Founding Leaders and National Narratives: Anthropomorphism and the Roots of Founding Leader Personality Cults in Three East Asian Cases

Founding leader personality cults are crucial components of national narratives. Yet, relatively little research examines how they emerge. A small political science literature argues that cults follow a personalization of power to dominate society and induce loyalty. We argue this conceptualization explains late-stage cults. We theorize that rival elites sometimes intentionally promote a leader’s image prior to personalization to generate emotional connections to the masses. We call these cults of legitimation. To explain why elites concede to cults that could erode their own power, we apply social psychology research to argue that personality cults can generate greater emotional attachment to an abstract group – in this case a nation – by anthropomorphizing it. Symbols alone are less powerful in this regard. Using Vietnam, China, and Indonesia, we process trace cult emergence to demonstrate the plausibility of our theory. Our paper provides a new perspective on a visible, undertheorized component of authoritarian rule.