(Plebiscitary) leader democracy

Abstract

There is a revival of notions of leader democracy (LD) and plebiscitary leader democracy (PLD) both at the level of politics (e.g. the rhetoric of strong leadership) and in academic debate. This paper focuses largely on the latter, with occasional reference to real-world political developments. The paper (i) sketches changes in the nature of contemporary governance; (ii) argues that Weber’s and Schumpeter’s account of (plebiscitary) leader democracy ((P)LD) as a means of addressing the crisis of representation has marked affinities with current debates; (iii) discusses the possible implications of the re-emergence of a political language of (P)LD. The paper takes a sceptical view, arguing that an appeal to leadership is a symptom of, and contributor towards, the problems it purports to address. Two contemporary defences of (P)LD are discussed: that of the political scientist András Körösényi and that of the political theorist Jeffery Green.

Keywords

crisis of representation leader democracy ocular democracy plebiscitary leader democracy postdemocracy

Introduction

This paper seeks to examine features of contemporary governance and politics through the prism of ‘leader democracy’ – Führerdemokratie. The concept – in its democratic form – is most closely associated with Max Weber and Joseph Schumpeter.¹ Given the connotations that the first part of this German compound noun has taken on, it can be of little surprise that some contemporary usages of the term leader democracy (LD) conjure up the spectre of new forms of authoritarianism and anti-constitutionalism. Equally, given the presence of political leaders such as Hungary’s Victor Orbán, of the Law and Justice Party (PiS) in Poland, and the proximity of Tayyip Erdoğan, it is unsurprising that this should be particularly the case in Central Europe.² This was not, however, the original implication of the term’s usage,³ and it is with LD in its original sense that I shall be concerned. I shall particularly focus on the notion of plebiscitary leader democracy (PLD).

The arguments I shall seek to develop are, first, that recent shifts in the nature of governance and politics have reintroduced – or at least reinforced – conditions similar (but not identical) to those that led thinkers like Weber and Schumpeter to turn to the idea of (P)LD as a possible solution to political impasses in the first place; secondly, we are witnessing the return of the language and strategies of (P)LD into the mainstream of contemporary politics. These arguments will be developed in three stages: (i) I shall first briefly sketch changes in the nature of governance; (ii) demonstrate the affinities with the problems that Weber and Schumpeter believed (P)LD could potentially address; and (iii) discuss some possible implications of the re-emergence of a political language of LD and PLD.

Governance shifts

As the literature on governance – and specifically on the alleged shift ‘from government to governance’ – is vast, here I shall draw only on that which is directly relevant to my argument. One standard characterization of the dominant model of politics and of the state in the post-Second World War period is itself a variant of LD and carries Schumpeter’s name: the Competitive Leadership Model (CLM). CLM proposes what Adam Przeworski (1999) has called a ‘minimalist’ conception of democracy in which democracy is no more – but also no less – than the right to elect leaders: to (peacefully) change governments. From its positivist-inspired starting point, the minimalist view puts consensualist ideas of democracy and any notion of the general will ‘where they belong’: ‘in the Museum of Eighteenth-century Thought’ (1999: 44). Notwithstanding this, the Schumpeterian CLM has long been the object of critique from the left – for not being democratic enough – and from the right – for producing sub-optimal outcomes. It all but goes without saying that it has been the criticisms from the right – articulated in the language of Public Choice Theory and New Public Management (NPM) – that have been most influential in reshaping government, to the point where even the minimalist conception of democracy can be circumvented. Palumbo (2015: 233) presents CLM as a compromise which gives force to popular sovereignty while limiting its influence by transferring ‘real policy-making power to polyarchies charged with the task of determining the “needs and interest” of “we the people’”. But, under the influence of Public Choice Theory and NPM, the ‘regulatory state’ centralizes power further by transferring many of the remaining powers of parliament onto non-majoritarian institutions and by empowering experts. Politics becomes increasingly a matter of technical expertise and ‘channels of “voice”’ are increasingly replaced by ‘mechanisms of “exit”’ (2015: 237).⁴

The umbrella term that has come to cover the political implications of these shifts in governance style is ‘postdemocracy’, which received an influential formulation in Colin Crouch’s short but incisive volume of that name (Crouch, 2004). Policies of privatization, liberalization, and marketization, which have accompanied the introduction of the NPM ‘template’, have been said to have had two broad effects: (i) the weakening of the ‘institutional pillarization’ between the state and the market and (ii) depoliticization. Wolfgang Streeck’s distinction between Staatsvolk and Marktvolk (citizens of the state and market respectively) draws attention to the first implication by arguing that the interests of citizens of the market have come to trump those of citizens of the state:

The politics surrounding the consolidation of public finance is meant to reassure the new, second constituency of the modern state, the financial markets, that in case of doubt their claims can and will have priority over those of citizens. (Streeck, 2014: 112)

