A Model of Cults of Personality
Xavier Márquez
Senior Lecturer, Political Science and International Relations Programme
Victoria University of Wellington
Wellington, New Zealand
marquez.x@gmail.com or Xavier.marquez@vuw.ac.nz
Work in progress. Comments welcome. 1
Abstract
This paper presents a general model of the emergence and functioning of cults of personality. Drawing
on the work of Collins (2004), I understand a cult of personality as a set of interaction rituals, linked in
chains, focused on symbols that refer to a political leader, and saturating a significant part of the public
space of a polity. I argue that when interaction rituals focused on leader symbols are embedded in
pat o age elatio s, p o esses of flatte i flatio a e likely to emerge. I illustrate this model by
looking at three very different cases: the short-lived cult of Caligula in the early Principate in Rome, the
cult of Mao in China, and the emerging cult of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela.
1
A version of this paper is to be presented at the 2013 Meeting of the American Political Science Association in
Chicago (29 August). I wish to thank Jason Young and Daniel Leese for discussion on the Mao cult, Marcus Frean for
general comments, and Andrew Ivory for research assistance. I developed much of the argument in this paper over
several years in bits and pieces in my blog, http://abandonedfootnotes.blogspot.com. Some sections still bear the
mark of these origins (especially the discussion of Caligula and Mao, which incorporate material that first appeared
there). I thus wish to thank the many people (some anonymous) who have commented on these posts, directed
me to useful and relevant sources, and encouraged me to research a topic for which at first I had very little
previous training. The stude ts i
POL“
o Di tato ships a d ‘e olutio s lass o e the ea s also
provided much of the impetus for delving deeper into the phenomenon of cults of personality.
1
Cults of personality are rarely taken seriously. They are typically viewed as curiosities of authoritarian
rule, with their over-the-top effusions and grandiose imagery merely certifying the narcissism of
absolute power. To the extent that they are studied as instruments of control in their own right, with
very few exceptions,2 existing work on leader cults has tended to rely uncritically on Weberian
atego ies of ha is a a d legiti a
to e plai thei e e ge e a d de elop e t,3 even as these
categories have had to be stretched considerably in the process (Cohen 2007). In this view, charismatic
leaders create cults that boost their legitimacy and thus help secure their hold on power. The
phenomenon is thus viewed primarily through the lens of persuasion and the focus is on the techniques
and symbols used to persuade a population to accord legitimacy to a leader (Heller 2008, Plamper
2012).
Yet even a cursory examination of the historical evidence suggests that such explanations are at the very
least hopelessly incomplete. As Wedeen showed in her study of the cult of Hafiz al-Assad (Wedeen
1999, 1998), cults can remain perfectly serviceable instruments of power without inducing anything we
could call persuasion, or convincing people of the legitimacy of their leaders. Other researchers have
also noted the general unbelievability and absurdity of much cult rhetoric.4 Unbelievable claims may
serve an important purpose, as we shall see, but it is clearly not necessary for them to be believed by a
large majority of the populatio i o de fo the ult to o k; hate e e ha is s the ult uses to
produce submission, they cannot be reduced to the persuasive effectiveness of propaganda techniques.5
2
“ee, e.g., Wedee s pio ee i g studies of the ult of Hafiz al-Assad in Syria (Wedeen 1999, 1998), or the rationalchoice based remarks of Svolik (2012, pp. 80-81).
3
See, e.g., Rees (2005), as well as most of the other essays collected in Apor et al. (2005).
4
Wedeen (1999) reports that Hafiz al-Assad as said
ult p opaga dists to e the ou t s p e ie
pha a ist ; Hassig and Oh (2009, p. 55) e ou t ho
[i]n 2006 Nodong Sinmun published an article titled
Milita -Fi st Telepo ti g lai i g that Ki Jo g-il, the e t ao di a
aste o
a de ho has ee hose
the hea e s, appea s i o e pla e a d the sudde l appea s i a othe like a flash of light i g, so ui kl
that the American satellites overhead cannot track his movements ; the list of titles gi e to Ni olae Ceauşes u
included such stupendous nonsense as the Giant of the Carpathians, the Source of Our Light, The Treasure of
Wisdom and Charisma, the Great Architect, the Celestial Body, and the New Morning Star (Sebestyen 2010, 161);
i toda s Ve ezuela, du i g the
ele tio afte the death of Chá ez, Ni olás Madu o, Chá ez hose
successor and eventual winner of the election, claimed that Chávez had appeared to him in the shape of a small
i d to less hi [Madu o], a o
e t that led the Ve ezuela sati i al site El Chigüi e Bipola
the
Venezuelan equivalent of The Onion; the site s a e ea s, oughl , the ipola ap a a to eak ha a te
a d ite
e do ot k o ho to ake a joke of this (Anonymous 2013). The examples could be endlessly
multiplied; Svolik (2012, p. 80) provides further examples, and stresses, correctly, that their absurdity does not
undermine the cult.
5
Hassig and Oh note, with reference to the hyperbolic rhetoric of the Kim Jong-il cult, that [e] e i No th Ko ea
few people have been convinced by this propaganda because since Kim came to power, economic conditions have
go e f o
ad to o se (2009, p. 57). Even Myers (2010), who credits North Korean propaganda with a high
degree of effectiveness, agrees that it is not believed literally; to the extent that it functions to increase
commitments to the regime, according to him, it must do so by making national status salient and encouraging
people to identify with certain narratives of national grievance, not by persuading people of the charisma of a
pa ti ula leade . Hu o a out Ceauşes u s faili gs a d foi les as o
o th oughout the o
u ist pe iod;
jokes about the leader were also common during Hafiz al-Assad s ule. A d the pu li dis ou se of justifi atio
used by these cults, in all its hyperbolic silliness, was constantly subverted in private conversation and in myriads
of private and individually unconnected rebellions. Even in North Korea, where the cult of Kim family members has
long been assumed to have been extremely effective, jokes about the Kim family have been known to circulate in
2
In fact, both stories of preference falsification (cf. Kuran 1991) – people who merely go through the
motions of the cult while not feeling any particular attachment to the leader symbols, or even actively
work to hide their true feelings6 - and narratives of disillusionment – a child grows up thinking the leader
is a god, but something happens after a certain age that disillusions them permanently (Kelly 2005) –
seem to be common in cults, though their relative frequency vis à vis stories of genuine devotion is hard
to gauge. 7 But even the fact that some people assert the godlike status of the leader after coercive
penalties for failure to be insufficiently devoted no longer operate (and hence cannot plausibly be said
to be engaging in preference falsification) is not properly explained by appeal to the persuasive
effectiveness of propaganda, but must typically make reference to various identity-related motivations.8
It is dou tful, i a
ase, that p opaga da p odu es o siste t effe ts o is ead
its i te ded
9
audiences in sufficiently similar ways outside of particular ritual contexts. And appeals to charisma as
an explanation of cults often seems to confuse cause and effect; beliefs about the charisma of a leader
are in many cases clearly an effect, rather than a cause, of the cult, as the most sensitive analyses
recognize.10
If cults of personality do not appear to generate committed support in a reliable way (the collapse of the
Ceauşes u egi e i just fou da s i
ei g the ost spe ta ula e a ple of this failu e , the h
do rulers invest large amounts of economic resources in the production of cults, and why do they seem
to strategically manage flattery,11 sometimes encouraging it, sometimes dampening it? Mere narcissism
is an inadequate explanation: though narcissism may not be an uncommon personality trait among
absolute rulers, a rational leader should not encourage the highest possible degree of flattery, since it
recent years (New Focus International 2012a, b); and the veneration of Stalin in the Soviet Union appears to have
often been quite superficial (Brandenberger 2011).
6
For example, Demick (2009, 97-101) reports the story of a elati el p i ileged stude t, Ju -sa g, who at the
time of the death of Kim Il-sung must force himself to cry when he realizes that, despite the fact that he does not
feel much for the deceased, his e ti e futu e depe ded o his a ilit to : ot just his a ee a d his
e e ship i the Wo ke s Pa t , his e su i al as at stake. It as a atte of life a d death p.
. Crying
turns out to be easy enough while surrounded by other crying people, for reasons we will discuss later.
7
Plamper (2012), for example, opens his study of the Stalin cult with a story about how a group of Moscow
stude ts, ete a of WWII, [f]ea i g the spi itual p ese ce of the leader, turned the Stalin poster on their
do ito
all a ou d i o de to feel f ee e ough to talk a out thei e pe ie es at the f o t, a d otes that
e e so e i ti s of “tali s te o ea ted so st o gl to “tali s death that the suffe ed heart attacks. Even if
o e disag ees ith Pla pe s spe ifi i te p etatio of these a d othe sto ies, the e is o de i g that leade
s
ols i
a
ults do e o e sa ed to so e sig ifi a t pa t of the populatio ; the sto of Mao s Ma goes
(Chau 2010, Dutton 2004) provides another striking example of this phenomenon. We could also note the
emergence of impromptu shrines to Chávez in Venezuela as examples of the sacralization of leader symbols even
in the absence of large degrees of coercion (Ultimas Noticias 2013).
8
See Jones (2005) for some suggestive evidence regarding the motivations of people who resisted the discourse of
de-Stalinization in the Soviet Union.
9
A poi t ell ade i Mittle s (2012) sensitive study of Cultural Revolution propaganda.
10
As Svolik (2012, p. 80) notes, quoting Suny (1998, p. 38): “tali as sho t i statu e, a mediocre speaker, and
the ulti ate a of the a hi e a d did ot p oje t a i age of a leade u til o e as eated fo hi . The
same could be said of many other leaders who have developed personality cults.
11
On the strategic management of flatter i “tali s ult, see Davies (2005). I provide more examples of such
strategic management –Caligula, Mao, and Chávez – below.
3
would seem to prevent him from identifying genuine supporters;12 and leaders who develop cults are
typically those who have the longest tenures,13 which would suggest that these are not irrational leaders
who are easily deceived by their own propaganda. Indeed, dictators often appear to be perfectly aware
of the problem excessive flattery presents,14 and classical advice to beware of flatterers is common, at
least in the Western tradition; both Aristotle (Politics 1313b32ff.) and Machiavelli (The Prince, chapter
23) mention the problem flatterers pose to the rational tyrant, for example. Why then do we observe
cults?
This paper presents a general model of the emergence and functioning of cults of personality that does
not rely on Weberian categories of charisma and legitimacy. The starting point of the model is what
Randall Collins has called an interaction ritual (Collins 2004). An interaction ritual is a situation of copresence with joint focus: a group of people interact with each other while jointly attending to particular
objects, actions, or events s
ols . These symbols circulate in chains of interaction rituals (rituals
with similar focal symbols) where their meaning and value is established and renewed via processes of
emotional amplification. I argue here that cults of personality are best understood as interaction ritual
chains in which leader-related objects circulate as focal points for group attention.
The second building block of the model is the idea of signalling: politically speaking, cult practices are
first and foremost public signals of support for a leader or a regime produced within the context of
interaction rituals. But unlike many other forms of support signalling, I argue that cult practices are
typically the result of inflationary processes that devalue the credibility of previous support signals and
lead to the de elop e t of e t a aga t sig alli g o e tio s that ide the status gap et ee
leaders and populations. I call this process flattery inflation (following a suggestion in Winterling's
biography of the Roman emperor Caligula, Winterling 2011), and distinguish two varieties: managed and
unmanaged. Leaders might strategically manage flattery inflation as a way of monopolizing certain
esou es; o su h i flatio
ight e e ge f o
elo , as the esult of ed uee p o esses,
whereby individuals experience heightened social pressures to engage in costly displays of support,
leadi g to suppo t as ades. M odel of ults diffe s i this espe t f o “ olik s (2012, pp. 80-81)
discussion of personality cults in the context of his more general model of authoritarian consolidation,
since Svolik only considers the cult from the point of view of the autocrat (as a signal of invincibility).
