Leadership is a topic of global significance that is examined through various theoretical frameworks. It is defined as a personal trait, a set of behaviors, or a cognitive or relational ability, and its complexity requires a multidimensional understanding. Leadership has been a research field for over a century, and its definitions have naturally evolved and been influenced by trends, ideologies, and changes in professional environments. Nowadays, leadership is a highly sought-after topic and has generated a lot of discussion. The community is increasingly interested in this theme, aiming to know the characteristics of effective leaders for better management and to organize adequate training. Books on leadership, articles, and even videos on social networks are multiplying, and the business world believes that fostering good leadership is the key to improving financial results (Northouse, 2015; Plane, 2015). However, despite their significant overlap, discussions surrounding leadership often overlook its intrinsic connection to authority.

The concept of authority itself is not new; it has been extensively studied for over two millennia. In contemporary society, the crisis of authority and belief profoundly influences our understanding of leadership within political and religious institutions. Yet, existing advancements in this discourse remain insufficient to fully grasp the implications surrounding the interplay between leadership and authority within these institutions. Moreover, the prevailing authority and belief crisis significantly affects both leadership and society. In what manner does it influence the political and religious institutions and their authority?

Within the philosophy of religion, this article contributes to political science by developing a conceptual interpretation of how leadership, authority, and belief co-produce institutional legitimacy within religious and political institutions, collectively referred to as “institutions of belief”—religious and political bodies whose functioning depends on shared doctrines and recognized sources of legitimacy. Building on classical thinkers and theorists, the paper makes explicit three interdependent moments: authority, belief, and leadership; shows how shifts in authority structures transform leadership patterns of belief; and identifies mechanisms through which crises of authority generate political instability or new charismatic developments. The article is primarily conceptual but indicates where illustrative contemporary cases, particularly from the Middle East, can ground the framework and suggests empirical strategies for future assessment.

This work explores two main questions: first, how authority, belief, and leadership interact within belief institutions; and second, how changes in sources or structures of authority influence leadership styles and political results. It is primarily conceptual and synthetic, tracing histories of ideas, providing operational definitions from earlier discussions, and creating an analytical framework. This framework can be applied to current cases, such as examples from the Middle East discussed below, and translated into empirical markers for testing. To make this approach practical, the third section presents specific empirical indicators for examining causal pathways. This plan directs future empirical exploration.

We now analyze how authority, leadership, and belief are mobilized within institutions of belief, starting with Arendt’s evaluation of the crisis of authority.

Hannah Arendt’s book The Crisis of Culture is a major work in political thought. It has had a profound influence on the understanding of modern culture. In her writings, she analyzes the nature of power and authority and explores the conditions for responsible leadership. She argues that power is the ability to act, while authority is the ability to get others to do what you want. Arendt believes that power is essential for politics but that it must be tempered by authority. She also argues that responsible leadership requires the ability to think and act in the public interest. Having emphasized the importance of authority, Arendt writes that religion, authority, and tradition form a “trinity” whose three elements are closely related to each other and whose stability is affected when one of the three is weakened (Arendt, 1968, p. 128). We recognize the institution as having the criterion of authority. Thus, since the latter plays an essential role in the institution, its weakening destabilizes not only tradition and religion but any institution. According to Arendt, authority is a “natural necessity” (Arendt, 1968, p. 103) that requires obedience. A review of history proves that neither violence nor persuasion can replace it. Moreover, the fact that violence is used to compensate for the lack of authority proves that nothing can replace authority and that “no society can exist except within an authoritarian framework” (Arendt, 1968, p. 103). Moreover, as Arendt writes, what establishes the seriousness of the crisis of authority is its “symptom”:

The crisis in question impacts the institution and the public domain and extends to the academic and educational levels, thereby underscoring its evident nature. In Capelle (2008), Capelle-Dumont interprets this crisis and its effect on politics and religion:

The crisis of authority gives politics and religion a mixture of the criteria that define them. These criteria are authority itself, doctrine, and belief. It turns out that politics is an essential authority that no longer comes naturally but whose weakening reinforces the belief that takes precedence over citizenship and the relationship to rights and duties. Religion now resembles the political institution and becomes less essential; it is affected in its structure, and it loses its authority and its “belief.” The institutional criterion of authority is belief, which is a “receipt.” Michel de Certeau writes in this regard: “Perhaps even today all belief is a matter of ‘receipt’ (endoxon) as Aristotle defines it” (de Certeau, 1983, p. 72). Today’s world differs from Aristotle’s, as it has been transformed and made more complex. The simple model of a community with a single authority or leader no longer exists. There is no longer a single “reference” but several circles with several networks. However, as society becomes more complex, authority becomes fragmented and plural. We can find examples of this complexity within a political party or a religion. The role of the authority of the “receipt” in an institution consists, according to Certeau, in “a principle of overflow represented by beliefs” and “punctuates social life” (de Certeau, 1983, p. 73).

