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Leadership rhetoric: Audience fragmentation, insurgent leaders and the threat to
the political establishment
James Walter and Zareh Ghazarian, Monash University ©1
It is commonly argued that a party leader, now so central to the party’s public reception, is primarily
responsible for garnering voter support—for articulating a message that captures a majority. The party itself is
no longer the locus of opinion aggregation. In some respects, the leader must perform as ‘all things to all
people’ (or at least be able to calculate those interests he/she can win, and those he/she can afford to lose in
creating a winning coalition). Yet as the rusted on supporters that once peopled the branches of mass parties
have disappeared, the diminished activist base is now likely to comprise a significant element of partisans
whose views may be significantly at odds with the population in general. The leader, then, is caught between
crafting an appeal that reaches out to a broad audience (and will typically be insisted upon by the party
organization and its electoral strategists) and satisfying the conflicting demands of (and/or concordance of
his/her own views with) the party membership.
Our interest in this conundrum was triggered by the unusual circumstances of prime ministerial
succession in Australia over recent years, and especially the curious demise of Tony Abbott, which
sufficiently highlights the question with which we are concerned. Ignoring for a moment much of the very
recent outpouring about his failures, we suggest that it was also significant that Abbott epitomized the
problem of mistaking what some in his party thought mattered most for what might sell to the broader
population. For example, his views on climate change were certainly congruent with party opinion, but did not
accord with those of the general population (Leviston et al. 2015; Oliver 2015). He focused, then, on issues
that reflected the hard right views of a proportion of the party base, but were strikingly at odds with majority
opinion. Following some 30 negative opinion polls in a row, and the looming possibility of electoral defeat, he
was voted out by his parliamentary colleagues and replaced by Malcolm Turnbull, seemingly a more
progressive liberal figure.
But though Turnbull was popular, it was apparent that Abbott’s supporters had not abandoned what
they considered to be the party’s ‘true’ values and would continue to harass Turnbull with the threat of
internal insurgency. Turnbull was forced to moderate his message, and his popularity began to wane. That this
happened in a party that was in government seemed to us indicative of a series of inter-related problems
concerning leader-centric governance, the decreasing utility of parties in opinion aggregation, the
fragmentation of political audiences and the consequent problems of political communication.
As this was playing out, even more striking manifestations of just these problems were presented by
the insurgent party campaigns of Jeremy Corbyn and Donald Trump, indicating a degree of universality in this
dynamic. Hence, it is to these cases that we turn, but with one proviso: Corbyn and Trump are consistently
represented as outsiders, battling public consensus and political professionals while aspiring for office; the
Abbott/Turnbull case should remind us that the dynamic can also hobble mainstream leaders in government.
Pathologies of leader-centric politics
Leader-centric trends have been more or less universal in the Western polities since the 1980s (for a summary
of such trends, see Pakulski & Körösényi 2012: 51-79) and have been understood as a consequence of the
personalization of politics. ‘Political leaders’ it is argued, ‘have become electorally important in their own
right, by personifying the policy platforms of their respective parties’ (McAllister 2011a). The corollary of
leader-centrism, however, is that institutional restraints on leader preferences have diminished. Leaders can
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This is excerpted from a much more detailed paper, which is itself a work in progress. We welcome discussion and
critical feedback. Please do not cite without first referring to the authors: contact [email protected] and/or
[email protected]
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assert an authority that might be seen as stretching the traditional expectations of party leader (with, for
instance, reduced accountability to the party organization; latitude to extend or over-ride the party platform;
and relative autonomy in decision making). And now even candidate leaders are testing such expectations.
