Keyword

Axes

Upper Left Quadrant Details Upper Right Quadrant Details Lower Left Quadrant Details Lower Right Quadrant Details Details

Quadrants

Outline

The lower left quadrant (LLQ) covers the moment thought by followers to be the extraordinary birth. The primordial charismatic character often has a religious origin and is recognized according to how he or she appears to possess supernatural qualities and style befitting "an envoy of God, a hero - a mighty warrior" (Boudon and Borricaud 1989, 69). The upper left quadrant (ULQ) depicts charisma in movement, arising out of crises that so often beset communities. Crisis produces a quest for a return to the foundations of the community. And when action and conflict are required, people become followers, having put their trust in a figure known for effectiveness, heroism, sacrifice, prophecy, or prayer. In the upper right quadrant (URQ), the community is on a more rational footing, emerging as an institution whose need for leadership must be more in keeping with established rules and practices that actually define an institution and are in the process rationalized by supporting beliefs - i.e., the function of ideology. It is this quadrant that best applies to one of Weber's most luminous discoveries, the "routinization of charisma." The lower right quadrant (LRQ) is a still more formalized version of routinization, in which rationalization is crafted directly in terms of a monocratic authority. Charisma is here instrumental to the founding of a new political order, be it the early monarchies of the thaumaturgic kings healing their followers or the authoritarian regimes of revolutionary leaders.