fully
realized national state. If Germany had ‘‘forsaken power’’ then it could be no
more than a nation in the most minimal sense; a failure, in effect, as Weber had
argued in the case of Belgium and Switzerland.
Weber’s sense of personal and national humiliation moved him close to the
Caesarism that he had so thoroughly condemned in his treatment of Bismarck.
However, with his confidence in political institutions undermined by the war
96 STEVEN PFAFF
and the revolution, Weber now saw hope for the nation in the transcendent
power of charisma realized in the person of the Caesarist leader. Weber’s
nationalism was never solely a means to construct the preconditions for
democracy, but rather a transcendental ethical commitment that had to be
served before other more mundane ends. In tying his own self-understanding to
national honor, Weber was not dissimilar from other members of the educated
classes. Unlike Weber, however, the German middle classes proved far less
critical in their understanding of nationalism and charisma than he had been.
Germany’s tortured liberalism, never fully abandoned by Weber, eventually
gave way after his death to a revolutionary charismatic movement that
promised a transcendent national community — Volksgemeinschaft — and great
power imperialism. As Weber had predicted, the desire for a new Caesar proved
overwhelming, only this time the modern Caesar proved a tyrant capable of
undermining every aspect of the liberal order.
Resorting to Caesar: Political Transition and the Problem of Charisma
One of the most troubling aspects of post-Communist transitions has been
the prominence of plebiscitarian leaders and of intellectuals in the mobilization of
ethno-nationalist movements. Weber’s political thought and his own confronta-
tion with the difficulties of democratic transition provide a useful set of concepts
by which the elite embrace of nationalism and plebiscitarian legitimation can be
analyzed. In the aftermath of the First World War and the collapse of the
Hohenzollern monarchy, Germany had to contend with a host of problems: the
democratization of a country with an authoritarian political tradition, economic
stabilization, a sense of defeat and national humiliation, and the problem of
external German minorities left in neighboring states. There are remarkable
parallels to the situation 70 years later in the post-Communist nations of Eastern
Europe and the former Soviet Union. Indeed, Rogers Brubaker has even
suggested an analogy between the Weimar Republic and a post-Communist
‘‘Weimar Russia’’ (Brubaker 1996).
Eastern Europe, like Germany after the First World War, entered a phase of
political transition from authoritarian rule not because of the strength of
democratic movements, parties, or sentiments, but because of the collapse of the
old order under the weight of political or military crisis and the pressure of
broadly based, diffuse protest movement (Pakulski 1993). Liberal democratic
forces were small or marginal, while many supporters of the old regime remained
hostile to democracy. Rather than the transition being experienced as a triumph,
for many social groups democratization meant humiliation alongside social,
economic, and political chaos.
For many intellectuals after 1989 liberalism, market reforms and multiparty
cooperation seemed poorly suited to the enormity of the problems unleashed by
the fall of the old order and the transition to a new. In many cases, populist,
nationalist, and authoritarian solutions to the problems of transition were
appealing when compared with the compromises, inequalities, and self-interested
bargaining that characterizes democratic government. In the Balkans and in a
number of post-Soviet states where popular mobilization in support of democracy
was often weak, there was a tendency towards mass populist appeals by
representatives of old regime recast as national saviors. As the post-Communist
transition was worsened by economic collapse, civil violence, and secession
many intellectuals came to accept the flawed and dangerous notion that
democracy could ultimately be saved only through the resort to dictatorship and
exclusive, ethno-national definitions of citizenship rights.
Perhaps one of the most dramatic instances of the combination of
charismatic leadership and nationalist mobilization in the post-Communist
transition is the regime of Slobodan Milošević in the former Yugoslavia. Relying
on direct appeals to the masses in the context of a widening economic crisis, the
decay of Yugoslav institutions, and the eroding capacities of the Communist
party, the party apparatchik Milošević initiated a mass movement around himself
as the ‘‘defender’’ of the Serbs against foreign and domestic enemies. He
promised the crowds that ‘‘No one should dare to beat you’’ and pledged to lead
an ‘‘anti-bureaucratic revolution’’ that would sweep out the old Titoist elites and
restore Serbian power. In this, Milošević enjoyed the wide support of the Serbian
intelligentsia including many of the leading intellectuals (Markotich 1994;
Denitch 1996). Organizing mass gatherings and rallies at which celebration of the
‘‘martyred’’ Serbs unleashed both emotional catharsis and nationalist euphoria,
Milošević and his supporters effectively seized power in the name of a nationalist
crusade by attacking political opponents, undermining the autonomy of the
parliament, overturning the rule of law, and encouraging civil conflict and
secession in the various Serbian populations of the other Yugoslav republics.
Long after the mass appeal of Milošević subsided in the wake of military
defeat, political isolation, and economic collapse, his regime remained in place.
Despite widespread opposition, Milošević and his allies easily retained power and
even won parliamentary elections tilted to their advantage. Serbian intellectuals
variously explained the regime as a ‘‘half-legitimate’’ dictatorship or a
‘‘demokratura’’— a new fusion of dictatorship and democracy. Although there
was a measure of pluralism —with the opposition even running some local
governments — Milošević and his allies retained control of the secret police, the
army, the mass media, major business interests, and all of the important
government ministries. Of the protection of human rights or constitutional norms
