Democratic Backsliding and Public Administration: How Populists in Government Transform State Bureaucracies. Edited by Michael W. Bauer, B. Guy Peters, Jon Pierre, Kutsal Yesilkagit, and Stefan Becker. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021. 320p. $99.99 cloth.

charismatic leaders in the Peronist and Chavista movements, histories that allow the author to examine the rise and fall of these movements. She employs a rich variety of methods for the task. Specifically, part II explores the theory’s implications for charismatic demand, or the attitudes and behavior of followers. Chapter 3 examines public opinion data from Venezuela to show the dominance of charismatic linkages over programmatic or organizational linkages among Chavez supporters at the time he was alive. Chapter 4 uses focus groups to identify evidence of charismatic attachment among contemporary Chavistas and Peronists. Chapter 5 presents the results of a face-to-face survey experiment in both countries, finding that referencing the charismatic qualities of a fictitious candidate increases charismatic support for the movement (albeit results are not as strong in Venezuela as in Argentina, due to ceiling effects). This combination of evidence is one of the most persuasive parts of the book. Part III explores the implications of the theory for the supply of charismatic leaders. Chapter 6 uses mostly historical data and interviews with surviving party leaders and activists to trace out the reasons for the success or failure of successors. Chapter 7 shifts to highlight the negative consequences of charisma for state-building and democratic consolidation, which it attempts to demonstrate with a historical analysis of the Peronist experience. Andrews-Lee concludes (ch. 8) by restating the book’s argument and findings and reviewing four shadow cases that affirm the persistence thesis: Alberto Fujimori in Peru, Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, Thaksin Shinawatra in Thailand, and Mao Zedong in China. Interestingly, while the shadow cases in the conclusion reinforce the book’s point that charisma is a measurable and enduring form of linkage, the effort at a broader, comparative perspective also highlights two gaps in the author’s theoretical framework. To be clear, these are not fundamental flaws, but scope conditions that deserve further specification. The first is the author’s decision to focus primarily on populist charismatic movements, that is, charismatic movements whose leaders frame their mission in Manichaean terms of a cosmic struggle between a virtuous common people and an evil, conspiring elite. In the introduction, Andrews-Lee deliberately defines populism as a subtype of charismatic linkage. It is correct that some charismatic movements are populist, but her categorization implies that some other charismatic movements are not. Indeed, earlier studies of charisma (pre-2000) frequently included normatively positive cases such as the US civil rights movement under Martin Luther King Jr. or the Indian independence movement under Mahatma Gandhi— movements that avoided demonizing their opponents and strengthened liberal democracy. What of these other, more pluralist types of charismatic leadership? Likewise, while Weber and followers such as Robert Michels were wrong to argue that specific charismatic movements inevitably fade, the bulk of the movements that inspired their work—such as Communism and Social Democracy in Europe—became highly institutionalized parties. This process has continued in the wealthy democracies, where protest movements have given rise to new party families, such as the Green and the Radical Right. Indeed, one gets the feeling that these voters mistrust charismatic leadership and expect revolutionary leaders to build institutions. Rather than arguing that charismatic movements always become routinized or that they always persist, the broader evidence suggests that we should be asking why charismatic linkage is dominant in some countries but not others, a question that motivated the work of political sociologists such as Edward Shils. A more comparative study could answer this question. Ultimately, though, the strength of this volume is precisely its ability to move forward a more productive, empirically based discussion of charisma that helps us identify these questions. The leader-centric definition and the author’s causal arguments are worked out in impressive detail, in a way that invites further analysis and testing. Andrews-Lee has made a remarkable contribution to the study of charisma and political representation that sets a high standard for future research.