The modern state, for Streeck, increasingly comes to resemble Hayek’s ideal in which peace-seeking states ‘must combine in a federation’ requiring them ‘not only to liberalize their own economic order but also to shape that of the federation in a liberal manner’ (2014: 100–1). Any such project entails the reorganization of public services and state agencies on the ‘model of the firm’ (Marquand, 2004). But what Peter Mair (2013: 51) has called the ‘politics of depoliticization’ has – rightly – received just as much attention. The increasing reliance on new policy instruments, the technocratic turn in modern politics, the out- and up-sourcing of state capacities, and the increasing power of non-majoritarian institutions have, for Mair, served to evacuate the political arena.

The breakdown of institutional pillarization between state and market and depoliticization are presented as overlapping and mutually reinforcing developments. Together they have been said to encourage:

the convergence of parties – disciplined by the logic of TINA – and party programmes, erasing the ‘left-right plane of competition’ and with it ‘the entire foundation of the party government/responsible party model’ (Mair, 2013: 71);

politics as spectacle in which citizens play ‘a passive, quiescent and even apathetic part’ (Crouch, 2004: 4) and in which public opinion becomes a matter of measurement without the public being able to ‘take control of the process itself’ (2004: 21);

not simply an increasing disconnect between rulers and ruled/politicians and voters, but also what Mair (2013: 76) sees as their mutual disengagement: citizens’ retreat into their ‘own private and particularized spheres of interest’ on the one hand, and political and party leaders’ retreat into the ‘closed world of governing institutions’ on the other.

All this is well summarized in the title of Mair’s posthumously published volume, Ruling the Void (2013). What is striking about this list is that none of the conditions of minimal democracy are violated, they have simply become less relevant in a context in which government has increasingly come to mean ‘ruling without an opposition’ (Offe and Preuss, 2006: 182).⁵

Leader democracy: First iteration

I shall now turn to the original debates around LD and PLD in order to argue that they were responses to political dilemmas that bear a striking resemblance to those identified in the current literature on postdemocracy.⁶ Here I shall follow Crouch’s view – for which he uses the (literally graphic) image of the parabola – that postdemocracy shares some but not all of the characteristics of its pre-democratic predecessor. The similarities I seek to identify in Weber and Schumpeter with current debates lend support to Crouch’s view that while there are affinities between current and historical dilemmas neither the diagnosis nor the prognosis is identical.⁷

We can illustrate both similarities and differences with reference to this observation by Weber (1994 [1917]: 104, all emphases in the original), which, on face value, seems to go even further than Streeck: ‘for who on earth is the “state”, as distinct from this machinery of large and small capitalist cartels of every kind into which the economy is to be organized […]?’ Weber is warning here against the same dangers as contemporary theorists of postdemocracy: the ‘unlimited and uncontrolled command over the state’ by ‘bankers and capitalist entrepreneurs’. However, the source of this danger is precisely the opposite to the putative subordination of the state to the market. Weber is concerned with the possible implications of the permanent socialization of the means of production that might emerge out of the necessities of the war economy. The clue lies in that part of the above quotation left as an ellipse: ‘if the formation of the state’s own will (Willensbildung) is to be placed in the hands of precisely these “cooperative” organizations’.

At this point (1917) Weber argues for a robust parliamentary democracy – which both exercises real control and acts as a mechanism for leader selection (Führerauslese) – based upon the principle of universal suffrage in which citizens are understood as a Staatsvolk rather than as members of associations (the latter being bearers of particularistic interests – cf. Streeck’s Marktvolk) or community of fate. Only through the strict separation of state and market and a strong parliament can we hope to find a counterweight to the power of the interests of capitalist cartels and corporations and give those subject to bureaucratic domination a ‘minimal right of codetermination in the affairs of the community for which they are obliged to give their lives’ (1994 [1917]: 106).

Were we to accept Weber’s argument here this would have one important implication for current debates: it is the fact not the causes of the breakdown of the pillarization between state and market that is decisive for the quality of democracy. In other words, the outcome is the same whether it is the result of privatization, liberalization, and marketization or – alternatively – the socialization of the means of production. In either case market actors threaten to acquire ‘unlimited and uncontrolled command over the state’ and economic exploitation and political domination are once more combined. Equally, Streeck’s arguments act as a corrective to Weber’s assumption that it is the socialization of the means of production that presents the chief threat to the separation of state and market.

