Charismatic authority and leadership change: lessons from Cuba's post-Fidel succession

Abstract

When Max Weber introduced the concept of “charismatic authority” into the social sciences, acknowledging its great transformative potential, he stressed its inherent problem of succession. This proposition has been tested in the case of one of the most emblematic charismatic leaders in modern politics, Cuba's longtime revolutionary leader Fidel Castro. When he fell ill in 2006, conventional wisdom assumed a major crisis of succession to be inevitable. So how was it possible that the Cuban regime was able to stage a gradual and orderly succession? In addressing this question, the article identifies four key ways in which the empirical experience of the post-Fidel succession challenges our theoretical understanding of the link between charismatic authority and political leadership change.