We generally think of personalist political movements as shallow and fleeting. Without a programmatic political project and the formal organization to nurture and motivate adherents, these movements are expected to fade away, especially once the charismatic leader exits the scene. But although this pattern has often held, some charismatic movements somehow, puzzlingly persist. Argentina’s Peronist movement was founded in the 1940s and to this day, supporters hang portraits of Juan and Eva Perón on their walls. Hugo Chávez, who first won the presidency in 1998, continues to elicit deep loyalty from a substantial number of Venezuelans even after his death in 2013 and the country’s economic and social collapse.
Andrews-Lee’s masterful new book explains how. She persuasively argues that personalist attachment to a charismatic leader—often borne of people’s search for a savior in times of crisis—can be a lasting source of individual social identity, even in the absence of a...