A concern with stemming the power of capitalist cartels thus led Weber to argue – albeit on instrumental and functionalist grounds – for robust institutions of parliamentary democracy. What gets us from there to PLD in which individual politicians ‘would be forced to compete directly for the support of a mass electorate’ (Stanton, 2016: 333) and act as a ‘spokesman [Vertrauensmann] elected by the masses themselves’ (Weber, 1994 [1919]: 305)? What explains the shift of emphasis away from suffrage and democracy towards plebiscite and leadership? Above all two things: (i) growing scepticism towards popular sovereignty and (ii) growing doubt concerning parliament’s capacity to fulfil its functions of control and leader selection. The former is part of a familiar elitist trope: ‘orderly democracy’ is necessary if we are to avoid the demagogy of the streets (Straßendemagogie), emotion, and the influence of the rabble (Pöbeleinfluss) and to translate the negative politics of the masses into positive support for political leaders in their struggle against administration (Weber, 1994 [1918]). With respect to the latter, by 1919 Weber had come to view parliaments as places where members use horse-trading to pursue their interest (1994 [1919]: 304) and tended to favour ‘shelf huggers’ (Ladenhüter)⁸ over those of genuine political talent. It is in this context that the Caeserist instruments of plebiscite and mass acclaim are proposed, not as part of an authoritarian turn but as a contribution to democratization – as a counterweight to parliament. The plebiscitary leader remains bound by law and the constitution, and the gallows await as the ‘reward’ for ‘any attempt to interfere with the laws or govern autocratically’ (1994 [1919]: 305). We might characterize Weber’s ideal of plebiscitary leadership as bounded charisma: the political leader must have a degree of charismatic authority but not of a pure – and thus unpredictable and arbitrary – kind, but one limited by the rule of law and constrained by the logic of bureaucratic rule.

If Weber’s PLD was intended – whether misguidedly or not shall remain an open question for the moment – towards greater democratization, by the time we get to Schumpeter (1994 [1942]) LD has become the dam to hold back the tides of mass democracy. Schumpeter is drawn towards an even thinner conception of democracy: namely, the minimalist view in which democracy equals regular elections plus competition. What had been proposed as a supplement and counterbalance to parliament and as a means to redress its alleged shortcomings in a specific context – post-First-World-War Germany – with a specific intent – to influence debate on the constitution – becomes in Schumpeter’s hands a totalizing theory of modern democracy per se. What had been intended as an instrument to maintain the autonomy of politics in the face of the forces of capitalist cartels on the one side and bureaucratic administration on the other becomes a general model of the workings of the modern political system.

The relevant issues have recently been set out in a critique of Schumpeter by Gerry Mackie (2009) and in a response by Jeffrey Green (2010) in the journal Political Theory. For Mackie, Schumpeter’s radical doubts concerning the ideas of the ‘common good’ or ‘will of the people’ (other than that imposed by political leaders) – ideas Schumpeter ascribes to the ‘classical doctrine of democracy’ – and the supposedly infantile nature of an electorate easily influenced by crowd psychology and advertising led him to believe that ‘the judgement of a qualified leader is generally better than the pooled judgements of lesser beings’ (Mackie, 2009: 135). These views, when combined with a strictly instrumental and procedural understanding of democracy, drove Schumpeter towards the anti-democratic conclusion that the electorate merely has to accept – as opposed to approve – leadership over which they exercise no effective control, and to a view of parliament as ‘merely an intermediate organ between the mass vote and the leader’ (2009: 145). Here competitive elections are treated not merely as necessary, but as sufficient conditions for democracy. However, elections – even regular elections – are, as Aron (1968: 86) long ago recognized, compatible with autocratic (even totalitarian) regimes. In a similar fashion, Mackie argues that strictly procedural definitions fail to distinguish between democracies and pseudodemocracies.

Green’s response to this critique is interesting for our purposes because it picks up on the theme of postdemocracy (although he does not frame it in those terms) by arguing that the ‘crisis of representation’ that Schumpeter sought to address was indeed real, however hyperbolic his formulations (Green, 2010: 268). Like Crouch and Mair, Green notes that the weakening of a liberal-conservative (non-US readers should read ‘left-right’) continuum will indeed mean that the electorate comes to exercise less control over leaders because ‘electoral decisions become divorced from policy consequences’ (2010: 269). Green further notes the tendencies of democracies to self-deception; towards the self-serving assumption that they are working along the lines of democracy’s self-understanding irrespective of the empirical reality. Schumpeter’s realism calls democracy’s bluff by asking in what sense, in which ways, and how far citizens are really authors of the constitutions and laws under which they live. The elitism of Weber and Schumpeter – however anathema to our (equally self-serving and self-deceived?) current egalitarian sensibilities – makes us confront ‘the obvious’: ‘nonparticipation, nondecision, hierarchy, nonpreference, spectatorial passivity’ (2010: 273). Bearing this in mind, we now move onto more contemporary considerations.

