Last Friday, as I read Aakriti Ghimire’s column “Nation-building isn’t a one-man game”, I was reminded of Konrad Adenauer, West Germany’s uncharismatic chancellor, who quietly anchored the Wirtschaftswunder (Germany’s post-war developmental miracle)—a stark contrast to his predecessor Adolf Hitler’s charisma-driven disasters. Ghimire was right—Nepal’s democracy remains trapped in a cycle of hero worship, where every crisis produces a new redeemer.

Yet charismatic leadership is not always a curse. It can work—but only when institutions are strong enough to contain it, and when personal magnetism does not harden into a cult. When these safeguards fail, charisma curdles into idolatry, and democracy becomes a stage play of devotion.

When it succeeds, when it doesn’t

The difference between success and failure lies less in the leader’s magnetism than in the machinery around him. Sociologist Max Weber warned that charismatic authority is inherently unstable unless it is ‘routinised’ into legal-rational order. The leaders remembered as builders tended to do exactly that. Indonesia’s Suharto, for instance, bureaucratised his revolutionary charisma into a ‘routinised’ one—unlike his predecessor, Sukarno, who had personalised the state.

By contrast, recent studies show that the spread of such personalism erodes democratic quality itself. Nepal’s recent experience with KP Oli—a once-charismatic leader who rose through his theatrical defiance of the Indian blockade yet fell from grace amid the disillusionment of later scandals and the Gen-Z protest killings—shows the peril of charisma left unchecked. Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew and South Korea’s Park Chung-hee prospered because their charisma was channelled through institutions—but Uganda’s Idi Amin, the Philippines’ Ferdinand Marcos and Nepal’s Oli failed because their charisma replaced institutions. Even benevolent dictators, it turns out, can deliver progress only by first limiting themselves through rules.

In democracies, charisma can be constructive—sometimes even indispensable—when it persuades within constraints rather than commanding beyond them. Franklin D Roosevelt’s famous ‘fireside chats’ calmed panic during the Great Depression while he worked with Congress, not around it. Nelson Mandela converted personal reverence into reconciliation, then stepped down after a single term, which is an institutional lesson as much as a moral one. In neighbouring India, Jawaharlal Nehru used post-colonial charisma not only to entrench democracy at home but also to lead non-alignment and decolonisation efforts abroad.

Similarly, Jacinda Ardern’s charismatic roles in the aftermath of the Christchurch shootings and during the Covid-19 pandemic mobilised solidarity without vilifying dissent, establishing that charismatic, humble and empathetic politics can work. The greatest charismatic democrats make their own charisma unnecessary, as Ardern proved by resigning voluntarily in 2023 (just as France’s Charles de Gaulle—another charismatic leader who’d lead France’s constitutional and infrastructural rebuilding—did in 1969).

However, the line between charisma and cult is perilously thin. In her book Me the People, Nadia Urbinati calls this slide ‘plebiscitary democracy’—i.e., rule by acclamation rather than accountability. Experiments by Matthew Graham similarly show that citizens, under polarisation, often excuse such norm-breaking by “their” hero—much as many far-right Americans excuse Donald Trump’s excesses. The result is familiar—when charisma eclipses processes, democracy mutates into theatre.

Electorate’s saviour fallacy

Electorates buy this because history and psychology make it comforting to believe in saviours. Nations emerging from trauma crave order—just as many who once criticised Sushila Karki welcomed her brief premiership; and citizens weary of corruption crave decisiveness—as when Nepalis briefly cheered King Gyanendra’s 2005 coup d’état. Similarly, when systems fail, personality is mistaken for competence—as seen in the frenzy that propelled Rabi Lamichhane in 2022. Cultural memory—from South Asia’s Dharmarāj to Plato’s philosopher-king—too, glorifies the righteous ruler. And as Pippa Norris argues in her book Cultural Backlash, periods of rapid social change generate identity anxiety that charismatic figures—like Donald Trump or Nigel Farage—exploit by offering moral clarity.