in Milošević’s Serbia or its satellites there could be no serious discussion. Despite
a series of military and political defeats, worsening economic chaos, and the
emergence of a broad, if poorly integrated opposition, Milošević’s regime was
98 STEVEN PFAFF
only overthrown when he misjudged his popular support and permitted elections
in which moderate nationalists could oppose him.11
How do we account for political developments of this kind? Although
Weber argued that charisma was an unpredictable force that could emerge under
any conditions, he repeatedly emphasized that it was most likely to emerge in
‘‘moments of distress.’’ Indeed, as Edward Shils has noted, charismatic appeals
are best heard when crises reveal ‘‘the inadequacy of the inherited and prevailing
institutional systems and discredit the elites which have hitherto dominated
them’’ (1982, p. 116). In these crises charismatic leadership addresses
‘‘extraordinary human needs,’’ particularly the problem of meaning, that existing
institutions and culture fail to satisfy. Charismatic leaders provide the image of
‘‘excellence’’ that can make faith and community possible in the face of daunting
political challenges. This quality is clearly vague, but that is actually its virtue. In
place of a concrete political program or deliberation the charismatic offers
psychological and emotional relief (Camic 1980).
Of course, Germany’s postwar political culture was well suited to the
‘‘charismatic eruptions’’ Weber had predicted. Rainer Lepsius notes, ‘‘after the
defeat in the First World War. . .distrust in the new constitution, parliamentarism,
party government, and interest-group politics, which were all denounced as un-
German, inefficient and not serving the common good of the German people. The
war experience also contributed to the growing propensity to surrender to heroic
genius’’ (1986, p. 83). This fusion of nationalism and faith in extraordinary
leaders led many, including Weber, to postpone or abandon substantive advances
towards democratization in favor of national resurgence.
Weber expected bureaucratic organizations, particularly mass parties, to be
able to restrain charisma and routinize the exercise of charismatic leadership.
Even though true charismatic leadership seems to frustrate routine, over time, the
behavior of the leader himself can become the basis for a new set of rules and
institutional arrangements. Under the pressure of economic and administrative
needs what started as a revolutionary disruption of the formal and routine is in
time routinized and regulated. However, as Lepsius (1986) rightly contends, the
logical implication of Weber’s theory of charismatic leadership is that it only
functions where the ultimate values that it invokes can be translated into ultimate
power. This implies an enormous capacity to discard bureaucratic rules and
rationality along with moral and ethical limits in the name of an unrestricted
adherence to the leader’s will (Gerth 1940).
Although he was generally vague concerning the preconditions, causes, and
consequences of charisma, Weber made clear that charisma should be understood
in social–psychological terms (Camic 1980; Sica 1988; Brubaker 1984). In
unraveling the concept in light of Weber’s political engagement and subsequent
political history, the basic similarities between the nature of the nationalist and
charismatic appeals become clearer. Indeed, despite the many differences, there
are remarkable parallels between Germany after 1918 and much of Eastern
Europe after 1989. Both situations favored the embrace of nationalist appeals and
charismatic solutions in the midst of political crisis that destroyed the legitimacy
of the old regime. Where previously authoritarian regimes have been defeated or
discredited and intellectuals feel a keen sense of shame or resentment at outside
forces for the reverses suffered by the nation, the possibility of liberal transition
are seriously compromised.
It is not only in Eastern Europe or the Balkans that a ‘‘charismatic
solution’’ to the problem of political transition and democratization in a newly
liberated or emerging nation has arisen. As a strategy of political transformation
in moments of crisis, twentieth-century history suggests that charismatic
leadership has proven an attractive, if perilous, route especially when linked to
an utopian ideology or resentful nationalism (Chirot 1994). As much as they
have held aloft the promise of freedom, independence, and constitutional
democracy, charismatic leaders have rarely allowed themselves to be restrained
by constitutional law or a parliamentary opposition. Nor does one have to look
to the exceptional nightmare of Hitler and his ‘‘National Socialist revolution’’ to
emphasize this point. For the contribution of every charismatic such as Havel or
Walensa in the transition to democracy (Tiryakian 1995), we can find many
more postcolonial (Ake 1966) or post-Communist (Banac 1992; Pusic 1994;
Pakulski 1995) dictators who legitimate their rule in plebiscitarian and
nationalist terms.
Applying Weber’s theory in an analysis of the political career of Juan Perón,
Douglas Madsen and Peter Snow (1991) rightly contend that it is the contexts in
which charisma arises, rather than the idiosyncratic content of the charismatic
appeal, that is most useful in comparative political sociology. In other words, ‘‘to
grasp charismatic faith, we must study the faithful’’ (Smith 1998, p. 53).
Charisma is best understood as a relational concept that has its pronounced appeal
in the context of political crisis and institutional decay. As Madsen and Snow
have noted of the crises that give rise of charismatic leadership,
The collapse of a great social enterprise, such as a polity or economy, brings with it for many
(but not all) of those involved a collapse of their own personal worlds. Expectations are dashed
and hopes are ruined. Fundamental assumptions are undermined. Social arrangements and
economic structures disintegrate. Often ‘‘understanding’’ is lost and, with it, the sense of being
able to cope. In many areas where self-efficacy seemed strongest and most justified, one’s
efforts to deal with crucial problems repeatedly fail. (1991, p. 12)
It is not a single defeat or disappointment that leads people to resort to a Caesar,

