Theorizing the End of Trump and Trumpism

Death. Depersonalization. Routinization. Sociologists of charisma and populism have long theorized how intensely personalized forms of dominance are transformed, normalized, or extinguished over time. Trump offers a pressing and unsettling test case. Looking toward 2028, observers might ask: Will Trump invoke emergency powers to remain in office? Or adopt the position of shadow ruler behind someone else who is nominally president? Or, if Trump himself exits the stage, will his authority be hereditarized (transferred to family members) or redirected to a loyal inner circle? Or will Trump and Trumpism be actively expunged, not only from the Republican Party, but from political culture more broadly?

These questions, however important they may be for the present, have implications that reach far beyond the fate of a single leader or party. They prompt a broader inquiry into how populist and charismatic projects are concluded, tamed, institutionalized, or displaced. How do movements organized around a singular figure adapt when that figure exits the stage, symbolically or literally? What combinations of legal, institutional, cultural, and affective mechanisms shape the “afterlives” of charismatic rule? And how might the denouement of Trump and Trumpism illuminate the trajectories of global populisms, whether on the right or the left?

This session invites theoretical and theoretically rich empirical papers that examine the possible endings, afterlives, and transformations of charismatic personalist rule. We welcome contributions that engage classical and contemporary theories of charisma, routinization, and populism; explore historical analogues; or theorize novel modes of post-charismatic politics across the globe.