The routinization of charisma

It was the famous German sociologist Max Weber who gave political literature the typology of charisma as a form of leadership. In his works Weber went to considerable lengths to explain that the charismatic form of leadership is a typology belonging more to the past than to the present. His aim is to reveal the effect of rationalisation in modern life on the political sphere.

With this he tries to explain that whereas in pre-modern periods the typical form of authority was traditional or charismatic, in the modern period it has been replaced by written, rational rules, that is, “legal” authority. That is why the discussion of charismatic authority is also one resorted to in order to explain that charisma now belongs to the past.

Yet the time that has passed in modern life since Weber has shown that charismatic authority has not entirely remained, and cannot remain, in the past. At least alongside legal authority, as an interesting way of ensuring the validity and effectiveness of the law, as the spirit and excitement of a kind of legal authority or political effectiveness, charisma has been rediscovered.

That not only politics but in fact all organisational structures need this element to some degree must be one of the most important discoveries of the sociology of politics and organisation of the post-Fordist era. However rational it may be, an organisational structure that gives no place to any leadership element or institutional identity and excitement, to “asabiyya” in Ibn Khaldun’s term, and that relies only on its own written rules or its management hierarchy and bureaucracy, is the typical organisational structure of modern times, but it is also the structure that produces the most cumbersome bureaucratic structures. The heavy price that modern bureaucracy, which tries to bury alive the charisma contained in the leadership that excites organisations and motivates them, has made humanity pay is beyond reckoning.

It is evident that the AKP’s success as a party rests largely on its leader’s charisma. But in fact charisma is not a trait peculiar to a single leader, and the charismatic energy that emerged in the conditions that gave rise to the AKP does not belong solely to Erdoğan’s person either. The total of the charisma in question was expressed by a mind and an emotional concentration produced by the conditions of the severe crisis that the country has been passing through in this period, which found its field of attraction in the AKP project together with Erdoğan and his team. Charisma is therefore not a formula that begins and ends with Erdoğan’s person, but the total energy of a movement in which Erdoğan has distinguished himself as leader.

Like all energies, charisma is not an inexhaustible source of energy. In the contemporary political environment, charisma’s most important source of nourishment is success and consistency, but beyond these, a passion of belief that inspires respect for its ideals. As the AKP and Erdoğan succeeded, their charisma increased further. Their way of coping with crises increased this charisma still more.

However, Weber’s discussion of charisma has another subsection, which he calls “the routinisation of charisma,” and this shows itself in charisma reaching the limit of its capacity to transmit the same passion and excitement after it has attracted the masses in particular and undergone a relative institutionalisation. Those who were more idealistic and self-sacrificing at the beginning fall more into the concern of settling in and sharing at the stage of routinisation of charisma. Gradually, the charisma that brings the movement or leader into being turns, for some, into merely fields of opportunity to feed off that movement.

What happened in the latest elections shows that the AKP has entered a tendency to be caught up in this process called the routinisation of charisma. Erdoğan continues to preserve his charismatic quality, but the organic relationship with the people of a significant part of the party organisations and members of parliament has diminished greatly. One of the features that made the AKP most distinctive in our political history was its “organic relationship and channels of communication” with the people. In many places these channels between party organisations and the people have begun to take on a surprisingly inorganic state. For many, the party being a movement with idealistic missions such as democratisation, liberalisation, improving human rights, and international prestige and opening up in Turkey may have no meaning at all. For these people, the charisma of both the party and Erdoğan consists rather of a power opportunity applied and distributed in a clientelist manner.

In many places the organisations loaded their election work entirely onto Erdoğan’s personal charisma or the charisma of success that the AKP has accumulated through its work up to now, and themselves made no contribution beyond squandering the fruits of this charisma or fighting over shares.

A paradoxical aspect of the latest election process has emerged for the AKP and Erdoğan. Erdoğan, who until now has always been criticised for acting like a “one-man” in the party leadership, recorded failure in most of the places where he shared his authority in candidate selection in these elections, particularly with organisations or members of parliament, and on the contrary success was recorded in the places where he insisted on again acting like a one-man. This is truly a result like an exam, from which bad lessons are likely to be drawn. We hope that Erdoğan will not draw a lesson from this result in the direction of becoming still more authoritarian.

Sociologically, the routinisation of charisma is a turning point that cannot be entirely avoided but that, if desired and if correct and early measures are taken, can be delayed considerably.