The value of an effective leader in relation to established parties, then, is thought to be ‘the ability to
present policy and to focus an election campaign on the party’ (McAllister 2011b: 251). Yet to accept this is
to overstate the homogeneity of parties, which are not only hollowed out, but fragmenting—witness the
disjunction between ‘Tea Party’ and establishment factions in the Republican party (on which Trump has
depended), or between business oriented neo-liberal ‘Blairites’ and the newly active, leftist party base
(aroused by Corbyn) in the British Labour Party. And there is always the potential that a leader—given the
license that personalization implies, and the performative opportunities offered by mediatization—may shift
the focus to himself (Trump?) or to a program at odds with that determined by party professionals (Corbyn?)
rather than concentrating on shepherding the party over the line.
The problem is amplified when a candidate leader, in the contest with rivals, proves able to mobilize
the largest proportion of activist support among party identifiers even if this is a minority of the whole. For
example, in mid-March 2016, Trump had a significant lead over rival candidates for the Republican Party’s
presidential nomination even though two-thirds of Republicans had by then voted for someone else. The
problem is also exemplified when a candidate leader gains majority support from the party membership while
persuading only a small percentage of those elected to the legislature to back him. For example, Corbyn had
over 70 per cent support from party members, but less than 22 per cent support from Labour MPs, when he
won his party’s leadership in 2015. By what means were such paradoxical outcomes achieved?
Rhetorical patterns” a ‘winning’ message?
Consider Trump’s methods of communication. His message is simple: it is about American economic decline.
He rails against the incompetent and compromised politicians who brought about the decline and touts his
capacity to make America great again. Trump claims his business success as the manifestation of economic
acuity. He cites his history of boldness and aggression as the necessary qualities for the tough leadership
needed, as well as the cure for those who have been ‘screwed’ by successive failed leaders. But the enemies of
those for whom he speaks are all around: the migrants threatening their jobs, the minorities with their
‘foreign’ values, domestic dissidents who scorn national verities, terrorists with their hatred of American
achievement, and international coalitions who challenge American exceptionalism. Trump’s violent response
indicates a will to ‘destroy’ all of these, as does his robust response to protesters who dog his rallies.
His is an undeniably authoritarian populist appeal: he promises to act for all those who have been
‘pushed around’, the ‘average American’ exposed to threat and deprived of opportunity by a conspiracy of the
elites. The ebb and flow of such populist appeals has been a constant in Western democracies, fuelling fascism
in the mid twentieth century, and thereafter cropping up periodically in minor parties or splinter groups, but
rarely gaining traction in mainstream parties. Yet in the last twenty years, the era of globalization, party
fragmentation, personalization and mediatization, populism has flourished anew. Arguably, Sarah Palin
foreshadowed Trump. But it is notable that he had tested the themes that would define his campaign over at
least five years (Haberman & Burns 2016).
Trump’s presentation always appears to be extemporaneous. He derides the ‘script’ followed by other
politicians and their concern with staying ‘on message’. The themes are consistent, but his speeches are ‘never
exactly the same twice. Instead he just riffs and feels his way through crowds. He’s no orator … but he has an
undeniable talent for commanding a room’ (Taibi 2016). There is no concern for logic, sequence, or even
coherence but rather a stream of consciousness in which topics crop up and are abandoned as something else
occurs to him. He ‘does everything that a politician ought not do—disparage war heroes, ridicule the disabled,
demean women, flaunt his wealth’ (McGeough 2016a) as well as flirting with white supremacists, targeting
religious and racial minorities and slandering those who disagree with him (NYT 2016). His is ‘a fortunecookie mind—restless, confrontational, completely lacking the shame/veracity filter’ (Taibi 2016). The
incredulity of party leaders and media analysts at this performance is beside the point: Trump has intuitively
grasped that ‘the idea is to enter into a relationship of fellowship, not mastery, with your audience. You’re not
a superior intelligence leading your auditors by the nose; you’re testifying to a shared experience; you’re
telling it like it is, just as you see it’ (Stanley Fish, quoted in McGeough 2016a).