Social media algorithms amplify the temptation—where outrage travels faster than reform, and the performative strong leader goes ‘viral’ while the quiet reformer does not. The upshot is a kind of saviour syndrome—an emotional outsourcing of agency—where it is quicker to admire than to participate, and easier to hope than to hold to account.

Across regimes, though, the same law holds. Dictators succeed only when charisma is anchored in institutions, and democrats succeed when it strengthens them. Weber’s old insight about ‘routinisation’ remains the best test—did the leader’s popularity outlast him by becoming a rule? Lee Kuan Yew turned charisma into a clean, meritocratic civil service. De Gaulle left behind the Fifth Republic. Mandela transformed loyalty to himself into loyalty to a constitution. Roosevelt’s political theatre hardened into the modern administrative state.

But where such translations fail, heroism decays into dependency, and societies plunder like Chávez’s ‘Bolivarian revolution’ and Marcos’ ‘New Society’. Charisma without constraint is fireworks without wiring—dazzling, then dark.

Is charisma always necessary?

No. Some of the most effective leaders of the past century were conspicuously uncharismatic. Like Konrad Adenauer, Japan’s Shigeru Yoshida, too, was aloof, bureaucratic and almost invisible—yet guided Japan’s reconstruction with caution. India’s Narasimha Rao, scholarly and sphinx-like, liberalised the Indian economy without fanfare. Angela Merkel governed Germany for 16 years with what commentators called the ‘charisma of competence’. Their authority derived from credibility—not spectacle. By forcing institutions to speak louder than individuals, they normalised procedural power into what might be called institutional charisma.

Yet Nepal’s circumstances differ, as ours is not an institutionalised democracy. We’re an underdeveloped country still plagued by corruption, patronage and more important, civic exhaustion. Public faith in the political class has collapsed, the middle class is emigrating, and drivers switch lanes as nonchalantly as ministers switch parties. In such situations, pure technocracy cannot revive morale. Nepal needs a few, sustainable sparks, ignited by a charismatic, thoughtful, and worldly democrat to reenchant our disenchanted republic.

Political development theorists from Edward Shils to Sam Huntington argue that in societies where institutions are weak and legitimacy thin, charismatic mobilisation is often a precondition for institution-building. Charisma, in this sense, becomes a civic accelerant as it can generate the trust and participation without which technocracies never gain traction. In transitional democracies, inspiration precedes regulation.

The cult danger

The spark must be continuous enough to keep citizens engaged—yet contained enough to prevent personality from consuming process. If unrestrained, it will decay into precisely the populist cult Nepal has already begun to taste, as Aakriti’s article hinted. The challenge for any future charismatic leader is therefore paradoxical, as they need to inspire without deifying themselves, to move citizens emotionally while binding themselves legally. Charisma can unify a frustrated nation, but only if it strengthens the institutions that outlast it, such as schools that teach civic reasoning, courts that command trust, parties that serve ideas rather than idols, and a free press that speaks truth to power and to the uncritical masses.

So, how can Nepal avoid the pitfalls of charismatic leadership? The answer lies in building institutions that endure beyond any single leader, and in resisting the slide into what Urbinati calls plebiscitary habits. Only through strong institutions, an informed citizenry, and leadership energies that are channelled rather than scattered can democracy take root.

As the 2026 elections approach, the question for voters should not be “who is your leader—Balen, Rabi, or the old guards?” but rather, “what kind of system will they work within, and how will they deliver?”. Charismatic leaders who can answer these questions convincingly may ignite the much-coveted spark—one whose flame institutions will sustain. Mandela, De Gaulle, Roosevelt, Nehru and Lee understood that—and made their own magnetism redundant by transforming followers into citizens. Hitler did not—and led his nation into a second catastrophe in 26 years, along with the horrors of the Holocaust. Nepal’s charismatic leaders today face similar choices, and it remains to be seen whom they learn from.