6.1.1.1 Anointed Successors

The struggles of anointed successors stem from the inevitable reluctance of charismatic leaders to select a replacement. As Weber stresses, the charismatic founder considers himself an extraordinary individual with unmatched power (Reference Weber, Roth and Wittich1922/1978, 241–46). For this reason, throughout his rule, the founder insists on his own superiority, concentrates rather than shares power, and demands unwavering loyalty from his staff. Moreover, when forced to face his own mortality, the founder often refuses to groom a successor to take his place. Although a talented successor could safeguard the survival of the founder’s movement, training a worthy replacement would threaten the founder’s superiority. Therefore, to shield his predominance from potential competitors, the founder prefers to designate a loyal and unintimidating successor rather than a skilled heir.Footnote ³ As faithful disciples accustomed to pleasing the founder, anointed successors stand little chance of outshining him. At the same time, however, these handpicked replacements are typically weaklings who lack the independent ambition and authority necessary to lead the movement in the founder’s wake. Thus, while the selection of an inadequate successor protects the founder’s superior charismatic image, it also places the movement in a precarious position after his rule has ended by leaving it in the hands of a weakling successor who lacks the founder’s skill, willpower, and magnetic appeal.

In addition to anointed successors’ lack of skill, willpower, and appeal, the situation they inherit from the founder complicates their prospects for success. This is because, by the end of the founder’s rule, his audacious policies are likely to be nearing exhaustion. Since these haphazard and personalistic programs are designed to prove the founder’s heroic capacities, they tend to lack the infrastructure to endure. While the performance of the policies may begin to decline during the founder’s tenure, he can stave off the negative consequences by draining available resources and using his charisma as a shield (Merolla and Zechmeister Reference Merolla and Zechmeister2011, 30). Yet, neither of these tools is available to anointed successors. By the time the disciples take power, the country’s resources are likely to be depleted; furthermore, anointed successors have no charisma of their own to protect their reputation. Consequently, these new leaders – rather than the adored founder – are likely to be blamed by followers for the policy failures.

Given the collapse of the founder’s policies, anointed successors would do well to initiate drastic reforms. However, the extraordinary initial success of these policies, which remains fresh in the followers’ minds, pressures the new leaders to become excessively risk averse. Indeed, the fearful prospect of disappointing the followers and sacrificing fragile legitimacy, which rests entirely on their connection to the founder, prompts handpicked successors to cling to the status quo rather than implementing drastic reforms. To make matters worse, these successors struggle to convincingly blame other actors for the policy failures and resultant crisis. To avoid blaming the beloved founder, even though the fault for these problems lies predominantly with him, they may attempt to place blame on classic enemies of the movement. However, this is unlikely to win much sympathy from the followers. From the followers’ perspective, the founder successfully warded off threats from these malevolent opponents; anointed successors’ inability to do so only further substantiates their weakness. In short, while the founder’s endorsement may initially boost anointed successors’ support, multiple obstacles related to skill, timing, and resources prevent these individuals from becoming successful new leaders of the movement.

Existing studies of charisma support the notion that anointed successors struggle to uphold their predecessors’ movements. Yet in contrast to my theory, scholars tend to interpret this as evidence that the movements must routinize to survive. For example, Kostadinova and Levitt state, “When [the founder] withdraws from politics or dies, the organization faces an enormous challenge: it either replaces the leader with a functionary who is not remotely comparable with the predecessor, or else it splinters or simply dissolves. In either case, electoral loss is a more likely outcome than revival” (Kostadinova and Levitt Reference Kostadinova and Levitt2014, 500–1). Similarly, Madsen and Snow claim, “the ability of any [anointed successor] to maintain a direct tie with his/her following is very much diminished.” Thus, “charismatic movements, if they are to survive for an extended period, will inevitably develop structure and with that structure will come some decentralization of influence” (Madsen and Snow Reference Madsen and Snow1991, 25–28, emphasis added).

I argue that this logic of routinization underestimates the resilience of followers’ affective attachments to the founder, which – as demonstrated in Chapter 4 – cultivate a remarkably stable identity (Huddy Reference Huddy2001, 127–56; Meléndez and Rovira Kaltwasser Reference Meléndez2019, 3). Even in the absence of the founder, cultural symbols – such as images of the founder and stories of his/her heroism – can help sustain the identity among the followers (Huddy Reference Huddy2001, 143–4). In fact, these symbols may trigger especially intense feelings of sadness and yearning when the founder dies, making it very difficult for proponents of routinization to replace the followers’ identity with depersonalized partisanship. As I will illustrate in subsequent sections, successors who adopt a strategy of routinization – including Antonio Cafiero in Argentina – overlook the intensity of the followers’ enduring, charismatic attachments and therefore fail to tap into this reservoir of deep emotional support.

In sum, anointed successors face overwhelming obstacles that almost always preclude success. But, the resilience of citizens’ affective attachments to the founder and movement signals the potential for self-starters to reactivate those bonds, revive the founder’s transformative mission, and consolidate independent authority when conditions are more apt. Even so, success is anything but guaranteed. In fact, most self-starters who attempt to revive the movement in their own name fall short of establishing themselves as powerful heirs. The next section assesses the conditions under which self-starters can achieve this objective and carry the movement forward.

6.1.1.2 Self-Starters

Self-starters circumvent two obstacles faced by anointed successors and therefore have greater possibilities for successfully reviving charismatic movements and consolidating power. First, because they have greater freedom to seek power on their own timeline, self-starters can bypass the “status-quo bias” that encumbers handpicked successors; they can also avoid inheriting the crisis caused by the founder’s collapsed programs. Thus, not only can self-starters seek power unencumbered by the burdens shouldered by anointed successors, but they can also convincingly blame the crisis on someone else – such as the unfortunate leader who immediately replaced the founder. Second, because these leaders choose when they seek power, they often rise years after the founder’s rule, and can sidestep the founder’s desire to appoint an underwhelming replacement. While this fact alone does not ensure self-starters’ success, it encourages the emergence of more talented and promising candidates capable of exercising greater individual agency and appearing as strong leaders reminiscent of, rather than beholden to, the founder.

Scholars of routinization would claim that these two factors could not revive charismatic movements. Indeed, Weber, who perceives charisma to be fundamentally unstable, would argue that the movement could not live on without transforming into a more stable – traditional or bureaucratic – form of authority during the founder’s rule or shortly after his death (Reference Weber, Roth and Wittich1922/1978, 249–51). Shils, who contends that charisma can survive only through inanimate objects, would likewise doubt the possibility that an individual leader could reactivate the movement in personalistic fashion years after the founder’s disappearance (Reference Shils1965, 205). Finally, Jowitt, who claims that the charisma of programs – but not of leaders – can persist, would find it unlikely that a self-starter could claim the founder’s mantle. In short, these scholars would contend that charismatic movements’ lack of organizational structure would cause disintegration before self-starters could bring them back to life.

By contrast, I argue that charismatic movements can tolerate much more leadership volatility than institutionalized parties precisely because of their weak structure and their firm emotional foundation. As shown in Chapter 4, unlike conventional partisanship, the profoundly affective and personalistic nature of citizens’ identification with the movement, which is rooted in the founder’s legacy, can endure even if the movement suffers an organizational decline. While the intensity of charismatic attachments may fade during such periods, ambitious leaders who “embody the prototype” of the movement – that is, leaders who signal their likeness to the founder – can politically reactivate citizens’ ties and earn their loyalty as new standard-bearers (Haslam, Reicher, and Platow Reference Haslam, Reicher and Platow2011, 137; Hogg and Reid Reference Hogg and Reid2006, 19; Huddy Reference Huddy2001; Meléndez and Rovira Kaltwasser Reference Meléndez2019). Indeed, while it is difficult to change the personalistic nature of citizens’ identity, the evidence in Chapter 5 suggests that, in some contexts, talented successors can strategically “shift the intensity” of the followers’ identity to increase its political significance (Huddy Reference Huddy2001, 148).

6.2.1.1 Isabel Perón

As will be described in further detail in Chapter 7, Juan Perón rose to the presidency in 1946 and consolidated a powerful charismatic movement alongside his second wife, Eva, by granting unprecedented benefits to millions of socioeconomically and politically excluded citizens. Though Eva died of cancer in 1952 and a military coup exiled Juan to Spain in 1955, outlawing Peronism for nearly two decades, Perón remained Argentina’s most prominent political figure throughout his lifetime. Indeed, during his exile (1955–73), he influenced politics through proxy leaders and his unmatched support base.Footnote ⁷

Perón frequently spoke of creating an “organized community” of followers, suggesting that his movement might one day routinize (Perón Reference Perón1974). In practice, however, he undermined the organizational dimension of his movement by allowing the proliferation of ideological rifts within it and maintaining unchallenged personalistic control over it (McGuire Reference McGuire1997, 50; Page Reference Page1983, 161). These tactics deepened the “chameleonic” nature of his political brand and prevented the rise of powerful protégés while reinforcing his position as supreme leader (Ciria Reference Ciria1974, 30). Indeed, personal loyalty to Perón constituted the only thread uniting his otherwise bitterly divided followers. Upon returning to Argentina to serve a third presidential term in 1973, he displayed reluctance to share his power. Despite old age and a delicate political and economic context, he appointed his most faithful servant, Isabel, as his vice president and eventual successor (McGuire Reference McGuire1997, 164). By nominating a complete political novice rather than a more experienced leader, he showed his desire to dominate the movement.

As her husband’s reluctant successor, Isabel lacked the political familiarity and skill to maneuver her government out of the crisis and claim her place as the new leader of Peronism. Instead of reaching out to console the devastated masses, she failed to take ownership of the deep bonds her husband had cultivated. Thus, while followers expressed euphoria upon Juan’s return to Argentina in 1973, they viewed Isabel as weak and out of touch. In fact, her presidency was widely perceived as a “leaderless situation,” and voters “assumed that she would not be able to remain, even as a figurehead” for the movement (Di Tella Reference Di Tella1983, 69).

Isabel’s failure to inspire the followers was compounded by her inability to reform her husband’s dysfunctional policies of economic nationalism. While these policies had once created impressive growth and delivered prosperity to millions of Argentine workers, they were already approaching exhaustion when Perón was exiled in 1955. Because Perón had prioritized the short-term impact of the policies over their sustainability, the policies were inherently “self-limiting” (Waisman Reference Waisman1987, 256). Thus, as the economy began to stagnate in the early 1950s, the policies generated a distributional conflict between the productive agricultural sector and the unproductive industrial sector; this, in turn, created a crisis of “illegitimacy and political instability” (ibid.). Because subsequent regimes struggled to implement adequate reforms, they were held responsible for the declining trade, expanding debt, increasing inflation, low growth, and political volatility that resulted.

This inability of non-Peronist regimes to address the crisis in the 1955–73 period provided Perón with a second opportunity to prove his heroic power upon returning to Argentina in 1973. At the time, he proposed the “Social Pact,” a series of bold programs – enhancing Argentina’s economic independence from the United States, freezing inflationary prices, and increasing workers’ wages – to return the country to the prosperity of his prior rule (Pion-Berlin Reference Pion-Berlin1983, 59). As before, these policies initially delivered favorable results and sustained Perón’s superhuman reputation for the rest of his life, which lasted just nine months, until July 1, 1974. Shortly thereafter, the policies quickly imploded, causing a grave crisis that Isabel was forced to shoulder (ibid., 59–60).

Despite the urgent need for reform, Isabel feared that altering her husband’s policies would impose a painful cost on the followers and demonstrated little desire to undertake this challenge. Instead, in a half-hearted effort to maintain the support of her husband’s increasingly fractious rank and file, she promised to continue rather than reform his deeply problematic platform of economic nationalism through wage hikes and industrial expansion (Waisman Reference Waisman1987, 280). This strategy soon shattered the economy, forcing Isabel and her closest advisor, José López Rega, to enact a series of stabilization plans that substantially decreased workers’ real incomes (McGuire Reference McGuire1997, 167). Consequently, Lorenzo Miguel, the leader of the General Confederation of Labor (Confederación General del Trabajo – CGT), launched a crippling, two-day general strike against Isabel’s government. Unable to recover from this political and economic disaster, Isabel was ousted by a military coup on March 24, 1976 (ibid., 170).

Isabel’s weak image and utter lack of leadership led Peronist followers to view her as a tremendous disappointment rather than her husband’s genuine heir. Thus, while their loyalty to Perón and Eva survived, their attachments never transferred to Isabel. In fact, “Isabel is not Perón” and “there is only one Evita” became common refrains among the Peronist left during Isabel’s administration (Gillespie Reference Gillespie1982, 164). Decades later, in 2016, followers in focus groups with the author emphasized their distaste for Isabel. They stated, “I am Peronist of [Juan] Perón”; “I am an original Peronist”; “I follow Eva and her masses, but Isabel was a disaster”; and “Isabel was chaos.” Crucially, while her rule gave way to a military dictatorship in March 1976, these statements suggest that followers disassociated Isabel from Perón, thereby preserving their attachments to his heroic legacy.

6.2.1.2 Nicolás Maduro

As described in Chapter 3, Hugo Chávez took Venezuela by storm upon rising to the presidency in 1999. During his fourteen-year rule, he took drastic measures to destroy the unpopular, corrupt, and dysfunctional regime he replaced and establish his image as a true champion of the poor. Although the dramatic impact of his reforms depended on unsustainably high oil prices and drastic overspending, they provided unmatched benefits to millions of citizens and solidified Chávez’s status as their everlasting savior. Correspondingly, when he revealed that he had cancer on July 1, 2011, he assured his followers that he would combat the illness; in the meantime, while undergoing treatment in Cuba, he promised he would continue to personally govern the country rather than appoint a successor, emphasizing his irreplaceability (Primera Reference Primera2011). Thus, when he announced his cancer was terminal in December 2012, he appeared as surprised and devastated as his followers that he would not live on to serve as their immortal protector. As though resigned to the fact that any successor would be inadequate, Chávez anointed Nicolás Maduro, an obsequious follower with scant ambition or domestic political experience, as his heir. The choice surprised many within and outside of Chavismo. However, the anointed successor’s lack of skill made Chávez appear even more impressive; furthermore, Maduro had devoted years of service to Chávez – a characteristic of paramount importance to the founder (Corrales and Penfold Reference Corrales and Penfold2015, 160).

Since becoming president in 2013, Maduro has utterly failed to claim true leadership of Chavismo. His attempts to legitimate his authority have hinged exclusively on his appointment by Chávez rather than the establishment of an independent charismatic image. For instance, he has declared himself the “son of Chávez,” referenced the founder constantly in speeches, and covered public spaces with images of his predecessor. Perhaps as a result, support for Maduro remains at about 28 percent – a surprisingly high figure, considering his catastrophic mismanagement of the economy and society in general (GBAO Strategies Reference Strategies2019). Nevertheless, whereas Chávez relied on his captivating charisma to consolidate support, Maduro has used despotic tactics to remain in power, including jailing opposition politicians, outlawing (or holding fraudulent) elections, and repressing civilians (Freedom House 2018). Furthermore, his claims to have assumed the founder’s mantle appear absurd to many followers, who have been forced to endure hyperinflation, extreme shortages of basic goods, and even starvation (Corrales and Penfold Reference Corrales and Penfold2015, 171; Gill Reference Gill2017).

Like Isabel Perón in Argentina, Nicolás Maduro has also proven unwilling and unable to transform his predecessor’s foundering policies. To sustain the flow of benefits to his followers during his rule, Chávez squandered the state’s oil profits and recklessly interfered with the economy. Maduro therefore inherited an administration that severely undermined economic production and embraced drastic overspending, triggering inflation, shortages, corruption, and crime. Despite these problems, the successor’s only political asset – Chávez’s personal endorsement – made him unwilling and unable to introduce desperately needed reforms, which has caused a devastating crisis. Furthermore, Maduro’s attempts to blame the domestic opposition politicians and foreign “imperial” powers, such as the United States and Europe, have appeared thoroughly unconvincing – even to followers, who have long distrusted these “enemy” groups. Consequently, many Chavistas view the new leader as responsible for their suffering. As several followers expressed in focus groups conducted in 2016, “Maduro is a bad Chavista”; “we are more Chavista than Maduro is”; and “what a shame that Maduro is the one representing Chavismo today.” Because of Maduro’s refusal to reverse policy failures, about half of Chávez’s followers opposed Maduro in 2015, two years into the anointed successor’s rule (Briceño Reference Briceño2015a).