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Trump is an inveterate liar about his past and his business ‘successes’, but attempts by the broadsheet
press to ‘fact check’ his dissimulation go unnoticed by his audience, which is listening for other ‘truths’. He
says things that no other Republican dares to say: that the Iraq war and other interventions in the Middle East
have been ‘a big f…fat mistake’, costing trillions in treasure and reputation; that the regular politicians are
beholden to their big corporate donors and will never pass legislation to protect the little guy; that ‘free-trade’
deals have destroyed American jobs; that ‘the carpetbagging snobs’ in the national media are in league with
the political class and should be treated with contempt (Taibi 2016). Only Trump, beholden to no-one (since
he is funding his own campaign) has not been bought; only he has the celebrity pull that guarantees coverage
of the issues he raises despite the hostility of media ‘snobs’; only he can lead his army of outsiders against
‘the establishment’. Policy specifics and complexity are irrelevant. Each time a policy crisis is presented,
Trump translates it into ‘a generic problem, to be resolved by “the best deal” for the US, and Donald Trump
[is] best equipped to get the best deal’ (McGeough 2016b). It is a stance that ‘rallies audiences looking for a
gut reaction to all that is wrong in their lives and their worlds’ (McGeough 2016a). It is the gut reaction rather
than rational evaluation that counts.
And this points us to the demographic that responds to Trump. It comprises a constituency with
legitimate grievances: those who failed to benefit in the boom years, but paid the price when the bonanza
failed (Edsall 2016). It is the disadvantaged middle, whose income flat-lined, whose jobs were threatened and
whose assets lost value and who ended up equally resenting the undeserving rich (who skewed the system,
then persuaded political elites they were too big to fail and must be bailed out when it all went wrong) and the
undeserving poor (parasitic spongers on the hard-working community). They have learned to distrust the
economic rationale offered by politicians for the disruption they have experienced, and have disengaged from
‘news’ and politics. They respond strongly to Trump’s rallying cry: ‘we won’t be pushed around anymore!’
They tend to be older, whiter, poorer, less conservative, and less-well educated. About half are between 45
and 64 years of age, with 34 per cent over 65 and less than two per cent younger than 30. (Brady & Rivers
2015; Cohn 2015; Lewis et al. 2016) Support is highest among whites who express ethnocentric viewpoints,
score high on measures of authoritarianism, identify strongly as white and hold negative views about racial
minorities (Kalkan 2016). Not surprisingly, they fear the predicted demographic change that will see current
minorities—African Americans, Latinos and people of Asian descent—becoming a majority in the United
States by 2043: Trump won the support of 60 per cent of those who thought this to be a ‘bad thing’ (Nteta &
Schaffner 2016). There are grounds for a more nuanced analysis of such findings (see Bland 2016). But in
overview, Trump has conjured up a ‘public’ that fears contemporary change and responds emotionally to his
promise to make America great again.
Jeremy Corbyn differs from Donald Trump in nearly every respect. Trump is a practitioner (and a
product) of celebrity culture: Corbyn was a virtual unknown until his unexpected translation into party leader.
Trump’s point of reference is himself (an extreme of narcissism that led him to answer ‘I talk to myself’ when
asked who he consults about foreign policy); Corbyn’s point of reference is the cause he serves. Though
critical of Bush’s Iraq War, Trump is intensely battle oriented: Corbyn has always been resolutely anti-war.
Trump is an issue-oriented populist without a moral compass: Corbyn is not a populist but a conviction
politician whose views are evident and have altered little over thirty years, and whose rhetorical style has been
honed in conventional party politics. His very refusal to compromise and to reach accommodation with the
Blairite ‘New Labour’ program is now seen as testament of his ‘authenticity’. In one respect, however, he
parallels Trump: he has appealed to party supporters whose anger over contemporary politics has generated
disaffection and opposition to the party orthodoxy, and he has prevailed over a party establishment inclined to
describe such supporters as ‘morons’ (John McTernan, quoted in Harries 2015: 249) and convinced that his
elevation spells ruin.