Finally, I argue that inflationary signaling is most likely to occur when interaction ritual chains focused on
leader-related objects are embedded in patronage structures (Martin 2009), that is, social structures in
which lower-status individuals are dependent for protection, position, or advancement, on higher-status
individuals who monopolize crucial resources. Here I follow previous studies of personality cults (Gill
12
At least one contemporary researcher has formalized it in terms of a di tato s dile
a: the ge e al i e ti e
those ruled by a dictator have to falsify their preferences makes the dictator more insecure the more powerful he
becomes (Wintrobe 2008, 2000, 1990).
13
Data on this in a section of this paper that is under construction.
14
For example, Mao wrote to Ho Chi Minh in June 1966: I advise you, not all of your subjects are loyal to you.
Perhaps most of them are loyal but maybe a small number only verbally wish you "long live," while in reality they
wish you a premature death. When they shout long live, you should beware and analyze [the situation]. The
more they praise you, the less you can trust them. This is a very natural rule (quoted in Leese 2011, p. 168).
4
1980) and flattery in authoritarian contexts (Shih 2008), which have implicitly noted that inflationary
signaling seems to be especially likely to occur when personal advancement within a hierarchical
organization is dependent on ties to powerful patrons rather than impersonal bureaucratic criteria, and
develop a theory of the conditions under which status competition within such patronage structures is
likely to result in flattery inflation.
The model is intended to explain why cults of personality are found in autocracies across a wide range of
politico-economic conditions (in communist regimes committed to ideologies of equality as much as in
absolute monarchies not so committed) but are uncommon in established democracies; why leaders
sometimes prefer not to encourage flattery inflation, and why sometimes they lose control of the
process; why leaders sometimes enforce anti-cult norms while accepting the breaking of such norms as
reliable signals of support; why cults both produce genuine commitments from some fraction of the
population, and why nevertheless these commitments typically prove fragile and fail to penetrate the
entire population.
The pape is o ga ized as follo s. The fi st se tio des i es hat a ult of pe so alit is, a d a gues
that they should be understood as a specific sort of interaction ritual chain in which the value of the
leader-related objects and signals that are the focus of interaction is subject to inflationary pressures.
The second section introduces a simple model of signaling and identity in interaction rituals, and
explains why we should expect flattery-inflationary processes within patronage structures. The third
section illustrates the model with evidence from three specific cases drawn from widely different
contexts – the short-lived cult of Caligula in during the early Principate in Rome, the Mao cult in China,
and the nascent cult of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela today.15 A final section sketches some implications for
the study of power in authoritarian regimes.
What is a cult of personality?
I defi e a ult of pe so alit he e as a set of interaction rituals, linked in chains, whose focal symbols
relate to a particular political leader, and which occupy a considerable fraction of, or even saturate, the
public space of a polity. Four points are worth noting about this definition.
Fi st, follo i g Colli s se i al o k o i te a tio ituals (Collins 2004), which in turn draws on
Goffman (1958), Durkheim, and Mead, I understand a ritual as any practice involving 1) a group of
people who 2) interact while jointly focusing on some particular object (including, potentially,
the sel es o s
ol a d ha i g o
o k o ledge of thei atte tio al fo us. ‘itual he e has
thus a much broader meaning than formal ceremony; many informal practices qualify as rituals, from
everyday conversation to sports games and work meetings, as well as (of course) many more formal
ritual practices. The stress of the definition is on the ritual practices rather than on the particular objects
that are the focus of such practices and their specific meaning in context. It does not matter, for our
purposes, whether the focus of cult practices is on the specific image of the leader, his sayings, or even
15
th
A fourth section, using quantitative evidence from a new dataset of cults of personality in the 20 century, is still
under construction and not included in this draft.
5
the leader himself; what matters is that ritual practices exist whose focal symbolism refers to a political
leader.
Second, the definition emphasizes the fact that cults of personality are not constituted by one or a few
events, but are composed of chains of rituals where leader-related symbols circulate in a variety of
media. In particular, we can usefully distinguish among four different sorts of rituals that can be linked in
chains where leader-symbols acquire value and circulate throughout a polity. First, and most obviously,
we find spectacular mass gatherings (Hitler at Nuremberg, the mass receptions of the Red Guards for
Mao at Tiananmen Square, large-scale election rallies elsewhere) where the leader himself is the focus
of attention for masses of people gathered together in large public spaces. Second, there are a variety of
relatively regular small-s ale ituals he e the leade s i age o utte a es a e the fo us of atte tio .16
These rituals tend to have a recognized structure and setting; they happen at specified times and places;
and are often coercive, insofar as nonparticipation carries negative consequences, sometimes large.
Third, there are many transitory rituals which entail the production of leader-related symbols that can
be interpreted as signals of support for the leader.17 Finally, there are a number of private or secondary
rituals (secondary in the sense that they do not necessarily involve a group, but instead use symbols
whose meaning and value is established in more public interaction rituals), focused on images or
utterances of the leader, and generally unobservable to others.18
The reason for stressing the need for leader-related symbols to circulate in interaction rituals is that
(successful) rituals act as engines of emotional amplification. Through processes described in Collins
(2004), interaction with joint focus can produce patterns of bodily synchrony and their attendant
emotions, leading to feelings of euphoria (especially among people centrally located within the group)
and to the experience of the objects of focus as valuable, even sacred. Following Collins, I shall speak of
rituals as charging leader-related objects with value, though as we shall see this value is experienced
heterogeneously by ritual participants; not all participants will consider the leader-symbols to be sacred.
Indeed, in some circumstances rituals will fail to produce these effects for most participants, leading to
feelings of disaffection or boredom, and to the progressive dampening of the value of the leader
symbolism, or even its inversion (i.e., where leader-symbols acquire negative value, as with symbols
related to Ceauşes u fo ost ‘o a ia s i the
s .19 The circulation of symbols in chains of rituals
16
E.g., the itual of aski g fo i st u tio s i the o i g a d epo ti g i the afte oo i f o t of a po t ait of
Mao many workplaces during the cultural revolution, o the stud sessio s fo used o Mao s iti gs i the
army during the Great Leap forward (Leese 2011).
17
E.g., lo alt da es du i g the ultural revolution (Leese 2011, Jiang 2010, pp. 208-210, photos 232-235), giftgivi g o “tali s i thda (Davies 2005, Plamper 2012), the ado atio of Mao s a goes as eli s (Chau 2010), the
construction of shrines to Chavez (Ultimas Noticias 2013), pilg i ages to the leade s to
o ausoleu , pla i g
a portrait of the leader in a visible place in the workplace, etc.
18
E.g., u i g i e se i f o t of a sh i e ith a pi tu e of Mao i pla e of the t aditio al sto e god (Steinmüller
2010, Landsberger 2002), praying in front of an image of Chávez, turning over a portrait of Stalin in order to have a
private conversation (Plamper 2012, p. xiv), etc.
19
See Sebestyen (2010), hapte
, fo a e a ples of the egati e ale e of Ceauşes u s i age a o g
ordinary Romanians during the 1980s. Tismaneanu (1989, p. 330) epo ts that ‘o a ia s efe ed to the apital
it of Bu ha est, disfigu ed i a o da e ith the p eside tial a hite tu al tastes, Ceaush itz, Ceaushi a,
o Pa a opolis.
6
is necessary to keep their value high; without circulation in chains of rituals where the same people
participate, their emotional charge is likely to decay.
The mere existence of leader-focused rituals, however, is not sufficient to speak of a cult of personality;
the phenomenon we are interested in is, to a first approximation, the near-saturation of the public
space of a polity with such rituals. To be sure, from this perspective the existence of a cult is often a
atte of o e o less, he e a su essful ult is si pl a ult that a ages to fill ost of the
available ritual space of the polity. Furthermore, cults wax and wane – both in the sense that is symbols
can appear more or less sacred to some fraction of the population, and in the sense that its rituals can
occupy more or less of the public space of the polity – via inflationary and deflationary processes, as we
shall see later, though below a certain threshold we are unlikely to speak of a cult of personality per se
and speak simply of discrete rituals associated with leaders (e.g., election meetings in a democracy). It
should also be stressed that what we are interested in is not primarily the saturation of public space
with images of the leader. Leader-related objects circulate widely throughout the ritual space in
successful cults, and (as we shall see) leaders often encourage the wide dissemination of such objects,
but a successful cult is not an advertising campaign; leader-related objects must become a focal part of
interaction rituals throughout the polity for us to speak of a cult, rather than merely a (widely ignored)
background of interaction. We might say that leader symbols command attention in a cult of
personality.
I make no sharp distinction here between the cult of modern leaders and the cult of religious figures,
saints, ancient monarchs, and the like, or any special qualitative distinction between sacred and profane
objects. Following Collins, I take it that the production of a distinction between sacred and profane is
merely the result of the operation of interaction rituals; successful rituals (i.e., rituals that successfully
amplify emotion) produce sacred objects, and in a society saturated with successful rituals focused on
particular leaders some fraction of people is bound to experience the leader and leader-associated
objects as sacred. Moreover, from this perspective the rituals of cults of personality are also not sharply
separated from the rituals of other forms of politics: the mass rallies of a cult differ from the mass
election gathering focused on a particular politician only in the degree to which the cult rituals saturate
public space, and from the mass rallies of a nationalist movement only in their focal symbolism. (Indeed,
national and leader symbolism is often fused together).
The advantage of discussing cults as interaction ritual chains is that it allows us to see that worship
practices in a variety of contexts are generated by the same mechanisms, even if the techniques used to
circulate leader symbols are relatively new and the meaning of the symbols is experienced differently.
Moreover, the conceptualization of cults as interaction ritual chains allows us to cut through ideological
de ates a out hethe pa ti ula s
oli uses of politi s o stitute ults. ‘athe tha e gage i
f uitless de ates a out hethe o ot a pa ti ula leade is o as a tuall o side ed sa ed, e
simply assume that the sacredness of a symbol is merely the effect of large-scale chains of successful
interaction rituals. To use some jargon, sacrality is endogenous to ritual: not a fact about the meaning of
the symbols used in some particular practice but an extra-semantic fact about how some symbols
e o e e do ed ith alue e otio al e e g i Colli s te i olog as they circulate in ritual
chains that amplify their emotional charge. This perspective allows us to shift our vision away from the
7
(often quite entertaining, for a certain temperament) content of the symbols used in cults and towards
the actual mechanisms that a ou t fo the su ess o failu e of cults as instruments of power,
which we will miss if we focus solely on the cult as a form of persuasive rhetoric or even on the
particular propaganda techniques used to make leader-symbols circulate through society.
Flattery Inflation
The emergence of cults of personality has two closely related aspects. First, an emerging cult may
expand over the ritual space of a polity, displacing alternative rituals focused on other symbols; and
second, leader-symbols may increase greatly in value for some participants in these rituals: they
sa alise. These t o aspe ts of the de elop e t of a ult a so eti es d ift apa t; s
ols may
increase in value only locally (so that the cult never manages to permeate the ritual space of a polity,
but remains relatively localized to some particular group), or rituals might expand without much
increase in the value of leader-related symbols (so that the cult remains desultory, or is quickly
routinized).20 The second aspect of the process (symbol-value inflation) is the most important one,
however, since a regime, especially an authoritarian one, can typically flood the public sphere with
leader-symbolism, without necessarily increasing the value of these symbols. (In fact, flooding the public
sphere with leader-symbols can sometimes cheapen the value of the symbols, as we shall see). For this
reason, we shall focus here on the process through which leader-related symbols increase in value, or
flatte i flatio .