Several scholars have taken Maduro’s failure as evidence that Chavismo has died – a testament to the fleeting nature of charismatic movements (e.g., López Maya Reference López Maya2014, 68–87; Rondón Reference Rondón2017). Conversely, I argue that the stark contrast between Chávez and Maduro has caused many followers to reinforce their attachments to the former while distancing themselves from the latter. Indeed, half of Chávez’s most devoted followers – about 16 percent of the electorate – identify as “Chavistas no Maduristas” (Briceño Reference Briceño2015a). Moreover, a 2020 poll by Venezuelan firm Datanálisis indicates that while Maduro’s approval rating stands at a dismal 13 percent, fully 62 percent of voters maintain favorable views of Chávez (Datanálisis: Encuesta Nacional Ómnibus 2020). And in focus groups conducted with Chavista followers in 2016, participants expressed disdain for Maduro while declaring their love for Chávez and expressing faith that a more competent successor will appear someday: “I am with the future, and we are going to get it with Chavismo”; “one looks to the future and one sees Chávez.” Others declared that their future leader should be “charismatic,” “honorable,” “capable of restoring order,” and “100 percent Chavista.” Contrary to the logic of routinization, wherein citizens’ bonds must transform into depersonalized organizational linkages, the survival of citizens’ affective ties to Chávez suggests the potential for his movement to one day reemerge in its original charismatic form under a more appealing successor.

6.2.2.1 Keiko Fujimori

In June 1990, political outsider Alberto Fujimori was elected president of Peru during a period of hyperinflation and insurrection. He immediately implemented drastic policies of economic stabilization, bringing hyperinflation to a screeching halt, and soon launched a campaign to combat the insurgent groups (Weyland Reference Weyland2002, 150–58). Combined with his personal allure and his inspiring mission to “reengineer Peru,” these bold initiatives helped him consolidate impressive popular support (Carrión Reference Carrión and Carrión2006, 126–49). Devotion to Fujimori proved especially strong among the poor, who had suffered the most from the economic crisis and political violence prior to his rule. Indeed, his popularity remained well above 50 percent in 2000, ten years after his rise to power, when he won a third (unconstitutional) term (Arce and Carrión Reference Arce and Carrión2010, 37–38).

While he retained a large and devoted following, Congress threatened to depose Fujimori following his electoral victory in 2000, citing accusations of corruption and misconduct. Reluctantly, he resigned that November while in Japan and remained in self-imposed exile until 2007, when he was imprisoned for human rights abuses committed during his rule (ibid.; Levitsky and Zavaleta Reference Levitsky, Zavaleta, Levitsky, Loxton, Van Dyck and Domínguez2016, 433). When he was forced to step down in 2000, Fujimori’s personalistic legacy left the country in a leadership vacuum. In fact, in subsequent years, Peru endured a series of disliked presidents characterized by “broken promises” (Dargent and Muñoz Reference Dargent and Muñoz2016, 147).

Over time, however, Keiko Fujimori, Alberto’s daughter, demonstrated her potential to return Fujimorismo to power and become its new champion.Footnote ⁸ When she competed in presidential elections in 2011 and 2016, she built a larger and more consistent support base than any other political party. In fact, in 2016, she claimed 39.9 percent of the vote in the first round – nearly twice as much as the runner-up candidate (Dargent and Muñoz Reference Dargent and Muñoz2016, 145–47).

To build this support, Keiko first established herself as a self-starter. As the daughter of the exiled founder, in some ways she appeared to be her father’s handpicked heir. Indeed, she made her political debut as First Lady of Peru during her father’s presidency, after her parents had separated. Years later in 2011 when she first sought the presidency, many speculated that Alberto had helped orchestrate her campaign from prison (Romero Reference Romero2011). In turn, Keiko leaned heavily on her flesh-and-blood connection to Alberto throughout the 2011 campaign to enhance her popularity among his followers, calling him “the best president in Peruvian history” (Loxton and Levitsky 2016, 127).

Despite her close relationship with her father, however, Keiko’s experience in the 2011 and 2016 presidential campaigns indicates that she earned her status as a self-starter. First, while she took advantage of her familial connection to boost her popularity, her father never explicitly designated her as his successor. Rather than leaning on his overt endorsement, she sought the presidency on her own, a full decade after his resignation. Moreover, Keiko ran under a party label of her own creation, Popular Force (Fuerza Popular – FP) (Levitsky Reference Levitsky2011).Footnote ⁹ In doing so, she injected fresh energy into the movement and added her own “personal stamp” to expand its political influence (Meléndez Reference Meléndez2019; Vergara Reference Vergara2018, 67).

In contrast to anointed successors, Keiko also navigated an increasingly tense personal relationship with her father during her quest for power (Meléndez Reference Meléndez2019). Indeed, unlike political advisers who had faithfully served Alberto and continued to display sycophantic tendencies throughout the 2000s – such as Martha Chávez, his handpicked candidate for the 2006 presidential election – Keiko exercised independent ambition that sometimes conflicted with and threatened to overshadow her father. For instance, whereas Chávez unabashedly praised even the most unsavory aspects of Alberto’s legacy, Keiko carefully tied herself to his most popular accomplishments – namely, stabilizing the economy, restoring law and order, and lifting up the poor – while distancing herself from his more violent and authoritarian tendencies (“Martha Chávez Aplaude Ataque a Monumento ‘Ojo que Llora’” 2007; Meléndez Reference Meléndez2019).

In the most overt demonstration of her independence, during her 2016 campaign, Keiko publicly vowed not to pardon her father for his past crimes and release him from prison if elected (Vergara Reference Vergara2018, 83). In contrast, Keiko’s brother, Kenji, remained faithful to his father, fiercely advocating for his release from prison – which finally occurred in December 2017 (ibid.).Footnote ¹⁰ While this family drama added to the growing rift between Keiko and Alberto, it helped the former secure her hard-won position as the movement’s new leader. Indeed, the number of “Keikistas” within the movement – who support both her father’s legacy and her new leadership – continued to grow even as she distanced herself from him (Levitsky and Zavaleta Reference Levitsky, Zavaleta, Levitsky, Loxton, Van Dyck and Domínguez2016, 436–37).

While positioning herself as a self-starter, Keiko also fulfilled the second condition for successful movement revival by adopting key elements of her father’s personalistic style to win over traditional Fujimoristas. For example, rather than campaigning on a specific platform, she made sweeping promises to reverse economic stagnation and meet the needs of citizens “tired of waiting for solutions to their pressing problems” (Dargent and Muñoz Reference Dargent and Muñoz2016, 152). She also donned her father’s approachable, “down-to-earth” style and traveled the country to forge direct ties with voters as Alberto had years earlier.

Importantly, even as she consolidated personalistic appeal, Keiko also tried to establish a party organization more than any other presidential candidate. Her new party, FP, organized local-level committees throughout Peru, and nominated candidates for subnational elections under its label (Meléndez Reference Meléndez2019). Perhaps as a result, FP achieved some electoral successes, including an absolute majority in Congress in 2016 with 36 percent of the legislative vote (Birnbaum Reference Birnbaum2017; Tegel Reference Tegel2017).

Despite these efforts, Keiko prioritized her charismatic allure over her party-building efforts at crucial moments. During her presidential campaigns, she created a “personalistic vehicle” that overshadowed her nascent party (Dargent and Muñoz Reference Dargent and Muñoz2016, 152). Her supporters also came to call themselves “Keikistas” rather than FP partisans, indicating their loyalty to the individual over the party. In short, Keiko’s “success at party-building [was] far from guaranteed,” whereas her image as a fresh leader capable of delivering prosperity to the suffering masses – as her father did two decades earlier – played to the personalistic foundations of Fujimorismo (ibid., 155).

Though Keiko achieved self-starter status and adopted an engaging personalistic style, she narrowly lost the elections in both 2011 and 2016, failing to secure the presidency. Contrary to the successful self-starters discussed subsequently, she did not manage to win an impressive, landslide victory over her opponents. Thus, she was unable to restore her father’s movement and exercise power as the people’s new savior.

I argue that Keiko failed due to the absence of a crisis – another crucial condition for self-starters’ success. An economic boom in the mid-2000s, driven by international demand for Peru’s copper, gold, and natural gas, generated substantial growth and acted as a “buffer against social malaise” (ibid., 147). Indeed, this boom, combined with solid macroeconomic policies and structural stability, enabled the country to achieve high growth, low inflation, and substantial poverty reduction in the post-Fujimori period. Peru’s average GDP grew at an annual rate of 6.1 percent between 2002 and 2013, while poverty fell from 52.2 percent to 26.1 percent between 2005 and 2013, and extreme poverty fell from 30.9 percent to 11.4 percent during the same period (The World Bank in Peru: Overview, April 2019). Consequently, while Peruvians expressed disappointment in their political leaders, they did not desperately crave a hero as they did prior to Alberto’s rise in 1990. Keiko’s promises to once again “reengineer Peru” and restore prosperity did not resonate enough with the public to catapult her into power.

6.2.2.2 Antonio Cafiero

In Argentina, Antonio Cafiero, a talented and experienced leader, had the potential to become a successful self-starter when he competed in the presidential primaries for the Peronist Justicialist Party (PJ) in July 1988. By then, memories of Isabel’s failures had been overshadowed by the even-worse performance of the military during the 1976–83 dictatorship. Moreover, seeking power fifteen years after Perón’s death, Cafiero rose as an independent leader and not as a submissive protégé of the founder. Without the inherent weaknesses of anointed successors, Cafiero’s path to power seemed more promising than that of his Peronist predecessor.

Additionally, Cafiero sought power amidst a terrible economic crisis, further enhancing his prospects for becoming the new leader of Peronism. The outgoing president from the (non-Peronist) Radical Civic Union (UCR) party, Raúl Alfonsín, had failed to stimulate growth, reduce inflation, or ameliorate the country’s ballooning debt. Despite Alfonsín’s attempts to stabilize the economy, unemployment worsened, wages stagnated, and prices soared, increasing social conflict while destroying his popularity (McGuire Reference McGuire1997, 185–86). This provided a unique opportunity for Peronist self-starters such as Cafiero to seek power: with Alfonsín delegitimized and the crisis worsening every day, citizens grew eager for a new leader to rise up and relieve their misery (Weyland Reference Weyland2002, 138). As Cafiero’s grandson, Francisco Cafiero, stated, Argentines were desperate for “a leader to put an end to the economic cancer…to take action to confront the crisis.”Footnote ¹¹

Despite these advantages, Cafiero failed to reactivate followers’ attachments and secure the Peronist presidential nomination. I argue that this is because he did not play to the movement’s charismatic foundations. Rather than promising to save his people through whatever means necessary, as Perón had done, Cafiero committed himself to the “Peronist Renovation,” an effort to transform Peronism into a strong, institutionalized party (Cafiero Reference Cafiero2011).Footnote ¹² He adopted this approach because, in line with scholars of routinization, he believed that “Peronism could only survive … to the extent that it clearly assumed the form of a party, detached itself from authoritarian traditions, and stopped trying to center itself around a plebiscitarian leadership that had not existed since Perón’s death” (McGuire Reference McGuire1997, 167–68, emphasis added).

While Cafiero’s attempt to transform the movement into an institutionalized party appealed to middle-class intellectuals, it distanced him from traditional, popular-sector (lower- and lower-middle-class) Peronists, who simply wanted a strong leader to resolve their pressing problems.Footnote ¹³ Furthermore, Cafiero’s lack of affinity with Perón’s personalistic legacy caused the followers to perceive the successor and his team as “a bunch of urbane intellectuals mesmerized by an exotic leftist ideology perhaps appropriate for Sweden or Germany but alien to Argentina’s nationalist tradition” (McGuire Reference McGuire1997, 211). Cafiero’s dry communication style also projected “formality, wordiness, and lukewarm progressivism,” further alienating him from traditional Peronist followers (ibid.). In fact, compared to his alluring competitor, Carlos Menem, Cafiero was so unpopular with the masses that, a week before the July 1988 primaries, pundits predicted that his victory over Menem would depend on low turnout among Peronist voters (“Evita votaría a Cristina, Perón votaría a Taiana, y los dos juntos a Unidad Ciudadana” 2017). In the end, Cafiero suffered a humiliating defeat: to the chagrin of PJ elites, he lost in 19 of 24 electoral districts, by a total margin of more than 100,000 votes (“Menem, Candidato Presidencial Del PJ” 1988).Footnote ¹⁴ As the incumbent Governor of the Province of Buenos Aires – a traditional Peronist stronghold – Cafiero even lost his own province to Menem by over 23,000 votes! (“Replanteo en el Justicialismo tras el triunfo de Carlos Menem” 1988).

In brief, Cafiero’s failure to win the Peronist nomination for president demonstrates the unviability of routinization for reviving charismatic movements. His commitment to party institutionalization over the cultivation of an inspiring, charismatic image prevented him from appearing as Perón’s heroic descendant. Though he was a self-starter in a time of crisis, he attempted to create a programmatic organization rather than simply playing to Perón’s personalistic legacy. This strategy of routinization alienated followers and marked Cafiero as an elite politician rather than a hero capable of reviving Perón’s ambitious mission to transform society.

As the experiences of Keiko Fujimori and Antonio Cafiero illustrate, self-starters fall short of reanimating charismatic movements when they fail to meet both of the essential conditions. First, as Keiko’s unsuccessful quest for power shows, leaders who emerge in the absence of crisis cannot leverage citizens’ desperation for a new savior and thus struggle to establish a charismatic image reminiscent of the founder. Second, Cafiero demonstrates that self-starters who attempt to routinize the movement into a structured party rather than filling the absent founder’s shoes fail to tap into supporters’ profound, affective bonds and thus struggle to cultivate their own charismatic allure.

6.2.3.1 Carlos Menem

Carlos Menem defied the expectations of party elites by securing the PJ presidential nomination in July 1988 against Cafiero, the favored candidate, and becoming president the following year. Subsequently, Menem established a new chapter of Peronism, giving the movement new life and becoming the most beloved leader of Argentina since Perón. Indeed, Menem swept the May 1989 elections by more than ten points; enjoyed approval ratings as high as 70 percent within two years of assuming office; successfully revised the constitution to allow for reelection; and won a second term in 1995 by a margin of more than twenty points (Carlin et al. Reference Carlin, Hartlyn, Hellwig, Love, Martínez-Gallardo and Singer2016).

In addition to consolidating impressive popularity, Menem’s charismatic leadership revitalized Peronism as the country’s predominant political force. In fact, while deliberately undermining the efforts of Cafiero and the “Peronist Renovation” to institutionalize the movement – a process I will discuss in greater detail in Chapter 7 – he inspired followers to express their attachments with renewed strength. This is reflected by the dramatic increase in the proportion of citizens who expressed their identification with the movement after his rise to power. According to public opinion surveys from local firms, whereas about 16 percent of citizens openly identified with Peronism in 1985, more than 40 percent identified themselves with the movement in 1992, just three years into Menem’s presidency. In contrast, over the same period of time, the proportion of citizens who identified with the UCR – the main opposition party and the party of Menem’s predecessor, Alfonsín – declined precipitously, from about 32 percent in 1985 to 20 percent in 1992 (Consultoria Interdisciplinaria En Desarrollo 1985; Romer & Associates 1992).Footnote ¹⁵

Like Cafiero, Menem’s presidential candidacy was aided by his self-starter status and his rise during a severe crisis. The difference in the two leaders’ fates, I contend, lies in their contrasting leadership styles. As described in the previous section, Cafiero’s efforts to routinize the movement led to his downfall. He believed that working through the party’s nascent institutional channels, establishing a platform for effective programmatic governance, and accumulating the support of party elites would lead to victory. In reality, however, this approach alienated Cafiero from the Peronist rank and file, effectively cutting him off from the movement’s most powerful asset.