There have been three aspects to the way Corbyn ‘presents’. The first is reversion to ‘traditional’
meeting tactics: overflow audiences attend public gatherings and are warmed up by his team and by singing
(the Internationale, no less)! When he finally appears, the audience is receptive, despite a low-key style:
Corbyn does not talk about specific policies, nor does he explain how his aspirations will be carried
out. Rather he offers an idealistic vision of Labour’s future, rooted in direct action and protest. …
focused purely upon inward renewal and creating a more left-leaning party. His supportive audiences
don’t question this because the character he has constructed for himself is one of authenticity. This
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character is one of honesty, caring, and left unity. Put simply, he is trusted by his word because his
style of engagement is very different to the conventional … wisdom. (Crines 2015)
Notably, Corbyn addresses his audience, not the cameras. But, second, it is far from the glitz and glamour of
his ‘New Labour’ predecessors (let alone the Trump circus), and that is the point. ‘The drabness of this new
politics, it’s rejection of spectacle and rhetoric, may itself be a reaction to the pin-sharp presentation that
characterised the British politics of the 1990s’ (BIR 2015). The inattention to grooming has been said to signal
Corbyn as a man of the people, whose mind is on higher matters than mere appearance (Ceril Campbell,
quoted in Kelly 2015). Third, however, there has been a canny use of social media: a tactic designed to engage
directly with a technologically literate audience sharing ‘left’ values.
By situating his campaign itself as a kind of picking apart of normal politics, the Corbyn team created
a brand image that was difficult to effectively attack. What should have been negatives in normal
campaigning were transformed into positive messages. The drabness, the shabbiness and the politics
of the fringes added to his appeal precisely because they contrasted with the kind of politics that has
dominated mainstream media in recent years and testified to dogged determination. (BIR 2015: 200)
What is less commonly noted, however, is that Corbyn is not offering dialogue: a conviction politician does
not engage in exchange of views, but in sharing what he knows to be right.
A survey in August 2015 showed Corbyn supporters to be actively left wing (rather than simply ‘left
of centre’) and to hold a range of attitudes widely divergent from those of the British public, for example,
endorsing nationalization of utilities (86% vs. 31%) and railways (86% vs. 34%); wanting redistribution of
wealth (89% vs. 21%); wanting much less private sector involvement in health care (84% vs. 32%); opposing
the institution of the royal family (61% vs. 21%); and disapproving of British airstrikes against ISIS (45% vs.
18%) (Sayers 2015; and compare Hogg 2015 as an exponent of youthful, pro-Corbyn views). This then is not
a group with generalized discontent capable of being mobilized by an assertion that a strong leader can ‘strike
the best deal’ to address their problems. It demands change but its aspirations are much more programmatic
than those of Trump’s supporters and more explicit in rejection of what the public at large may well consider
to be core values. Detractors lamented that: ‘The party has slipped its moorings … launching on the choppy
waters of an atomized, affective politics, mediated by social networks, but still rather traditional in its methods
and outlook’ (Stafford 2016).
In fact, Corbyn and Trump have intuitively developed means of communication that capitalise on this
‘atomized, affective politics, mediated by social networks’ to generate their audiences and thereby to create
their own ‘publics’—activists who identify with their messages and can be mobilised against ‘established’
views of ‘the public’ and the hegemonic orthodoxies of their time. It is an exemplification of the fact that
publics are emergent rather than stable entities (Emirbayer & Shelley 1999: Walter 1988: 156-158); produced
‘and then revised, erased and revised again by countless acts of creative representation’ (Coleman 2011: 40);
that organic intellectuals (Gramsci 1971) and political insiders (Lippman 1922) cannot indefinitely maintain
‘the phantom public’ (Lippmann 1927); and that ‘audience democracy’ (Coleman 2011; de Beus 2011; Manin
1997)—when homogeneity breaks down—is capable of generating subaltern publics.