Through the mediation of language or discourse, the institution asserts its authority and remains faithful to the words of those it represents in its authority. However, the crisis of authority not only has consequences within the institution but also impacts the public domain, as Arendt explains in Between Past and Future:

Traditional authority, rooted in Roman and Greek political thought, has not been effectively restored through revolutions or conservative efforts. Society faces fundamental challenges in living together without authority, lacking the sacred foundations and traditional norms that once guided behavior. The decline of traditional authority highlights a crucial challenge for leadership. Leaders struggle to establish legitimacy and inspire trust in a society where authority no longer transcends power or provides a sacred foundation. Without the guiding force of traditional norms, leadership must navigate the complexities of influencing and unifying people in a context where established standards and sources of authority have eroded, making the exercise of leadership more precarious and contested.

In the Gospel of Mark, the authority of Jesus establishes that belief calls for an instituter, an authority: “They were astonished at His teaching because, unlike the scribes, He was teaching them as one having authority”(Mk 1:22), “Then they were all amazed, so they began to argue with one another, saying, “What is this? A new teaching with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey Him” (Mk 1:27). Authority in the person of Christ finds its source in the transcendent (El Asmar Bou Aoun, 2023, p. 212). The weakening of authority in its traditional form invalidates the new representative power because it is seen as non-transcendent. The main problem that arises from this is the difficulty of people living together. This difficulty is proportional to the lack of trust in a credible source.

Moreover, Max Weber’s The Scientist and the Politician better interprets the functioning of authority within an institution. For Weber, the state, for example, can use violence in a legitimate way to dominate people (Weber, 1963, p. 101). They agree to submit to authority for three reasons: the “three foundations of legitimacy” and three types of authority. The first is “the authority of the ‘eternal yesterday’,” it is validated by memory or ‘habit’: “This is the ‘traditional power’ that the patriarch or the landed lord once exercised.” The second is based on “the personal and extraordinary grace of an individual (charisma)” and is characterized by the subjects’ “dedication” and “trust” in the “one person” considered a “hero” by his “prodigious” and “exemplary” leadership qualities: “this is the ‘charismatic’ power that the prophet exerted, or—in the political realm—the elected warlord, the elected sovereign, the great demagogue, or the leader of a political party.” The third authority, on the other hand, is based on “legality,” the “belief in the validity of legal status,” in other words on a question of obedience to rules: “this is power as exercised by the modern ‘servant of the state’, as well as all those who come close to it in this respect” (Weber, 1963, p. 102). This typology shows once again that today’s authority is weakened due to the transformation of belief in the course of history.

Believing in charismatic authority proceeds “from a game of identification of a person with values or principles, such as the prophet identified with God or a certain politician with the nation” (Capelle, 2008, p. 57). This type of authority is irrational since it is the devotion of the leader. Several contemporary events serve as examples that illustrate the intersection of the criteria associated with political institutions and those relating to religious institutions. It is, therefore, a question of a “successful adaptation of cults and figures of holiness to a new and changing world” (Mayeur-Jaouen, 2002, p. 34). In the Middle East, which is constantly in turmoil, people need to believe in leaders and hope that their saint will be able to secure them or that their political leader will be able to restore peace. This reveals how a charismatic leader, whether religious or political, can be revered and adored. Religious behaviors such as prayer, worship, rituality, etc. are typical in the veneration of the saint, martyr, or politician. The image of the authority figure thus becomes a mixture of democratic, sacred, salvific, liberating, etc. projections. Since the sacred and the political are inseparable, the emotional community is devoted to its leader. Added to this is the socio-economic context and political stability that influence the degree of the people’s need for a leader and its impact on the authority figure.

This typology is found, to varying degrees, in the world’s different cultures according to society’s needs. Members of the political institution serve and believe in “national,” “humanitarian,” “social,” “ethical,” “cultural,” “secular,” “religious,” and “progress” ends (Weber, 1963, p. 166). It follows that “a belief or faith is necessary” (Weber, 1963, p. 166), whatever the purpose of devotion. In other words, even if the politician claims to serve only “material ends” or an “idea,” the fact remains that believing in him is essential, precedes authority and leadership, engenders the institution, and is at the center. To believe the authority is a criterion of the institution, but it often goes beyond the limits of the structures to which we want to restrict it, it goes beyond leadership.