but rather repeated failures, a sense of general collapse, the belief that the existing
institutions can no longer carry on.
100 STEVEN PFAFF
The result is what Madsen and Snow term the ‘‘collapse of perceived
efficacy’’ (1991, p. 13). In the context of such a catastrophe, individuals
experience a psychological crisis, a sense that their own efficacy and that of
others around them has been neutered. The appeal of the charismatic is that he (or
she) demands the transfer of agency from the dispirited and defeated members of
society to himself, a super-actor capable of reversing their fortunes. The
charismatic leader acts in the name of the group that believes that he knows them
personally, will act on their behalf, and whose interests are identical to their own.
The charismatic solution is based on a basic paradox: ‘‘only by yielding personal
control is a sense of control retained; only by accepting the leader’s
‘understanding’ of events is a sense of personal understanding restored’’
(Madsen and Snow 1991, p. 15).
In light of the unraveling of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in nationalist
populism and ethnic violence, one could argue that Weber’s insistence on a strong
state shielded from democratic passions appears well justified. Yet, it seems more
plausible— as Weber himself had argued in the case of Germany during World
War I— that democratization prior to regime collapse might have helped to
maintain these unions in a more pluralistic form or at least make a peaceful
dissolution possible. As Pakulski observes of post-Communist Eastern Europe, in
practice plebiscitary government usually means ‘‘weak parliaments, paralysed
administration and the unchecked power of leaders’’ while it ‘‘hinders rational
deliberation, increases the likelihood of incompetent political choices and
weakens the safeguards for civil rights and liberties’’ (1995, p. 420).
For Weber, plebiscitary leadership within the formal structure of
constitutional rule is an intermediate form between charismatic domination
and rational–legal domination. Pakulski (1995) argues that it is a ‘‘transitional
type’’ of regime. Weber expected that plebiscitarian regimes would be a way
station in the process of the gradual routinization of rational–legal domination.
However, rather than increasing the pace of democratization, in practice
plebiscitary leadership usually restrains it. Although some charismatic leaders
willingly transform themselves into statesmen and party politicians, many more
will resist processes of routinization and pluralization. As Weber himself
pointed out, it is in the nature of charisma that those whose authority stems
from it will generally refuse to conform to rational–legal restraints. They fear
the possibility of replacement and irrelevance, and are resistant to compromise,
especially in those areas of ultimate values that they are said to embody or
represent. As Daniel Chirot has observed of such regimes, ‘‘if ‘democracy’ is
taken to mean mass support for decisions taken by an elite on behalf of the
‘nation’, instead of a means by which individuals can defend themselves
against the power of government, then the prospects of avoiding tyranny dim
further’’ (Chirot 1994, p. 50).
Summarizing these comparative reflections permits us to draw some simple