Let us start by examining a simplified single ritual situation, repeated indefinitely, and focused on
leader-symbols. Through processes of emotional amplification described in Collins (2004), some fraction
of participants where
come to consider the leader- elated s
ols sa ed – valuable
enough as a token of membership in the group that they are willing to expend significant energies in
defending the leader-symbol and preventing others from denigrating it, or otherwise punishing those
who display insufficient devotion, while a fraction
of participants finds the ritual demotivating and
the symbols empty. More formally, we say that a fraction of ritual participants place value s on the
leader-symbols (where s might be negative if the ritual charges symbols with negative valence, capable
of arousing anger and similar emotions), while a fraction
of participants places no value on these
symbols.
The fraction of e thusiasts and the value they place on focal symbols in a ritual context depends
on the structure of the ritual, the previous associations of the leader-symbol (e.g., is the leader-symbol
associated with victory in war or economic development? , a d the leade s o the itual s p odu tio
tea s a ilit to d a o p e-existing charged symbols of identity to construct narratives that increase
20
In fact, many cults of kings can be understood as routinized rituals of worship of particular offices, rather than of
the particular persons who currently occupy them. Here, signals of support and focal symbols are highly
conventionalized, and value inflation has essentially stopped; the cult occupies a restricted, though reasonably
sig ifi a t, pa t of the itual spa e of the polit , a d e e od k o s the i i u lo alt id e ui ed see
below).
8
the emotional energy of ritual participants while focusing on the leader-related symbols.21 Indeed, we
could even understand the quantity
as a easu e of hat itual pa ti ipa ts ight all the leade s
ha is a; ut it is i po ta t to st ess that ha is a he e easu es a skill which may or may not
belong to the leader as such, rather than a personal quality of the leader that induces certain reactions
in ritual participants independently of pre-existing identities, ritual structure, and the circulation of
symbols though ritual space. E e a highl
ha is ati leade f o the poi t of ie of so e itual
participants may appear a oo to othe s. I stead of speaki g of the leade s ha is a, the , I shall
speak elo of a itual s po e as a su
a
easu e of oth the f a tio of pa ti ipa ts ho as a
result of the ritual) end up placing a high value on its focal symbols, and of the value they place on these
symbols.22
The more diverse the pre-existing identities of ritual participants, the more difficult it is for a given ritual
to affect all participants equally (i.e., the smaller the fraction ). I assume that the appeal of a particular
symbol (including leader-symbols) for a particular person depends on all the other symbols that make up
the pe so s ide tit , hi h is i tu
uilt up i hai s of i te a tio ituals of g eate o lesse po e .
This implies that under conditions of free exit and entry into rituals, where participation in particular
rituals does not carry other compensation than heightened emotional energy, and ignoring the material
pre-requisites of participation in rituals, the equilibrium outcome would be segregation by identity, as
people migrate towards the rituals that exert the strongest emotional pull for them (or, put otherwise,
the rituals whose symbols have the highest value or emotional charge for them).23 Under these
circumstances (which approximate those prevailing in most modern electoral campaigns), we should
normally see no large-scale cult formation.24 Where, then, should we see flattery inflation?
It is worth stressing that it is not obviously rational for a leader to encourage flattery inflation. Excessive
flatte dis upts the leade s a ilit to disti guish et ee ge ui el lo al follo e s a d pu e
opportunists, and leaders themselves are often aware of this.25 The problem is especially acute
whenever the leader wishes to distribute a scarce good with value outside of the ritual situation
(protection, economic resources, or status) to his followers, and wishes to condition the distribution of
the good on genuine loyalty,26 that is, to supporters who genuinely identify with him as leader (rather
21
For example, cultural symbols often drew on pre-existing identities; for careful reconstruction of the ways in
which they did so, see Mittler (2012).
22
A more precise statement of these ideas might associate particular rituals with the production of a specific
distribution of values for the focal symbols of the ritual among participants, ranging from negative values to high
levels of emotional attachment. We could even represent this as a function mapping ritual participants to symbol
values for a specific ritual . Indeed, below I use just such a representation.
23
As Collins (2004) puts it, [h]u a eha iou a e ha a te ized as e otio al e e g t opis . “o ial sou es
of EE di e tl e e gize eha iou ; the st o gest e e gizi g situatio e e ts the st o gest pull and i di iduals do
not experience such situations as controlling them; because they are being filled with energy, the feel that they
[a e i ] o t ol … Whe EE is st o g, the see i
ediatel hat the a t to do.
24
We can represent this process as follows. Assign each person a natural number greater than or equal to 2. Assign
each focal symbol a prime number value greater than or equal to 2.
25
See footnote 14 for one striking example from Mao.
26
There is a prior question here concerning why a patron might wish to reward mere loyalty (identification) rather
than other characteristics of the clients, like competence at particular tasks. In actual fact we should expect
patrons to reward some mixture of characteristics including loyalty, competence, and other factors, but
9
than, for example, with the group as a whole or some potential rival). This situation arises generally in
patronage relations, where a powerful patron distributes some scarce resource in exchange for loyalty,
and expects support from his clients that is forward-looking and diffuse rather than specific or
contractual, i.e., expects identification with his goals.27 But genuine identification is unobservable; the
leader can at best condition the distribution of the valued economic resources or status on the value
group members place on the leader s p efe ed symbols.28 The idea here is that the valuation a group
e e pla es o the g oup s fo al s
ols ithi thei solida it ituals is evidence of identification
with the objects referenced by the symbols.
A client in this situation must credibly signal commitment to the leader by implicitly placing a price, as it
were, on symbols associated with the patron, if they hope to gain access to the goods that the patron
can allocate (or to avoid punishment, if the good in question is protection). The higher the price, the
greater the commitment signaled. The te h i al te
fo this should e sho i g that ou a e – e.g.,
sending congratulatory messages, placing the portrait of the leader in a position of honour, reverently
a d isi l stud i g his o ds, uoti g his sa i gs, o se i g pa ti ula ta oos o e i g the leade s
i age, et . . The ost of a sig al i this o te t a e easu ed oth i te s of the e o o i
resources or time expended and the status loss incurred, since in a ritual context one can signal the
value one places on the leader by dramatizing the distance between oneself and the leader. Indeed,
from the perspective of group members, self-abasement is often an imperfect substitute for time or
other resources used to signal loyalty (see, e.g., Shih 2008, on abject humiliation as a signalling cost),
though in some (perhaps most) cases the patron will prefer to condition the allocation of the good not
on mere self-a ase e t ut o so e sig that the lie t ide tifies ith the pat o s ideologi al goals
e.g., adi alis i a i g out the pat o s p oje ts, de u iatio of the pat o s e e ies, et . .29
The problem, from the point of view of the patron, is that conditioning the allocation of the good on the
value a group member places on the focal symbols of the group, and in particular on the leader symbols,
is likely to attract not just genuine enthusiasts (people who genuinely identify with the leader, and
already place a very high value on the leader symbols), but also opportunists (people who value the
good the pat o allo ates o e tha the leade s
ols, a d do t ge ui el ide tif ith the leade . If
they value the patron-allocated good sufficiently, opportunists can mimic the signals of loyalty of
enthusiasts; but since the support promised to the patron is diffuse and forward-looking, there is a
commitment problem implicit in the relation: opportunists may renege on their commitments when the
going gets though. In the process, moreover, they devalue the signals of the enthusiasts, which cease to
identification with the pat o a d he e ith the pat o s goals a e espe iall salie t i
a situatio s –
e.g, when the goals of the patron are quite radical or easily subverted. For a formal treatment of the loyaltycompetence tradeoff, see Egorov and Sonin (2011), who show that dictators will often prefer to reward mere
loyalty over competence. Their model assumes, however, that loyalty is generally observable.
27
For a full treatment of patronage relations, see Martin (2009, chapter 6).
28
The patron can condition the allocation of the good on the value a group member places on any of the g oup s
focal symbols within solidarity rituals – Marxist-Leninism, Arab nationalism, the Bolivarian revolution – not just on
the leade s
ols. We ill etu to the uestio of the pat o s choice of symbols later.
29
Kung and Chen (2011) discuss the case of rewards to radicalism du i g the g eat fa i e i Mao s ti e. Fo
reasons we shall explore in a moment, rewarding radicalism seem to have attracted opportunists rather than true
believers.
10
be informative regarding their identity; opportunistic signaling by people who are not genuine true
believers both cheapens the identity of enthusiasts, and makes it difficult for the patron to condition the
allocation of the good on the basis of genuine loyalty.
We can odel the situatio as a au tio , ith a t ist. People ake a lo alt id
d a atizi g i
visible ways the value they place on the leader, and the patron allocates the good to all those who meet
so e th eshold lo alt p i e, which in turn will depend on the nature of the good allocated and the
pat o s goals. The twist is that the more a person identifies with the patron, the more they are willing
to e gage i alt uisti pu ish e t of those i di iduals ho id too lo , si e the s
ols i uestio
are tied to their identity; too low a loyalty bid by other participants in the ritual context is interpreted as
disrespect. The more successful the interaction ritual is at imbuing the pat o s symbols with value for
these enthusiasts (i.e., the higher s), the more likely it is that enthusiasts will punish those they perceive
as opportunists; and the higher the number of enthusiasts (the higher ), the lower their costs for
punishing disrespect. Moreover, depending on the specific ritual context, they are likely to have better
local information on who is an opportunist than the patron. Under what circumstances should a patron
distribute the good according to the price followers place on his symbols, and under what circumstances
should he find an alternative allocation mechanism to allocate the good? There are at least three
circumstances in which a patron might choose to encourage a high minimum loyalty bid.
First, there are cases in which the patron is a le to e gage i p i e dis i i atio , distributing goods
that are of limited alue to oppo tu ists. These ill t pi all e heap status s
ols – medals, mere
proximity to the leader, prizes and honours. If the patron distributes these goods, we should see a
separating equilibrium: only those people whose identity is sufficiently tied to leader symbols through
the rituals in which they participate will credibly bid high enough for them to the leader, since cheap
status symbols are ex hypothesi of limited value to the opportunists (whose identity is not bound up
with these symbols) whereas they are in fact valuable to the enthusiasts (we are excluding here the
possibility of oppo tu ists ho a u ulate heap ho ou s e ause the a e fo a d-looking, and
believe these cheap honours will help them later on). But this is obviously not the case in the vast
majority of patronage relationships; many of the goods that the patron must normally distribute – the
perks of political office with all its opportunities for material enrichment, for example – appeal to both
the opportunist and the enthusiast, and have both material and symbolic appeal.
The second circumstance in which a patron might choose to encourage flattery inflation requires the
assumption of an initial situation of status equality between patron and clients. Suppose patron and
client are of similar status but differ in their ability to control of specific material resources. Assume
further that status equality precludes the existence of direct command relationships between patron
and client. The wider the status gap, the more likely that direct command relationships can be
established. But flattery dramatizes a status gap between leader and follower; through self-abasement,
the follower indicates a recognition that the patron is of higher status than himself, and in fact expresses
a readiness to take orders from the patron. What the patron wants, however, is the promotion of a
social norm that recognizes a qualitatively higher difference in status between himself and his clients,
which is only possible if all clients engage in self-abasement, not just the unreasonably loyal or the
occasional sycophant. In this case, the patron might encourage flattery inflation (distributing the good
11
only to those who make high loyalty bids) as a way of encouraging the constitution of this sort of norm
even if he suspects most people signaling support are actually craven toadies, who must weigh the
status cost of signaling loyalty against the value of the good they receive. The patron thus trades off
knowledge of the type of follower (whether genuinely loyal or not) against increased status (which
allows him to substitute relationships of direct command for diffuse support).
Finally, consider a situation in which the patron in chief – the leader - fears competition from clients that
have their own clients, and controls resources that are proportional to the number of people directly
signaling loyalty to himself. Here encouraging flattery inflation – the signaling of direct loyalty to himself
- makes it harder for elite competitors to mobilize the loyalty of their clients against himself or even
against his preferred policy goals. The indirect, intransitive patronage structure is modified by adding
direct links between the patron and the lower levels.
