Charismatic Bond : Political Behavior in Time of Crisis [Paperback]

Here is a book that takes up where Max Weber left off in his study of charisma and extends the theory with insights from other disciplines and new empirical data. Douglas Madsen and Peter Snow demonstrate that magnetic personalities must have willing followers, finding support for their argument in the rise of Juan Per?n and the Peronistas in Argentina.In their study of the evolution, institutionalization, and eventual fragmentation of Peronism in Argentina, Madsen and Snow focus scholarly attention on precisely the issues that most interested Weber himself& This compact and cogent book manages to clarify many points in Webers original treatment, and makes a compelling argument about the nature and development of Peronism.An excellent small volume that can be read with profit by many social scientists and historians who are making similar kinds of scholarly inquiry& The book is lucidly written, innovative and astute.A pleasure to read& This is by all odds the best theoretical treatment of charisma I have read since reading, forty years or so ago, Max Webers famous treatment of the topic& It is urbane, sophisticated, clearly written, and, above all, a true extension of Webers original conception of the charismatic phenomenon. The authors have a firm grip on the relevant literature without making this a dull literature review. Rather, they use the literature to develop their own (and, I think, proper) conception. But this is not all of it: they draw, with imagination, on a related research literature to bolster the original Weberian treatment.An excellent job& It lays out an important theoretical argument about the nature of charismathat it depends on the proper environmental situation (in this case, the after-effects of a severe economic crisis), as well as, presumably, the personal leadership characteristics that are more usually the focal point of analyses of charisma& It is methodologically sophisticated. It is a brief book that makes a nice argument, wellS'