What It Takes to Be a Leader: Leadership and Charisma in a Citizen-Candidate Model

This paper analyses leadership and charisma within the framework of social choice. In societies that lack formal institutional authorities, the power of leaders to coerce is limited. Under such conditions we find that social outcomes will depend not only on policy preferences but also on individuals' abilities to transform voluntary efforts into some communal public good. The paper has three central results: (1) Leaders might credibly compromise on policies they favor in order to elicit more social efforts, while society members might be willing to compromise on favorable policies in order to gain better leaders. (2) Under imperfect information regarding individuals' abilities, social choice might be biased toward less competent but more charismatic leaders. (3) Lesscompetent, more charismatic leaders can achieve more in terms of social goals than competent non-charismatic ones.