Leader democracy: Second iteration

If, as I have been arguing, contemporary theories of postdemocracy are responses to political developments that are similar (or at least perceived as similar) to those associated with historical debates around LD and PLD, we might expect a revival of those ideas not only at the level of academic debate, but also in political discourse and practice. The broad question is whether (P)LD has, or may, once more come to fill the void left by declining party competition and the increasing circumvention of parliamentary democracy.

There are two recent interesting and innovative attempts to present (P)LD as a potential means to redress the current crisis of representation, one by the Hungarian political scientist András Körösényi (and his associates), the other by the American political theorist Jeffery Green, whose defence of Schumpeter was briefly discussed above. In the rest of the paper I shall discuss these arguments with the aim of showing that LD and PLD are – and always were – problematic ways of addressing these political dilemmas.

Defending Schumpeter

Körösényi offers a whole-hearted defence of the Schumpeterian version of LD according to which the popular will is an ‘empty space’ (2009a: 82), voters can exercise ex post political judgements but (contra social choice theory) have no clear ex ante preferences via the aggregation of which political opinion can be formed or decisions reached (2005: 365), and political leaders ‘are selected from those few, who take the risks, the responsibility, and who take part in the competition or struggle for power’ (2009a: 93). But Körösényi also offers a sociological story: the decline of people’s parties (Volksparteien) has opened up a space for politicians who correspond more closely to the figure of the plebiscitary leader. The personalization of politics gives such leaders ‘more room for political manoeuvre’ and a ‘wider autonomy for action than political parties of the pluralist model’ (2005: 367–8). Under these conditions, democracy comes increasingly to resemble the LD model: ‘a routinized version of charismatic leadership’ (2005: 371). Thus LD in its contemporary manifestation is more than the oft-remarked presidentialization of political campaigns. It is a strategy enabling politicians – at least temporarily and partially – to free themselves from the normal constraints imposed by party machines. It opens up the possibility for the leader to capture the party and hitch it to a personal political project (New Labour); campaign simultaneously inside and outside a party machine (Trump); found a new party (En Marche!) or liberate themselves from the discipline of an established and powerful party hierarchy (Kurz, current leader of the ÖVP in Austria). Were such strategies completely successful, political parties would become leader parties ‘whose role is restricted to anointing leaders and financing campaigns in the hope of participating in the distribution of political spoils if their leader wins’ (Pakulski and Higley, 2008: 49).

The sociological aspect of Körösényi’s argument is quite plausible; his use of it as a defence of Schumpeter’s elite democracy model and of LD less so. The latter ascribes too much to the leader, overestimates willingness to take responsibility, and overloads the capacities of leadership:

There is no democratic popular will independent of political manipulation, and no interpretation of the political situation that is independent of leaders’ goals, preferences and wishes. In a contingent political situation, political leaders determine the political space(s) and dimension(s) in which voter preferences are formed and gain political meaning. (Körösényi, 2010: 298)

Such considerations lead Körösényi to prefer an ‘authorization’ model of democracy in which ‘political competitions offer voters choice among leaders but not among policies’ (2009b: 373) over rival accounts (mandate and accountability models) on the grounds of the former’s greater realism.

There are two problems with attempts to revive notions of LD in Schumpeterian (or Weberian) form as an appropriate response to depoliticization: (i) the emphasis upon leadership is inconsistent with democratic elite theory’s claim to realism; (ii) LD does not ultimately address problems of postdemocratization.

With respect to the former, the realism of democratic elitism draws attention to the limits of public engagement: lack of (or poor) information, the complexity-reducing tendency to focus on performance and image, and the ‘thinness’ of the concept of the public interest (2009b: 375). But this realism is asymmetrical. Scepticism towards notions of popular sovereignty or the public interest is compatible with a romantic, even heroic, view of leadership. It is this asymmetry that has plagued notions of LD and PLD from the start. This problem was noted by Sheldon Wolin – with respect to Weber – some time ago:

Weber plaintively pleaded for a conception of political leadership cut to truly classical proportions. Weber’s leader is a political hero, rising to heights of moral passion and grandeur, harried by a deep sense of responsibility. But at bottom, he is a figure as futile and pathetic as his classical counterpart. […] Weber’s political leader is rendered superfluous by the very bureaucratic world that Weber discovered: even charisma has been bureaucratized. (Wolin, 2004 [1960]: 379–80)

Wolin is here drawing attention not so much to bad or poor – ineffective or, in policy terms, unambitious – leadership (cf. Helms, 2014) but to the inevitability, or near inevitability, of disappointment in and/or failure of political leaders. Leaders typically fail, and strong leaders ‘often fail spectacularly’ (Dowding, 2008: 100).⁹ Some fail slowly but irretrievably (Tony Blair); some fast and melodramatically (Tony Abbott); others appear predestined to failure (Donald Trump). In restating Schumpeter’s theory – suitably updated into the language of contemporary political science – Körösényi does not escape this asymmetrical realism: the irony that a theory so sensitive to the failures and shortcomings of representative and parliamentary democracy should be equally insensitive to those of leadership.

