Globalisation and Politics: Conceptualisation of Charismatic Power by the Modern State

Starting from the ideal-typical categories coined by Weber, this paper aims to analyze the concept of charisma and its function of unifying force in the formation of social groups. In the oldest societies, it has played an important and essential role, but with the birth of the modern State and the its bureaucratic-legal-rational form, this form of power has declined. Only in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, just when the first crisis of the liberal State, charisma presents itself as the true strength of the union group consensus. Globalization heightens the sense of maladjustment of the modern individual. He’s devoid of any social bond, but the charisma of populist leaders or neo - fundamentalists trying to redesign a fictitious community of belonging to each individual, to give meaning to their lives. The applied methodology makes use of a political-philosophical approach, based on the hypothetical-deductive method through bibliographical research. The aim of the article is to show how the sociological and political categories of charism and authority are still pregnant in contemporary Western societies and the possibility of moderating the power of charismatic personalism through democratic institutions.