We can formalize these intuitions a bit more. Consider the first case. The patron is interested in the
|
probability (
, where is the loyalty bid by a particular individual. B Ba es theo e ,
this is equivalent to:
(
Or, since (
|
(
,
(
|
(
(
|
(
|
(
If the patron does not offer a good sufficiently valuable to the opportunist to be worth the loss of status
involved in flattery, and does not punish lack of identification, it straightforwardly follows that
( |
|
, and hence that (
= 1; this is the situation where the patron
only distributes cheap status goods of no interest to the opportunist, leading to a separating equilibrium
where only true believers signal loyalty to the leader.
Consider now the second case, which we will call the pu e s opha
case. Here, most ritual
participants are opportunists; the good distributed by the patron is highly valuable to opportunists, or
the patron is able to punish disrespect within the ritual context; and existing rituals do not produce large
degrees of commitment even among people who identify with the leader (i.e., ritual power is low). In
this case, there is no minimum loyalty bid that will discriminate sufficiently between opportunists and
true believers; an opportunist can always at h a t ue elie e s lo alt id. I deed, it is easo a le to
suspect that only unprincipled opportunists would be willing to incur the status loss involved in making a
very high loyalty bid in these circumstances, given the low power of the ritual to produce genuine
identification with the leader. But since a low can indicate either an enthusiast or a disloyal member
of the group, i.e., someone who identifies with a different set of symbols, enthusiasts cannot compete
fo the pat o s goods deli e atel aki g lower loyalty bids than others. And the patron cannot
count on enthusiasts to identify and punish opportunists, since ex hypothesi there are few genuine
enthusiasts, which greatly increases their costs of punishing opportunists, and at any rate opportunists
12
can also denounce enthusiasts as opportunists when making loyalty bids. If the patron does condition
the distribution of the good in this context on signaling loyalty to the leader, then, the stage is set for
full-blown flattery inflation; and the eventual outcome is a general lowering of the status of ritual
participants vis à vis the leader (who may or may not be the patron), and the allocation of the good to
the most craven toadies. Signals of commitment to the patron are likely to increase in value (and thus
status is likely to decrease for those aki g the sig als u til the
at h the alue the lie ts put o
the resources the patron can allocate, unless the patron takes measures to discourage flattery, or
conditions the distribution of the good on other criteria (e.g., on meeting impersonal, rule-based
criteria). This situation, at any rate, is likely to arise where there is a large disparity between status and
esou es: if the pat o a d the lie t a e i itiall lose i so ial status, ut the pat o s esou es a e
much larger than those of the client, the client can only offer status in return for these resources (since,
ex hypothesi, he has no genuine loyalty to the patron), and flattery inflation may occur even in the
absence of encouragement by the patron (i.e., be unmanaged flattery inflation).
The final case requires some additional assumptions. For simplicity, let represent the cost of signaling
support for the leader or chief patron, and let it range over the real numbers. This cost is visible to other
people in the ritual context. Negative numbers indicate signals of support for other potential leaders,
hile positi e u e s i di ate sig als of suppo t fo the hief pat o . A i di idual s al ulatio of
ho
u h to id fo lo alt ho high to ake his o he sig al ) depends essentially on three
factors: first, the difference between the private value they place on the leader symbols (denoted by ,
which we might call the degree of identification and which we can stipulate is negative for supporters of
other leaders) and the cost of the signal they produce, a quantity which they wish to minimize (the
la ge the diffe e e, the o e disho est the sig al, and the larger the identity costs); second, the
expected value of the goods they might receive from the patron for a given bid (which is increasing in
the value of their signal relative to the average signal, under the assumption that the good is relatively
scarce); and third the expected costs of punishment, which also depend on the average loyalty signal:
the larger the difference between o e s lo alt sig al a d the a e age lo alt sig al, the highe the
chance that people bidding higher will either i te p et o e s lo alt sig al as punishable disrespect (and
hence as an opportunity to signal loyalty themselves) and the lower the average costs of punishment for
people signaling high (since more people will be available to act as punishers).30 Schematically, we might
say that the utility of making a loyalty bid is:
(
(
|
̅
(|
|
(
|̅
Where ̅ represents the average loyalty bid, represents the private valuation the agent puts on the
goods being distributed if he or she actually receives them, and represents the agent s private
valuation of the costs of punishment if he or she is actually punished. More informally, the first term in
this equation represents how much the agent values the goods the leader can provide; the second how
important ho est sig ali g is to the age t; the thi d ho
u h he fea s the pu ish e ts othe s ight
inflict on him for not making a high enough bid for support for the leader. This sets up a pure game of
30
This is a simplification. In practice, the probability of punishment depends on the network structure of
interaction, not just on the average signal of loyalty.
13
expectations, where how much to bid for loyalty depends on how much others are bidding. As in other
threshold models of collective behavior, the final equilibrium depends on the network structure of
interaction (which we are assuming away here) as well as on the underlying distribution of private
valuations of the leader symbols ( ) and the underlying distribution of private valuations of the good
being distributed ( ).31 But the higher the expected average signal, and thus the expected benefits and
e pe ted osts of pu ish e t elati e to the osts to ide tit of sig ali g disho estl , the g eate the
incenti es to id high fo lo alt ; conversely, the lower the expected average signal (e.g., the more
people expect others to be uncommitted followers, or opinion to be polarized between different
leaders), the greater the incentive to minimize costs to identity and signal honestly. The question we are
interested in: how is this sort of expectation about the average signal – set?
There are two cases worth noting. The first is a case of managed flattery inflation, where the leader can
affect the distribution of private valuations of leader-symbols. Here the leader suspects large numbers
of people actually have a high degree of identification with him, or he has some control over the rituals
affecting the actual degree of identification with him that other potential leaders do not have. For
example, he might be able to promote additional rituals through which his symbols circulate and are
further charged with value, increasing the private valuations for some substantial number of people.
By promoting such rituals, he can increase the identity costs of bidding low, and thus increase the
expected average signal of loyalty. If, moreover, the value of the resources the leader can distribute is
increasing in the average signal (that is, in the number of people directly signaling support for him, and
the apparent intensity of that support, as when the resource in question is political office; in other
words, is increasing in ̅ ), we have a positive feedback loop: the more intensely people signal loyalty
to the leader, and the more people do so, the more the expected value of the benefits the leader
distributes increase, the highe the e pe ted osts of pu ish e t fo iddi g lo , and the greater the
average signal of support. As this process unfolds, the value of signaling direct loyalty to any other
leader decreases, and hence the possibility of successful challenges to his position from other potential
leader-candidates, since clients with low private values of s find it very hard to coordinate in the absence
of any signals of support for alternatives. The process continues until the value of the benefits the leader
can distribute stabilizes, or the power of the rituals that charge his symbols with value is exhausted.
A leade ho suspe ts he has a ge ui e ese oi of suppo t a o g his lie ts lie ts a thus
encourage flattery inflation to generate a source of personal support independent of his immediate
clients. But note that if he does not actually have this support, or cannot change the underlying
distribution of valuations of leader-symbols via ritual manipulation, the process will quickly stall; he will
not be able to generate a critical mass of i te se suppo t that tu s e e o e else. As in other
threshold models, if the distribution of s and y has gaps – if some subgroup greatly disvalues the
leader and cares little for the resources he is able to distribute – the cult may not expand over the entire
population, or the equilibrium outcome may be polarization.
The second is a case of unmanaged flattery inflation. Assume there is some exogenous shock either to
the reputation of the leader (e.g., the leader appears responsible for the independence of the nation) –
31
For a fuller discussion of threshold models of this kind, see Granovetter (1978).
14
increasing s for individuals – or to the value of the benefits he can distribute (e.g., he suddenly comes to
control new economic resources) – or even to the network structure of interaction, increasing the
probability of punishment by people who value the leader highly (e.g., free train travel enables
enthusiasts to spread from major cities). If the shock to the underlying distribution of private valuations
s or y is high enough, this may induce some people to bid higher for loyalty, which in turn increases
e e o e s e pe ted pu ish e t osts fo iddi g lo e , a d so o , u til the e flatte e uili iu
reflects the underlying distribution of resources or the private values of the leader symbols.
It is important to recall that the value of the leader symbols, even for genuine enthusiasts, is not a fixed
quantity, but depends on both the ritual context and any external associations the symbols may acquire
through their circulation in ritual space. If the power of a particular ritual decays – if, for example, the
leader-symbols become associated with some negative economic outcome and lose value even for true
believers, or the ritual becomes too routinized or even ceases to operate – the a ea lie pu e fe o
e uili iu
ight tu i to a pu e s opha
e uili iu . Similarly, if the conditions for the
allocation of the good change, we might see relative deflation in the value of leader symbols. These are
negative exogenous shocks to the private valuations s. The problem is that once the expectations are
set, they may be hard to reverse: if everyone expects a high average loyalty bid, even major decreases in
private valuations of the leader symbols may not much affect the actual loyalty bid each individual is
willing to make.
The simple model may be formalized further, and extended in various ways. Though I will not pursue
various possible formalizations here, it is worth mentioning one important extension. Recall that the
ritual situation described above is embedded in a chain of ritual situations with greater or lesser power
to produce identification with the leader-symbols via emotional amplification, and with greater or lesser
fo us o the leade s i age. No , e e if ost of these ituals ha e lo po e a leade ight still a t
to flood the ritual space with his symbols, not because he trusts that these will induce commitment
(increase the average value of ), but because by increasing the minimum loyalty bid he discourages the
emergence of alternative symbolic foci of mobilization. Though there is no commitment on behalf of the
leader, there is no commitment on behalf of anyone else either. This induces inflation (the devaluation
of signals of loyalty), and encourages opportunists, but the opportunists can be useful insofar as they
can signal loyalty by identifying principled opponents of the leader (those who will not meet the
minimum loyalty bid).32 At this point, however, we shall gain greater understanding of the dynamics
described by the model by looking at a number of specific cases.
Three examples: Caligula, Mao, Chávez
We can illustrate the abstract model of the cult developed above by looking at a few specific cases in
more detail. I have chosen to look at three cases that are quite different in their social, economic,
32
Wedeen (1999, 1998); documents precisely this strategy on the part of Hafiz al-Assad. The ritual space of Syria
was flooded with leader-related symbols, but it was common knowledge that none of these symbols helped to
produce any great degree of commitment and identification with the leader; what they did make impossible was
the emergence of alternative symbolic foci, and they facilitated the identification of principled opponents of the
regime.
15
cultural, and political contexts to show how the processes of cult formation are independent of many of
these variables, though of course the focal symbols of each cult vary. The short-lived cult of Caligula
emerged during the early Principate in Rome (Caligula was emperor from 37AD to 41AD), an agrarian,
highly class-di ided so iet he e the idea of a he o ult as idel k o ; the ult of Mao e e ged
in a society undergoing a communist and agrarian revolution explicitly committed to collectivism and
egalitarianis , a d though it offi iall e ded ith Mao s death, it has had a lo g afte life, o ti ui g
to provide symbols for private rituals; the cult of Chávez emerged in a broadly capitalist society with
relatively democratic institutions, and it shows no signs of deflating yet, despite his death. In all three
cases we can observe the sudden take-off of flattery inflation as ritual contexts interact with patronage
structures, despite wide variations in culturally valued symbols, economic structures, and political
institutions within these three societies. At the same time, they illustrate different sorts of cult
d a i s: the Caligula ult is a e a ple of pu e s opha ; the Mao ult illust ates the d a i s of
runaway flattery inflation through the conjunction of very successful interaction rituals and a large
degree of coercion; and the Chávez cult displays the dynamics of a separating equilibrium (cult and anticult) in a situation where exit from leader-focused interaction rituals is possible and even common.