With respect to my second reservation about the attempt to revive (P)LD – that it fails to address depoliticization and the power of the market over the state – we might to go back to the political sociology of the 1950s and 60s, and specifically to arguments advanced by Raymond Aron and Otto Kirchheimer. As noted above, Aron (1968) argued that regular elections are not a sufficient condition for pluralism, and thus cannot be used as the differentia specifica between totalitarian and pluralist regime types. Drawing on both Weber and Montesquieu, he argued that the key feature of pluralist regimes is their mix of (i) competition; (ii) willingness to compromise (and mutual recognition of the legitimacy of – and unwillingness to destroy – the opposition); (iii) respect for the spirit as well as the letter of the law. Aron (again borrowing from Montesquieu) emphasized that all regimes – including pluralist ones – are vulnerable to corruption, not in the modern sense of graft but in the older sense of decay.¹⁰

Kirchheimer, in a way that uncannily anticipates the current debates on postdemocracy,¹¹ offers a more precise account of what this might look like, and of its possible causes (e.g. Kirchheimer, 1957). ‘Corruption’ in the old sense (Verfall)¹² – as well as the more neutral ‘transformation’ – was the term Kirchheimer also occasionally used in his account of the shift from ‘Weltanschauungsparteien’ to ‘Allerweltparteien’ (see Schmidt, 1989); from parties representing distinct worldviews to ‘catch-all parties’ (the term most closely associated with Kirchheimer) more narrowly focused on gaining and holding onto power. As Krouwel (2003) has noted, the fact that the term catch-all party has become common property can distract from recognizing that in Kirchheimer the concept is not a standalone, but is embedded in a general theory of the transformation of party democracy. The rise of the catch-all party is accompanied by – an inelegant term even in German – Entideologisierung, the waning of ideology, and with it the weakening of opposition. Kirchheimer identifies a set of interrelated developments closely resembling that discussed in current postdemocracy literature: the convergence of party programmes and policies, and with it the decline of opposition;¹³ a growing distance between parties and their members, and civil society more broadly – in part a reflection of the growing professionalization of politics;¹⁴ the replacement of competing parties with a ‘state-party cartel’.¹⁵

That Kirchheimer’s analysis so closely resembles that of contemporary theorists of postdemocracy is perhaps of some interest, and certainly remarkable. The more important point, however, is that it makes clear why a return to LD or PLD cannot address the effects of these conditions: an emphasis on leadership is a symptom of, not a remedy for, the decline of competition. What was then – and is now – being described is essentially Schumpeter’s CLM without the C. But – as both Aron and Kirchheimer were aware – even a minimalist (CLM) conception of democracy has competition – and thus genuine opposition – as its socio-political precondition. The decline of Weltanschauungsparteien and all that goes with it facilitates the renewed emphasis upon leadership. As ideology wanes and policies converge, the leader increasingly becomes the marker of difference. The ‘concentration of power at leadership level’ (Krouwel, 2003: 25) thus mirrors rather than redresses depoliticization. The significance of leadership rises with the decline of parties as relatively stable loyalty towards a party is replaced with the much more volatile – perhaps fickle – personal loyalty towards a leader.

But perhaps we can push this point a little further: (P)LD is not merely a symptom of but a force for depoliticization and postdemocratization. If we go back to Aron’s three preconditions of pluralism – competition, compromise, and respect for (the letter and spirit of) the law – not only has the first of these been undermined, but the others have been increasingly called into question. Chants of ‘lock her up’ at Trump campaign rallies and exultations from the right-wing press in the UK to ‘Crush the Saboteurs’¹⁶ (i.e. Her Majesty’s Opposition) during the snap election in 2017 would have horrified Aron in their violation of the principle of restraint and willingness to compromise. This would have been the case even where those hopes were (in part) dashed (Clinton won the popular vote and Labour gained seats in 2017). The aim of competition is the defeat of the opponent, not its annihilation. The continued capacity of the opposition to oppose (and one day to (re)gain power) is, for Aron, a prerequisite of pluralist competition.¹⁷ (P)LD encourages the view that opposition poses a barrier to the dominant political will that must be removed, and this in turn can merge with the view that the conventions of party democracy – even the law and constitutions themselves – constitute a barrier to the ‘will of the people’, which – as in much of the politics of Brexit in the UK – is invoked both to silence opposition and circumvent parliament. Faith in leaders flourishes there where faith in institutions is weakest.

