Xavier Márquez
Biographic Data
| ID | 4376958 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Xavier Márquez |
| GIVEN NAMES | Xavier |
| FAMILY NAME | Márquez |
| SIGNATURE | MÁRQUEZ X |
| AFFILIATIONS | Victoria University of Wellington |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7653-9334 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 48 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 13 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Ancient Tyranny and Modern Dictatorship
This article traces the conceptual history of key terms used to describe and criticize bad political regimes, focusing on the displacement of “tyranny” by “dictatorship” and “authoritarianism.” Classical Greek thought understood tyranny primarily in terms of the character of rulers, whereas the modern idea of dictatorship emerged from a Roman conceptual framework that focused on authority and its legitimation. New problems of legitimation in the …
Max Weber, demagogy and charismatic representation
Political thought has long identified demagogic leadership as one of the key pathologies of democracy. Unusually among political thinkers, Max Weber not only accepts the inevitability of demagogy in democratic politics but also appropriates the figure of the demagogue for democratic thought, praising certain kinds of ‘responsible’ demagogic leadership. This paper examines the role of demagogues in democracy through the lens of Weber's political t…
The mechanisms of personalization
The mechanisms of cult production
This chapter argues that leader personality cults are typically produced by a specific set of mechanisms of flattery inflation. It describes how loyalty signaling, emotional amplification, and direct production mechanisms can combine, under specific circumstances, to transform ordinary flattery into full-blown practices of ruler worship. It also argues for attending to the specific conditions that make possible the operation of these mechanisms, …
The Mechanisms of Cult Production
Two Models of Political Leader Cults
Personality cults of political leaders can be conceptualized in one of two different ways: as propaganda that portrays the leader positively, or as rituals of leader worship. The first model stresses the forms of communication that make possible the transformation of bureaucratic state power into charismatic (extra-bureaucratic) authority, while the second emphasizes the forms of participation that make possible the construction of charismatic au…
The Irrelevance of Legitimacy
Both popular and academic explanations of the stability, performance and breakdown of political order make heavy use of the concept of legitimacy. But prevalent understandings of the idea of legitimacy, while perhaps useful and appropriate ways of making sense of the political world in ordinary public discourse, cannot play the more rigorous explanatory roles with which they are tasked in the social sciences. To the extent that the concept of leg…
An Epistemic Argument for Conservatism
Maximizing Accountability to the Least Privileged
Egalitarian-liberal theories of justice are in principle very demanding, imposing substantial epistemic and justificatory burdens on citizens and requiring substantial changes to social and economic structures. Yet existing democratic institutions show little tendency to manage such burdens well or produce egalitarian outcomes over the long run. I argue that these facts imply a principle for the political realm analogous to John Rawls’s famous “d…
Spaces of Appearance and Spaces of Surveillance
Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault developed different but complementary theories about visibility and power. In an Arendtian "space of appearance," the common visibility of actors generates power, which is understood as the potential for collective action. In a Foucauldian "space of surveillance," visibility facilitates control and normalization. Power generated in spaces of appearance depends on and reproduces horizontal relationships of equalit…
Knowledge and Law in Plato's Statesman and Laws
Ever since Morrow's seminal contribution to the study of Plato's Laws, the Nocturnal Council described in book XII of the Laws has been generally agreed to be consistent with the rest of the work. In a recent piece in Political Studies, however, George Klosko revives the older argument against Morrow's interpretation, arguing that the Nocturnal Council really is inconsistent with the overall project of the Laws, and that the best explanation for …
Theory and Practice in Plato’s Statesman
Measure and the arts in Plato's Statesman
The Irrelevance of Legitimacy
Both popular and academic explanations of the stability, performance and breakdown of political order make heavy use of the concept of legitimacy. But prevalent understandings of the idea of legitimacy, while perhaps useful and appropriate ways of making sense of the political world in ordinary public discourse, cannot play the more rigorous explanatory roles with which they are tasked in the social sciences. To the extent that the concept of leg…
Spaces of Appearance and Spaces of Surveillance
Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault developed different but complementary theories about visibility and power. In an Arendtian "space of appearance," the common visibility of actors generates power, which is understood as the potential for collective action. In a Foucauldian "space of surveillance," visibility facilitates control and normalization. Power generated in spaces of appearance depends on and reproduces horizontal relationships of equalit…
Two Models of Political Leader Cults
Personality cults of political leaders can be conceptualized in one of two different ways: as propaganda that portrays the leader positively, or as rituals of leader worship. The first model stresses the forms of communication that make possible the transformation of bureaucratic state power into charismatic (extra-bureaucratic) authority, while the second emphasizes the forms of participation that make possible the construction of charismatic au…