Caligula
I d a he e o Alo s Wi te li g s supe , ut e isio ist, iog aph of Caligula (Winterling 2011).33 From
Augustus Caligula s g eat g a dfathe , the fi st e pe o o a d, the imperator was the most powerful
person in Rome, partly due to his control of the Praetorian Guard, and partly due to the economic
resources the imperial household had come to control. At the same time, the emperor depended (at
least early on) on the senatorial aristocracy to rule the empire. The 600 member senate constituted the
group from which the emperor needed to draw the people who could command the legions, coordinate
the taxation of the provinces, and in general govern the empire and keep him in power. The emperor
could differentially favour members of the senatorial aristocracy (by promoting them to various highstatus positions), but segments of the aristocracy could also conspire against him and potentially
overthrow him, selecting a different emperor, especially since principles of hereditary succession were
not clearly institutionalized. Nevertheless, though senators as a group might dislike a particular
emperor, they did not necessarily agree on any given alternative (much less on any alternative
acceptable to the Praetorian Guard, hi h ould ulti atel eto the se ato s hoi e), and at any rate
individual senators could always benefit from convincing the emperor that some other senators were
conspiring to unseat him (via maiestas or treason trials, in which the convicted were executed and their
property confiscated). Senators thus faced some coordination costs in acting against even a hated
emperor. These obstacles were not insurmountable (conspiracies did take place, and sometimes
succeeded), but they were not insignificant either.
Yet despite the disparity in military and economic resources between the emperor and the members of
the aristocracy, emperors and senators did not at first have widely different social statuses, and the
senate remained the central locus of the distribution of honours in Roman aristocratic society. Senators
jockeyed over relative status in the many rituals of Roman life (marked by such things as the seating
order in the circus or the theatre, the order of voting in the senate, the lavishness of their hospitality in
33
An earlier version of this section appeared in my blog.
16
their private parties, elections to political office, the number of their clients, etc.) while recognizing the
primacy of the emperor, but they remained notional social equals. Augustus was known as the princeps,
literally the fi st itize he e the ea l ‘o a E pi e is o all alled the p i ipate ; the
standard republican offices were filled more or less normally and retained their meaning as markers of
status (though elections were often rigged, when they were held at all, to produce the results decided in
advance by the emperor); the senate voted triumphs and special festivals in honour of particular people
a d e e ts, a d te h i all o fi ed the e pe o s o positio ; e e the title imperator originally
meant nothing more than military commander (though it came to be applied exclusively to the princeps
or certain members of his family). Most importantly for our purposes, the first two emperors (and many
later ones as well) did not (and could not, for reasons that should become clear shortly) compel the
sorts of marks of obeisance typical of earlier Helle isti o a hies, he e the status dista e
between the rulers and the members of the traditional elite had been much larger than in Rome:
proskynesis (prostration), kissing the feet or the robe, worship as a god, elaborate forms of address,
clear hereditary succession, etc.34
I fa t, Augustus i pa ti ula e t out of his a ot to sig al a so t of i te tio to e o e a ki g,
that is, a ruler like the Hellenistic monarchs, despite the fact that the Roman polity had obviously
e o e a o a h i all ut a e, so ethi g that as o
o k o ledge a o g all e e s of
the elite. He lived in a relatively small house on the Palatine hill; stood for office in the normal way, and
sometimes resigned it; and let the senate conduct the business of the republic in appearance, cleverly
signaling his i te tio s so that se ato s ould ea h the ight esult i.e., the esult Augustus a ted .
The reason for this cautious behavior is that signaling an intention to become a king (that is, to widen
the status distance between himself and the senatorial aristocracy) reduced the senators coordination
costs. This as, afte all, hat happe ed to Julius Caesa Augustus adopti e fathe . By behaving in
ways that signaled an intention to become a king in the Hellenistic sense (a rex), he threatened to
destroy the foundations of senatorial status in the Republic, i.e., to drastically humiliate them vis à vis
the emperor. Rex was a symbol that could still mobilize passions against those who tried to appropriate
it; any credible signals of an intention to re-establish kingship seem to have greatly lowered the
coordination costs of dissatisfied senators for conspiring against the emperor.
Yet the strong norm against the appropriation of kingship symbols by powerful individuals was not
e ough to p e e t the e e ge e of the ult of Caligula a fe de ades afte Augustus death. The
problem was that the social status of the emperor was not fully commensurate with the resources he
controlled. Senators as a group preferred this situation of status equality. But individual senators could
benefit (both materially and in status terms) from credibly signaling special loyalty to the emperor, who
as of ou se pat o i hief, a d o t olled status a d material resources that only he could allocate
to the senators.
Such signaling could take two forms. First, senators could inform on each other. Yet excessive
denunciations also increased the risk of actual conspiracies (as senators anticipating that they might be
denounced could attempt to take power) and devastated the elite on which the emperor relied, so
34
To get a sense of the cult of Hellenistic monarchs, see Eckstein (2009).
17
emperors often attempted to curb excessive conspiracy-mongering. But senators could also directly
flatter the emperor, attempting to show how much they valued his person by costly acts that inflated his
status relative to theirs. The problem here (for the emperor) was that any particular form of flattery
quickly became devalued, and the emperor lost the ability to distinguish genuine supporters from nonsupporters. Moreover, flattery inflation tended to diminish the collective social status of the senatorial
aristocracy: the more the emperor was praised, the more the senators were abased.
For example, in Roman elite society the morning salutatio was an important indicator of status: friends
and clients visited their friends and patrons in the mornings, and the more visitors a senator had, the
higher his status. But nobody could afford not to visit the emperor every morning, or to signal that they
were not eall f ie ds ith the e pe o ; every member of the senatorial aristocracy was in a sense
the emperor s client. So the morning salutatio at the e pe o s eside e tu ed i to a ush of
hu d eds of se ato s, all of the jostli g to get a little it of the e pe o s atte tio , a d all of the
p ete di g to e the e pe o s f ie ds, ega dless of thei p i ate feeli gs. Similarly, in principle, the
senate retained some discretion in allocating honours to the emperor (triumphs, titles, etc.), but
individual senators could always sponsor extraordinarily sycophantic resolutions in the hopes of gaining
something from the emperor (offices, marriages, etc.), and other senators could not afford not to vote
for such resolutions due to the risk of being made the target of denunciations.
In sum, flattery inflation was, from the point of view of the senators, a tragedy of the commons: as each
senator tried to further his relative social status within the aristocracy, they tended to devalue their
collective status. And it was not necessarily a good thing from the point of view of the emperors either,
who could not easily distinguish sycophantic liars and schemers from genuine supporters, and who often
disliked the flattery. So the emperors tried to dampen it or manage it to their advantage. Winterling
distinguishes three different responses.
First, as noted earlier, Augustus managed flattery inflation through ostentatious humility. Everybody
could then pretend that things remained the same even though they all knew that Augustus was
ultimately in charge. But this required indirectly signalling his intentions so that senators had enough
guidance to know what to vote for and who to denounce without ordering them to do anything (which
would have resulted in a catastrophic loss of status for the senators, potentially risking a conspiracy – a
direct atta k o the se ato s ide tit ). But less a le politi al ope ato s like Ti e ius, Augustus
immediate successor) could not use indirection as effectively. Tiberius apparently detested flattery, but
he was at the same time unable to clearly communicate his intentions to the senate. His inability to
master the complex signalling language that Augustus used led to inflationary pressures on flattery, i.e.,
on the value of symbols associated with his person relative to the value of the symbols associated with
senatorial status. As the level of flattery increased, Tiberius was led to use increasingly blunt
instruments to tame it, like moving to Capri permanently and banning the senate from declaring certain
honours. We ight thi k of Ti e ius st ateg as the e ui ale t of i posi g p i e o t ols o e tai
kinds of loyalty bids. Yet by imposing such controls and removing himself from Rome, senatorial
energies were instead turned towards denunciations, which were made especially easy by the fact that
senators e e o sta tl aki g istakes a out hat Ti e ius eall a ted. The o e
denunciations, moreover, the less actual conspirators had to lose, leading to a poisoned and dangerous
18
at osphe e, espe iall as fa tio s of Ti e ius fa il s he ed o e the su cession. Most potential heirs
did not live long; Caligula was the last man standing.
Caligula s as e t to the th o e did ot e d the flatte -inflationary pressures induced by the
fundamental power disparity between the imperator and particular senators. To manage these
pressures (which, as discussed above, make it difficult for the patron to discriminate between genuine
and non-genuine supporters, especially when, as in this case, the patron can be reasonably sure that
most group members are opportunists rather than genuine supporters), Caligula first tried the Augustan
policy of indirection and ostentatious humility, and was reasonably good at it. But for reasons that are
not entirely clear (though Winterling suggests they were related to attempts on his life), he seems to
have changed tack in the third year of his reign to deliberately encourage flattery hyperinflation. He did
this, in part, by taking the senators literally: when they said that he was like a god, he demanded proof
of this, thus forcing them to worship him as a god and humiliating the particular senator. Or when he
was invited to dinner, he forced senators to ruin themselves to please him. And he demonstrated
contempt for their status by the way he behaved in the circus and elsewhere. (The famous story of how
he named his horse a consul can be understood as one such insult). Yet the senators could not retaliate
by revealing their true feelings; their coordination costs had increased and their individual incentives
were always to flatter Caligula.
Strategically speaking, the point of this seems to have been to lessen his dependence on the senatorial
aristocracy and to move the regime towards a Hellenistic model. (Winterling discusses some suggestive
evidence that Caligula might have been planning to move to Alexandria, an obviously symbolic move to
the historic capital of Hellenistic dynasts). Encouraging runaway flattery inflation made conspiracies
harder to pull out (since even the most innocuous comment could be used to betray the other
conspirators) but also succeeded in completely humiliating the flatterers (in this case the senatorial
aristocracy) and lowering their collective social status vis à vis the ruler. At the endpoint of this process
(represented here by the status hierarchy of the Hellenistic dynasts), ambiguous language is no longer
necessary to manage the relationship between the patron and his clients; their competitive selfabasement has widened their status distance so much that direct orders are no longer out of the
question.
It is also possible that by encouraging runaway flattery inflation, Caligula might have hoped to
institutionalize the principle of hereditary succession, which would also have contributed to a shift in
power from the aristocracy to the imperial household. (It does not seem to be coincidental that cults of
personality even in the modern world appear to be associated with forms of hereditary succession even
in regimes that are not in principle hereditary, like North Korea or Syria). This was a high-risk strategy:
deliberate humiliation, by striking at the core of the symbols of senatorial identity, also made some
senators more willing to run the risk of conspiracy; even as these risks increased, the costs to identity of
allowing Caligula to humiliate them so directly also increased. In fact, according to Winterling, the
humiliation of the aristocracy not only led to the downfall of Caligula, but also contributed to his
characterization by later a isto ati
ite s as the ad e pe o : Caligual s
ols had become
objects of hatred, since they never had a ritual context that charged them with positive emotional
energy.
19
Mao
Fo
dis ussio of Mao, I d a p i a il o Da iel Leese s
Mao cult (Leese 2007, 2011).35
ag ifi e tl
esea hed studies of the
Leese argues that the cult first emerged during the later years of the Chinese civil war as a mobilizing
device. It was consciously promoted by the top leadership of the CCP (not just Mao) in reaction to the
growing cult of Chiang Kai-shek on the Guomindang side, and seen even by people who had doubts
about overly personalizing Marxism as a way to unify the party against their enemies. From this point of
ie , the ult appea ed as a fo of hat Leese alls a di g ; a d it as spe ifi all u tu ed ithi
the pa t th ough the p a ti e of g oup stud of pa t histo , hi h p ese ted a thi al a ati e of
the Lo g Ma h u de Mao s o e t leade ship. Group study among committed cadres focused on
Mao-related symbols is an archetypical interaction ritual; and since the cadres already identified with
communism, it is likely that these rituals were relatively successful in increasing the value of Maorelated symbols among them.
