Leadership Style, Charisma, and Populism

Populism is a political discourse, a movement, a political style, and a skillful strategy which claims to champion the cause of the common man in opposition to the elite class by establishing mutual trust and dependence between the leader and the people. Populism has come to be associated with charismatic leadership of an individual leader who typically bypasses democratic style of politics. In this short note, we bring out this contrast critically by looking at two dimensions of charismatic leadership: personal authority and political radicalism, to present this dilemma further. We close out our entry with a focus on recent research regarding populism, and how social media is seen as being the key factor in its spread across the globe.