propositions concerning the causes and consequences of plebiscitarian leadership
in regime transitions that can be further elaborated in comparative and historical
analysis. Weberian political thought and historical comparison suggest that
plebiscitarian leadership will emerge during processes of regime transition where
liberal forces are weak or factionalized, processes of democratization prior to
regime collapse were blocked or incomplete, intellectuals and political elites
perceive internal or external threats to national interests, there is broad but
diffuse popular pressure for change, and where perceived political efficacy has
declined in the face of the erosion or collapse of economic and political
institutions. The likely consequences of plebiscitarian transitions will be weak
guarantees of civil and political rights, expanding executive power at the expense
of parliamentary democracy, the continuing fragmentation of democratic and
liberal forces, and ongoing social and political instability and frequent episodes
of collective violence and civil unrest. In a future analysis, these propositions
will be more systematically evaluated through a detailed examination of various
cases of regime transition in light of Weberian concepts (see, e.g., Linz and
Stepan 1996).
Conclusion
Like many of those faced with the post-Communist crisis, Weber and other
German intellectuals advocated one or another authoritarian, nationalist route to
political reconstruction after the First World War. This route was especially
appealing to those who had invested the greatest status commitments to the ideal
of the nation and consequently harbored deep feelings of humiliation and
resentment against those foreign and domestic enemies held responsible for its
shameful circumstances. Under this set of conditions, charismatic nationalists
have proven remarkably adept at rallying intellectuals to their side and
convincing broad sections of the populace that they are their salvation. The
situation was not entirely different after 1989 or in a number of other settings in
which disappointed intellectuals and resentful nationalists advocated plebiscitar-
ian solutions to the problems of political transition.
Weber’s theories of nationalism, charisma, and democratization and the
conflicts that inspired them are remarkably relevant today in understanding post-
Communist regimes like Milošević’s. Like many contemporary theorists, Weber
rejected the claim that nations were natural, primordial, or fixed, seeing
nationalism as essentially political and discursive in origins (see, e.g., Calhoun
1997; Gellner 1983; Hobsbawm 1990; Anderson 1983). In emphasizing that the
nation was a political community that was not based exclusively on ethnic or
cultural likeness, Weber stood in sharp opposition to older notions of the nation
as a unified cultural entity and the new racist, völkisch nationalism that was
102 STEVEN PFAFF
already gaining ground in fin-de-siècle Germany. In his own day, Weber’s