The mechanisms of personalization
Max Weber, demagogy and charismatic representation
Political thought has long identified demagogic leadership as one of the key pathologies of democracy. Unusually among political thinkers, Max Weber not only accepts the inevitability of demagogy in democratic politics but also appropriates the figure of the demagogue for democratic thought, praising certain kinds of ‘responsible’ demagogic leadership. This paper examines the role of demagogues in democracy through the lens of Weber's political t…
Maximizing Accountability to the Least Privileged
Egalitarian-liberal theories of justice are in principle very demanding, imposing substantial epistemic and justificatory burdens on citizens and requiring substantial changes to social and economic structures. Yet existing democratic institutions show little tendency to manage such burdens well or produce egalitarian outcomes over the long run. I argue that these facts imply a principle for the political realm analogous to John Rawls’s famous “d…
Knowledge and Law in Plato's Statesman and Laws
Ever since Morrow's seminal contribution to the study of Plato's Laws, the Nocturnal Council described in book XII of the Laws has been generally agreed to be consistent with the rest of the work. In a recent piece in Political Studies, however, George Klosko revives the older argument against Morrow's interpretation, arguing that the Nocturnal Council really is inconsistent with the overall project of the Laws, and that the best explanation for …
Measure and the arts in Plato's Statesman
Theory and Practice in Plato’s Statesman
Knowledge and Law in Plato's Statesman and Laws
Ever since Morrow's seminal contribution to the study of Plato's Laws, the Nocturnal Council described in book XII of the Laws has been generally agreed to be consistent with the rest of the work. In a recent piece in Political Studies, however, George Klosko revives the older argument against Morrow's interpretation, arguing that the Nocturnal Council really is inconsistent with the overall project of the Laws, and that the best explanation for …
Spaces of Appearance and Spaces of Surveillance
Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault developed different but complementary theories about visibility and power. In an Arendtian "space of appearance," the common visibility of actors generates power, which is understood as the potential for collective action. In a Foucauldian "space of surveillance," visibility facilitates control and normalization. Power generated in spaces of appearance depends on and reproduces horizontal relationships of equalit…
An Epistemic Argument for Conservatism
Maximizing Accountability to the Least Privileged
Egalitarian-liberal theories of justice are in principle very demanding, imposing substantial epistemic and justificatory burdens on citizens and requiring substantial changes to social and economic structures. Yet existing democratic institutions show little tendency to manage such burdens well or produce egalitarian outcomes over the long run. I argue that these facts imply a principle for the political realm analogous to John Rawls’s famous “d…
The Irrelevance of Legitimacy
Both popular and academic explanations of the stability, performance and breakdown of political order make heavy use of the concept of legitimacy. But prevalent understandings of the idea of legitimacy, while perhaps useful and appropriate ways of making sense of the political world in ordinary public discourse, cannot play the more rigorous explanatory roles with which they are tasked in the social sciences. To the extent that the concept of leg…
Two Models of Political Leader Cults
Personality cults of political leaders can be conceptualized in one of two different ways: as propaganda that portrays the leader positively, or as rituals of leader worship. The first model stresses the forms of communication that make possible the transformation of bureaucratic state power into charismatic (extra-bureaucratic) authority, while the second emphasizes the forms of participation that make possible the construction of charismatic au…
The mechanisms of cult production
This chapter argues that leader personality cults are typically produced by a specific set of mechanisms of flattery inflation. It describes how loyalty signaling, emotional amplification, and direct production mechanisms can combine, under specific circumstances, to transform ordinary flattery into full-blown practices of ruler worship. It also argues for attending to the specific conditions that make possible the operation of these mechanisms, …
The Mechanisms of Cult Production
The mechanisms of personalization
Ancient Tyranny and Modern Dictatorship
This article traces the conceptual history of key terms used to describe and criticize bad political regimes, focusing on the displacement of “tyranny” by “dictatorship” and “authoritarianism.” Classical Greek thought understood tyranny primarily in terms of the character of rulers, whereas the modern idea of dictatorship emerged from a Roman conceptual framework that focused on authority and its legitimation. New problems of legitimation in the …
Max Weber, demagogy and charismatic representation
Political thought has long identified demagogic leadership as one of the key pathologies of democracy. Unusually among political thinkers, Max Weber not only accepts the inevitability of demagogy in democratic politics but also appropriates the figure of the demagogue for democratic thought, praising certain kinds of ‘responsible’ demagogic leadership. This paper examines the role of demagogues in democracy through the lens of Weber's political t…
Political science (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Economics (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Law and economics (4 works)