Institutional leaders have whatever power and authority they have, at least in part, by virtue of their office. In contrast, SM leadership involves acting without a recognised institutional position or office. In Weber’s terms, SM leaders cannot rely on either ‘traditional’ or ‘legal-rational’ authority, but have to create their authority by means of charisma (Weber 1947: part III, 324 ff). Charisma refers to those personal qualities of a leader that inspire loyalty and recognition from followers: ‘It is recognition on the part of those subject to authority which is decisive for the validity of charisma’ (Weber 1947: 359). In the absence of traditional, routinised or rule-based institutions and obligations, charisma has the capacity to generate ‘new obligations’ (361). Charismatic leadership has often been based on religious, mystical, emotional and other seemingly ‘irrational’ forms of appeal. This is particularly clear for religious and religio-political leaders (of particular interest to Weber) such as the Jewish ‘Messiah’, Muslim ‘Mahdi’ or Christian revivalist. Unlimited by either traditional, legal or rational constraints, charismatic leadership readily assumes authoritarian form and is associated with violent social upheaval and, in the twentieth century, fascism.

However, more pertinent to the recent experience of SMs is a variant of charismatic authority qualified by moral constraints. Although the category of ‘new’ social movement (NSM) is contested and problematic, it does serve to highlight prominent features of the upsurge of SM activity from the 1960s (for example, Jennett and Steward 1989, Dalton and Kuechler 1990). SMs, like second-wave feminism, gay and lesbian liberation, environmentalism and the peace and anti-nuclear movements largely avoided violence and revolutionary insurrection. In place of a conflictual and state-centred politics of class interest and material advantage, they pursued an ‘identity politics’ of moral and cultural contestation. They favoured a ‘pre-figurative’ politics, which seeks to align present political means with future political goals. Accordingly, traditions of non-violent direct action and civil disobedience, which involves violating current norms of institutional legitimacy (i.e. laws) by means that are yet morally defensible (Singer 1973), played an important role.

The morally constrained variant of charisma appropriate to NSMs is illuminated with the help of John Kane’s notion of moral capital, which refers to ‘the part played in political contexts by people’s moral perceptions of political actors, causes, institutions and organisations’ (2001: 4). Moral capital is an important political resource of formal leaders, ‘one that in combination with other familiar political resources enables political processes, supports political contestants and creates political opportunities’ (Kane 2001: 2). But moral capital is something that also originates, and can be created outside of existing political institutions in informal leadership contexts. Kane discusses Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi as two leaders who deployed moral capital in the cause of dissident politics. Moral capital is also a key resource of the movement as a whole in its promotion of new identities, communities of interest and, ultimately, social and cultural change.

Crucially, a dissident politics of moral challenge and moral capital implies corresponding limits on the goals and tactics that can be adopted by the movement — a feature, as already noted, of pre-figurative styles of politics favoured by NSMs. Of course, any moral limits will depend on prevailing moral norms and on the public’s perceptions and judgments. But although moral norms may be culturally and historically variable, they are not infinitely malleable or meaningless. At the same time, a significant goal of SMs is the reinterpretation and transformation of prevailing values and norms. For example, the gay movement seeks to extend liberal values of privacy and freedom concerning self-regarding actions to sexual conduct. Anti-racism and feminism advocate more consistent and inclusive values of equality and fairness. The politics of moral capital seem particularly suited to such goals.

NSMs have succeeded in transforming broader norms of legitimate political conduct as well. Before the 1960s, liberal democrats routinely denied legitimacy to all extra-institutional movements and challengers, maintaining that advocates of change should vote in elections, petition leaders and officials, form new political parties or put forward their arguments in the public domain. From this perspective, SMs were regarded as disorderly threats to political stability along with mobs, riots and panics — examples of what was derogatively termed collective behaviour. The rise of the ‘new’ movements rehabilitated extra-institutional forms of politics so that SMs can now studied as potentially rational forms of collective action (Della Porta and Diani 1999). SMs can be understood, not as irrational ‘outbursts’ or ‘eruptions’ of pent-up frustration, but as the rational achievement of collective action on behalf of previously neglected or excluded issues and groups. This understanding of SMs provides the context for the following discussion of informal leadership.