nationalism was equally opposed to both romantic conceptions of the Volksgeist
and the racial reductionism of the far right. Weber’s work can be put to similar
use in understanding contemporary ethno-nationalist mobilizations and in
evaluating racial and nationalist myth-making.
As much as Weber’s thought reflects a confrontation with German history,
key concepts that emerge from it are of continuing relevance for political
sociology, particularly as it grapples with problems raised by contemporary
political transitions and nationalist movements. Weber developed a political
sociology that theorized the issues of nationalism, charisma, and democracy
raised by plebiscitarian rule. But Weber was also among those Germans who
embraced —at least partially —a charismatic, nationalist solution during the crisis
of democratic transition during the Weimar Republic. Weber reached an analysis
of democratization that, misguided by an explicit elitism and by his faith in
nonrational, unpredictable factors in political life, was overly pessimistic.
Weber’s authoritarian version of liberalism ultimately relied on the figure of a
strong, nationalist plebiscitarian ruler who could rule in the name of the masses
while preventing their substantive participation. The problem is not only that
Weber lacked an ethical commitment to democracy, but that he came to advocate
charismatic forms of legitimation to overcome conflicts he saw as inherent in
modern political society.
The most likely result of plebiscitarian leadership may be ‘‘dictatorships
with democratic legitimacy’’ (Pusic 1994). In such regimes, plebiscitary elections
of national leaders are the only permissible moment of citizen participation in
government and the substantive participation in government by ordinary people is
excluded. Given the tendency to deny citizens a say in the day-to-day affairs of
government, practical guarantees of civil or constitutional rights, a way of
enforcing the division of powers, and establishing a state bureaucracy
independent of popular influence, then there is little chance that plebiscitarian
leaders will establish a solid foundation for liberal transition. In practice Weber’s
vision of an authoritarian liberalism anchored by charismatic leadership will most
likely obstruct democratization and have damaging consequences in the long
term. However fraught the liberal path to democracy, the charismatic-national
route seems to provide no reliable alternative.
ENDNOTES
1
I would like to thank Wolf Heydebrand, Edgar Kiser, Matthew Titolo, Richard E. Frankel, and
two anonymous reviewers at Sociological Inquiry for comments and criticism on various drafts of
this paper.
2
Debates concerning Weber’s political thought remain very current in sociological theory.
Weber’s legacy as a political thinker, for example, was an important theme of debate at the 1997
‘‘Theory as a Vocation’’ panel sponsored by the Theory Section of the American Sociological
Association at the annual conference in Toronto. In discussing the theme Frederic Vandenberghe
raised important questions concerning the impact of Weber’s philosophy of science on his
political theory. Vandenberghe suggested that Weber’s positions anticipated the radical
decisionism of Weimar-era political theorists (such as Carl Schmitt). The resulting discussion
was carried over into newsletter of the ASA Theory Section. The debate is linked to growing
interest in the work of Weber’s contemporary Carl Schmitt. A national-conservative jurist and
legal scholar has linked many of the same themes found in Weber’s thought to Schmitt’s
authoritarianism and eventual fascist turn (Cristi 1998; Habermas 1997; Bendersky 1983;
Gottfried 1990; also Schmitt 1976).
3
For a fuller account of the course of German nationalism and the effects of statism and
resentment upon its development see, among others, Schultze (1990), Greenfeld (1992), Alter (1989),
and Kohn (1955).
4
Weber described political ethics as ‘‘responsibility in the face of history.’’ This meant in
practice that the individual had to choose a political commitment and pursue the ends appropriate
to its realization in a responsible and achievable manner. This Weber dubbed a ‘‘politics of
responsibility’’ which he contrasted with the ‘‘politics of conviction’’; an irresponsible politics of