We have demonstrated that amidst the crisis of authority and the crisis of belief, individuals fervently seek a leader in whom they wish to place their trust and hope. All the types of leaders that we would like to establish in our society will have a lot of trouble emerging because the qualities that people seek in their leaders remain closely linked to their own needs and to the images that they project onto the leader, a saint, a protector, a savior, a father, a God etc.

This section translates the conceptual framework into an empirical agenda by showing how the crisis of authority can generate distinct leadership outcomes depending on the configuration of belief, authority, and institutional resilience. Using three analytical markers (1) the dominant authority modality (traditional, charismatic, or legal-rational); (2) the coherence and intensity of collective belief; and (3) technocratic or symbolic leadership, three ideal-type pathways will be sketched through which the authority crisis unfolds. The purpose is not to offer exhaustive case studies but to demonstrate how the theory can be operationalized and where focused empirical research (process tracing, discourse and content analysis, surveys, and local fieldwork) could test the proposed causal mechanisms.

First, where legal-rational authority persists, even amid political fragmentation, institutions tend to render leadership intelligible through routinized procedures, rules, and technocratic practices rather than through personal authority. In such contexts, leadership legitimacy is sustained by stable bureaucratic routines, formal accountability mechanisms, and elite discourse emphasizing competence and legality. Empirically, this configuration is evident in administrative regulations, court rulings, official planning documents, and technocratic public messaging.

For example, in 2016, despite the erosion of central state authority and persistent political fragmentation, local Lebanese institutions such as municipalities continued to operate through routinized, legal-rational practices. Empirical studies document municipal initiatives such as waste management (Mouawad, 2017, p. 6) and strategic responses to the refugee crisis (Mouawad, 2017, p. 8), designed to address governance challenges at the local level. Although these resilient initiatives, often implemented in collaboration with international organizations, could not substitute for the functions of the Lebanese government (Mouawad, 2017, p. 11), they nonetheless demonstrate forms of sectoral bureaucratic resilience operating in accordance with legal norms and administrative procedures. Legal authority persists under technocratic, efficient leadership.

Second, when belief in formal institutions diminishes and authority becomes personalized, leadership tends to become more performative, centered on charisma rather than procedures. This type of leadership focuses on rituals, symbols, and direct emotional connection, employing leader-focused rhetoric, public ceremonies, support networks, and direct communication between leaders and followers. During institutional decline, such leadership often transforms a general lack of trust and faith into personal loyalty by promoting moral stories and promises of protection.

This dynamic is particularly evident in contexts where belief is displaced from institutions onto leaders. Electoral populism thrives when institutional trust is weak, as it relies on symbolic rituals and moral narratives to rebuild belief in the leader rather than in institutions. The modern “crisis of political faith or trust” (Moffitt, 2016, p. 116) describes a situation where loyalty shifts more toward individuals, since “the devotion of followers—and indeed, the hatred of detractors—similarly hangs on the leader in many cases rather than the party” (Moffitt, 2016, p. 54). In such cases, leaders replace institutional belief with personal conviction, turning broad grievances into individual loyalty. The Lebanese context provides clear examples of this process during times of socioeconomic crisis. Both Muslim and Christian political figures use a mix of social services, ritualized public displays, and leader-focused symbolism to maintain personal authority amid institutional weakness, though they employ different ideological and community-based approaches. For instance, Hezbollah, a Shia political party, and the Lebanese Forces, a Christian political party, created welfare initiatives and projects to assist their supporters during crises. These social programs are highly organized and offer significant benefits to their loyal constituencies (Cammett, 2014, p. 131–133). Hezbollah’s religious and political organization fosters strong personal loyalty through social services, ritual commemorations, and leader-driven messaging, supplementing formal political processes. Welfare projects, religious rituals with political symbols, and speeches emphasizing protection all reinforce individual authority.

Additionally, charismatic leadership often depends on visible territorial control as a symbolic display of power, safety, and organizational strength. Before the 2024 conflict with Israel, Hezbollah limited access to specific areas, except for its own community, as a performative act of authority, demonstrating the leader’s ability to protect followers and strengthening loyalty through territorial control (Cammett, 2014, p. 88). This pattern highlights how charismatic political figures, often serving as militia leaders in contexts of weak state authority, mobilize ritual, patronage, and spatial control to attract followers and build durable networks of loyalty. In such settings, political institutions do not rely solely on religious ideas to maintain authority; they also distribute material benefits and construct symbolic boundaries vis-à-vis other communities to consolidate internal cohesion and control.