In contrast, Menem’s deliberate effort to revive Perón’s personalistic approach and apply his own charisma resonated deeply with the followers. By portraying himself as a hero in times of dire crisis, he explicitly recognized and promised to address the hopes and fears of the people. As summarized by the major national newspaper, La Nación, in the aftermath of the 1988 primary election, “The Cafiero … ticket represented rationality. It had a structure behind it and a more homogenous project. Menem worked principally on folklore and the emotional content of Peronism” (“Replanteo en el justicialismo tras el triunfo de Carlos Menem” 1988). For this reason, Menem was able to politically mobilize Peronist voters, vanquish his opponent, and restore the movement to power in his own name for a full decade.

Consistent with my theory laid out in Chapter 5, I argue that Menem’s successful adoption of a personalistic approach depended on a combination of symbolic and material strategies. To begin, the leader established direct, affectionate communication with Peronist supporters, reinforcing his symbolic image as the founder’s authentic and charismatic heir. In contrast to the elitist appearance of his opponents – including Cafiero in the 1988 primary election and the UCR’s Eduardo Angeloz in the 1989 general election – Menem embraced a “swashbuckling personal style,” donned casual clothing and sideburns that rivaled those of historic caudillo Facundo Quiroga, and traveled tirelessly to personally connect with ordinary people (McGuire Reference McGuire1997, 208). Alberto Kohan, a close advisor who would become Menem’s chief of staff, recalled how massive crowds would greet Menem as his campaign bus pulled into each town. After years of suffering under disappointing leaders, Kohan stated, citizens felt inspired by Menem’s charisma.Footnote ¹⁶ Carlos Corach, who became Minister of the Interior, explained that, like Perón, Menem could “interpret the sentiments, both good and bad, of the people,” and used this understanding to “tell the people what they wanted to hear.”Footnote ¹⁷

Additionally, during his 1989 presidential campaign, Menem promised citizens relief from the crisis and a return to the prosperity of Perón’s rule, rather than articulating the programmatic details of his proposals. On the surface, the candidate’s platform seemed consistent with Perón’s policies of economic nationalism. For instance, he proclaimed he would increase workers’ wages through his “Salariazo” and would reignite Perón’s state-sponsored “productive revolution” (Arias Reference Arias1995). Despite these vague programmatic references, however, Menem focused primarily on his promise to save the people from their suffering – a duty he claimed that the outgoing radical administration had failed to uphold. For example, two weeks before the May 1989 elections, he stated, “The current government has been unable to resolve [the country’s] problems, and has made them even worse. There is even more hunger, and [the government] has failed to guarantee the right to health, to a dignified home, to social protection, and the rights of the elderly” (“Menem: ‘No ofrezco falsas promesas, sino trabajo y más trabajo,’” 1989).

Moreover, rather than focusing on the details of his own policies, Menem pledged to do whatever was necessary to reverse the failures of the outgoing regime and “pulverize the crisis” (“Hay que enfrentar la crisis y pulverizarla, dijo Menem” 1989). In doing so, he became the first leader to bring Perón’s mission of salvation back to life. As he stated on the campaign trail:

In addition to assuring the people that he would resolve the crisis and deliver prosperity through whatever means necessary, Menem implored Peronists to have faith in his leadership, as demonstrated by his campaign slogan, “Follow me! I will not let you down.”Footnote ¹⁸ Through these tactics, he shifted the public’s attention away from programmatic substance and successfully embodied the charismatic spirit of Perón.

Shortly after coming to power in July 1989, Menem performed a programmatic about-face by implementing stark free-market policies. The new president fearlessly launched unconventional alliances with private companies and business elites long demonized by Peronism, namely the multinational corporation Bunge y Born; enacted structural adjustment measures that were even more extreme than the recommendations of international financial institutions; and committed Argentina to a fundamentally liberal economic model. Then, in 1991, Menem followed these adjustment programs up with the Convertibility Plan, a “highly risky” policy that pegged the Argentine peso to the US dollar (Weyland Reference Weyland2002, 112–15).

Predictably, most PJ elites criticized Menem’s bold gestures as brazenly anti-Peronist (Cafiero Reference Cafiero2011, 464–65; Levitsky Reference Levitsky2003, 148–49). Yet, while the substance of these policies contradicted those of Perón, they provided tangible evidence of Menem’s charismatic power by putting a swift and seemingly miraculous end to the hyperinflationary crisis that the new president had inherited from his predecessor, Alfonsín. Indeed, by straying from the substance of Perón’s original programs, Menem embodied the founder’s daring spirit and, in the short term, rescued the followers from their misery. For example, the Convertibility Plan reduced inflation from 1,344 percent in early 1990 to 17.5 percent in 1992 and to 3.9 percent in 1994 (Weyland Reference Weyland2002, 158). The plan also increased the purchasing power of poor Argentines – many of them Peronist followers – in an extraordinary fashion (Gantman Reference Gantman2012, 338). Menem’s audacious structural adjustment policies also paved the way for impressive economic growth, achieving an annual rate of 7.5 percent between 1991 and 1994, as well as a substantial decline in poverty, from 21.6 percent in October 1991 to 16.1 percent in May 1994 (Weyland Reference Weyland2002, 158).

The impressive, stabilizing impact of his policies on inflation and prices granted Menem overwhelming popular support, even if the policies ultimately hurt poor Peronists by generating high unemployment, social spending cuts, and a devastating economic crash in 2001. Crucially, both Menem and his supporters interpreted the remarkable, though short-lived, success of his programs as evidence of his genuine Peronist roots. In fact, throughout his presidency, Menem skillfully invoked Perón to justify his actions in the name of protecting the people from harm. As he declared in 1993, “This country, this president, is doing exactly what Perón would have done if he had to govern Argentina today” (Comas Reference Comas1993). Ten years later, during his third (and ultimately failed) campaign in 2003, he declared, “Carlos Menem is the best and most authentic disciple of Juan Perón and of Eva Perón” (Sued Reference Sued2003). Even today, long after his fall from power, many Peronists personally attribute their 1990s prosperity to him. As followers reported in the focus groups, “thanks to Menem, I bought my first house, there was credit available, and there wasn’t inflation”; “Menem was good to my dad”; “with Menem, we could eat well.” While some leaders strongly opposed Menem, followers praised him for quickly resolving their problems and fulfilling Perón’s mission to deliver prosperity.

By communicating in a direct and emotive fashion, tying himself to Perón, and rescuing citizens from hyperinflation-induced suffering, Menem embodied Perón’s most alluring traits. His policies eventually collapsed and unleashed an even deeper crisis. Indeed, beginning with Menem’s second presidential term in 1995, unemployment, inequality, and crime steadily increased (Gantman Reference Gantman2012, 338–44). Moreover, in the aftermath of his presidency, from 1999 to 2002, the economy sharply contracted, hitting rock bottom in December 2001. The dollar-to-peso convertibility came to a halt with a devaluation of the peso in January 2002, which led to an economic contraction of 11.74 percent that year (ibid., 332, 339–44). In spite of this implosion, the impressive short-term effects of Menem’s policies, combined with the leader’s captivating appeal, had successfully reactivated citizens’ charismatic attachments to Peronism for several years and had expanded his base to include the business-oriented middle class. Consequently, Menem achieved tremendous personalistic authority that endured for a decade. More importantly, by embodying the charismatic legacy of Perón, he successfully returned the Peronist movement to power and demonstrated its capacity to reemerge as a predominant political force without shedding its deeply personalistic nature.

6.2.3.2 Néstor and Cristina Kirchner

As described earlier, Menem’s unsustainable policies, especially the problematic Convertibility Plan, unleashed a terrible economic crisis in December 2001. In turn, this disaster delegitimized the political system: the government cycled through five presidents in eleven days, beginning with Fernando De La Rúa, Menem’s non-Peronist successor who resigned on December 21, and ending with Eduardo Duhalde, a Peronist who served as interim president from January 2, 2002, to May 25, 2003 (Gantman Reference Gantman2012, 345). During this transition, Peronism fragmented and did not nominate an official presidential candidate for the 2003 elections. Instead, three Peronist politicians – Carlos Menem, Adolfo Rodríguez Saá, and Néstor Kirchner – ran on independent tickets. Menem won the first round of elections with just over 24 percent of the vote but dropped out of the race, fearing he could not win in a run-off against Néstor, who was overwhelmingly the favored candidate. Thus, Néstor, a governor from the far-flung, southern province of Santa Cruz, became president (Mora y Araujo Reference Mora y Araujo2011).

While the new leader owed his presidential victory in 2003 in large part to the weak profiles of the other candidates, he and his wife, Cristina, leveraged favorable conditions to redefine Peronism on their own terms and dominate politics for the next twelve years. First, like Menem in 1989, Néstor became president in 2003 as a self-starter rather than an anointed successor. He achieved this by waiting four years after Menem’s fall to seek power and avoiding any association with his defamed Peronist predecessor. Moreover, he distanced himself by turning against Menem. This allowed the former president’s economic policies to break down under De La Rúa, a non-Peronist; softened his once-powerful grip on Peronism; permitted Néstor to frame Menem as a neoliberal traitor; and created the opportunity to reconfigure the movement by promising a return to Perón’s economic nationalism.

Second, Néstor’s rise after the 2001 economic collapse was essential to his reactivation of Peronism. To address the crisis and alleviate citizens’ extreme suffering, Duhalde, Néstor’s immediate predecessor, implemented painful economic stabilization policies in 2002, including a massive devaluation of the peso. This, combined with rapid growth in global commodity prices, produced much-needed relief during Néstor’s presidency. Indeed, between 2003 and 2007, Argentina’s gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of about 9 percent, the value of the peso stabilized, unemployment declined from 21.7 to 8.5 percent, and wages increased by over 50 percent (Damill and Frenkel Reference Damill, Frenkel, Gervasoni and Peruzzotti2015, Table 1).

Crucially, the self-starter capitalized on this remarkable recovery to frame himself as the people’s savior. To begin, he aggressively attacked others for causing the crisis, including Menem, the International Monetary Fund, and other foreign creditors (Gantman Reference Gantman2012, 345). For instance, during his 2003 campaign, Néstor blamed Menem for intentionally undermining the well-being of the people and weakening Argentina’s democracy, stating that the former president “robbed Argentines of their right to work, then their right to eat, to study, and to hope; then, he came after the last right they had, to vote” (“Kirchner acusó a Menem de dar un ‘golpe a la democracia’” 2003). Subsequently, in December 2005, Néstor canceled Argentina’s debt payments to the International Monetary Fund, blaming the international financial institution for inflicting “pain and injustice” on Argentina during the 2001 crisis through pressuring the country to enact “policies that undermined economic growth” (“Argentina cancela su deuda de 9.810 millones de dólares con el Fondo Monetario Internacional” 2006). This confrontational approach suited Néstor’s “fighting” personality and accentuated his appeal as a strong, charismatic leader.Footnote ¹⁹ Moreover, his aggressive style connected him to a key dimension of the Peronist legacy: the deep cleavage between the humble people and the selfish elites. Consequently, this strategy established emotional connections between Néstor and the movement’s followers without explicitly tying the new president to the Peronist label, which would have risked associating him with Menem’s disastrous failures.

In addition to deepening the cleavage between “elites” and “the people,” Néstor took personal credit for the economic recovery, even though it resulted largely from the stabilization measures imposed by Duhalde in 2002, prior to his rise to power (Damill and Frenkel Reference Damill, Frenkel, Gervasoni and Peruzzotti2015). Establishing this impression proved relatively easy for him, as his presidency coincided with notable improvements in employment, wages, salaries, and economic growth (Mora y Araujo Reference Mora y Araujo2011). In fact, thanks in large part to the concrete results of this recovery, Néstor’s approval soared to 74 percent by July 2003, just two months into his presidency (Carlin et al. Reference Carlin, Hartlyn, Hellwig, Love, Martínez-Gallardo and Singer2016), and Peronists seemed convinced that he would become a heroic reincarnation of the founder. Indeed, as evidenced in the focus groups conducted by the author in 2016, many followers went beyond positive evaluations of Néstor’s performance to worship him as a savior. “The world was sunken, and he saved us,” one participant declared; “the people began to believe in their president once again”; another stated, “Néstor brought love back to the people, he brought the return of Peronism,” a third said, “I had purpose in my life again when Néstor came to power”; a fourth confessed; “Perón’s legacy [was] alive in Néstor,” fifth expressed. Yet another participant claimed, “My father said that, since Perón, nobody had been capable of filling his eyes with tears until Néstor. When I saw [Néstor] on television, I felt butterflies in my stomach, I wanted to hug him and thank him [for touching my father].” In short, because the new president depicted himself as responsible for the seemingly miraculous economic recovery, he consolidated impressive, personalistic power and revived Peronism on his own terms, as a separate chapter from that of Menem (ibid.; Ollier Reference Ollier, Gervasoni and Peruzzotti2015).

Once Néstor proved himself worthy of the people’s adoration, he and Cristina set about consolidating their symbolic image as charismatic heirs of Juan and Eva Perón. To do so, the leading couple behaved in a deeply personalistic fashion and resurrected components of the Peronist narrative that played to their strengths while further separating them from their Peronist predecessor. For example, as mentioned earlier, the Kirchners adopted a polarizing, openly confrontational attitude toward their opponents, including Menem, agro-industrial elites, figures associated with the 1976–83 military dictatorship, international financial institutions, and supporters of the neoliberal development model in general (Wortman Reference Wortman, Gervasoni and Peruzzotti2015). This strategy recharged followers’ enthusiasm for the movement by reminding them of Eva’s defiant attitude toward anti-Peronist “oligarchs” and it differentiated the Kirchners from Menem, who had a much more conciliatory leadership style.Footnote ²⁰

The Kirchner couple also portrayed themselves as unparalleled champions of human rights. This appealed to young, middle-class, and leftist Peronists whose relatives and friends had suffered persecution and repression during the 1976–83 military dictatorship (Wortman Reference Wortman, Gervasoni and Peruzzotti2015). Interestingly, while President Alfonsín had courageously defended human rights and democracy in the immediate aftermath of the dictatorship, the Kirchners downplayed the contributions of this non-Peronist leader and instead “considered themselves to be the authors of human rights in Argentina.”Footnote ²¹ By consolidating an image as passionate defenders of victimized people, Néstor and Cristina boosted their charismatic appeal, especially among middle-class and leftist Peronists.

Finally, upon becoming president in 2007 in what was intended to be a strategy of alternation in power with Néstor, Cristina focused on rekindling direct, emotional ties with Peronists from the popular sectors. This strategy solidified the Kirchners’ symbolic position as true Peronists and, in combination with the extraordinary economic recovery under Néstor, curried favor with the movement’s traditional rank and file. Indeed, several Kirchner-affiliated political strategists stressed that, especially once the initial euphoria brought by the economic recovery began to fade, forging affective linkages with Peronist followers in this fashion was essential for the leading couple to “return Peronism to power,” “interpret and refresh the identity,” and consolidate their position as the undisputed heirs of Juan and Eva.Footnote ²²

As president, Cristina reconnected with Peronist followers by portraying herself as “Evita reloaded,” mirroring the founder’s wife in speech, dress, and interactions with voters (Wortman Reference Wortman, Gervasoni and Peruzzotti2015). This activated followers’ passionate, visceral connections to the movement and associated Cristina with Eva’s saint-like image – “a combination of Christ, Che, and Robin Hood.”Footnote ²³ After Néstor’s unexpected death from a heart attack in 2010, Cristina also portrayed him as a martyr alongside Juan and Eva, drawing explicit comparisons between the two leading couples. Consequently, Cristina won reelection in 2011 with an overwhelming 54 percent of the vote. Reflecting on this period, followers declared in the focus groups, “Perón is embodied by Néstor, and Eva by Cristina”; “for me, Cristina is a reflection of Eva”; “Perón and Eva, Néstor and Cristina, they are the most important leaders in Argentina.”

