Abstract
Sociological research has overlooked the political consequences of charismatic leadership that arises in existing democratic political bureaucracies. In this article, we theorize the consequences of charismatic leadership in democratic nations by revisiting Max Weber’s theory of charismatic authority. Our extension of Weber’s theory of charismatic authority helps to address a gap in the political polarization literature concerning the role of charismatic leadership. This article provides a foundational link in the research on charismatic authority–bridging the literatures on charisma and cross‐national comparative sociology. This bridging is enabled by advances in data collection that include information on charismatic authority in cross‐national context. This article makes use of a Driscoll and Kraay fixed‐effects analysis across 76 democracies from 1960 to 2009 to explore the relationship between charismatic leadership and political polarization. Our findings suggest that nations with higher levels of charismatic leadership tend to have higher levels of political polarization. These results contribute to both the literature on political polarization and charisma—as well as support our extension of Weber’s theory of charismatic authority.