In attempting to revive an orthodox Schumpeterian account of democracy, Körösényi reproduces the problems of the original: eliding description and prescription in such a way that normative claims are hidden behind a realist façade. Or, as Aron so nicely put it, the appeal to realism ‘under the pretext of not being a philosophy, puts forward a certain philosophy’ (Aron, 1968: 23). But is there an alternative, and perhaps more innovative, way of defending LD and PLD? Here I shall turn to Green’s ingenious proposal in which there is no attempt to disguise normative claims and a normative agenda.

Candour, risk, and the empowerment of gaze

Where Körösényi sticks closely to Schumpeter’s arguments, Green offers a novel way of understanding PLD in its earlier formulation, that of Max Weber. Whereas for Schumpeter, LD is a brake on democracy, for Weber – on Green’s reading – PLD is a product of (mass) democracy and stands ‘not for the abandonment of popular power, but its reinvention’ (Green, 2011: 146). Here the leader-public dynamic is relational, not static and unidirectional. But what does this relation consist of? For Green, it rests not on voice (the centrepiece of democratic theory) but on gaze; on the leader’s ‘ability to sustain an audience’ (2011: 148). Borrowing from Foucault, Green argues that mass gaze exercises ‘disciplinary power’ over the leader. In order to sustain the relationship, the politician must be able to go off script and enter into a direct, unmediated relationship with the audience; with ‘the People’ under conditions controlled by them. Under their ‘compulsory gaze’ the would-be leader must offer ‘constant proof of merit through struggle, articulation of new norms and values, and responsibilities’ (2011: 154) – i.e. demonstrate the qualities of charismatic leadership. Such a demonstration must (i) be sustained throughout and beyond election campaigns; (ii) articulate a vision and mission, thus transcending ‘mere administrative efficiency’ (2011: 156); and (iii) be rendered responsible by an ‘unprecedented level of surveillance such that it would be impossible for the leader to disclaim their actions’ (2011: 156). Rather than view spectacle as a symptom of the decline of democracy – as evidence that the public plays ‘a passive, quiescent and even apathetic part’ (Crouch, quoted above) – for Green, ‘the People’s gaze represents an empowered form of vision’ (2011: 128); the ‘great unelaborated ethical commitment of plebiscitary democracy’ (2011: 130). On the bases of these arguments he seeks to provide an alternative ‘ocular’ model of democracy.

Green offers both an account of the inner logic and a defence of PLD. As a heuristic for interpreting politics his analysis has considerable plausibility, at least for some cases. The 2017 UK General Election provides an illustrative example. PM Theresa May’s performance during the election lacked candour in Green’s sense. She stuck woodenly to the script (‘strong and stable’), was protected from ‘real people’, avoiding any spontaneous contact with the public under conditions determined by them, and hesitated before agreeing to TV debates with other party leaders (at one point sending her Home Secretary in her place). May also spectacularly failed to demonstrate a history of unpredictability when asked in a TV interview during the election campaign ‘what’s the naughtiest thing you ever did?’ After much humming and hawing (‘Oh, goodness me! […] ‘Gosh. You know I’m not quite sure.’) she eventually crash landed on ‘running through fields of wheat’ (with her friends as a child). The result was ridicule – the ‘Maybot’¹⁸ – and political humiliation (but not defeat) at the polls. Her cosseted appearance at the scene of the Grenfell Tower fire¹⁹ a few days after the election only served to confirm the general perception of an aversion to facing contestation and risk. In contrast, things that one might have expected to sink a Labour leader’s campaign – lack of experience in routine governmental administration and alleged sympathy for terrorism – left Jeremy Corbyn unscathed, while Labour’s appeal to what Weber would have called ‘extraordinary values’ – as well as some very ordinary ones – garnered adulation and a better than expected election result. May’s campaign managers would have been well advised to read Green’s book; Corbyn’s didn’t have to.

But as an analytic/normative account there remain problems and open questions.²⁰ These can be brought out by contrasting Green’s with Weber’s sociological account of PLD. Firstly, Weber’s conversion to PLD was not only late but also appears to be in stark contrast to (not to say in contradiction with) much else in his political writings, in particular his critique of the detrimental effects of Bismarck’s rule on political education and political culture in Germany; criticisms he repeated as late as the essay ‘Politics and Government in a Newly Ordered Germany’ (1994 [1918]). Secondly, and more importantly, Green seems to take what is for Weber an exceptional and transitional set of affairs and generalizes it into an account of politics in modern mass democracies as such.