During Cristina’s second term, the Kirchners’ policies of economic nationalism began to deteriorate, resulting in rising inflation, poverty, and crime (Salvia Reference Salvia, Gervasoni and Peruzzotti2015). Correspondingly, similar to Menem at the end of his presidency, some followers came to view Cristina as a failed Peronist leader. As non-Kirchner Peronists in the focus groups stated in 2016, one year after her fall from power, “I didn’t like Cristina at all, I hope she never returns, she makes me so mad because of the things she did”; “Cristina spoke about being ‘national and popular,’ but the government was a cash register for her”; “the era of Cristina was terrible, she disgusts me.” Other followers expressed frustration with Cristina’s attempts to portray herself as the contemporary Eva. For example, one participant stated, “Cristina wanted to be like Eva, but she didn’t have a single hair in common.” Another declared that Cristina’s attempt to imitate Eva “was a costume she used to keep robbing the people.” A third stated, “she tried [to be like Eva] but she didn’t succeed by a long shot.” A fourth said, “She tried to dress and speak like [Eva], but she didn’t actually imitate her.” A fifth stated, “she wanted to be like Eva but she didn’t ever succeed.” A sixth explained, “Evita was a common woman. Cristina wanted to be like that, but she fell victim to her own selfishness and ego.” As reflected by these statements, Cristina’s declining performance led Peronist followers to view her as a fraudulent Peronist, and symbolically excommunicated her from the movement while reaffirming their own attachments to its founders.

The Kirchner administration receded from power in 2015 with the presidential election of Mauricio Macri, a non-Peronist. Yet, while the leaders’ government ultimately fell, I argue that Néstor’s rise as a self-starter; his policies, which became associated with dramatic growth and economic prosperity; and both Néstor and Cristina’s symbolic strategies to reignite the followers’ emotional attachments to the movement enabled them to establish a formidable new episode of Peronism. In doing so, the Kirchners – like Menem before them – deepened the widespread perception in Argentina that Peronism is the only force capable of governing the country.

7.3.1.1 Establishing Charismatic Attachments

Perón fulfilled the first condition for the establishment of charismatic attachments by using his position as Minister of Labor to reach out to the neglected masses and grant them a role in politics for the first time in the country’s history. Thanks to his leadership, poor and working-class Argentines underwent a transformation from voiceless outsiders to dignified citizens who occupied a meaningful role in society (James Reference James1988, 17). In addition, Perón satisfied the second condition by implementing bold and extensive reforms on behalf of his descamisados (shirtless ones). Due to his reforms, millions of Argentinians enjoyed unprecedented material benefits, including newfound job security in urban factories, a 40-percent wage increase, paid vacation, and new homes (Ascher Reference Ascher1984, 51; Madsen and Snow Reference Madsen and Snow1991, 52). Grateful for their elevated status and material prosperity, these people came to worship Perón as their savior (ibid., 46–48).

Over the next two years, some factions of the military came to resent Perón’s rapidly increasing power (Page Reference Page1983, 112–19). On October 12, 1945, in an attempt to curb his power, they came together to arrest the Colonel with the naïve hope that removing him from politics would diminish his influence. However, the military vastly underestimated the political capital Perón had gained through his working-class supporters. Days later, on October 17, millions of poor Argentines flooded the plaza in front of the presidential palace to demand his release from prison – a day that would henceforth be commemorated annually as “Loyalty Day” (ibid., 127). A few months later, in February 1946, Perón went on to win the presidential election (James Reference James1988, 9).

During two presidential terms (1946–55), Perón deepened the direct, emotional bonds he had cultivated with his followers by recognizing the suffering and exclusion they endured prior to his rise to power and vowing to resolve their misery. Perón’s second wife, Eva, accentuated her husband’s appeal by portraying herself as his humble servant and quickly establishing her position as the poor’s most passionate advocate (Madsen and Snow Reference Madsen and Snow1991, 52; Page Reference Page1983, 79). Together, the leading couple continued to deliver new rights and material gains to the popular sectors through labor reforms, economic growth stimulated by import substitution industrialization (ISI), and social assistance channeled through the Eva Perón Foundation (Madsen and Snow Reference Madsen and Snow1991, 52). Perón also fulfilled the third condition of charismatic attachment and solidified his bonds with the people by crafting a powerful symbolic narrative that glorified him as a hero and “Evita” as a saint, attacked his opponents as selfish oligarchs and “defenders of class privilege,” and instilled a profound hope in Peronist followers for a more dignified and prosperous future (James Reference James1988, 18–21; Page Reference Page1983, 144). As a result of these actions, millions of Argentines developed steadfast affective connections to Perón and pledged quasi-religious devotion to him.Footnote ⁴

7.3.1.2 Concentrating Hegemonic Authority

During his first two presidencies, Perón used the charismatic bonds he established with his followers to launch his paradigm-shifting movement concentrate power. Indeed, though he gave workers some political voice, he never relinquished significant control to union leaders. Thus, while some have suggested that Perón intended to establish a corporatist political system (e.g., Waisman Reference Waisman1987, 117; Wiarda Reference Wiarda1973, Reference Wiarda2009), which structures society into a rigid hierarchy under the State, in reality he maintained a direct relationship with his constituents in labor and industry. As Wynia states, “Perón was a very impatient and ambitious leader … who jealously guarded his authority from business and industrial leaders who sought to limit it” (Wynia Reference Wynia1978, 54, 60). Rather than ceding authority to unions, as a corporatist model would have required, the founder empowered the state (and, thus, himself) through an aggressive program of economic nationalism and ISI. With his bold policies, he gained personal control over commodity trading and lucrative industries, which enabled him to construct state institutions through which to distribute impressive benefits directly to his rank and file (ibid., 47).

Between 1946 and 1949, Perón’s daring reforms produced a “golden age” in Argentina. The GNP grew by 25 percent and the working and popular sectors experienced unprecedented upward mobility (Wynia Reference Wynia1978, 52). This period of growth resulted in immeasurable gains for poor citizens, including a newfound sense of respect, dignity, and material prosperity (James Reference James1988, 18). Yet by deepening citizens’ adoration of Perón, these victories also accelerated his executive aggrandizement. In fact, the apparently miraculous impact of his policies caused his followers to perceive him as “the ultimate guarantor” of their well-being and thus reinforced the emotional depth and political asymmetry of their relationship with him (ibid., 99).

Emboldened by the fervent loyalty of his supporters, Perón dominated the political system for several years, undermining the development of parties and overpowering political institutions that threatened his superior status. Within his own “Peronist party,” a loose conglomeration of conflicting factions, he “cultivated contention and disarray,” such that unwavering allegiance to him constituted the only thread uniting his fractious constituents (Page Reference Page1983, 161). He also filled his administration with personal confidants who pledged unwavering devotion to him. Most prominently, he relied on Eva, his most trusted servant, to run many important affairs – including the Ministry of Labor, arguably the most important branch of his administration (Madsen and Snow Reference Madsen and Snow1991, 51–52). From her position next to Perón, Eva played a crucial role in sustaining and deepening his emotional connections to his followers, while always openly subordinating herself to his authority (Page Reference Page1983, 198–99).

In addition to consolidating his influence over his own supporters, Perón stifled leaders and parties who opposed him. For example, he quickly smothered attempts by the Labor Party, namely the powerful union leader Cipriano Reyes, to maintain independence from his movement (McGuire Reference McGuire1997, 161). He also fragmented the main opposition party, the Radical Civic Union (UCR), by enticing some of its prominent leaders to join him while repressing others (ibid., 108, 208–9). To Perón’s delight, the UCR facilitated his efforts by adopting a strategy of obstruction that accelerated its own disintegration. Radical leaders used obscure legal tactics to attack Perón and publicly question his political legitimacy. Rather than tarring Perón as a criminal, this strategy accentuated the UCR’s reputation for “intellectual snobbery” and demonstrated how out of touch the party had become with the general public, who adored the new president (ibid., 162–63).

Beyond opposition parties, Perón limited the influence of other political institutions that threatened his power. For example, in 1945, even before he was elected president, he began issuing executive decrees such as the Aguinaldo – which increased nearly all workers’ wages, provided an annual bonus equal to a full month’s pay, and protected workers from being fired for unjust cause (Page Reference Page1983, 143). After becoming president, Perón treated Congress as an extension of his personal will, relying on the “unquestioning obedience” of inexperienced and faithful legislators, who constituted 69 percent of the Chamber of Deputies and 93 percent of the Senate (ibid., 162–64). He also frequently bypassed actors and institutions that questioned his bold actions, ranging from economic advisors to the Central Bank to the Supreme Court (Wynia Reference Wynia1978, 68–70). In fact, he “Peronized” the entire judicial system by stacking courts with loyalists and impeaching those critical of him on grounds of “malfeasance” (Page Reference Page1983, 165–67).

In sum, the combination of Perón’s charismatic appeal and his efforts to silence competing voices within his own ranks and across the political system granted him “virtually limitless power” (Page Reference Page1983, 228). The steadfast devotion of his support base was crucial to this concentration of his hegemonic authority. In turn, his profoundly personalistic influence helped reinforce his glorification. His single-handed initiation of bold economic programs to “rescue” the people made him seem even worthier of his followers’ adoration. The shortsighted and self-serving character of these policies would eventually cause them to implode, destabilizing the system and harming Perón’s own supporters (McGuire Reference McGuire1997, 59–60). Nevertheless, driven by their thirst for recognition and their charismatic perceptions of the leader, Peronist citizens would remember the initial, extraordinary success of the policies as part of a “golden age” and would blame others for the policies’ eventual failures. As I will illustrate subsequently, the founder’s legacy – combined with the military’s violent intervention, which attempted to destroy that legacy – would help the movement survive during Perón’s exile and eventually establish the conditions for his return nearly two decades later.

7.3.2.1 Policy Exhaustion

During Perón’s second presidential term (1952–55), the immediate payoffs of his shortsighted economic policies began to fade as structural weaknesses surfaced. By this time, his aggressive ISI program had drained the state’s reserves of gold and foreign currency, while industrial growth had slowed and agricultural exports had plummeted (Wynia Reference Wynia1978, 66–68). The economic slump that followed affected the popular sectors – his rank and file – in the form of stagnant wages, inflation, and shortages of basic goods such as meat and grain (Page Reference Page1983, 269). To protect his magnetic appeal, Perón responded to the downturn by firing his economic advisors and blaming them for problems of corruption and mismanagement. The fact that many of these individuals, including Central Bank President Miguel Miranda, had been personally appointed by Perón and had simply been following his orders did not implicate him in their guilt (Wynia Reference Wynia1978, 69). To the contrary, their dismissal actually vindicated Perón in the eyes of his followers and reinvigorated their support for him (Page Reference Page1983, 271–72).

Having preserved his heroic image, Perón reluctantly addressed the crisis through his Economic Plan of 1952 (Wynia Reference Wynia1978, 70). Composed in secret, the Plan reversed many of his prior pro-labor policies by opening Argentina to foreign capital, inviting private investors, and initiating an anti-inflationary monetary policy to stabilize the economy. Perón justified these ideological reversals using the same promise of political, economic, and social justice that he declared during his initial presidential campaign, underscoring the personalistic – rather than programmatic – nature of his leadership (Page Reference Page1983, 287). He also blamed selfish rural interests and “foreign imperialists” for attempting to thwart his righteous effort to transform Argentina, even though his excessive state intervention had generated many of the problems in the first place (Wynia Reference Wynia1978, 70–71). Thus, as circumstances began to improve, Perón did not suffer for reneging on his earlier policies. Instead, from the followers’ perspective, his about-face reinforced his reputation as the ultimate problem-solver and corroborated his “genius” (ibid., 288).

Nevertheless, while Perón successfully redirected blame for the downturn and temporarily salvaged the economy, he failed to address the fundamental weaknesses of his state-centered policies, resulting in a saturated market, sluggish growth, a weakened agricultural sector, and low entrepreneurial confidence (Waisman Reference Waisman1987, 121; Wynia Reference Wynia1978, 73). Furthermore, his brazen refusal to cooperate with entrenched elites – including opposition politicians, agricultural exporters, industrial and financial leaders, elements of the military, and the Catholic Church – placed his regime on increasingly precarious ground, even though his charismatic appeal and popular support remained strong. Consequently, an elite-backed military coup ousted Perón in September 1955, forcing him to flee the country and remain in exile for eighteen years (McGuire Reference McGuire1997, 72–75).

7.3.2.2 Resistance to Routinization

Based on the routinization theory, Perón’s sudden disappearance should have caused his movement to fade away or transform into an institutionalized party. Yet his abrupt and violent ouster by the military only enraged his followers and deepened their affective attachments to him. Moreover, the timing of the coup – after Perón had achieved a modest economic recovery, before the complete deterioration of his policies – helped protect his legacy and generated in his followers an intense nostalgia for the prosperity they had experienced in prior years thanks to his leadership. Throughout Perón’s exile, his supporters expressed “elements of a regressive fantasy for ‘the good old days’ of a ‘golden era’ – a plaintive reflection on a glorified, utopian past” (James Reference James1988, 98).

As I will describe subsequently, similar to routinization scholars, both the backers of the 1955 coup and subsequent democratically elected presidents underestimated the resilience of citizens’ devotion to Perón. This miscalculation, combined with the intractable challenges of governing an economically dysfunctional and politically fragmented society, undermined non-Peronist actors’ efforts to achieve political legitimacy. The failure of the opposition to achieve independent legitimacy, in turn, facilitated Perón’s efforts to maintain his personal grip over the movement and established the conditions for his eventual resurgence in 1973.

To maintain control over his movement during his exile, Perón began by reinforcing the loyalty of his followers. His eventual successor in Argentina’s presidency, General Pedro Aramburu, facilitated this task by proscribing the Peronist party, banning Perón’s inner circle from participating in politics, and outlawing the use of proper names for parties (McGuire Reference McGuire1997, 80). Aramburu assumed that these measures would diminish Perón’s influence and re-route followers’ support to more traditional parties who offered “bread-and-butter unionism” (ibid., 81–82). Had Peronism routinized by this juncture, Aramburu’s strategy would likely have been effective. However, the new leader’s efforts only emphasized the enduring charismatic appeal of Perón – whom poor citizens viewed as single-handedly responsible for their newfound prosperity (Ciria Reference Ciria1974, 25). Perón took advantage of Aramburu’s oversight by rallying his followers to resist the military government and fight for his return to power. Perón’s supporters from across the country responded by mobilizing in a wave of “ill-defined … insurrection” to demand his homecoming (James Reference James1988, 83). Thus, the proscription of Peronism actually reinforced the followers’ identification with the movement and deepened their resistance to the new regime.

To further tighten his grip on his movement while legally barred from power, Perón undermined attempts by politicians within his own ranks to reestablish his movement without him. His followers, who had never been organized into a “well-institutionalized Peronist party,” facilitated this effort by refusing to support leftists and “neo-Peronist” leaders who proposed anything “less than the complete return of Perón” (James Reference James1988, 83; McGuire Reference McGuire1997, 79). Capitalizing on this unmediated support, Perón also invoked a tactic that had served him well during his presidency: he encouraged divisions between the different factions of his movement, including hard-liners who promoted an aggressive strategy of resistance against the military regime, soft-liners who sought to negotiate with the new government, and a third group who preferred a middle path (McGuire Reference McGuire1997, 87).