All that is solid melts into air
Consider the fragmentation of recent years. At one level it has been discursive: the fictions of party solidarity
have been transferred to the more febrile imaginaries of party figureheads (providing the opening for insurgent
interventions such as those mounted by Trump and Corbyn). But it is also institutional, as new media
technologies revolutionised dissemination of and access to information and demolished ‘broadcast’ and print
media business models, ensuring audience fragmentation and undermining the means for hegemonic control
by the political class. Political parties also shifted as they abandoned organizational discipline, and with it
their capacity to aggregate opinion, leading one American commentator to remark: ‘ … there is no Republican
Party organization, per se. … [It] exists as an array of allied groups, incumbent office holders, media
organizations, and funding vehicles … When people ask why … ‘the party’ has not done anything to stop
Trump, it is not exactly clear who they mean’. (Nathan Persily, quoted in Edsall 2016).
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Orthodoxies however do not collapse in an instant. Path dependency, habituation and the dogmatism
of elite opinion leaders may shore up what decades of hegemonic discourse has established as ‘commonsense’ even when its systematic deficiencies have driven some of the disaffected towards alternative identities,
articulated by insurgent leaders. That is, majority opinion in the population at large may still coalesce around
propositions represented as offering no alternatives (hence the widespread disbelief provoked by Trump and
Corbyn) even though significant minorities of the disaffected now constitute subaltern ‘publics’.
Typically, subaltern formations depend upon two things: a political climate characterised by
uncertainty (provoking anxiety, insecurity and fear) and the emergence of leaders who give persuasive
expression, and offer a solution, to the anxieties of their historical moment. Such dynamics usually give rise to
dissenting social movements. Indeed, the communication strategies and politics of the Trump and Corbyn
campaigns, with their emphases on the systematic deficiencies of the current order, have more in common
with social movements than with conventional party politics. But the erosion of party identity, discipline and
organisation—that is, the historical contingency of atomized politics—has given them leeway to ‘step in’ to
the party framework and to claim to speak in the interests of all.
The distinctive differences between their campaigns, however, can be interpreted in relation to core
elements of the parties for which they claim to speak (no matter that their respective party establishments wish
to disown their insurgent interpretations), and to particular psychological proclivities that they project and that
resonate with the ‘publics’ they have mobilised.
Psychodynamics in play: navigating ‘the choppy waters of an atomized, affective politics’.
Trump takes positions that have long been part of Republican lore—opposition to the conspiracies of ‘liberal’
elites and their influence in Washington, small government fervour that has morphed into anti-government
rhetoric, celebration of US exceptionalism (and a corollary isolationism and ethnocentrism), demonization of
immigrants taking ‘local’ jobs and threatening the core culture, pessimism about the ‘deterioration’ of
America under Democrat presidents, and refusal to compromise about political objectives—and carries them
to an extreme of ‘take no prisoners’ aggression, anti-elitism and nativism that horrifies the Republican
establishment. It also offends against another core principle: it is bad for business, since it throws up barriers
to open dealing in the global market.
Once unleashed, however, the populist demagoguery Trump espouses serves to rally those who are
looking for a leader who promises to attack the causes of their disadvantage. He gives expression to the
frustration they have felt but been unable to articulate, or to assert in the public arena: one of the clearest
indicators of who is likely to be a Trump supporter is that they do not feel that they have a political voice
(Pollard & Mendelsohn 2016).
The psychological dynamic is familiar. There has long been research indicating that the need for
cognitive closure and hence simplicity is reliably associated with conservative beliefs (Jost et al. 2003).