ultimate ends (as Weber saw chiefly on the left), and with the unethical glorification of power and
violence he saw in the German right’s fascination with Realpolitik (Weber 1946b; Schluchter
1996).
5
As Weber explained, ‘‘The term charisma will be applied to a certain quality of an
individual personality by virtue of which he is considered extraordinary and treated as if he were
endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or
qualities. . .and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader’’ (1978, p.
241). As David Norman Smith (1998) notes, this charismatic authority was for Weber a social
force bestowed on the prophet by the believers.
6
This cult included, among other things, an adoring corps of admirers in the nationalist
press, pilgrimages to visit Bismarck in his retirement and memorial services after his death, the
erection of hundreds of Bismarck towers and memorials throughout Germany, and continual
reference to the ‘‘Iron Chancellor’’ in rightist political rhetoric. I am grateful to Richard Frankel
for bringing the full details of this cult to my attention. See his dissertation ‘‘Bismarck’s Shadow:
The Iron Chancellor and the Crisis of German Leadership, 1898–1945,’’ Department of History,
University of North Carolina, 1999.
7
These are collected as ‘‘Society and Democracy in a Reconstructed Germany’’ (Weber 1978,
pp. 1381–469), also as ‘‘Parliament and Government in Germany under a New Political Order’’
(see Weber 1994b).
8
This put Weber in the company of the so-called ‘‘republicans by reason’’
(Vernunftrepublikaner) who were ambivalent towards democracy but saw no alternative in the
wake of German defeat and Allied demands. Of course, this did not preclude subsequent
acceptance of the new democracy, as was the case with the conservative nationalist Gustav
Stressemann, who went from being an early monarchist to a tireless defender of the new regime
once they came to office in the Weimar Republic (Peukert 1989). In this, Stressemann could be
understood in terms of Weber’s ‘‘politics of responsibility.’’
9
Weber’s basic misgivings were probably deepened by personal resentment after the
leadership of the Democratic Party (DDP) forced him off of the parliamentary election ticket
in late 1918 in spite of what Weber saw as his popularity with the electorate (Beetham 1985,
pp. 23–5).
104 STEVEN PFAFF
10
Although Weber did not serve directly on the constitutional committee, he did serve as an
advisor. Many on the committee shared Weber’s distrust of radical democracy. The constitution that
eventually emerged through a process of significant compromise and concession granted the Reich
president a 7-year term of office, direct election, independence from the Chancellor, and extraordinary
emergency powers, including Article 48, which granted the Reich President the power to rule by
decree and cancel civil liberties during times of emergency. See Weber (1994c) and Baehr (1989).
11
On the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the rise of Miloševic, see among others Judah (1997),
Banac (1992), Denitch (1994), Glenny (1994), Ash (1997), and Pakulski (1995). A parallel case can
be seen in the regime of the late Franjo Tudjman in Croatia, see Tanner (1997).
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Nationalism, Charisma, and Plebiscitary Leadership:

The Problem of Democratization in Max Weber’s

Steven Pfaff, University of Washington

Sociological Inquiry, Vol. 72, No. 1, Winter 2002, 81–107

of a more general dilemma in modern politics? Does Weber’s turn reflect

that as much as it anticipates the central dilemma of charismatic solutions to

Nationalism thus contained a radical, even revolutionary moment in its demands

than the process by which states and institutions could be legitimated by

Weber’s theory of democratization was primarily concerned with the problem of

politicians such as William Gladstone, Theodore Roosevelt, and Lloyd George as

Weber’s theory of plebiscitarian leadership came largely in the context of the

It is not a single defeat or disappointment that leads people to resort to a Caesar,

Summarizing these comparative reflections permits us to draw some simple

already gaining ground in fin-de-siècle Germany. In his own day, Weber’s

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