Beyond Peronism, the opposition struggled to establish independent legitimacy and thereby contributed to Perón’s position of strength. In 1957, the UCR divided into two factions: Arturo Frondizi’s Intransigent UCR (UCRI), which proposed allying with Peronists to defeat Aramburu, and Ricardo Balbín’s UCR of the People (UCRP), which refused to partner with Peronists and sought power independently (McGuire Reference McGuire1997, 84). Perón deepened this fissure by backing Frondizi’s candidacy in the 1958 presidential election and calling on his supporters to vote for the UCRI candidate. Not only did this strategy further divide the UCR, but also thwarted efforts to institutionalize Peronism, as it drew a significant proportion of Peronist votes toward Frondizi and away from neo-Peronist leaders (Corach Reference Corach2011).

As president, Frondizi inherited an ungovernable situation. The Peronist voters to whom he owed his victory expected him to continue the founder’s bold and beloved redistributive policies. Instead, the saturated domestic market, combined with pressure from the military, led him to enact a program of strict stabilization (Wynia Reference Wynia1978, 87–92). This “astounding about-face” caused an uproar among workers, resulting in a series of debilitating union strikes over the course of the new leader’s presidency (Ascher Reference Ascher1984, 187–89). Furthermore, because Frondizi failed to inspire the cooperation of industrial and agricultural leaders, his painful structural adjustment program attracted little foreign investment and fell short of providing a satisfactory economic recovery (ibid.; Wynia Reference Wynia1978, 96–98). The president’s massive unpopularity and lackluster performance strengthened the campaign for Perón’s return. The military capitalized on Frondizi’s failure as justification to oust him in March 1962 and call for new general elections to be held in July of the following year (Ascher Reference Ascher1984, 193).

With Peronists banned from the ballot and the UCRI delegitimized by Frondizi’s disastrous performance, the UCRP candidate, Arturo Illia, won the 1963 election with a meager 26 percent of the popular vote (Wynia Reference Wynia1978, 112). Because he rose under more favorable economic conditions than Frondizi, Illia managed to enact more popular expansionary policies. In stark contrast to Perón, however, the new president enacted these policies in a cautious and gradual manner, “reinforcing the … impression that Argentines had elected a man with no program at all” (ibid., 116). Moreover, because Peronists viewed his election as illegitimate, Illia failed to earn the support of the movement’s rank and file, even though his redistributive policies produced modest, short-term improvements in their wages. To make matters worse for the president, his policies alienated the country’s other major actors, including agricultural and industrial elites. Thus, when labor protests erupted in 1964 and 1965, the military intervened again, removing yet another unpopular president with a coup in 1966 (ibid., 122–27).

The failures of Frondizi and Illia strengthened Perón’s reputation as the only leader capable of effectively governing Argentina. To sustain his favorable position, however, Perón also had to minimize threats from within his movement, which had gathered strength during Illia’s presidency. Most importantly, Augusto Vandor, an experienced union leader, sought to build a routinized Peronist party during this period that would sustain the movement’s traditional, pro-labor policies while leaving the founder behind (James Reference James1988, 162). A passionate defender of Argentine workers and a pragmatic leader, Vandor would likely have protected Peronist followers’ interests more effectively than Perón himself (McGuire Reference McGuire1997, 133). Yet the founder deliberately sabotaged Vandor’s attempts to carry Peronism forward without him. To do so, Perón empowered the radical left wing of his movement – the Revolutionary Peronist Movement – a faction with which he had very little in common ideologically (Gillespie Reference Gillespie1982, 42; McGuire Reference McGuire1997, 91). While emboldening this radical branch, Perón constantly shifted his support between it and the labor branch, the latter of which was sympathetic to Vandor, throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. This “deliberate strategic ambiguity” incited chaos and violence between the factions, compromising the well-being of Perón’s own followers (Gillespie Reference Gillespie1982, 45). Crucially, however, it also safeguarded his personal control over his movement, further demonstrating his preference for charismatic power over programmatic substance.

In short, chaos, fragmentation, and instability defined the interregnum between Perón’s ouster in 1955 and his return to power in 1973. Both opposition and neo-Peronist parties failed to grow roots and attract sufficient political support to establish a stable, democratic party system. Instead, the military, obsessed with erasing Peronism while unconfident in other parties’ capacity to govern, regularly interfered. In fact, Frondizi and Illia, the only democratically elected presidents who served during the period, were ousted by military coups; the third, Héctor Cámpora, served only as a stand-in candidate for Perón and was replaced by the founder just months after his election in 1973 (Wynia Reference Wynia1978, 14).

I argue that citizens’ charismatic attachments to Perón, combined with the exiled leader’s ongoing interference, helped sustain his image as the only person capable of rescuing the country from crisis and turmoil – even though he played a direct role in generating the upheaval. With his charisma intact, the triumphant Perón therefore returned to Argentina in 1973 to begin his third presidential term amid throngs of fervently loyal followers.

7.3.3.1 Recharging Charismatic Attachments

Like his first rise in the mid-1940s, Perón relied on his enduring personalistic appeal to return to power in 1973. In a conciliatory gesture, the military regime permitted the Peronist party – though not Perón himself – to participate in elections scheduled for that March. The regime invited the participation of the Peronist party in the hopes that “the ‘Perón myth’ would have eventually vanished during his long exile” (Ciria Reference Ciria1974, 30). As in 1955, however, the military once again underestimated the depth of citizens’ affective ties to their leader. By 1973, the charismatic founder had not just sustained the devotion of his original followers, but he had also grown his base by incorporating middle-class and leftist activists (Page Reference Page1983, 453). While the interests and values of these new supporters starkly contrasted with those of his working-class rank and file, he appealed to all of them: to his traditional followers, he symbolized a return to the “golden age” of his prior rule; to his new constituents, he appeared as an inspirational and revolutionary figure, “almost a local version of Mao or Fidel” (Ciria Reference Ciria1974, 29–30). Regardless of their interpretations, however, all of Perón’s supporters became convinced that their vision of the future required his personal resumption of power.

7.3.3.2 Reasserting Hegemonic Authority

Harnessing the faith of his followers, Perón revived his movement in typical charismatic fashion. His handpicked proxy, Héctor Cámpora, ran in the March 1973 presidential election. A “staunch supporter and personal representative of Perón,” Cámpora posed little threat to the founder and vowed to immediately step down upon winning the election to restore Perón to power (Ciria Reference Ciria1974, 32). With Perón’s blessing and the campaign slogan, “Cámpora to the presidency, Perón to power,” the proxy candidate won in a landslide (“Triumph for Perón” Reference Granovetter1973). True to his word, Cámpora welcomed Perón back to Argentina and stepped down from power in July, just four months after being elected. Perón won a newly scheduled election that September with 62 percent of the vote and, on October 12, greeted masses of jubilant – if internally divided – followers from the presidential palace (Page Reference Page1983, 477).

7.3.4.1 Policy Exhaustion

As discussed earlier, Perón resumed the presidency after nearly two decades of exile by leaning on his charismatic authority and fighting attempts to destroy or institutionalize his movement. These efforts facilitated his comeback, but they also presented him with intractable challenges, including an unstable political situation, a disjointed movement, and a fragile economy. Perón temporarily sidestepped these issues by condemning the failures of the prior military regime and making vague promises to restore independence, prosperity, and social justice to Argentina through projects such as the “Social Pact” and the “Reconstruction and Liberation Project” (Ciria Reference Ciria1974, 34; Wynia Reference Wynia1978, 252). Given the perilous state of the economy and explosive divisions – not only within his movement, but also across other sectors of society including opposition parties, the revolutionary left, and the military – his grand gestures would not last long. Fortunately for his legacy, he died before disaster ensued, just nine months after assuming office (Pion-Berlin Reference Pion-Berlin1983, 54). Rather than blaming him for the dark period that followed, his devotees sustained their glorified perceptions of their beloved Conductor.

As described in Chapter 6, during Isabel Perón’s short-lived and disastrous presidency from July 1974 to March 1976, she reinforced her husband and predecessor’s dysfunctional economic policies while using repression to quell popular dissent. Subsequently, the military ousted her and instilled a brutal dictatorship under General Jorge Videla. Over the next six years, the military dictatorship increased state-sponsored repression to horrific levels in its quest to “annihilate” the revolutionary left – and anyone even remotely associated with the left – in the name of reestablishing order (McGuire Reference McGuire1997, 170–71). The regime “disappeared” tens of thousands of civilians, killed thousands more outright, and pushed more than two million others to flee the country (Haberman Reference Haberman2015).Footnote ⁵ Economically, Videla sought to stabilize the country by demobilizing the working class and aggressively reenacting a free-market model to curb inflation and stimulate growth. Although these extreme measures led to a modest economic recovery during the first three years of the dictatorship, the regime – despite claiming to be a beacon of economic discipline and efficiency – indulged in “gargantuan borrowing” and destroyed industrial productivity, leading to widespread implosion of financial institutions (McGuire Reference McGuire1997, 171–73). The resulting economic collapse, combined with a last-ditch effort to shore up political legitimacy through a failed invasion of the British Falkland Islands, forced the regime to usher in a caretaker government and restore democratic elections in 1983 (ibid., 178–79).

7.3.4.2 Resistance to Routinization

During the military dictatorship, Peronism fragmented even more than during the founder’s eighteen-year exile. While the regime’s unspeakable acts of torture suppressed the Peronist left, rifts grew in the movement’s more traditional, union-centered base due to disagreements regarding how to confront the dictatorship. Some union leaders, such as Saúl Ubaldini of the beer workers’ union and Roberto García of the taxi workers’ union, adopted a combative approach in which they led general strikes and openly expressed their opposition. Others, including Lorenzo Miguel of the steelworkers’ union and Jorge Triaca of the plastic workers’ union, chose a more conciliatory path that involved negotiation with the regime in hopes of securing a role in the eventual transition to democracy (ibid., 173–74). Like the Peronists, opposition parties also suffered repression and fragmentation, albeit to a lesser extent. Similar to union leaders, Radical politicians disagreed about how to deal with the military regime. For example, UCRP leader Ricardo Balbín endeavored to cooperate with the military in order to gain a more prominent role in a transitional regime, whereas Raúl Alfonsín openly opposed the regime throughout its six-year tenure (ibid., 177).

Despite these divisions, the military dictatorship’s unabashed brutality and failed economic policies ultimately caused the regime to collapse, motivating Peronist and UCR leaders to form a united front to facilitate a transition to democracy. This coalition, dubbed the multipartidaria, played an active role in scheduling elections for October 1983 (Corach Reference Corach2011). Due to the deep fissures within Peronism, which had intensified due to the absence of its charismatic founder and the unrelenting repression of the dictatorship, the movement failed to present a compelling candidate for the election. Instead, its fractious leaders nominated Ítalo Luder – an unintimidating and perfunctory lawyer with no connection to the movement’s rank and file (Madsen and Snow Reference Madsen and Snow1991, 139).

In contrast to the behind-the-scenes politicking of Peronist leaders who all coveted the presidency, the UCR held a transparent, democratic primary election in which candidates had the opportunity to appeal directly to voters. Thus, unlike their Peronist counterparts, UCR leaders overcame internal divisions and coalesced behind Raúl Alfonsín (McGuire Reference McGuire1997, 183). An inspiring leader who promised to restore light, hope, and democracy to the country after years of repression and darkness, Alfonsín swept Luder in the elections and became Argentina’s first post-transition president.Footnote ⁶

As the first post-transition president, Alfonsín attempted to launch a new political movement, which he dubbed the “Third Historical Movement,” that would rise above the existing parties and movements including the UCR and Peronism (Zelaznik Reference Zelaznik2013, 424). At the time, many of Alfonsín’s supporters thought he would succeed: endowed with his own charismatic appeal, he seemed to personally embody the light, hope, and democracy that Argentines so desperately craved after several years of darkness, turmoil, and repression.Footnote ⁷ However, as I will illustrate susbequently, Alfonsín, like many leaders before him, underestimated the resilience of Peronism. Ultimately, this oversight foiled his ambitions to start a new movement and led to his premature departure from the presidency.

Specifically, although problems of leaderless fragmentation prevented Peronism from returning to power during this period, the Peronists capitalized on their enduring influence over the working class to obstruct Alfonsín’s capacity to govern. While unable to return society to the “glory days” under Perón, these politicians could mobilize Peronist workers to undermine the new administration by highlighting how Alfonsín’s proposals to stabilize the economy – which included scaling back benefits Perón had granted decades earlier – betrayed the founder’s legacy. Using this logic, Peronism’s otherwise divided union leaders, including Ubaldini and Triaca, joined forces to oppose the new president’s reforms. In fact, over the course of Alfonsín’s term, these leaders coordinated thirteen general, nationwide strikes (McGuire Reference McGuire1997, 200). These tactics greatly hindered Alfonsín’s success and played a crucial role in the leader’s premature exit from power in July 1989, several months before the official completion of his term.

In short, while no leader emerged as Perón’s clear heir in 1983, the movement’s capacity to mobilize followers and obstruct opposing forces sustained its political relevance throughout Alfonsín’s presidency. Perhaps more importantly, by inhibiting the leadership capacities of Alfonsín, the rebellious behavior of union leaders throughout the 1980s created a deep crisis of governability and demonstrated to Peronist followers the inability of non-Peronists to meet their needs. In turn, the desperate economic and political circumstances that had worsened during Alfonsín’s presidency established a ripe opportunity for a new charismatic savior to arise, pick up Perón’s baton, and save the people from their distress.

7.3.5.1 Recharging Charismatic Attachments

As described in Chapter 6, Carlos Menem rose toward the end of Alfonsín’s chaotic presidency to restore Peronism to power and – temporarily – become Argentina’s preeminent leader. A self-starter seeking power in the midst of a terrible crisis, Menem embraced a personalistic style of leadership that “echoed Perón’s,” revitalizing citizens’ emotional attachments to the movement and restoring their faith in its promise to bring them peace and prosperity.Footnote ⁸ As I will describe subsequently, Menem’s charisma played a crucial role in reviving Peronism and establishing his authority. But, just as with the first two waves of the movement under Perón, Menem’s personalistic tactics ultimately led to his downfall and yet another period of tumultuous crisis.

In contrast to his failed predecessor, Menem secured the loyalty of Peronist citizens in part because he portrayed himself as a genuine successor of Perón. He boasted a lifelong record as a devout Peronist: he had participated in the party as a young activist during Perón’s second presidential term, endured five years of imprisonment under the military dictatorship, and served three terms as the Peronist governor of the rural Western province of La Rioja (McGuire Reference McGuire1997, 207–8). Leveraging these strong connections to the movement, he rose above political infighting and portrayed himself as uniquely capable of picking up the founder’s baton and restoring the people’s faith in the movement’s promise of redemption.Footnote ⁹ Thus, Menem distanced himself from Alfonsín’s failed administration; triumphed over Cafiero in the 1988 Peronist primary; handily defeated the UCR candidate, Eduardo Angeloz, in the 1989 general election; and began his presidency backed by a powerful, emotionally charged base of supporters.

As president, Menem solidified his image as a charismatic savior by implementing daring reforms. Most prominently, his Convertibility Plan, which artificially fixed the Argentine peso to the US dollar, attacked and eventually ended hyperinflation, dramatically increasing the purchasing power of ordinary Argentines (see Chapter 6). Menem enacted the Plan in April 1991 after a cascade of neoliberal reforms that directly contradicted Perón’s original, state-centered policies and far outpaced Alfonsín’s proposed structural adjustment plans (Weyland Reference Weyland2002, 20–21).

While Menem’s policies appeared to contradict those of Perón, I contend that his behavior was quintessentially Peronist, as he ended the crisis and provided the suffering masses with much-needed relief. Between 1990 and 1994, inflation dropped from 1,832 percent to 4 percent. Additionally, newly privatized public services – which had been hopelessly dysfunctional before Menem’s rise – became efficient and affordable (McGuire Reference McGuire1997, 219–20). Thanks to Menem’s neoliberal policies, the country achieved sustained economic growth and Argentines enjoyed a higher quality of life than they had experienced in decades. In short, while his audacious programs horrified the principled leaders of the center-left Peronist Renovation – the coalition dedicated to institutionalizing the movement – Menem’s emotional appeal and extraordinary performance during his first presidential term enabled him to revive the movement in all its personalistic glory.

