Re: Fw: Re: rn,wsn> Laurence Cox re: theory & praxis

> I suspect that 'charismatic leadership' is to the 'passionate follower' 
> what 'beauty' is to the 'eye of the beholder.'

No, this is precisely my point.  There is a theory of charismatic
leadership, developed by Max Weber and others, that is both different
from, and to the extent that it overlaps with the everyday use of the
term, more specific than that usage.

Charismatic leadership, according to this more rigorous definition, is
associated with *an informal organizational structure, centered on the
charismatic leader*.  So leaders of routinized, bureaucratized
organizations cannot be charismatic by definition.

If you prefer to use a broader, everyday sense of the term, then I would
argue that effective leadership can take many forms.  There are the more
visible spokesperson sort of roles (which might be called charismatic),
and the behind-the-scenes organizational builder sort of roles, and
others, and they rarely all come together in one person.  A team of
leaders with various complementary attributes, in my experience, is
best.  It doesn't always, even usually, exist.  This "team" can be called
a critical mass, but that gets into another rigorous theory of social
movements (see Marwell and Oliver for starters).

[What I am saying about effective leadership in movements, by the way,
applies regardless of ideology -- effective leadership is just as
necessary, for instance, among anarchists as among anyone else.  I throw
this in as a response to the last post.]

RH