As Leese notes, loyalty signalling in these rituals could be used both to marginalize certain factions (e.g.,
the group of Soviet-t ai ed ad es a ou d Wa g Mi g, ho had “tali s fa ou and to motivate party
and army members in the continuing struggle with KMT forces: those insufficiently devoted to the Mao
faction could be identified relatively simply, since most participants would not have been opportunists
at this point, and hence would not ha e t ied to fake thei sig als. But to the extent that the cult also
mobilized non-party members (non-ritual participants), it would have done so mainly through general
propaganda campaigns, an arena where it had to compete with similar publicity by the KMT, at least in
o tested hite a eas. With the i to of the CCP these o ilizi g a d u if i g fu tio s of the ult
e a e less i po ta t, though the pa t of ou se o ti ued to o t ol the pu li displa of Mao s
image, and the cult could still be used as one of the instruments of centralization employed by the CCP
(e.g., against Gao Gang in 1953- , ho de eloped his o
egio al ult i Chi a s o th-east and was
eventually purged).
This is ot to sa that the e as o de a d f o
elo for cult practices. Since the CCP was in part a
huge hierarchical patronage machine with few formal mechanisms for promotion, signalling loyalty
through praise – sending congratulatory telegrams to Mao, for example, even when these were
discouraged by the CCP leadership – was a useful means of career maintenance and even advancement
(for similar dynamics in contemporary China, see Shih 2008). But praise of the top leaders was tempered
both by the fact that it was embedded in a larger discourse where Stalin, not Mao, was the pre-eminent
leader of the communist world, and by the fact that the top leadership of the party seems to have
consciously discouraged extreme praise, perhaps because it feared (not unreasonably, as it turns out)
concent ati g po e i Mao s ha ds. The ult thus appea s he e ot o l as a o ilizatio de i e
pushed from the top, but as the unintended consequence of loyalty signalling by lower levels of the
party, which tended to keep the overall level of flattery relatively high, and inflationary pressures
steady; and it was clearly fuelled, though not fully explained, by the undoubtedly high popularity of the
party and the prestige of Mao as its leader during the early 1950s.
35
An earlier version of this section also appeared on my blog.
20
The death of “tali , Kh ush he s secret speech, and other political developments disrupted this initial
equilibrium, in which the expression of loyalty to Mao had not yet crowded out all other signals of
loyalty to the party and the revolution, and had not yet colonized public space to the extent to which it
did during the Cultural Revolution. For one thing, the death of Stalin eventually had the effect of
displacing foreign leaders from their pre-eminent position in public displays, leaving Mao to monopolize
an ever larger and more central share of public space. But at first Kh ush he s spee h fed i to a p o ess
of liberalization of the public sphere which had begun somewhat earlier. Criticism of the cult and other
fo s of dog atis
as ai ed i high pla es, a d suppo t fo olle ti e leade ship expressed. At any
rate, the party was (with good reason) confident in its popularity at this time, and prepared to relax its
control over the public sphere. In particular, Leese takes the Hu d ed Flo e s a paig of
to e
a (botched) attempt at genuine liberalization, though Mao himself later described it (rationalized it?) as
a t ap, a a to lu e s akes out of thei holes. Whatever the original intention might have been, both
Mao and groups within the party came to think that liberalization had gone too far: cadres became
demoralized and confused, critics started attacking the party and Mao directly (worryingly for Mao, even
senior party figures like Peng Zhen and Liu Shaoqi joined in), a d Mao s p estige suffe ed:
The failure of the rectification a paig [the Hu d ed Flo e s a paig ] led to a selfge e ated isis of faith i ... the CCP s go e a e, a d the espo si ilit as lea l to e
pla ed o Mao. He thus fa ed t o edi ilit gaps : The a paig had ta ished his i age as
omniscient hel s a of the Chi ese ‘e olutio a o g pa t e e s, a d the a paig s
indecisive enactment led non-party members to question his authority over the CCP (Leese
2011, p. 63).
Mao s loss of p estige can be interpreted as an exogenous devaluation of Mao-symbols. The promise,
i itiall elie ed, that iti is
ould ot e pu ished lo e ed the lo alt ids of less-than-truebelievers (i.e., reduced their signalling costs), and the general relaxation of controls made it possible to
circulate other symbols within the space of interaction rituals. This not only threatened the identity of
true believers, who suddenly had to face criticism of their Mao-symbols, but presented an opportunity
for others to mobilize through interaction rituals focused on different symbols.
In response, Mao attempted to reassert control over the circulation of symbols within the public sphere.
He not only placed loyal supporters in control of the propaganda apparatus, but also formulated a
distinction between a o e t cult of personality (indicated by the term geren chongbai 个人 崇拜)
and an i o e t cult (indicated later by the term geren mixin 个人 迷信) that made it possible for him
to arbitrarily punish insufficiently loyal supporters. The distinction sidestepped the theoretical problem
aised Kh ush he s iti is of ults
edefi i g good ults as a o ship of t uth, ut it as
t a spa e tl d i e
Mao s u de sta di g of the ult as a e t a u eau ati sou e of power that
did ot el o its e og itio ithi the pa t elite (Leese 2011, p. 69). In other words, if there had to
be solidarity rituals focused on some revolutionary symbols, Mao indicated that it better be his symbols
as the ep ese tati e of t uth, ega dless of pa t ie s. As Mao said, uoti g Le i , it is ette fo
21
e to e a di tato tha it is fo ou. 36 Mao clearly saw that, in a context where most cadres were
susceptible to the appeal of the symbols of the revolution (including symbols related to himself),
encouraging the cult would provide him with a source of authority that was independent of the party,
and that the intensification of leader-focused rituals would be a good inst u e t fo p o oti g a li el ,
e otio al li ate that ould oti ate people to take a g eat leap fo a d to a d o
u is , just
as the cult had served to motivate party members and soldiers during their struggles against the KMT.
To use our terminology, Mao understood that when group members are already predisposed to
incorporate ritual symbols into their identity construction, interaction rituals serve as powerful
emotional amplifiers.
But as e ight e pe t, as the pat o Mao aised the
previously held in check, skyrocketed. As Leese notes:
i i u
lo alt
id, flatte
i flatio ,
... ith the alidatio of a o e t ult it as ot e essa a
o e to p aise the ki g the
hole ti e, ut, so to sa , ithout e pli it p aises , as Paul Pellisso , court historian of Louis
XIV, once wrote. During the early years of the PRC, praise of Mao Zedong in public discourse had
a d la ge ee u ed ith Mao s o se t. But afte Ma h
, efe e es to the Pa t
Chairman and his thought witnessed a huge upsurge in the media, although in comparative
perspective the excesses were dwarfed by the Cultural Revolutionary rhetoric (Leese 2007).
Cadres wishing to prove their loyalty could now stop worrying too much about the question raised by
Khrushchev of whether cults of personality were compatible with Marxism-Leninism, and hyperbolic
praise of Mao a d his latest li e soo e a e a e essa i st u e t of a ee ai te a e a d
advancement within the CCP, though at the beginning such praise was still carefully defined as praise of
the t uth
hi h just happe ed to e e odied i the person of Mao and his works).
The praise soon came into conflict with reality, however. The burst of flattery encouraged by Mao led to
a flood of o pletel fi ti e u e s of oth ag i ultu al statisti s a d ultu al a tifa ts i o de to
signal adherence of the p o i ial ad es to the Pa t Ce t e (Leese 2011, p. 73, see also Kung and
Chen 2011 for more on the consequences of Mao's implicit encouragement of radicalism). But the great
famine of 1958-59 could not be hidden by mere propaganda; for those affected by the catastrophe, the
evidence of the senses was of course in direct contradiction with the claims of Mao and his flatterers,
which again halle ged Mao s p estige a d edi ilit a d offe ed oppo tu ities to disaffe ted people
within the party. Here we have another exogenous shock to the value of the Mao-symbols. This
challenge was the most serious yet to Mao s positio , i pa t e ause the fa i e fo e ted
dissatisfa tio ithi the People s Li e atio A
, hose soldie s ould ot e full isolated f o
reports coming in from family members about the situation in the countryside. (Not even the Central
Bureau of Guards, the unit in charge of guarding the leaders of the party, was immune to unrest). Even
more seriously, Marshal Peng Dehuai, who had enormous prestige within the PLA, became severely
iti al of Mao s poli ies. This as a i tole a le halle ge to Mao s positio , ho fea ed a oup; a d
36
Mu h late , Mao told Edga “ o that Kh ush he s failu e to de elop a ult had led to his e e tual pu ge
Politburo members (Leese 2011).
22
though Peng was eventually purged, the need to regain control over the army was pressing. Lin Biao (the
youngest PLA Marshal) proved the man for the job.
For one thing, Lin was not shy about praising Mao, and knew how to wield the charge of insufficient
adherence to Mao Zedong thought against his enemies within the party and the military. In fact, he was
a le to shift the o s p e aili g at the top of the CCP so that adhe e e to Mao )edo g thought
became the sole criterion of loyalty; the minimum loyalty bid could now only refer to a highly restricted
set of symbols. In practice, this meant that any statements critical of Mao – uttered at any time in the
past – could be used as incriminating evidence of disloyalty, and used in factional disputes which nearly
destroyed the party, and served to purge many people at the top. Moreover, since most of the top party
leade ship i Beiji g e e t ue elie e s – loyal followers of Mao, who held him in high esteem –
rather than mere opportunists, they were also ill-positioned to defend themselves if they became the
targets of attack; they could hardly count on help from other true believers, who would be apt to
consider offering help to people accused of disloyalty as a form of disloyalty itself, a kind of countersignalling evidencing insufficient identification with the leader.37
Li used the ult ot o l to p ote t hi self f o the i ious ou t politi s of the CCP, ut also to
discipline the army and tamp down dissatisfaction among the soldiers. The main tool he used to
a o plish this o je ti e as si ila to the o igi al fo s of g oup stud that had ee used at the
e
egi i gs of the ult, e ept o e a o l fo used o Mao s iti gs a d o e formalized. The
li el stud a d appli atio of Mao )edo g thought as i p a ti e edu ed to lea i g to e ite a d
use uotatio s f o Mao s o ks as pe suasi e tools. But these interaction rituals nevertheless seem to
have been very effective in stabilizing the value of the Mao-symbols among the troops and increasing
the minimum loyalty bid.
It s o th taki g a lose look at ho these ituals o ked. To egi ith, ontacts between the troops
and their families were monitored, but they were not necessarily directly censored. Instead, reports of
dist ess i the ou t side e e tu ed i to tea hi g o e ts – focal points of ritual - that extolled
the necessity of staying the course and blamed unfavourable weather or the deviations of local officials
from the correct line. Elaborate performances making use of all kinds of media – big character posters,
theatre, films, poetry, etc. – e alled the itte ess of the past efo e the o
u ist t iu ph a d
e tolled the s eete ess of the p ese t though, as o e offi ial oted, ost o pa iso s of the
present sweetness referred back to the period of the land reform, whereas remarks about the Great
37
Interestingly, though Lin knew how to signal his unconditional loyalty (in costly, even humiliating ways
sometimes) he seems to have been no true believer himself. On the contrary, he seems not to have liked Mao
much, and to have promoted the cult in part as a way of protecting himself from the treacherous shoals of politics
at the apex of the CCP; he had see i Pe g Dehuai s ase ho e e the e est hi t of iti is ould e tu ed
by Mao (and others) against the critic, with severe repercussions, and was determined to avoid a similar fate.
Leese uotes a
p i ate ote of Li s o Mao s politi al ta ti s: Fi st he ill fa i ate ou opi io fo ou;
then he will change your opinion, negate it, and re-fabricate it – Old Mao s fa ou ite t i k. F o
o o I should e
a of it p.
