ABSTRACT
The advantages of charismatic leadership are far-reaching. The charismatic leader can galvanize and mobilize large numbers of people, and charisma is particularly effective in increasing the political activism of those who are inactive and apathetic. Charisma releases pent-up energy, at least for a limited period of time, and the Roosevelt administration as well as the regimes of Fidel Castro and Sukarno were marked by tremendous vitality and social action that went far beyond mere mobilization. Leaders who have charisma have advantages in exercising their authority. Charisma can be regarded as a form of power, power being, in Bertrand Russell's words, the capacity to produce an effect. Political "power is the capacity of some persons to produce intended and foreseen effects on others". Jesse Jackson, the PUSH/Excel staff, and the federal bureaucrats expected the local schools to cooperate much more than they did, but their authority was based only upon Jackson's charisma and federal inducements.
