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Charismatic Legitimation and Political Integration*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Claude Ake
Claude Ake
Affiliation:
New York City
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Extract

The search for a conceptual framework for interpreting the political evolution of the new states has led to a renewal of interest in charisma. Some writers, such as Shils, have used the concept of charisma to explain the problem of political integration; others, such as Wallerstein and Apter, have used it to indicate how political integration may be furthered. The use of charisma as a conceptual tool for illuminating the problem of political integration is taking on the character of a theory, which we call the theory of charismatic legitimation. This paper attempts an evaluation of this theory. Charismatic legitimation is the process of creating loyalty for the new state through the personal influence of the charismatic leader. This crude definition could bear further clarification. But we shall seek clarification by examining the theory of charismatic legitimation rather than by framing more abstract definitions.

Type
Charisma
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , October 1966 , pp. 1 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1966

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References

1 Shils, Edward, “The concentration and dispersion of charisma; their bearing on economic policy in underdeveloped countries”, World Politics, Vol. XI, No. I (Oct. 1958), pp. 1–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 We conceive political integration as the progressive focusing of the primary loyalty of the individual on the state and the reduction of intra-state tensions by creating a cultural-ideological consensus. Note that political integration is not always used in this sense. See for example, Haas, Ernst B., The Uniting of Europe: Political, Social … Economic Forces (Stanford, 1958), p. 16Google Scholar. Deutsch, K. and others, Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International organization in the light of historical experience (Princeton University Press, 1957), p. 31Google Scholar. Rosberg, Carl … Coleman, James, eds., Political Parties … National Integration in Tropical Africa (University of California, 1964), p. 9Google Scholar.

3 Wallerstein, I., Africa, the politics of independence (New York, Random House, 1961), p. 87Google Scholar.

4 Ibid.., p. 88.

5 Ibid.., p. 91.

6 He is referring mainly to the so-called one-party states, e.g., Ivory Coast, Mali, Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya.

7 Ibid.., pp. 96–99.

8 Ibid.., p. 99.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid.., pp. 100–101.

11 Ibid.

12 Apter, David, Ghana in Transition, op. cit., (New York, Atheneum, 1963), p. 8Google Scholar.

13 Ibid.., p. 291.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid.., p. 274.

16 Ibid.., p. 304.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid.

19 For explication see Apter pp. 304–305.

20 Ibid.., p. 303.

21 Weber, Max, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, trans, by Parsons, T. and Henderson, A. M. (Free Press, 1964), pp. 358–359Google Scholar.

22 Ibid., p. 359.

23 Ibid., p. 361.

24 Ibid..

25 For a general critique of Weber's typologies of authority, see Blau, P. and Scott, W., Formal Organization, A Comparative Approach (San Francisco, Chandler, 1963), pp. 30–36Google Scholar. Blau, Peter, “Critical Remarks on Weber's Theory of Authority”, APSR, 57 (1963), pp. 305–316CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Friedrich, Carl et al., Nomos, 1 (1958), pp. 28ffGoogle Scholar. Friedrich, Carl, Zeitschrift fur Politik, vol. VII, pp. Iff., 1960Google Scholar.

26 For more on the problem of routinization see Max Weber, op. cit., pp. 363–373. Michels, R., First Lectures in Political Sociology, trans, by Alfred de Grazia (University of Minnesota Press, 1949), esp. p. 131Google Scholar.

27 Friedrich, Carl, “Political Leadership and the Problem of Charismatic Power”, Journal of Politics, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Feb. 1961), pp. 3–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Ibid., p. 20.

29 Emmet, Dorothy, Function, Purpose and Powers: some concepts in the study of individuals and societies (London, Macmillan, 1958), p. 242Google Scholar.

30 Ibid., pp. 234–235.

31 For the tendency of these conditions to lead to mass movements, charismatic politics or ‘caesaristic identifcations’ see Lasswell, Harold, “The psychology of Hitlerism”, Political Quarterly, TV (1933), pp. 373–384Google Scholar; Neumann, Franz, “Anxiety and Politics”, in The Democratic and the Authoritarian State (Free Press, 1964), pp. 270–295Google Scholar; Aaltonen, J., “Karismaattiset ja byrokraattiset Johtajat” (The charismatic and the bureaucratic leaders), Politiikka, I (1959), pp. 1–2, 15–29Google Scholar.

32 Weber, op. cit., p. 359.

33 This will have to be an empirical survey geared to determining the masses’ images of their leader. We have some excellent examples of this technique. See Davies, James C., “Charisma in the 1952 Campaign”, APSR, 48 (1954), pp. 1083–1102CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Davies used data from the Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan to determine whether respondents perceived Eisenhower as a charismatic leader. See too, Free, Lloyd, Attitudes of the Cuban People Towards the Castro Regime (Princeton, Institute of International Social Research, 1960)Google Scholar. With the help of a research organization, Free made a sample survey of urban and semi-urban Cubans to evaluate their perceptions of Castro.

34 Zolberg, A. R., “The African Mass-party State in Perspective”, Paper delivered at the 1964 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Sept. 9–12, 1964 p. 7Google Scholar. For more on Ivory Coast elections see Zolberg, A. R., One-Party Government in the Ivory Coast (Princeton, 1964), pp. 183–215CrossRefGoogle Scholar, “Ivory Coast” in J. Coleman and C. Rosberg, eds., op. cit., p. 75.