.B
Li as adept at a ti ipati g Mao s position and changing his opinion as soon as he
sensed that the old opinion was no longer operative.
23
Leap Fo a d e e i li ed to e a st a t a d ithout su sta e , p.
, hile p ese ti g e a ples
of communist mart s fo e ulatio . The fo us as o ge e ati g e otio
e e e i g ha dships
and then channelling that emotion against the enemies of the communist project to achieve bonding.
The e e e also a paig s to e ulate soldie s of Mao )edo g thought, which encouraged status
competition among soldiers who were already disposed to value revolutionary symbols (the heroes of
Mao Zedong thought, like Stakhanovite workers in the Soviet Union, received media attention and other
rewards – heap status goods, i the terminology of the model above), and hence provided a positive
i e ti e to adopt the o e t so t of ide tit a d eha iou , o ple e ti g the egati e i e ti es
provided by peer pressure in group study sessions or other collective interaction rituals.
The combination of peer pressure, genuine emotional experiences, and threats of discipline for
e al it a e as lea l po e ful, et the pa t as a a e of the da ge s of people e el a ti g as
if the elie ed.38 Indeed, advice from higher ups indi ated that ad es e e ot to i sist o
fo alities su h as the eepi g of pa ti ipa ts as de o st atio of thei si e it (Leese 2011, p. 100).
But the very fact that such advice had to be given at all probably shows that lower-level cadres did insist
on such performances (increasing the minimum loyalty bid) just to be safe (not, perhaps, primarily to
eed out pote tiall oppo tu isti soldie s, ut to sig al thei own loyalty to their immediate
superiors).
From the army, the more intense forms of the cult spread to the broader population over time,
accelerating as the Cultural Revolution started. But while ritual participants in the army could be
assu ed to lie ostl o the t ue elie e side of the spectrum, the assumption did not necessarily
hold fo the ge e al populatio . Co side the sto of ho the Little ‘ed Book sp ead. The Little Red
Book (the Quotations of Chairman Mao) was at first confined to the army, but demand for it outside its
confines was soon enormous. For one thing, political study campaigns in the countryside (which
increased in the 1960s) required a focal text to mobilize people properly, and the Quotations provided
one. But, as Leese astutely observes, the main thing that the Quotations offe ed as the possi ilit of
empowerment for non-pa t e e s p.
. This is not to say that most people in the general
population were not genuinely devoted to Mao, or were complete opportunists; but, on the (plausible)
assumption that the proportion of true believers was lower in the general population than in the army,
the book could be used by people whose identities were not so tightly bound to the symbols of the
revolution or to Mao to crack the ode that e a led one to act more or less safely within the highly
unpredictable environment of the early cultural revolution. Indeed, as Leese documents later, during the
early Cultural Revolution Red Guards would sometimes set up te po a i spe tio offi es o the
streets and ha ass pedest ia s a out thei k o ledge of Mao s o ks. The book, in other words,
provided guidance about how to make a credible minimum loyalty bid, which contributed to high
demand for it; and the party enabled this demand by basically diverting the resou es of the e ti e
pu lishi g se to to p i ti g Mao s iti gs, at the e pe se of e e othe p i t ite , i ludi g
s hool ooks p.
.
38
Yet this did not lead Mao to try to dampen flattery inflation; despite the danger of sycophancy, the emotional
amplification ritual achieved proved useful.
24
Other rituals were of course important to the spread of the more intense forms of the cult outside the
army. The eight ass e eptio s of the ‘ed Gua ds i
e e the ost spe ta ula of these,
though in some ways the least interesting. Though the Red Guards became the vanguard in the spread
of the cult throughout Chinese society during the cultural revolution, the actual number of people who
pa ti ipated i these e eptio s ould ha e ee uite s all elati e to Chi a s total populatio , ost
of them impressionable young students who took the advantage of free train travel to get involved in
something bigger than themselves. Under the circumstances, it is unsurprising that many of them
reported ecstatic experiences on seeing Mao, which in turn cemented their identities as Red Guards;
this sort of interaction ritual seems likely to produce this outcome fairly reliably, independently of any
ha a te isti s of the supposedl
ha is ati figu e.
As cult rituals spread and the chaos of the Cultural Revolution deepened, however, the party lost control
o e its s
ols. Leese efe s to this as the pe iod of ult a a h ; in our terminology here this is the
point where the patron loses control over the inflationary process. Mao was no longer able or willing to
take a i i u
id as suffi ie t e ide e of lo alt , leading to runaway flattery hyperinflation.
Diffe e t fa tio s of ‘ed Gua ds sta ted usi g Mao s i age a d o ds i i o pati le a s, a d e
cult rituals emerged from the grass roots, sometimes from the enthusiasm of the genuinely committed,
sometimes seemingly as protective talismans against the uncertainty and strife of the period. Everybody
appealed to Mao to signal their revolutionary credentials, but there was no longer anyone capable of
settling disputes over the credibility of these signals. Mao himself was not very helpful; whenever he
spoke at all, his messages were often cryptic and did not really settle any important disputes. The cult
as o a ‘ed Quee
a e of asteful sig alli g, athe tha a a efull ali ated tool of
mobilization or discipline, driven by a complex combination of genuine desires to signal loyalty and
ide tit a d fea s fo o e s se u it . As Leese notes, failure to conform to the arbitrary protocols of the
ult put people at isk of ei g se te ed as a a ti e ou te e olutio a a d do u e ts a
cases in which minimal symbolic transgressions resulted in incarceration or even death; in these
i u sta es, the e is o safe i i u lo alt id, si e the pat o is u illi g o u a le to
defi iti el take a
id.
By 1967, for example, statues of Mao first started to be built, something that CCP leaders, and Mao
himself, had discouraged in the past, and still officially frowned upon. The statues were typically built by
local factions without approval from the central party, and they were all 7.1 meters high and placed on a
pedestal that as .
ete s high, fo a total height of .
ete s.
De e e = Mao s i thda ,
Jul = the Pa t s fou di g date, Ma = the egi i g of the ultu al e olutio . People a i ed at this
precise convention for the statues without any centralized direction, merely through a signalling
p o ess . Late Lo g Li e the Vi to of Mao )edo g Though Halls e e uilt o a g a d s ale, agai
without approval from the central party. Billions of Chairman Mao badges were produced by individual
o k u its o peti g ith ea h othe , hi h e e the sel es su je t to size i flatio [a]s the la ge
size of the adges a e to e asso iated ith g eate lo alt to the CCP Chai a , … adges ith a
diameter of 30 centimetres and greate a e to e p odu ed, p.
; )hou E lai ould g u le i
1969 about the enormous waste of resources this represented. Costly signalling demands kept
25
escalating; some people took to pinning the badges directly on their skin, for example, and farmers sent
lo alt pigs to Mao as gifts pigs ith a sha ed lo alt
ha a te .
New rituals and performances emerged too. Leese dis usses the uotatio g
asti s, a se ies of
g
asti s e e ises ith a sto li e ased o Mao s thought a d i ol i g p aise of the eddest ed
su i ou hea ts, a d lo alt da es, hi h, like the uotatio g
asti s, as a g ass oots
i e tio desig ed to ph si all sig al lo alt , a d hi h sp ead e e to egio s he e pu li da i g
was not part of the common culture a d thus led to o side a le pu li e a ass e t p.
.
Pe haps o e of the ost i te esti g a ifestatio s of this i flatio a p o ess as the sto of Mao s
mangoes, which seems so bizarre that it has received significant scholarly attention (Chau 2010, Dutton
2004). These a goes, gi e as a gift fi st to Mao a d the f o Mao to the Capital Wo ke a d
Peasant Mao Zedo g Thought P opaga da Tea
e a e the fo us of i te se i te a tio ituals,
including processions were replicas of the mangoes were displayed, and ceremonies where the mangoes
were boiled and the resulting mango water was drunk ceremonially by the members of various factories
in Beijing. But this should not surprise us: among people who were already committed to Mao symbols
like the e e s of these Mao )edo g Thought P opaga da Tea s othe o je ts elated to Mao
would already have had a significant charge, while among people who were not true believers, the
mangoes (rare fruit in China at the time, so deserving of some curiosity) could well serve as occasions to
participate in interaction rituals that signalled loyalty at a relatively low cost.
The general point to note about most of these rituals, for our purposes, is that they were not authorized
by the CCP Centre, and that many of the supposed leaders of the cultural revolution (e.g., Kang Sheng,
Jiang Qing, and occasionally even Mao himself) tried to curb their practice, or at best only grudgingly
autho ized the afte the fa t. F o thei pe spe ti e, these g ass oots p a ti es a d ituals e e
objectionable because they could not be controlled directly by them. But it would be a mistake to think
that because these practices were not directed from the top, that they were therefore genuine
expressions of love for the Chairman. Motivations were of course various, and there were certainly
some people who were true believers – those who adopted the ide tit of ‘ed Gua ds, fo e a ple –
ut hate e people s oti atio s a ha e ee the e e lea l do i ated the eed to sig al
loyalty against a background of others who were also furiously trying to signal loyalty for their own
manifold reasons. The clearest evidence of signalling behaviour is in fact the uniformity of the language
used to flatte Mao do to the le el of si gle ph ases o e thousa ds of te ts, p. 184: boundless
hot love, [o
ou dless ado atio fo a less loaded t a slatio ], the reddest red sun in our hearts,
etc.); the language of flattery was a code to be mastered, not a way of expressing deeply held emotions.
And this escalation in the minimum loyalty bids was reinforced by the presence of a small core activist
group – the Red Guards at first - that was quite capable of inflicting punishment, directly or indirectly, on
those who did not conform.
The party did eventually regain control over the symbols of the cult by increasing coercive penalties for
diverging from approved signals. In essence, the party determined that only some arbitrary signals
would be accepted as minimum loyalty bids, and all other signals would be rejected. As Leese notes,
[d]e iatio s f o the p es i ed outi es e e ega ded as dislo al ehaviour and thus potentially
e ge de ed d asti o se ue es p.
; but by re-establishing clear criteria about which signals
26
would be accepted as loyalty bids and which would not, the party gradually eliminated the uncertainty
d i i g the ‘ed Quee
aces of the earlier period. By 1971, the party had regained some control over
cult symbols, Lin Biao had fallen from grace, and the party even engaged in some flattery deflation,
helped somewhat by the death of Mao in 1976. (Interestingly, there was not a great deal of
spontaneous public grief at the time; as Leese notes, most people were probably rather cynically
disenchanted with Mao by then. The old rituals of the cult had lost their emotional power, presumably
aided so e hat the sta da dizi g effo ts of the party, which routinized and formalized them). Yet
the symbols of the Mao cult still circulate today in various sorts of grassroot rituals, though without any
clear dominant meaning; the meaning of the symbols has fragmented, and without official
encouragement or patronage resources, we find that Mao-related rituals are only one of many potential
symbols to express a variety of identities and motivations – nationalism, mild rebellion against the 1989
status-quo, nostalgia, religiosity, etc.
Chávez
In contrast with the Caligula and Mao examples, no study of the cult of Chávez exists yet, in part
because the cult continues to develop. The discussion in this section is therefore much more preliminary
in character, and relies more on primary sources.
For much of the 14-year period during which Hugo Chávez was president of Venezuela (1999-2013),
there seems to have been no attempt to systematically develop a cult of personality around him.