Differences in epistemic and existential needs to manage uncertainty and threat are linked to individual
preferences for liberalism versus conservatism (Jost et al., 2007). Not surprisingly, then, the challenge of
novelty and systemic change promotes the emergence of politicians in parties of the right who, in order to
satisfy their own need for closure, respond to uncertainty by asserting simple and unambiguous solutions,
often posited in terms of battles that the ‘strong leader’ must fight. In turn, those voters most affected by the
uncertainty of systemic transition (and least prepared to exercise sophisticated judgment) are mobilized by
such appeals (cf. de Zavala 2012). It is a context favouring an agitator (Lasswell 1930: 78-128) such as
Corbyn, who trades on gut reaction and affect rather than complex messages. While there are distinctions
between political sophisticates and those with more limited knowledge of politics the tendency may be
amplified more broadly by circumstances. There is evidence that environmental factors such as threat can and
do produce ideological shifts (e.g., Bonnano & Jost 2006). In a context of policy collapse, significant
economic dislocation and novel transitions in the party system, voters may be drawn to relatively simple
cognitive schemas focused on stable and fundamental characteristics instead of more complex and malleable
political and ideological criteria. (cf. Frolov et al. 2012)
In Corbyn’s case, there is also a link to a core element of Labour Party tradition. He proposes to
revive the party’s historical commitment to social democracy and the argument for state intervention that Blair
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and ‘New Labour’ had insisted was incompatible with the market imperatives of the modern order. He will
address the deficiencies of ‘zombie economics’ (Quiggin 2010) by regenerating state capacity to address
market failure, to take over functions that are best dealt with collectively and to restore social welfare
measures. He is a theorist (Davies 1980: 100-120) trading in ideas. While Corbyn’s supporters have some of
the psychological characteristics found consistent with a liberal orientation—being more open-minded in their
pursuit of creativity, novelty, and diversity than conservatives (see Carney et al. 2008; and cf. Sayers 2015)—
there is a paradoxical illiberalism in Corbyn himself: despite an ability creatively to link his philosophy with
contemporary challenges, he manifests a dogmatism hardly suggestive of open-mindedness. His followers,
however, read this long-term consistency as evidence of ‘authenticity’. The bond between Corbyn and his
followers may best be understood in terms of the group dependency that emerges in collectively oriented
ensembles whose leaders promise not so much to fight their battles but to encourage the ‘caring community’
in which security is assured and their aspirations can be pursued (cf. Little 1985: 82-84; 144; 146-147; 150151). Corbyn’s unassuming style is integral to such a relationship: a sort of capable older brother whose
dogmatism is interpreted as the ‘wisdom’ of the experienced, fraternal and dependable leader.
Provisional conclusions
The emergence of Trump and Corbyn challenges the status quo supported by the conventions and the
leadership repertoire of established parties in the Anglosphere. Indeed, it is the failure of the status quo that
has provided the climate for Trump and Corbyn to emerge and capture a proportion of partisan activists. Their
refusal to adhere to the expected norms of major party leaders is (in the eyes of their followers) their strength,
rather than a weakness. Most frustrating for the political class is the fact that the rise of Trump and Corbyn has
unexpectedly energized sections of the electorate. Rather than meeting the apathetic response now common in
liberal democratic politics, Trump and Corbyn have become heroes to citizens who had tuned out of politics
due to its homogeneity and failure to engage with their concerns (Daley 2016).
Rather than maintain or advance the established leadership repertoire, they act as lightning rods and
galvanize their own niche support bases. Unlike most contemporary leaders, these two figures have rejected
compliance with the expected norms. They perform more like leaders of dissenting social movements than
political insiders. They have presented themselves as actors who bypass the party elites in order to
communicate with those they seek to represent. In doing so, they forge distinctive positions in the political
debate and challenge the hegemony of party professionals: is this the triumph of audience democracy over
party democracy? If nothing else, they show us that audiences are multiple; subaltern publics can destabilize
the ‘common-sense’ of the political class; and hollow, professionalized parties can be blind-sided by internal
insurgency. It remains to be seen whether the approach of Corbyn and Trump will be a failed experiment, or
foreshadows further transitions in relationships between modern political parties and their leaders, or perhaps
signifies the exhaustion of parties as we have known them. Aside from the impact Trump and Corbyn have
had on their respective parties they raise the question: are the established rhetorical norms for leader-audience
mobilization in liberal democratic polities realistic?
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