7.3.5.2 Concentrating Hegemonic Authority

Capitalizing on his success, Menem followed Perón’s model by deepening his control over politics. First, the self-starter conquered the Peronist party by marginalizing prominent leaders of the Renovation and replacing Cafiero as president of the PJ. He also filled his cabinet with trusted friends rather than experienced party officials. For example, he appointed three individuals to important posts based on personal rather than party connections: Roberto Dromi (Minister of Public Works), Alberto Kohan (Chief of Staff), and Eduardo Bauzá (Minister of the Interior). He also selected several previously anti-Peronist leaders as prominent advisers, including Alvaro Alsogaray and Octavio Frigerio, further demonstrating that he was not beholden to party officials (ibid., 242).Footnote ¹⁰ To deepen his control over the PJ, Menem personally endorsed political outsiders ranging from celebrities to speedboat racers to corporate CEOs for legislative and gubernatorial positions rather than supporting party leaders (ibid., 242–43). In doing so, he stifled the efforts of many to routinize the PJ, coopted important opposition leaders, and strengthened Peronism’s personalistic nature.

In addition to overpowering parties within and beyond the Peronist movement, Menem undermined political institutions that constrained his authority. For example, he bypassed the legislature to enact hundreds of emergency decrees that ensured the swift implementation of his free-market reforms, which many politicians found worrisome and irresponsible. By the end of 1993, he enacted over three hundred such decrees – about ten times more than the country had experienced over the previous 140 years combined (ibid, 256).Footnote ¹¹ Similar to Perón, he also sidestepped legal challenges to his executive power by increasing the number of Supreme Court justices from five to nine and handpicking loyalists to fill the new vacancies. To reinforce his image of indomitable popularity, he meddled in electoral rules to benefit his administration, adding twenty-three new seats to the Chamber of Deputies representing sympathetic districts and, most prominently, pushing through a new constitution to permit his reelection in 1995 (ibid., 255–57). Through these tactics, Menem successfully overcame constraints imposed by the other branches of government and solidified his charismatic power in a manner reminiscent of the founder.

Lastly, to ensure his personal control over the state, Menem allowed corruption to proliferate throughout his administration and often orchestrated illicit activities. When scandals erupted involving his personal advisors and other loyal politicians, he responded by demonizing the press for unjustly accusing these individuals (ibid., 259). Crucially, thanks in large part to his charismatic image and close attachments with Peronist followers, the accusations of corruption failed to reach Menem personally during his presidency. As Kohan, Menem’s Chief of Staff, stated in an interview with the author, opposition leaders “accused Menem of everything … and even then, we continued to win elections. They still haven’t been able to prove anything.”Footnote ¹² Thus, the president remained popular and exercised largely unchecked power throughout his first and much of his second presidential term.

To recapitulate, like Perón, Menem harnessed the fervent loyalty of Peronist followers and the early success of his economic reforms to achieve hegemonic control over the political system. As with the charismatic founder, his direct appeals to the popular sectors helped catapult him into power. Then, as president, Menem used his personalistic authority to reinforce his heroic image and temporarily provide his supporters with determined reprieve from economic crisis. Ultimately, Menem’s actions undermined his followers’ long-term programmatic interests, destroyed the efforts of the Renovation leaders to routinize Peronism, and weakened political institutions vital to the consolidation of democracy. Nevertheless, Menem’s charismatic leadership strengthened Peronism by reenergizing the followers’ enthusiasm for the movement and causing them to worship him as its new chief. Thus, while his impressive reign would not last, I argue that it played a crucial role in perpetuating the personalistic nature and spasmodic trajectory of the movement.

7.3.6.1 Policy Exhaustion

During Menem’s second presidential term (1995–99), the structural deficiencies of his audacious policies began to emerge. In particular, it became increasingly difficult to ignore the unsustainable nature of the Convertibility Plan, as the official value of the peso far exceeded its real worth. While Menem refused to publicly acknowledge this disturbing reality, anxiety rose among ordinary Argentines, whose livelihood had become dependent on the artificial exchange rate (Weyland Reference Weyland2002, 187). Adding to this fear were the social consequences of Menem’s neoliberal reforms, which included growing inequality and unemployment (Gantman Reference Gantman2012, 338–41). Although the Peronist rank and file continued to view Menem favorably, these problems directly impacted their lives and began to erode his reputation as a heroic problem-solver.

Unable to run for a third presidential term in 1999, Menem was forced to yield the Peronist candidacy to Eduardo Duhalde. A programmatically principled leader and longtime rival of Menem’s, Duhalde enjoyed the backing of Peronist Renovation leaders who had grown frustrated by the president’s hegemonic behavior and his waning performance (Weyland Reference Weyland2002, 194). Yet, Menem’s influence over the movement remained significant. Furthermore, many of the outgoing president’s conservative supporters backed his former Economy Minister, Domingo Cavallo. This fragmentation deprived Duhalde of valuable votes and ultimately cost him the election. Thus, Fernando de la Rúa, a dreadfully uninspiring candidate aptly nicknamed “baby pacifier” (el chupete), came to power backed by a loose alliance of anti-Peronist parties (ibid.).Footnote ¹³

As with the recession of the first two Peronist waves in 1955 and 1974, Menem’s delicate economic and political balance collapsed upon his departure from power in 1999. Throughout his presidency, he had enforced political cohesion and economic stability from the top-down using his unmediated charismatic authority. His sudden absence, combined with the exhaustion of his shortsighted policies, ushered in a chaotic period without a leader to guide the way. Indeed, the virtually powerless de la Rúa failed to take charge of the situation upon rising to office and thus resigned in December 2001 (Weyland Reference Weyland2002, 195). The combination of economic collapse and feeble leadership de-legitimized the political system and led citizens to riot in the streets (Krauss Reference Krauss2001).

In the eleven days between de la Rúa’s resignation and Duhalde’s appointment as interim president, Argentina endured a profound leadership crisis in which five presidents rose and fell. Remarkably, the military did not intervene during this tumultuous period – a testament to the country’s commitment to a minimal level of democracy as well as its strong aversion toward violence. Nevertheless, the crisis revealed the disintegrated state of the party system and demonstrated how little the country’s political institutions had progressed over the previous decade.

In terms of political parties, the UCR grew even weaker during the 1999–2003 period than it had been when Alfonsín stepped down from the presidency prematurely in 1989 (Zelaznik Reference Zelaznik2013, 425). The party’s inability to compete in the 1999 elections without crafting an alliance with several other parties was an illustration of its frailty; De La Rúa’s feeble presidency and resignation in 2001 only exacerbated the party’s failure to thrive. Consequently, in the wake of the crisis, the UCR would play only a minor role in stabilizing the country and would never again present a stand-alone candidate for presidential elections (Roberts Reference Roberts2007, 12).

7.3.6.2 Resistance to Routinization

Peronism remained divided in the aftermath of Menem’s presidency. For his part, Duhalde led a large group of party stalwarts against Menem and his neoliberal policies. The rival’s faction had begun to accumulate strength in 1997, as Menem’s performance had begun to wane. Yet Duhalde’s group encountered several obstacles that prevented it from assuming control over the party. One obstacle is that, as previously mentioned, Cavallo also ran for president under a separate ticket in a blatant attempt to split the PJ (Cassese Reference Cassese1999). In addition, Menem retained control over important factions of the PJ, hindering the efforts of his Peronist opponents to dethrone him. Thus, while constitutionally barred from running for a third presidential term in 1999, Menem managed to get himself reelected as president of the PJ until 2003 (Ventura Reference Ventura1999).Footnote ¹⁴

When Duhalde scheduled presidential elections for 2003, the PJ refrained from endorsing an official candidate, reflecting the lack of cohesion within the party. As a result, three leaders with Peronist affiliations ran on separate tickets: Menem; Néstor Kirchner, the Governor of Santa Cruz and Duhalde’s preferred candidate; and Adolfo Rodríguez Saá, the Governor of San Luis. Notably, despite running independently, the three candidates did not attempt to break away from Peronism and start new parties. Instead, each depicted himself as a true successor of Perón while targeting the others as frauds threatening to denigrate the founder’s legacy. Most explicitly, Menem claimed throughout his campaign to be Perón’s most faithful successor. He even declared during his campaign finale in the iconic River Plate Stadium in the Federal Capital, “Carlos Menem is the authentic and best disciple of the Lieutenant General Juan Domingo Perón and of Eva Perón” (Sued Reference Sued2003).

Although Kirchner downplayed his ties to the PJ in order to distance himself from Menem, he also implicitly connected himself to the charismatic founder. For example, just as Menem claimed to reinvigorate Perón’s “productive revolution” during his 1989 campaign, Kirchner promised an economic “model of production and work” – a clear association with the founder’s original platform (Ybarra Reference Ybarra2003). Similarly, while less popular than Menem or Kirchner, Adolfo Rodríguez Saá titled his electoral coalition after the founders’ movement, “National and Popular Movement,” and referenced Perón’s promise of salvation by titling his caravan “The March of Dreams” (Colonna Reference Colonna2003). In short, while the infighting between Peronist leaders kept the PJ fragmented and weak during the 1999–2003 period, each candidate’s efforts to associate himself with the founder underscore the ongoing influence of Perón’s charismatic legacy.

In addition to weak parties, political institutions during this period remained frail. The judicial branch remained deeply politicized and the legislature was virtually powerless, as evidenced by its failure to implement much-needed economic reforms and prevent the 2001 collapse (Ventura Reference Ventura1999). With weakling De La Rúa at the helm, the executive office also lost its decisive authority. Given the utter disempowerment of the three major branches of government, the State had little capacity to address the crisis, causing citizens throughout the country to become thoroughly disillusioned with the government and detached from politics in the ensuing years (Quiroga Reference Quiroga2005, 322–23).

Despite the discredited status of political parties and institutions, however, Peronism sustained its reputation as the only force capable of governing the country during the transitional period from Menem to Kirchner (Mora y Araujo Reference Mora y Araujo2011; Ollier Reference Ollier, Gervasoni and Peruzzotti2015). In fact, I contend that Argentina recovered from the 2001 collapse primarily due to the ongoing legitimacy of Peronism and the strength of the chief executive office relative to other political institutions. Paradoxically, while undermining democratic institutions, the movement’s popular legitimacy and its monopoly over executive power saved Argentina from worse fates. Moreover, while the 2001 crisis made citizens feel utterly fed up with politics, it also reinforced their perception of Peronism as the only force capable of rescuing the country from desperate circumstances. Thus, even while rejecting contemporary politicians, Peronist followers sustained their attachments to the movement and their faith in the founder’s promise to deliver salvation. As I will discuss in the next section, it is for this reason that the followers would come to worship another set of charismatic saviors soon after the crisis, restoring Peronism to its position of power.

7.3.7.1 Recharging Charismatic Attachments

As discussed in the previous chapter, Néstor Kirchner won the 2003 presidential election thanks in large part to Menem’s departure from the race, combined with the wave of economic recovery that Duhalde had initiated in the previous year. Taking personal credit for the reestablishment of prosperity, Néstor – and subsequently, his wife, Cristina – consolidated tremendous popularity and reinvigorated followers’ emotional attachments, thereby ushering in the fourth wave of Peronism.

Initially, the Kirchners tried to establish a unique movement that superseded (but still incorporated) Peronism. For example, Néstor responded to the PJ’s refusal to endorse any candidate for the 2003 election by creating a new party label, Front for Victory (Frente para la Victoria – FPV), which he claimed would be a “transversal” coalition that would incorporate Peronist and non-Peronist actors alike. Julio Cobos, the Radical governor of Mendoza, also served as Cristina’s vice president during her first presidential term (2007–11). Mora y Araujo (Reference Mora y Araujo2011) indicates that the Kirchners initially pursued this strategy because, when Néstor rose to power, his control over Peronism was anything but guaranteed. Indeed, Néstor won the presidency with less than 23 percent of the vote; Menem, who had gained over 24 percent of the vote in the first round of the election, still enjoyed the loyalty of many Peronist followers. The Kirchners sought to strengthen their position by building a broader coalition that reached beyond Peronism and drew support from opposition groups, such as ideologically moderate and left-leaning Radicals like Cobos.

However, similar to Alfonsín’s attempts to create a “Third Historical Movement” in the 1980s, the Kirchners’ attempts to establish a new movement failed, causing them to double down on their Peronist identity. The leading couple’s renewed embrace of Peronism occurred in large part because they resisted making concessions to the diverse members of the transversal coalition; in turn, the coalition members felt increasingly irritated and alienated by the Kirchners’ domineering style (Mora y Araujo Reference Mora y Araujo2011). Thus, as the Kirchners’ joint administration progressed, their non-Peronist alliances fell apart, especially during Cristina’s presidency (Calvo and Victoria Murillo Reference Calvo and Victoria Murillo2012, 151; Mora y Araujo Reference Mora y Araujo2011).

At the same time, Néstor and Cristina’s popularity among Peronist followers increased substantially over the course of their joint rule due to Argentina’s impressive economic recovery as well as Menem’s fading prominence (Mora y Araujo Reference Mora y Araujo2011). In an especially notable illustration of the Kirchners’ newfound control over the movement, Cristina defeated Duhalde’s wife, “Chiche,” in the 2005 senate race for the Province of Buenos Aires, arguably the most important Peronist stronghold in the country (Calvo and Victoria Murillo Reference Calvo and Victoria Murillo2012, 161). As a result of their increasing dominance over Peronism and the defections of their Radical allies, the Kirchner era became widely perceived as a formidable new chapter of Peronism rather than an independent movement (Ollier Reference Ollier, Gervasoni and Peruzzotti2015).

Interestingly, some scholars and Peronist activists insisted in interviews with the author that the Kirchners brought Peronism back to life using a programmatic approach: namely, by constructing a state-centered, nationalist economy similar to Perón’s original platform.Footnote ¹⁵ For instance, Santiago Cafiero, a grandson of Antonio Cafiero who would become President Alberto Fernández’s cabinet chief in 2019, stated that, whereas Menem claimed the Peronist label through superficial “iconography,” the Kirchners resurrected the programmatic substance of Peronism through reinstating “concrete policies of state-centered economics and social redistribution.”Footnote ¹⁶ Based on this reasoning, one might conclude that, in contrast to Menem, the Kirchners successfully transformed Peronism into the routinized, center-left party envisioned by Antonio Cafiero and other leaders of the Peronist Renovation a decade earlier.

Yet, as I argue subsequently, the Kirchners intentionally undermined others’ attempts to routinize Peronism and strengthened the charismatic heart of the movement. They achieved this by adopting the same strategies that Perón and Menem utilized in the past to consolidate decisively personalistic authority. However, to distance themselves from Menem’s tainted administration, they employed the strategies of charismatic leadership in reverse order: they began by enacting daring and initially successful programs, then embraced their roles as the heirs of Juan and Eva Perón.

Whereas Menem stressed his symbolic role as a Peronist before implementing bold reforms, Néstor kicked off his presidency by enacting audacious policies that produced extraordinary, though unsustainable, benefits. The outcomes of his daring reforms reenergized Peronist followers and secured the loyalty of new supporters from the lower and middle classes. His decision to repay Argentina’s massive debt with the International Monetary Fund in one fell swoop in December 2005 exemplifies this approach. This astonishing initiative created a “climate of euphoria” across Argentina by instantaneously liberating the country from the “tutelage” of one of its most detested and powerful overlords (“Histórico: el país saldará en un solo pago la deuda con el FMI” 2005; Ollier Reference Ollier, Gervasoni and Peruzzotti2015). Moreover, it cast Néstor in a heroic light and distinguished him from Menem, whom the public widely perceived as selling out to the IMF in the first place. The loan repayment accelerated the economic recovery, bringing about substantial increases in employment and wages, thereby causing Néstor’s popularity to skyrocket to 74 percent by July 2003 (Mora y Araujo Reference Mora y Araujo2011).