Indeed, Chávez himself favoured a cult of Simón Bolívar, the 19th e tu leade of Ve ezuela s
independence movement. Bolivarian symbols were put into renewed circulation through such actions as
ha gi g the a e of the ou t to Boli a ia ‘epu li of Ve ezuela, o
issio i g a e like ess
of Bolívar, and disinte i g Bolí a s e ai s to o du t a tele ised autops to dete i e hethe o
not Bolívar (who is thought to have died of Tuberculosis) had instead been murdered. Nevertheless,
though these symbols were thus made to circulate in the public sphere, the ritual context provided by
o sta t a paig i g the e e e
ajo ele tio s i Chá ez
ea s i po e , i ludi g ele tio s
to a constitutional assembly, a recall referendum, and a referendum on several important constitutional
a e d e ts , a d Chá ez constant presence in the Venezuelan media (through his ability to
o
a dee ai ti e ia ade as; sho s su h as Aló P eside te – a call-in show lasting sometimes
as much as six hours, where Chávez took calls from ordinary people, gave orders to his ministers,
discussed ideas, and sometimes sang or recited poetry; his theatrical denunciations of other world
leaders in international forums; and even his presence on Twitter) inevitably put Chávez-related symbols
into circulation, and amplified their emotional charge. The mass meetings typical of electoral campaigns
are well-suited to producing charged symbols of identity, especially in the hands of a skilled practitioner
like Chá ez, ho as outi el des i ed as ha is ati (Merolla and Zechmeister 2011). Chá ez
charisma, from our perspective here, was simply his ability to reliably producing intense interaction
rituals by drawing on pre-existing symbols of identity; and as the focus of such rituals, he inevitably
became an object of intense affection, even adoration, among a subset of people who participated in
such rituals.
Moreover, throughout its time in power, the Chávez government encouraged the formation of a
number of popular organizations that, intentionally or not, provided a fertile context for the emergence
27
of Chávez-related interaction rituals. For example, early during his time in office, Chávez called for the
fo atio of Cí ulos Boli a ia os Boli a ia Ci les , ea h o sisti g of a ou d -20 people (though
some were much larger) sworn to defend the revolution in light of the ideals of Simón Bolívar. These
Ci les e gaged i o
u it o k e.g., oke i g a ess to go e
e t se i es as ell as politi al
work – demonstrations, participation in mass meetings, etc. – for Chávez, and most members strongly
identified with him; they joined in response to his call, and were unified primarily by loyalty to him
(Hawkins and Hansen 2006); indeed, the circles played an important role in the counter-demonstrations
against the abortive 2002 coup that briefly removed Chávez from power. Later on, similar groups known
as the U idades de Batalla Ele to al a d the attalio s of the Mi a da Ca paig pla ed a i po ta t
role in the 2004 recall referendum and the 2006 presidential election, respectively (López Maya and
Lander 2011). Members of these groups did not typically control large patronage resources, and hence
did not at first contribute to the expansion of the Chávez cult throughout the population, but observers
did point very high levels of attachment to Chávez-related symbols among group members (López Maya
and Lander 2011, p. 74), including the spontaneous use of religious language to describe their
relationship to Chávez (Hawkins and Hansen 2006, p. 120).
Some other organizations created by the Chávez government did control substantial economic and
symbolic resources, such as the well-k o
Misio es so ial p og a
es p o idi g lite a
lasses
Misió ‘ó i so health se i es Misió Ba io Ade t o a d su sidized goods Misió Me al ,
and there is evidence that these goods were preferentially allocated to groups and areas that signalled
loyalty to Chávez. Thus, Hawkins, Rosas, and Johnson (2011) report that the location of Misiones was
highly correlated with areas of electoral support for Chávez and the PSUV (and not correlated with the
socioeconomic status of potential recipients), and that non-supporters of Chávez were at the very least
made to feel uncomfortable enough by committed participants to exclude themselves from
participation in many of these programs. For example, most of the teachers in the Misión Róbinson
ee o
itted suppo te s of Chá ez a d the Boli a ia e olutio , a d a used lass ti e to
promote the movement, turning the programme into another set of interaction rituals where Chávezrelated symbols circulated and were positively charged with value. Similarly, community radio stations
(whose formation was encouraged by the Chávez government after the 2002 coup) that aligned
themselves with the Chávez government found it easier to obtain resources from the state, while
stations that maintained a non-partisan attitude or welcomed non-Chavistas have been subject to social
p essu e, atta ked as es uálidos o si pl ie ed ith suspi io
othe Cha ista o ga izatio s
(Fernandes 2011). More generally, there is also some evidence that people who signed the recall
referendum petition against Chávez in 2004 have been punished in various ways by the loss of jobs or
the denial of state services (Hsieh et al. 2011), and some anecdotal evidence that in communities that
have benefitted greatly from government programmes, expressions of gratitude to Chávez are expected,
and people who are suspected of being opposition supporters find themselves socially pressured to
show evidence of loyalty.
In theory, the distribution of material resources on the basis of loyalty signals, and in particular of signals
of personal identification with Chávez- elated s
ols, should ha e i eased the i i u lo alty
id a d led to flatte i flatio . But si e the so ial p og a
es i uestio al ead te ded to ta get
28
likely Chávez supporters, and levels of coercion in the Venezuelan public sphere have never been high
pu li iti is of Chá ez a d the p o eso is o
o ; e e a o g Cha istas iti is of Chá ez
government policies was possible and even common among some sectors of the movement,39 though
criticism of Chávez himself by self-identified Chavistas was much harder to find), what we see during
most of the Chávez era had the characteristics of the separating equilibrium described above: with free
entry and exit into rituals, devoted supporters of Chávez tended to gravitate to precisely those
organizations where Chávez-related symbols circulated with a positive valence, while people who did
not identify with Chávez and his revolution tended to gravitate to organizations and ritual contexts
where such symbols circulated with negative valence. The result was polarization over the divisive
Chávez symbols, not the monopoly over public space characteristic of a genuine cult.
Nevertheless, after Chávez disclosed that he was sick with cancer in 2011, and especially after he left for
Havana on 10 December 2012 to seek treatment for the last time (after winning the 2012 presidential
election but before taking the oath of office), many observers (including some people sympathetic to
the broader goals of the Chavista movement, like the Venezuelan historian Margarita López Maya)
ega to ote that a p o ess of deifi atio of Chá ez see ed to e u de a (Díaz 2013). There were
videos in heavy rotation on state TV whe e Cha ez e lai s that he de a ds a solute lo alt
e ause
he is ot a i di idual, he is a e ti e people, o he e people p o ide testi o ials of thei g atitude
for Chavez and identify themsel es ith hi
o so Chá ez ; PSUV militants (including senior party
members, like Maduro, Disodado Cabello [president of the National Assembly], Tareck El Aissami
[Aragua state governor], and Elías Jaua [foreign minister]), issued statements declaring that they are the
sons and daughters of Chávez, that they owed everything to him, and that they are eternally loyal to
Chávez. Large numbers of ordinary Chavistas tweeted thei lo alt a d o e fo Chá ez health,
efe i g to hi as i o a da te
o
a de a d thus e phasizi g thei su o di atio a d
absolute loyalty.40 The government even staged a e ti e i augu atio
ee o
he e thousa ds of
Cha istas took the oath fo the a se t Chávez, symbolically embodying him; and, once Chávez died,
the government staged a spectacular funeral were hundreds of thousands of people mourned him. The
mausoleum where Chávez is interred immediately became a site of pilgrimage, with government
encouragement; several public Chávez shrines appeared in Caracas, one of them in the headquarters of
the state oil company, and statues of Chávez, previously unknown, started appearing in many places.41
What we see here is a classic case of flattery inflation within the Chavista movement: an increase in the
circulation of Chávez-related symbols throughout the public sphere – made possible, in part, by the
u h g eate hege o
of the go e
e t o e the edia
elati e to the ea lie pa t of
Chá ez ti e i offi e (the days when most of the media was opposition aligned or controlled were long
gone; see MacRory 2013, Kornblith 2013) – plus an intensification of loyalty bids on the part of people
who were already associated with the Chavista movement. This was not, however, contrary to the
39
See Ellner (2013) for examples of such criticism from within self-identified Chavista sectors.
Fo Madu o s statements, see Maduro (2013); fo El Aissa i s state e ts, see Anonymous (2012).
41
It is worth noting that a Chávez- e a de ee a ed the use of Chá ez fa e ithout autho izatio ; though the
regulation had never been properly enforced (as evidenced by the Chávez paraphernalia it is possible to buy in
many parts of Caracas), statues and busts of Chávez seem to have been off-limits while he lived.
40
29
conventional analysis offered in the Venezuelan press and elsewhere, an attempt to secure the
legiti a
of Madu o, hose legal lai to the offi e of P eside t had ee uestio ed y the
opposition; Chávez-related symbols were too divisive in Venezuelan society to secure any sort of
a epta e o the pa t of people ho e e ot al ead o
itted to the , espe iall gi e Chá ez
absence.
What seemed to be driving the process of flattery inflation at the top of the PSUV hierarchy was the fact
that the absence of Chávez made it difficult for committed militants to evaluate the credibility of loyalty
signals. Many observers have noted a division – the extent and nature of which is a matter of some
controversy – between different factions associated with Chavismo, one of them conventionally
associated with National Assembly president Cabello, who had roots in the military wing of Chavismo
and has often been seen as more pragmatic, and another conventionally associated with now president
Maduro, ho had o e tio s to the la o o e e t a d the i ilia
i gs of the Cha ista
42
movement and has often been seen as more ideological. With Chávez incapacitated (and soon dead), a
struggle was underway to define the future of the movement and the aims of the revolution. But under
the circumstances, there was no one who could credibly arbitrate between potentially disparate goals
and visions of socialism or revolution – no one who could set a credible i i u lo alt id. The o l
symbols to which top leaders could appeal to maintain the support of the grassroots and prevent public
divisions on the eve of a new election were Chávez-related symbols. The signals from the leaders of the
movement in turn stimulated flattery inflation at the grassroots, while Chávez sickness acted as an
exogenous shock to the value of the symbols, making them more salient to the identity of true believers.
But unlike in the previous cases, no goods external to the ritual were available to promote this process;
the intensification of loyalty signalling and the increase in value of Chávez symbols were driven by the
e oge ous th eat to the g oup s ide tit ep ese ted Chá ez i pe di g death a d the i te sified
circulation of these symbols.
Ritual and Belief in Cults of Personality: Concluding Thoughts
In this paper, I have attempted to show that cults of personality are best conceived as interaction ritual
chains focused on leader symbols that induce varying degrees of loyalty signalling from ritual
participants. From this perspective, classic questions like whether people believe in cult propaganda no
longer make a great deal of sense. The most we can say is that, depending on the power of the rituals
involved, some greater or lesser fraction of the population will endow leader symbols with a very high
emotional charge, enough so that we might be able to say that the symbols are sacred to them, and
hence that they are likely to commit resources to the defence of the leader and to the achievement of
his objectives. To ask further whether they believe in the cult propaganda is to miss the point; it is not
belief that drives attachment to the leader, but participation in sufficiently powerful rituals. As the
rituals decay or are replaced by rituals with different focal symbols, we expect the charge of ritual
symbols to diminish as well. By the same token, some fraction of the population will find the rituals
empty and fail to endow leader symbols with much value, but may nevertheless feel forced to signal
that they place a high value on these symbols in order to gain access to desired resources allocated on
42
For a more nuanced picture of the divisions within the Chavista movement, see Ellner (2013).
30
the basis of loyalty signals or to avoid punishment by committed individuals. Their behaviour is also not
driven by belief or lack of belief in the cult.
This perspective also suggests that not only are Weberian categories of legitimacy and charisma
unnecessary to explain cults of personality; they are also likely to be misleading. Cults are not large-scale
exercises in persuadi g a populatio of a ule s ight to ule, ut p o esses i hi h leade s
ols
circulate widely enough, and acquire sufficient value for some sector of a population, that certain signals
of support become universally likely to be produced. The phenomenon of interest is less the content of
the particular symbols that circulate throughout a ritual space than the moments of symbol-value
i flatio o deflatio . We ould speak he e of a o eta
ie of ults of pe so alit , i hi h ule s
attempt to manage the value of their own symbols so as to achieve effects of power.
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