This contrast comes out clearly in Weber’s discussion of the ‘herrschaftsfremde Umdeutung des Charisma’ (the transformation of charisma in a direction antithetical to domination) (Weber, 1972 [1922]: 155).²¹ Here he starts out by noting that in its primary sense charisma is authoritarian, but that it can take an anti-authoritarian turn. The subsequent discussion identifies the conditions under which such a transformation can occur and the diverse paths it can take. The starting point is an observation that would seem to strongly support Green’s reading: the democratic inversion of charisma is possible ‘because the real validity of charismatic authority indeed entirely rests on recognition by the ruled, conditional upon the “demonstration of worth” [Bewährung]’ (1972 [1922]: 155–6). Furthermore, such recognition is not the consequence (Folge), but the basis (Grund) of legitimacy – i.e. it is a form of ‘democratic legitimation’ in which the leader is freely elected; ‘der frei gewählte Führer’ whose leadership rests upon the grace of the ruled (‘Herrn von Gnaden der Beherrschten’). However, these are unstable conditions in which the group believes that it has the right to make or rescind laws and decrees of its own ‘free will’. More typically – under ‘genuine’ rather than such ‘personal’ and freely elected charismatic leadership – the group will be ‘under psychological pressure: there is only one dutiful and correct decision’ (1972 [1922]: 156).

Weber identifies plebiscitary democracy as the most important transitional form between these two states of affairs, and leader democracy as its most typical expression. Whereas personal charisma (under conditions of free election) approximates Sheldon Wolin’s ‘fugitive democracy’ – a democratic moment that must pass (Wolin, 1994), plebiscitary democracy is closely associated with party leadership (Parteiführertum), and thus with the modern state in which ‘the leader, as spokesman of the masses, feels himself to be legitimated and recognized as such’ (Weber, 1972 [1922]: 156). Crucially, Weber also notes that the plebiscite as a means of legitimatization expresses a ‘voluntary trust’ (freies Vertrauen) on the part of the masses that is ‘formal and fictitious’. There is not in Weber – as there is in Green – any hint that the ‘will of the People’ exists outside or prior to the political process. The conclusion towards which Weber is moving here is: ‘as types, plebiscitary democracy stands in contrast to leaderless democracy, which is characterized by the striving to minimize the rule of man over man’ (1972 [1922]: 157).²² In Weber’s account, the democratic inversion of charisma will normally lead to both the destruction of feudal and patrimonial power and onto a path of further rationalization (‘führt normalerweise in die Bahn der Rationalität’) because plebiscitary rule rests upon a smoothly functioning staff of civil servants (‘reibungslos fungierenden Beamtenstab’; 1972 [1922]: 157). However, because leadership democracy also rests on popular acclaim, its rationalizing drive meets its limits: popular demands that economic considerations should be subordinated to ideals of substantive justice. There are two points to note here: first, for Weber, PLD is not merely transitional, it is also exceptional (e.g. revolutionary tribunals); (ii) popular acclaim constrains the character type that PLD selects for; one that is quite different from that selected for via parliamentary selection mechanisms (where these work properly).

It is worth focusing briefly on the second of these points because it brings out the contrast between Green’s and Weber’s views of leader democracy particularly clearly. The key question here is a variant of the one that Wilhelm Hennis (2000) identified as Weber’s ‘central question’: what kind of subject is selected for (by modern large-scale industry)? Here that question becomes: what kind of leader would be selected by a public where that public is understood to be passive but watching? Green’s answer is that it would look for candour: the willingness to take risks and to enter a direct relationship with the public under conditions the latter determines. Weber provides a very different, and much less hopeful, answer to this question:

In general, leader democracy, which is in its nature emotional, is characterized by complete devotion [Hingabe] to and trust in the leader from which emerges the inclination to follow those who are most exceptional, who promise the most, who best work with provocation [Reizmitteln]. (1972 [1922]: 157)

These qualities are far removed from candour; indeed they may be its opposite. The best position from which to ‘promise the most’ is the secure knowledge that one will never be in a position to honour the promise or will never be held to account for its non-delivery. The ‘naturally emotional’ nature of PLD makes the promise itself, rather than its realization, the key point. Both Weber’s leader and the public are very different from those Green has in mind. Whereas Green’s public is passive but watchful – always looking out for a combination of candour and a willingness to take risks – Weber’s public is passive but needy – always looking out for stimulation and bravura, and perhaps willing to accept a ‘candour’ that is studied, trialled, and simulated. Green’s public offers the leader a sceptical and conditional support; Weber’s, devotion and trust. These different publics would produce and select for quite different leader types. Weber’s leader is what we would call a populist and Weber a demagogue. It is easier to think of successful current politicians who correspond to Weber’s list of qualities than it is Green’s list. Conversely, there are examples of highly successful – or at least not yet failed – politicians (Angela Merkel comes to mind) whose electoral success rests upon neither stimulation and bravura nor on the qualities that Green identifies, but upon their opposites: caution, patience, careful analysis, self-discipline, aversion to drama and rushed decisions²³ – what might be characterized as Sachlichkeit und Sitzfleisch (objectivity and staying power). This is a type that conforms more closely to Weber’s (somewhat idealized) account of the politician as someone with an ethic of responsibility tempered by (occasional) passion – i.e. the type selected for not via the mechanism of plebiscite but by that of parliament.

