Glass-jawed governance: fragile charisma and academic freedom in comparative context

Abstract

Recent attacks on academic freedom in the United States and abroad have renewed sociological interest in the cross-national forces that shape protections for academic inquiry. This article explains global variation in academic freedom by drawing on Weber’s conception of charismatic authority. Because charismatic authority depends on maintaining public proofs of exceptionalism, critics with professional legitimacy pose a unique threat. Academics often occupy this position, giving them the capacity to undermine a leader’s heroic narrative. We argue that charismatic executives respond by using cooptation and criminalization to weaken academic institutions and constrain scholarly autonomy. To evaluate this claim, we analyze a country–year panel of 159 countries from 1951 to 2018 using two-way fixed effects models. The results provide strong support for our core argument: increases in charismatic authority are followed by measurable declines in academic freedom, particularly in settings where institutional checks on the executive are weak.