CHARISMA, LEADER EFFECTS AND SUPPORT FOR RIGHT-WING POPULIST PARTIES Wouter van der Brug and Anthony Mughan ABSTRACT One of the ways in which support for right-wing populist parties is held to be distinctive from that for other kinds of political parties is that their leaders are alleged to be ‘charismatic’ figures who play a crucial role in the electoral success their parties have enjoyed. Focusing on three Dutch elections, this article tests the charismatic leadership hypothesis, asking whether leader effects are stronger for populist than for established parties and whether they are stronger for populist leaders who are widely held to be more rather than less charismatic. The results indicate that if, following Weber, charisma is seen as an intimate and direct bond between leaders and followers, there is in fact little support for the charismatic leadership hypothesis, at least in the context of leaders shaping electoral outcomes. While recognizing that charisma may manifest itself in other, perhaps indirect, ways, there would seem to us at the very least to be a need for the notion of charisma to be concep- tualized more rigorously if it is to continue to be used as an explanation of right-wing populist party success. KEY WORDS  charisma  electoral effects  established leaders  populist leaders Introduction Over the past two decades, a wave of right-wing populist, or extreme right, parties has burst onto the political scene in many established democracies, particularly in Europe. One of their more notable features is that they are treated as a species apart in the political parties literature; they are widely taken to be parties ‘not like the others’ (e.g. Betz, 1998; Eatwell and Mudde, 2004; Hainsworth, 2000; Meny and Surel, 2002). When analysis is at the party level, this perspective is reasonable and justifiable. After all, insisting that they alone are the true voice of the people, populist parties themselves PARTY POLITICS VOL 13. No.1 pp. 29–51 Copyright © 2007 SAGE Publications London Thousand Oaks New Delhi www.sagepublications.com 1354-0688[DOI: 10.1177/1354068807071260] 02 Brug 071260 11/10/06 12:24 am Page 29