To sum up, Weber’s sociological account of plebiscitary democracy differs from Green’s insofar as the former (i) views plebiscitary democracy as transitional (as an Übergangstypus) and as typically occurring under exceptional conditions such as revolutions and coups; (ii) sees the populist and the demagogue rather than the candid and risk-taking politician as the ‘type’ that ‘the People’ are likely to select where selection occurs via plebiscite rather than via parliament. The implication of the first point is that plebiscitary democracy cannot be generalized either into an account of the nature of modern mass democracy as such (even though this is exactly what Weber himself comes close to doing in ‘The President of the Reich’) or into a normative foundation for democracy. With respect to the second point, it is the 19th-century elitist – Weber – rather than the modern democrat – Green – who offers the more convincing portrait of a political type that has become all too familiar over the last 30 or so years.

Conclusion: Leadership as Enttäuschung

One aspect of democratic elite theory’s asymmetrical realism has always been – as suggested above – its veneration of leadership; the obverse has always been its denigration of ‘the masses’ (see Beahr, 2006; Bellamy, 2008). Körösényi’s restatement of Schumpeter’s version of the LD model failed, I argued, to address the former issue (a romantic and heroic conception of leadership). Green, however, seems to reproduce the problems of the latter aspect of the asymmetry. What distinguishes Green from the elitism of Weber and Schumpeter, and what is novel in his argument, is the attempt to harness a watching but essentially silent mass (the People) to a normative democratic project. At the level of institutional design, he suggests practical ways in which the People could have more – and the political leader less – control of the leader’s appearance in public. But this is decoupled from a mechanism that would convert gaze into voice; ‘the People’ remain essentially bovine. As one critic (Landmore, 2014: 197) points out, for an ocular model to work requires specific preconditions, one of which is the presence of channels for the expression of voice: ‘the gaze has power only to the extent that it is accompanied, and indeed preceded, by some form of actual physical or vocal control’. This objection is closely related to my point above: if you conceive of ‘the People’ as an audience, the resulting ‘will of the People’ is likely to be fallible and seducible (cf. Offe, 1996: 91–3). Devotion to a leader expressed via the acclamatory channel of the plebiscite (or by elections that take on a plebiscitary and acclamatory quality) can only reinforce this:

We must in particular warn against the widespread and false assumption that procedures which focus less on electing representatives and more on a direct democratic poll of opinion, such as popular initiatives, petitions for referendums, and referendums themselves, ipso facto inevitably generate more authentic results than do the usual procedures of a representative democracy. (1996: 93 )

Claus Offe’s warning here was probably directed against well-meaning and progressive movement-parties such as the German Greens. In the meantime – and confirming Offe’s concerns – instruments of direct democracy have become the favoured means of the populist far right.

The emphasis upon leadership raises a similar set of concerns. It was noted above that leaders typically fail, and strong leaders often fail spectacularly. Failure here is more than the corruption of a regime; it is an abrupt loss of support and legitimation accompanied by a sense of disappointment of (often unrealistically high) expectations. This point can be generalized with reference to an argument made by Albert Hirschman. For Hirschman (1982), our most basic experience of public (or indeed private) life is one of disappointment, but with the connotations of its German equivalent, Enttäuschung – literally dis-illusion. In other words, there is an intimate link between experiencing disappointment and losing our illusions. Hirschman traces the basic illusion behind public engagement to the belief that the world can be bent to our will. Those who – often, as Dowding (2008) points out, through luck – come to be perceived as strong leaders may, if anything, be more prone to this illusion than the engaged citizens with whom Hirschman was primarily concerned: reputation and past accomplishments signal that whatever was thought to have led to the current situation will guarantee future success; that what worked (for them) in the past will work in the future. On the side of the followers, if Weber is right that acclamatory politics rests upon personal devotion to the leader, then hopes and expectations are exceptionally high, increasing the likelihood and intensity of disappointment.

Bearing in mind the sceptical arguments of Offe, Hirschman, and Wolin, perhaps we should conclude by using Weber (1918) against Weber (1919):

What we lacked was leadership of the state by a politician, which does not mean a political genius (they can only be expected every few centuries), nor even an important political talent, but simply by anyone who is a politician at all. (Weber 1984 [1918]: 162)

It is not so much the gallows that would-be plebiscitary leaders should have before their eyes as the looming prospect of their feet turning to clay. On the idea of leader democracy more generally, as the Austrian satirist Karl Kraus once remarked of psychoanalysis, it may be a case of a disease purporting to be its own therapy.²⁴

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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