35 A. R. Zolberg, “The African Mass-party State in Perspective”, p. 8.

36 David Apter, “Ghana” in J. Coleman and C. Rosberg, eds., op. cit., pp. 285–292.

37 Note that these three leaders - Boigny, Keita and Nkrumah - are supposed to be immensely popular and that our figures come from elections held on the eve of indepen dence when the nationalist leader supposedly attains the peak of his popularity. We have avoided post-independence elections because they were not as competitive and do not accurately reflect the winners’ popularity.

38 Blau, Peter, “Critical Remarks on Weber's Theory of Authority”, APSR, 57 (1963), p. 309CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Weber, op. cit., p. 360.

40 See especially Coleman, J., Nigeria, Background to Nationalism (California University Press, 1964)Google Scholar; Zolberg, A. R., One-Party Government in the Ivory Coast (Princeton, 1964)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pye, L., Politics, Personality and Nation-Building: Burma's Search for Identity (Yale University Press, 1962)Google Scholar.

41 For more on these cleavages see Edward Shils, “Political Development in the New States”, in Kautsky, J., ed., Political Change in Underdeveloped Countries: Nationalism and Communism (New York, Wiley, 1962), pp. 195–234Google Scholar; Coleman, J., “The Problem of Political Integration in Emergent Africa”, Western Political Quarterly, VIII, 1 (March, 1955), pp. 44–57Google Scholar; Wriggins, W., “Impediments to Unity in the New States, the case of Ceylon”, ASPR, Vol. LV, No. 2 (June 1961), pp. 313–320Google Scholar; Marriot, M., “Cultural Policy in the New States”, in Geertz, C., ed., Old Societies and New States: the Quest for Modernity in Asia and Africa (Free Press, 1963), pp. 27–56Google Scholar.

42 Apter, op. cit., p. 304ff.

43 Almond, G., “A Functional Approach to Comparative Politics”, in Almond, G. and Coleman, J., eds., The Politics of the Developing Areas (Princeton, 1960), p. 9Google Scholar.

44 Apter, op. cit., p. 81ff.

45 To get a picture of the contrast between the Ashanti and Tallensi systems alone, compare Busia, K., “The Ashanti”, in Forde, Daryll, ed., African Worlds, Studies in the Cosmological Ideas and Social Values of African Peoples (O.U.P., 1954), pp. 190–208Google Scholar, with Fortes, Meyer, The web of kinship among the Tallensi (O.U.P., 1949)Google Scholar, and id. “The political system of the Tallensi of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast” in Fortes, M. and Evans-Pritcbard, E. E., African Political Systems (O.U.P., 1940), pp. 239–271Google Scholar.

46 Apter, op. cit., pp. 329–330.

47 Runciman, W. G., “Charismatic Legitimacy and One-Party Rule in Ghana”, Archives Européennes de Sociologie, 4, 1 (1963), pp. 148–165CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 Furnished by government investigations such as the Akin Abuakiva Commission (1957) and the Kumasi Commission (1958).

49 Runciman, loc. cit., p. 154.

50 Ibid., p. 156.

51 Ibid., p. 153.

52 Understandably more marked in the case of the more radical governments such as Guinea and Ghana.

53 That this is how some of these leaders regard traditional authorities is evident in their policy and ideological statements. See Sigmund, Paul, The Ideologies of the Developing Countries (New York, Praeger, 1963), pp. 155–156Google Scholar; Cowan, L. G., “Guinea”, in Garter, G., ed., African One-Party States (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1962), pp. 198–199Google Scholar. For an interesting case study of the confrontation between the new elite and the conservative, particularistic traditional authorities see Gertzel, Cherry, “Report from Kampala”, and “How Kabaka Yekka came to be”, Africa Report, Vol. 9, No. 9 (Oct. 1964), pp. 3–13Google Scholar.

54 In the new states, the parties that champion the cause of regionalism have tended to be predominantly tribal parties, e.g., The National Liberation Movement in Ghana, the Northern People's Congress in Nigeria, the Kabakka Yekka in Uganda, the Kenya African Democratic Union (representing the minor tribes opposed to Kikuyu and Luo domination) and the Sudan African National Union.

55 Every attempt to explain the politics of the new state in charismatic terms has not been as unhappy. Fagen, R. R., “Charismatic Authority and the leadership of Fidel Castro”, Western Political Quarterly, Vol. XVIII, No. 2, Part I (June, 1965), pp. 275–284CrossRefGoogle Scholar, tries to use empirical data to show that Castro is perceived as a charismatic leader and that the routinization of charisma is taking place in Cuba.

56 The one-party state is more satisfactorily explicable in terms of the social conditions and historical experience of the new states than in terms of charismatic politics. For more on these parties, see Ashford, D. E., The Elusiveness of Power; The African Single Party State (= Cornell Research Papers in International Studies, III) (Ithaca, 1965)Google Scholar; Julius Nyerere, “One Party System”, Spearhead, Vol. 2; Kilson, Martin, “Authoritarian and Single-Party Tendencies in African Politics”, World Politics, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Jan. 1963), pp. 262–294CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Schachter, R., “Single-Party Systems in West Africa”, APSR, V, 55 (June 1961), pp. 294–307CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Coleman, J. and Rosberg, Carl, eds., Political Parties and National Integration in Tropical Africa (University of California Press, 1964)Google Scholar.

57 Runciman, op. cit., p. 159.

58 Weber, op. cit., p. 360.

59 Ibid., p. 361.

60 Ibid., p.371.

61 Weber, op. cit., p. 360.

62 Ibid., p.361.

63 Deductive because its explicans does not contain statements that go beyond the explicandum. See Popper, Karl, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (New York, Basic Books, 1959), pp. 59ffGoogle Scholar.