Mečiar, Fico a charizmatické panstvo

Abstract

This article deals with Max Weber’s notion of charismatic domination and its applicability in the analysis of political development in postsocialist Slovakia. First it introduces the concept, as well as its role in Weber’s philosophy of history and its function in his explanations of cultural change. To test and illustrate the analytic value of the concept, it is applied to interpret the rise of two postsocialist political leaders, Vladimír Mečiar and Robert Fico, with a special focus on the integrative and transformative functions charismatic domination fulfills in the context of political transition, the role it plays in the establishment and negotiation of a new moral and political order and in overcoming the inherent exclusionary tendencies of a revolutionary discourse, as well as the role it seems to play in ordinary political life within a modern, legal system of domination.