Third, when established sources of authority are nearly dismantled, institutions often create new sources of legitimacy. In this process, authority may be re-established through formal routines and new symbolic or procedural authorization, or it may shift toward highly personalized, charismatic leaders who fill a legitimacy gap. The path taken depends on factors such as institutional resilience, socioeconomic pressures, and the discursive and performative capacities of competing actors. Many real-world situations show a mix of outcomes, where formal procedures remain in some areas while charismatic leadership grows in others. These changes are influenced by institutional strength, resource availability, and discursive power, and can be observed in sectoral differences in ways authority is exercised, overlapping rule systems, and the coexistence of official institutions with patronage or religious networks.

The Syrian case after 2011 exemplifies crisis-driven recomposition under conditions of extreme institutional collapse. The erosion of state-based legal-rational authority and the breakdown of social trust created openings for charismatic and militant leadership forms. In localized settings where institutions collapsed, leaders combining ritualized authority, sectarian narratives, and performative displays of protection acquired intense followings. This dynamic is described as “warlordism, in which ‘trained, armed men’ take advantage of state collapse to take over territory and, relying on their charisma, form networks of patronage to attract fighters and supporters” (Voller, 2022, p. 854). Recruitment in such contexts is mediated through local authority figures, “such as religious leaders, tribal sheikhs and village elders” (Voller, 2022, p. 857).

Overall, these pathways illustrate how authority crises can result in routinization, personalization, or hybrid recompositions, influenced by belief systems, institutional resilience, and leadership styles. These processes can be examined using empirical indicators such as the dominant type of authority, levels of belief strength and coherence, and inventories of leadership practices, thereby turning theoretical insights into testable hypotheses. The next stage involves empirical validation through methods like process tracing, discourse analysis, survey data on trust and legitimacy, and qualitative fieldwork at the regional level, especially in countries like Lebanon, where sectoral differences offer a valuable testing ground.

In conclusion, the historical and contemporary efficacy of leadership remains deeply entangled with how the authority of leaders is perceived—as something that confers transcendence and existential purchase on institutional claims. Globalization, digitization, and rapid social transformation have unsettled the old grounds of legitimacy and fractured traditional sources of authority, producing an intricate mélange of representation and weakening the sediment of collective belief. Without such belief, commitment risks becoming performative rather than substantive, and leadership can be reduced to techniques of manipulation rather than modes of shared meaning and common action.

We may therefore conceive authority, belief, and leadership as three interdependent moments within any institution of belief: authority names the socially recognized claim to institute norms; belief denotes the cognitive–affective orientation through which agents render those claims meaningful; and leadership denotes the practiced ensemble of speech, ritual, and organization by which authority is animated and belief cultivated. From this standpoint, the prevailing modality of authority—whether anchored in tradition, embodied in a charismatic figure, or sustained by routinized norms—conditions which leadership forms will be intelligible and effective within an institution. The coherence and intensity of collective belief mediate how authority translates into sustained allegiance: when belief is attenuated or fragmented, institutional authority loses purchase and non-institutional leadership forms (charismatic, populist, sectarian) become more attractive. Where recognized sources of authority erode altogether, institutions undergo a process of recomposition in which authority is either re-embedded through routinization and re-authorization or replaced by personalized, charismatic leadership that occupies the resulting legitimacy vacuum; which pathway unfolds depends on institutional resilience, socio-economic pressures, and the discursive and performative capacities available to competing actors.

These conceptual claims should not remain merely programmatic. They invite empirical translation into measurable indicators—dominant authority type, intensity and coherence of belief, and catalogs of leadership repertoires—which can be applied in comparative and regional studies. In contexts such as the contemporary Middle East, where institutional fragility and social dislocation are pronounced, the framework helps explain why actors seeking legitimacy sometimes turn toward saintly, salvific, or populist figures as much as toward formal offices. The task for future research is to operationalize these markers and to test, across paired cases, when crises of authority yield processes of institutional renewal and when they precipitate the emergence of personalized rule. Only through such convergent conceptual and empirical work can leadership be rethought and reconstructed upon foundations that resonate with contemporary needs for shared meaning, accountability, and stability.