As president in subsequent years, Cristina implemented similar state-centered programs to display her own determination and capacity to transform Argentina. For example, in a bold move in 2008, she renationalized the pension system that Menem had privatized in 1993. She presented the decision as a radical effort to “protect our pensioners and our workers,” from the evils of Menem’s neoliberalism as well as the greedy interests of developed countries, “economic conglomerates,” and “large banks” (Arza Reference Arza2012, 48–49; Datz Reference Datz2012, 116). In reality, the policy revealed Cristina’s “political short-termism and executive strength,” and undermined “long-term concerns about the stability of the social security system” (Datz Reference Datz2012, 101). However, the renationalization deepened the enthusiasm of her followers, greatly enhanced her control over the country’s fiscal resources, and enabled her to restructure and temporarily alleviate the country’s large and growing public debt. By the end of her presidency, 1.28 million Argentines received noncontributory pensions thanks to the reform (Nogueira Reference Nogueira, Gervasoni and Peruzzotti2015). In short, while complicating the country’s economic stability, this daring fiscal policy strengthened Cristina’s image as the common people’s central protagonist and proved her willingness to stand up on the world stage to defend her supporters against powerful enemies.Footnote ¹⁷

Once they achieved impressive performance and distanced themselves from Menem, the Kirchners proceeded to portray themselves as symbolic reincarnations of Perón and Eva, thereby reviving the movement’s quasi-religious mystique. Néstor did this implicitly by portraying himself as the champion of Argentine workers (Wortman Reference Wortman, Gervasoni and Peruzzotti2015). He also reanimated the cleavage Perón had emphasized between the privileged and the poor – a dimension of the Peronist narrative that Menem had downplayed. For example, he verbally attacked Menem, human rights abusers from the military dictatorship, and international financial institutions as selfish elites.Footnote ¹⁸ Conversely, he praised Argentine workers, the progressive middle class, youths, and the poor masses as model citizens (Wortman Reference Wortman, Gervasoni and Peruzzotti2015).

When Cristina rose to power in 2007, she reinforced this cleavage between the “haves” and “have-nots” and explicitly embodied Evita’s persona as the mother of the impoverished masses.Footnote ¹⁹ Throughout her presidency, she mingled with poor Argentines during public acts, used passionate rhetoric to defend the “people” against the malevolent upper class, and depicted herself as personally responsible for redistributing wealth to more virtuous Argentines via her social programs. She introduced many such programs in the “Evita Room” of the presidential palace, with an image of the founder’s wife projected prominently behind her, as exemplified in Figure 7.2.

Figure 7.2. Cristina Kirchner announces a new bill in the “Evita Room” of the presidential palace, 2012

However, it was Néstor’s sudden death from a heart attack in October 2010 that would catalyze the Kirchners’ most powerful symbolic connection to the Peróns’ charismatic legacy. Following this tragedy, Cristina doubled down on her efforts to create an “idealized image” of her husband that explicitly associated both of them with the founders (Cherny Reference Cherny, Novaro and Amaral2014, 156). For example, following Néstor’s death, images proliferated of Cristina and her late husband mimicking the founders’ passionate embrace during massive campaign rallies (see Figures 7.3 and 7.4). Cristina also publicly mourned Néstor’s death for an extensive period of time and continually referred to “Him” as Christ-like during the final years of her presidency, intensifying her allure as a brave and tenacious widow. And just as Perón immortalized Eva’s saintly image upon her tragic death, Cristina solidified Néstor’s charismatic legacy by incorporating his image into propaganda spread throughout the country; renaming streets, public buildings, and neighborhoods after him; and constantly referencing his extraordinary contributions to society (Cherny Reference Cherny, Novaro and Amaral2014, 156; Wortman Reference Wortman, Gervasoni and Peruzzotti2015).

Figure 7.3. Cristina and Néstor Kirchner embrace

Figure 7.4. Juan and Eva Perón embrace

7.3.7.2 Concentrating Hegemonic Authority

Contrary to the hopes of some party activists and intellectuals, the Kirchners did not use their charismatic authority to oversee the construction of a leftist, institutionalized party. Rather, the leading couple seized control of the PJ and leveraged their powerful appeal to vanquish threats from the party’s mid-level agents. Initially, Néstor adopted a conciliatory tone to win the support of diverse leaders within and beyond the PJ (Cherny Reference Cherny, Novaro and Amaral2014, 150; Mora y Araujo Reference Mora y Araujo2011). Yet, as he became more popular, these actors – especially Duhalde – quickly went from critical sources of support to obstacles threatening to hinder the Kirchners’ consolidation of power. As these fragile political alliances grew more strained, the leading couple abandoned their transversal movement and established a new chapter of Peronism that they could define on their own terms (Dagatti Reference Dagatti2013; Ollier Reference Ollier, Gervasoni and Peruzzotti2015).

To establish a formidable and distinctly Kirchnerista chapter of Peronism, Néstor used his overwhelming popular support to demand loyalty from Peronist governors and legislators throughout the country. He also punished PJ leaders who questioned him by nominating parallel lists with his own candidates during the 2005 mid-term elections, and his nominees easily won thanks to their association with him. Furthermore, he weakened dissident Peronist governors by placing loyal mayors (intendentes) with new executive powers in the governors’ districts. When some Peronist officials attempted to create a united front to oppose the president’s aggressive behavior, he responded by pressuring influential members of the PJ to resign, effectively deactivating the party (Cherny Reference Cherny, Novaro and Amaral2014, 151–54). Finally, as previously mentioned, Cristina competed against Duhalde’s wife, “Chiche,” in the 2005 elections for senator of the Province of Buenos Aires. Unfortunately for Duhalde, his experience as a two-term governor of the province was no match for the Kirchners’ popularity. Cristina emerged as the victorious senator, delivering a decisive blow to dissident Peronists, extinguishing Duhalde’s influence, and paving the way for the Kirchners’ undisputed control over the movement (ibid.; Mora y Araujo Reference Mora y Araujo2011; Ollier Reference Ollier, Gervasoni and Peruzzotti2015).

Throughout the remainder of their combined presidencies, the Kirchners controlled the PJ in a hegemonic manner reminiscent of Menem and Perón. In fact, Néstor became president of the PJ in 2008, less than one year after handing the presidency of the nation to his wife. Time and again, the leading couple overcame internal threats to their power by deepening their direct connections with their adoring followers. Cristina continued to dominate the party on her own in the aftermath of her husband’s death in October 2010, as evidenced by her landslide reelection in the following year. Before Néstor’s death, a group of important Peronists had been plotting to wrest the party from the Kirchners’ grasp (Cherny Reference Cherny, Novaro and Amaral2014, 155). Yet his death reinvigorated the followers’ attachments to Cristina and glorified her husband as a martyr. Capitalizing on this emotional support, Cristina won reelection with an overwhelming 54 percent of the vote, smothering threats to her power from PJ challengers and enjoying supreme control over the movement and the country for several more years.

As the Kirchners established hegemonic authority over the nation and consolidated their influence over the Peronist movement, they also helped accelerate the fragmentation of opposition parties. Early on in his presidency, Néstor lured Radical leaders into his transversal coalition, thereby preventing the country’s most influential opposition party from reestablishing a coherent bloc. This, combined with the UCR’s implication in De La Rúa’s humiliating (mis)management of the 2001 crisis, produced a precipitous decline in the UCR’s representation in Congress (Zelaznik Reference Zelaznik2013). In fact, from 1999 to 2007, the party went from occupying eighty-five seats in the Chamber of Deputies and twenty seats in the Senate to forty seats in the Chamber and thirteen seats in the Senate (Ollier Reference Ollier, Gervasoni and Peruzzotti2015).

When Cristina became president in 2007, her polemic style and actions fomented greater division between the government and the opposition. Most prominently, in 2008, she issued an emergency decree to increase export taxes on agricultural products, namely soybeans – an aggressive challenge to the country’s powerful agricultural sector. This bold gesture deepened the divide between her followers and opponents. For the former group, it strengthened her symbolic image as a true savior of the poor, as she promised to use the resulting funds to finance massive social programs. For the latter group, which included much of the middle class, the action was interpreted as a transparent ploy to enhance the power and influence of the Kirchners themselves (Calvo and Victoria Murillo Reference Calvo and Victoria Murillo2012, 154).Footnote ²⁰ The increased polarization that resulted from this debacle presented an important opportunity for opposition groups to form a united front against Cristina. However, even in the face of Cristina’s divisive leadership style, the opposition struggled to establish a cohesive force.

Finally, similar to their charismatic predecessors, the Kirchners weakened political institutions in the quest to sustain their personalistic authority. Like Menem, Néstor made ample use of emergency decrees to rapidly and single-handedly enact his policies – a total of 270 over the course of his presidency, an average of one every six days (Capriata Reference Capriata2008). While Cristina passed fewer than 50 decrees during her two presidential terms combined, she also used this tool strategically to enhance her charismatic image.Footnote ²¹ Like Perón, the Kirchners also interfered with the National Institute for Statistics and Census of the Republic (INDEC) to falsify statistics and mask the rising inflation that had resulted from their unsustainable state-centered economic policies. By 2012, the disparity between real and “official” inflation rates reached nearly 15 percentage points (Streb Reference Streb, Gervasoni and Peruzzotti2015). To strengthen their appearance as heroes defending the people against nefarious enemies, the Kirchners attacked media outlets critical of their administration and dominated public spaces with propaganda. Most prominently, in 2008 Cristina launched an all-out attack against the media giant Clarín for criticizing her efforts to increase taxes on the agricultural export sector to fund her social spending (Becerra Reference Becerra, Gervasoni and Peruzzotti2015).

In sum, Peronism surged back to power under the Kirchners just as it had under Menem. Had the movement become institutionalized, this impressive comeback would have been unlikely. Yet its persistent charismatic nature enabled ambitious new leaders to restore its position as the country’s predominant political force following the 2001 crisis. Specifically, citizens’ enduring attachments to Peronism and their faith in the founder’s mission of salvation caused them to crave a new hero capable of resolving their misery. The Kirchners capitalized on this opportunity to rise up and demonstrate their charismatic power. They oversaw an impressive economic recovery and boldly reversed Menem’s neoliberal program through reinstating the economic nationalism and state interventionism of the past, reinvigorating citizens’ intense nostalgia for Perón’s golden age. Over time, the leaders also strategically reconstructed the movement’s symbolic narrative by writing Menem out and depicting themselves as the contemporary manifestations of Perón and Eva. In doing so, Néstor and Cristina politically reactivated the followers’ affective bonds, dominated the PJ, and weakened institutions that threatened their executive power.

As with Menem, this charismatic style of leadership allowed the Kirchners to consolidate hegemonic power – but only for a limited period of time. As I will illustrate in the next section, their shortsighted programs eventually imploded, compromising their heroic image. The Kirchners’ collapse would once again usher in a period of leaderless fragmentation. Rather than destroying the movement, this recession, which would occur under non-Peronist president Mauricio Macri, would simply provide the opportunity for Cristina to stage an impressive comeback four years later, this time as vice president under Néstor’s close confidant and Cabinet Chief, Alberto Fernández.

7.3.8.1 Policy Exhaustion

Over the course of Cristina’s two presidential terms, unchecked social spending and protectionist economic policies resulted in increasing inflation, rising prices, and shortages of basic material goods (Damill and Frenkel Reference Damill, Frenkel, Gervasoni and Peruzzotti2015). Rather than addressing these problems, Cristina upheld the policies and used personalistic tactics to try to preserve her power. Speculation blossomed regarding her potential plans to legalize “re-reelection,” which would enable her to serve a third presidential term (Rebossio Reference Rebossio2012). Meanwhile, she blamed the economic struggles on “evil” opponents including speculators, international financial institutions, and private corporations (Wortman Reference Wortman, Gervasoni and Peruzzotti2015). She also denied the severity of the looming crisis, distorted inflation statistics, further increased social spending, and relentlessly spread propaganda in praise of her administration’s progress, which she came to label “The Victorious Decade” (La Década Ganada).

As Cristina’s second presidency unfolded, it became increasingly difficult to sustain the illusion of prosperity with these stopgap measures. Moreover, in large part due to her declining performance, her plans for “re-reelection” failed, forcing her to step down in 2015 (Gilbert Reference Gilbert2015). As with Menem in 1999, the combination of growing economic woes and the charismatic leader’s inability to remain in executive power caused the Peronist movement to recede from power once again.

Due to economic deterioration and Cristina’s looming departure, Peronism once again suffered a crisis of fragmentation. The 2015 elections revealed these internal divisions. Cristina reluctantly endorsed Daniel Scioli, the lackluster Governor of the Province of Buenos Aires and Menem’s original protégé, as the PJ candidate (Raszewski Reference Raszewski2015). As in 2003, two additional Peronist candidates ran on independent tickets: Sergio Massa, a prominent national deputy from the Province of Buenos Aires and Cristina’s former cabinet chief, and Adolfo Rodríguez Saá, the governor of San Luis and perennial presidential hopeful.

Similar to 1999, the fragmentation of Peronism greatly facilitated the opposition. Despite their ongoing struggle to unite, opposition groups managed to coalesce around a single candidate: Mauricio Macri, the center-right, wealthy businessman and Governor of the Federal Capital. Macri won and stepped into the presidency, backed by an ideologically variegated, seven-party coalition called “Cambiemos” (Let’s Change), whose sole unifying foundation was its opposition to Cristina. Notably, Macri won in the second round of the election.Footnote ²² In the first round, he won a mere 30 percent of the vote; in contrast, the Peronists won a combined 61 percent (about 38.5 percent for Scioli, 20.5 percent for Massa, and 2 percent for Rodríguez Saá). While Peronism clearly remained the country’s most popular political force, its internal divisions permitted Macri to participate in a runoff against Scioli, in which the non-Peronist won by two percentage points. In short, Macri owed his narrow victory to Peronists disillusioned with the Kirchner regime who refused to support her weakling successor.

7.3.8.2 Resistance to Routinization

Macri broke with historical precedent by becoming the first non-Peronist president to complete a full term in office (2015–19) since Perón’s first electoral victory in 1946. Nonetheless, his presidency was marked by struggle and controversy, in large part because the crisis he inherited from his predecessor worsened substantially under his watch. By the end of his term, inflation had soared to 50 percent, GDP had shrunk by over three percent, and his approval dropped from a high of 62 percent after the 2017 mid-term election to a low of 28 percent in 2019 (Gillespie and Do Rosario Reference Gillespie and Do Rosario2019; Murillo and Rodrigo Zarazaga Reference Murillo and Rodrigo Zarazaga2020). Therefore, Macri lost his October 2019 bid for reelection by a full eight points to the Peronist presidential candidate, Alberto Fernández, whom Cristina chose as her running mate (with Cristina as vice president) just three months prior to the election. In short, while Macri temporarily overcame enormous challenges to assemble a successful non-Peronist coalition and complete his presidential term, his weak leadership – marked by his glaring inability to address the worsening economic crisis – ultimately paved the way for Peronism’s fifth resurgence.

As with the presidencies of Alfonsín and De La Rúa, I argue that the persistent, charismatic nature of Peronism severely impacted Macri’s leadership potential and contributed substantially to his political demise. Even while out of power during Macri’s presidency, Peronism continued to shape citizen’s expectations for a strong leader to provide a heroic resolution to the growing crisis. Yet Macri’s non-Peronist background, coupled with his unwillingness and inability to adopt the personalistic style typical of Peronist leaders, prevented him from filling this role. Instead of working to establish a charismatic image, the new president endeavored to project a principled, business-like style. Indeed, while he held influential political roles in the past – most importantly, as the Chief of Government (equivalent to Governor) of the City of Buenos Aires – he leaned on his credentials as a civil engineer and businessman rather than portraying himself as a talented and inspirational leader in his own right. Throughout his campaign and presidency, he also openly criticized the “hyperpresidentialism and … polarizing style” of Peronist leaders, namely Cristina, and depicted himself as the humble manager of a “team” of bureaucrats (Lupu Reference Lupu2016, 47–48). Members of Macri’s political administration insisted that this technocratic approach, which intentionally downplayed any emotional connection between the president and the citizenry, would help the president differentiate himself from his melodramatic predecessor and enhance his capacity to govern.Footnote ²³

However, instead of strengthening his image, Macri’s strategy of depersonalization demonstrated his grave underestimation of the affective power of the Peronist identity, which hinges on citizens’ deeply emotional bonds to charismatic leaders. Thus, although the president believed his so-called de-dramatization of power would inspire Argentines to invest in a more “horizontal” and egalitarian concept of leadership, his approach appeared to many as a brazen attempt to erase the legacies of Argentina’s most beloved heroes – Perón above all (Rodríguez and Touzon Reference Rodríguez and Touzon2020, 55, 70). In other words, by belittling the charismatic style of past leaders, especially Perón and the Kirchners, Macri and his team of technocrats (perhaps unknowingly) insulted the hopes and dreams that many citizens felt those leaders had fiercely defended (Rodríguez Reference Rodríguez2019). Consequently, Macri failed to connect on an emotional level with ordinary Argentines and fell short of their expectations of strong leadership.

In addition to denying the symbolic power of Peronism, Macri enacted lukewarm policies rather than providing bold and decisive action to confront the economic crisis he inherited from his predecessor. Ironically, during his campaign, he vowed to end poverty, inflation, and corruption while jumpstarting Argentina’s economy – audacious promises not unlike those of Peronist heroes. Yet, as president, he lacked the confidence and support to enact bold structural adjustments and provide the swift relief that many Argentines expected (Kovalski Reference Kovalski2019). His cautious approach unfolded into a “meandering road to stability and growth” rather than bringing about miraculous recovery (Sturzenegger Reference Sturzenegger2019). Then, in 2018, the Turkish debt crisis and a terrible drought exacerbated the recession (Kovalski Reference Kovalski2019). Desperate to resolve the situation, the president turned to the International Monetary Fund – the most detested institution in Argentina – for help, securing the largest loan in history, at US$5.7 billion; in exchange, he promised to enact much stricter structural adjustment measures (Murillo and Rodrigo Zarazaga Reference Murillo and Rodrigo Zarazaga2020, 129). By this time, Argentines had lost faith in his capacity to rescue them from crisis. They also felt betrayed by his decision to sell the country out to the IMF and suffered from the painful adjustment measures.

Similar to his non-Peronist predecessors, Macri’s weak leadership reinforced the maxim that only Peronist leaders are capable of governing the country. His presidency strengthened the cleavage between Peronists and anti-Peronists, injecting Peronism with a much-needed boost of legitimacy. As the “Macrisis” worsened during the final two years of his presidency, the fragile unity of his non-Peronist coalition eroded substantially (Rapoza Reference Rapoza2019). Meanwhile, the ideologically heterogeneous array of Peronist leaders grew increasingly motivated to “put aside their differences and coalesce” (Murillo and Rodrigo Zarazaga Reference Murillo and Rodrigo Zarazaga2020, 126).

In short, as with Alfonsín and De La Rúa decades earlier, the fall of Peronism in 2015 enabled Macri, a non-Peronist, to rise to power. At the same time, the charismatic ethos of the movement once again largely precluded the non-Peronist from becoming a successful leader. Indeed, Macri’s inability and unwillingness to emotionally connect with Peronist-identifying citizens or miraculously resolve the economic crisis through bold, unilateral action set him up for failure and paved the way for Peronism’s impressive comeback.

8.1.2.1 Routinization versus Revival

To my knowledge, this study is the first to directly challenge the routinization thesis and provide an alternative explanation for the striking resilience of charismatic movements. While some scholars have produced insightful theories about the survival of charisma, their analyses are firmly rooted in the logic of routinization. Weber’s original theory of charisma and its routinization provides the foundation for these studies (Reference Weber, Roth and Wittich1922/1978). According to Weber, charisma is inherently unstable in its pure form. Yet, he argues, charismatic movements have the potential to transform into alternative forms of authority: namely traditional authority, rational authority, or a combination of the two (ibid., 246). Based on this reasoning, Weber discusses several potential pathways of routinization. For instance, charisma might be “traditionalized” into a form of hereditary succession, in which next-of-kin inherits the original leader’s legitimacy (ibid., 248). Alternatively, charisma might be “rationalized” by transferring from the leader to a series of offices, rules, and procedures used to govern society (ibid.).

Building on Weber, Shils (Reference Shils1965) develops a theory in which the leader’s charisma disperses to a series of inanimate offices, groups, and laws. He claims that charisma survives by detaching from the individual leader and injecting meaning and value into associated “collectivities,” as well as inanimate “roles and rules” (ibid., 205). Citizens’ faith in and attachments to the leader therefore transfer to these institutions, strengthening and stabilizing the bureaucracy that develops in the charismatic leaders’ place (ibid.).

Alternatively, Jowitt argues that charismatic movements and parties can survive if their platform, rather than (or in addition to) their leader, embodies a heroic and transformative mission. Under these circumstances, he states that the “[charismatic] Party is called on to sacrifice, struggle, and exercise continual vigilance to maintain its purpose” (Jowitt Reference Jowitt1992, 11). Unlike Shils, who states that the charisma originally associated with an individual leader “disperses” to institutions, Jowitt contends that the institutions can develop a form of “impersonal” charisma from the outset (ibid.; Shils Reference Shils1965, 205). To illustrate his theory, Jowitt traces the history of Leninism, which he argues was always rooted at least as much in a “charismatic” platform as in Lenin’s personal appeal (Jowitt Reference Jowitt1992, 8–12).

Despite the differences across these authors regarding the origin of charismatic authority, they all conclude that charisma can only persist in depersonalized form. In contrast, my theory of charismatic movement revival stresses that charisma lives on precisely by sustaining its personalistic core. The followers help maintain the personalistic nature of their identity with the movement when the founder disappears by recounting their individual experiences of his heroic leadership. This reinforces the citizens’ direct, emotional attachments to the founder and his movement, rather than transforming their bonds into respect for bureaucratic offices and procedures that are indirectly associated with the founder, as Shils would argue. Moreover, whereas routinization theories insist that only depersonalized party organizations can perpetuate charisma, I argue that new leaders who personally embody the founder can revive charisma in its original form. Using this strategy, successors can become powerful charismatic leaders themselves – if only temporarily. By developing this personalistic mechanism of survival, my theory makes a novel and important contribution to the literature on charisma.

8.1.2.2 Structure versus Agency

In documenting and explaining the personalistic revival of charisma, this book also contributes to key debates about the roles of structure and agency in politics. Scholars debate the extent to which charisma relies on one or the other. On the one hand, some define charisma as a fixed personality trait with inscrutable origins (e.g., Antonakis et al. Reference Carlin, Hartlyn, Hellwig, Love, Martínez-Gallardo and Singer2016; Hoffman and Hoffman Reference Hoffman and Hoffman1968; House and Howell Reference House and Howell1992; Keller Reference Keller2006: Maranell Reference Maranell1970). This interpretation, which underscores the magnetic appeal of individual leaders, focuses disproportionately on agency at the expense of structure. Unsurprisingly, many social scientists have criticized this understanding of charisma as too slippery, ambiguous, and subjective to warrant rigorous analysis (e.g., Bendix Reference Bendix1967; Schlesinger Reference Schlesinger1960; Smith Reference Smith2000; Van der Brug and Mughan Reference Van der Brug and Mughan2007; Worsley Reference Worsley1957).

On the other hand, some authors stress that structure plays an indispensable role in the establishment of charismatic authority. For instance, Weber states that charismatic leaders must rise “in times of psychic, physical, economic, ethical, religious, [or] political distress” to prove their extraordinary capacities to their potential disciples (Weber Reference Weber and Eisenstadt1968, 18). Similarly, Madsen and Snow underscore the importance of a crisis for generating feelings of low self-efficacy, which initiates the process of charismatic bonding between leaders and followers (Reference Madsen and Snow1991, 9–14). These theories of charisma highlight important structural conditions. However, they risk becoming overly deterministic. Indeed, given the intensely personal and subjective nature of this type of authority, it would seem problematic to overlook the individual agency of charismatic leaders.

My study sheds greater light on the distinct influences of agency and structure on charisma by tracing the long-term trajectories of charismatic movements. I illustrate how structure and agency interact to facilitate new leaders’ ability to reactivate citizens’ charismatic attachments and inherit the founder’s mantle. I show that the capacity of successors to revive the movement depends in part on their agency. Without their own personal appeal, skill, and experience, these leaders could not achieve extraordinary performance reminiscent of the founder, nor could they tap into the followers’ emotional bonds.

Nevertheless, my theory stresses the centrality of structural conditions in the revival of charismatic movements. To begin, the eruption of a crisis provides the indispensable opening for successors to prove their heroic potential because it makes citizens crave a new savior in the first place. The method by which new leaders are selected and the timing of their rise also greatly influence their prospects for success. In addition, the preexisting, charismatic nature of citizens’ identification with the movement structures the way these leaders govern. Specifically, these leaders must use a personalistic style and tie themselves to the founder’s legacy to fulfill the followers’ expectations for a savior. Thus, while charismatic successors often manage to exercise largely independent authority for a period of time, these structural conditions impose crucial constraints on their power. Paradoxically, these conditions also strengthen the movement’s momentum and help extend its survival beyond the abbreviated rules of its successors.

By clarifying the roles of structure and agency in the spasmodic trajectories of charismatic movements, this study also demonstrates that the impact of charisma on politics is far less ephemeral than previously assumed (Eatwell Reference Eatwell2006; Jowitt Reference Jowitt1992; Kitschelt et al. Reference Arce and Carrión2010; Madsen and Snow Reference Madsen and Snow1991; Weber Reference Weber, Roth and Wittich1922/1978). I show that the resilience of citizens’ affective attachments to the charismatic founder underpins the survival of these movements in their original, personalistic form. In turn, the emergence of structural conditions conducive to the rise of a new savior – namely, the eruption of a crisis – encourage new, ambitious, and talented leaders to reactivate citizens’ attachments, return the movement to power, and consolidate a new wave of personalistic authority. As illustrated in Argentina and Venezuela, charisma can therefore exert a profound, destabilizing influence on politics for years or even decades.

8.1.2.3 Political Identity, Cleavages, and Partisanship

In contrast to previous studies that emphasize the short-lived nature of charismatic attachments, my theory indicates that these attachments can develop into a resilient political identity. Although the content of this identity remains rooted in the heroic legacy of individual leaders and therefore differs from more traditional political identities based on programmatic content and/or robust social networks, it has a similar capacity to endure, cross over to new generations, and profoundly shape citizens’ worldviews, attitudes, and behaviors. Whereas programmatic and organizational identities “help bind voters to parties” and therefore facilitate party system institutionalization (Roberts Reference Roberts2014, 20), the charismatic identity tethers citizens to a weakly institutionalized movement that thrives off of, and reinforces, volatile cycles of personalistic leadership. Thus, my theory stresses that the charismatic identity can result in unique consequences for the political system.

Like other forms of partisanship, the charismatic identity establishes a cleavage that organizes society into two groups: the “in-group” constitutes true believers while the “out-group” incorporates individuals who do not belong to the movement (Tajfel Reference Tajfel1974). In programmatic settings, these in- and out-groups tend to be rooted in left–right ideology and substantive policies as much as affect; thus, while the people in an out-group possess a negative identification with one party, they often also possess a positive identity with another party. For example, in the United States, many conservative individuals negatively identify with Democrats, but also positively identify as Republicans, and vice versa.

In contrast, the charismatic identity links up with a personalistic cleavage, which organizes in- and out-groups based on profound (positive or negative) emotions toward individual leaders and has little to do with programmatic content. Because the out-group coalesces based exclusively on a strong rejection of the charismatic leader and movement, the group struggles to develop a positive identification with its own group or party. Thus, these individuals’ anti-identification with the movement, defined by negative emotions rather than substantive policies, predominates. Even more than in programmatic party systems, affective (rather than programmatic or ideological) polarization between followers and opponents becomes a defining quality of the political system (Abramowitz and McCoy Reference Abramowitz and McCoy2019, Iyengar et al. Reference Abramowitz and McCoy2019). As some studies have noted (Ostiguy Reference Ostiguy2009; Ostiguy and Roberts Reference Ostiguy and Roberts2016), the personalistic cleavage generated by a charismatic identity can undermine the relevance of more traditional ideological or social divisions thought to facilitate party system institutionalization (Lipset and Rokkan Reference Lipset, Rokkan, Lipset and Rokkan1967). By demonstrating how charismatic attachments emerge and develop into a resilient identity, my theory sheds light on the mechanisms through which such a personalistic cleavage can structure the political system in ways that intensify affective polarization and harm programmatic development.

8.1.2.4 A Novel Explanation for Enduring Institutional Weakness

Finally, my theory of charismatic movement revival contributes to the literature on institutional weakness and its consequences for democracy. My analysis reinforces the findings of several important studies that highlight the detrimental impact of personalism, elites’ top-down control of parties, stark programmatic reversals, and severe crises on party system institutionalization (Gervasoni Reference Gervasoni and Mainwaring2018; Kostadinova and Levitt Reference Kostadinova and Levitt2014; Lupu Reference Lupu2013, Reference Lupu2014; Mainwaring Reference Gervasoni and Mainwaring2018; Mainwaring and Scully Reference Mainwaring and Scully1995; Roberts Reference Roberts2007, Reference Roberts2014). For example, my finding that charismatic movements can remain dormant for years before suddenly becoming revived by new leaders complements Mainwaring’s observation that, in Latin America, countries with seemingly stable party systems can experience surprisingly rapid institutional and ideological change, at times “unravel[ing] quickly and dramatically” (Reference Bandurski2018, 35, 62). Furthermore, the fits and starts of charismatic movements emphasized by my study align with Roberts’ analysis of the “ebb and flow of populist waves” in several Latin American countries, including Argentina and Venezuela (Reference Wilpert2007, 4, 12).

My theory of charismatic movement revival contributes an alternative explanation for recurrent institutional weakness that rests on the self-reinforcing, spasmodic trajectories of charismatic movements. Specifically, as detailed in Chapter 7, I argue that the emergence of these movements sets into motion an endogenous cycle of personalistic leadership that establishes – and subsequently perpetuates – problems of institutional weakness highlighted by the previously mentioned authors. Moreover, because the charismatic core of such movements persists over time rather than succumbing to routinization, my theory suggests that it can undermine democratic development for decades. Indeed, as shown in Chapter 7, the periodic revival of charismatic movements encourages executive aggrandizement, promotes shortsighted policies whose inevitable collapse harms citizens’ well-being, exacerbates affective polarization, hinders programmatic party structuration, and makes it difficult for both citizens and institutions to hold leaders accountable.

Importantly, my explanation of persistent institutional weakness extends only to countries where charismatic movements have taken root.Footnote ¹ Nonetheless, I argue that its contribution to the broader literature is valid and useful for two reasons. First, while they have hitherto not been very common, my research shows that charismatic movements have a powerful and enduring impact on political systems. Second, the growing trend toward the “personalization” of politics, combined with the recent rise of charismatic leaders in countries around the world, suggest that my theory may become increasingly relevant in diverse contexts (Dalton and Wattenberg Reference Dalton, Wattenberg, Dalton and Wattenberg2000; Garzia Reference Garzia2011; Gervasoni Reference Gervasoni and Mainwaring2018; Kyle and Mounk Reference Kyle and Mounk2018; McAllister Reference McAllister, Dalton and Klingemann2007; Roberts Reference Roberts2014). It is particularly notable that the recent surge in charismatic leaders and movements has coincided with the alarming global retreat of democracy (Freedom House 2020). My theory suggests not only that these trends are related, but also that the threats to democracy posed by these charismatic movements could be more enduring than previously thought. The next section demonstrates how the central components of my theory generalize to four additional cases within and beyond Latin America.