Personalist Leadership and Institutional Degradation: A Comparative Political Sociological Analysis of Donald J. Trump and Caligula by C. Negus Rudison-Imhotep, Ph.D.
History often repeats itself not in events, but in the psychological and structural blueprints of power. In this incisive publication, Dr. Negus Rudison-Imhotep, our Contributor on memory and memory-building-related topics transcends the superficiality of political punditry to offer a rigorous comparative political sociological analysis of two seemingly disparate figures: Roman Emperor Gaius Caligula and U.S. President Donald J. Trump.
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By synthesizing Weberian charisma, Linzian democratic breakdown, and Critical Race Theory, Dr. Rudison-Imhotep identifies the “homologous patterns” of personalist leadership that threaten institutional stability across millennia.
This work moves beyond mere analogy, arguing that the hollowing out of governance, whether in an imperial autocracy or a constitutional democracy, is a predictable byproduct of leadership untethered from institutional restraint and fueled by racialized grievance.
Through the examination of “spectacle-driven governance” and “elite humiliation,” this analysis serves as both a historical autopsy and a contemporary warning: institutions are only as resilient as the norms that sustain them, and personalism remains a transhistorical contagion capable of corroding the very foundations of the state.
Abstract
This article offers a comparative political sociological analysis of Roman Emperor Gaius Caligula (r. 37–41 CE) and U.S. President Donald J. Trump (2017–2021) (2025-Present) to examine recurring patterns of personalist leadership, institutional erosion, and authoritarian tendencies across divergent political systems.
Rather than advancing ahistorical analogy or sensational comparison, the study employs a comparative–historical methodology grounded in political sociology, leadership studies, authoritarian theory, and Critical Race Theory (CRT).
Drawing on Weberian charisma, Linzian democratic breakdown, narcissistic leadership theory, and CRT scholarship on racialized power, the article argues that personalist leadership becomes especially destabilizing when embedded within racial hierarchies that normalize exclusion, grievance, and differential citizenship.
While acknowledging critical structural differences between imperial autocracy and constitutional democracy, the analysis demonstrates how behavioral patterns—such as spectacle-driven governance, elite humiliation, grievance mobilization, racialized norm defiance, and symbolic violence—function as empirically observable indicators of institutional degradation.
The study concludes by situating Trump as a case of proto-authoritarian personalism operating through racialized democratic backsliding, while Caligula represents the extreme endpoint of unconstrained personalist rule absent racialized citizenship.
Keywords: personalist leadership, authoritarianism, Critical Race Theory, Caligula, Donald Trump, political sociology, democratic backsliding
Introduction
Comparative analysis across historical epochs has long been a contested yet indispensable method within political sociology. Critics often caution that anachronism, contextual distortion, or moral projection can undermine analytical rigor.
Yet when carefully framed, cross-temporal comparison allows scholars to identify recurring structural, institutional, and behavioral patterns in leadership and power consolidation that transcend specific historical settings (Skocpol, 1979). Rather than collapsing difference, such comparison clarifies how distinct political systems confront similar threats posed by personalist authority.
This article undertakes a comparative analysis of Roman Emperor Gaius Caligula (r. 37–41 CE) and former United States President Donald J. Trump (2017–2021) to examine how personalist leadership manifests across radically different institutional contexts and historical epochs.
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Popular discourse frequently invokes historical analogies between contemporary political leaders and ancient tyrants. These comparisons are often dismissed within academic circles as polemical, sensationalist, or ahistorical.
This study explicitly rejects superficial analogy and instead advances an empirically grounded, theory-driven comparison. The central research question is not whether Trump and Caligula are equivalent rulers, nor whether modern democratic systems are reducible to imperial autocracy.
Rather, the inquiry examines whether both figures exhibit homologous patterns of personalist authority—defined as leadership centered on individual loyalty, symbolic domination, and norm transgression—that systematically undermine institutional constraints.
Methodologically, this article employs structured, focused comparison to examine leadership behavior, elite relations, institutional responses, and public legitimation strategies across cases.
Drawing on primary historical accounts of Caligula’s reign (e.g., Suetonius, Cassius Dio) and empirical political science research on Trump’s presidency, the analysis isolates mechanisms of personalist rule rather than moral character alone.
Key variables include attacks on institutional legitimacy, the politicization of loyalty, the erosion of bureaucratic autonomy, and the cultivation of performative dominance. This approach aligns with Weberian ideal-typical analysis, particularly Weber’s concept of charismatic authority, which emphasizes devotion to the leader’s persona over adherence to rational-legal norms (Weber, 1978).
Within this framework, Caligula and Trump emerge as structurally comparable not because of identical political systems, but because both governed amid declining institutional trust and exploited that fragility to centralize symbolic power.
Caligula’s open contempt for the Roman Senate, public humiliation of elites, and theatrical assertions of personal supremacy functioned to delegitimize republican remnants and normalize arbitrary rule.
Similarly, Trump’s repeated attacks on electoral integrity, judicial independence, scientific expertise, and the professional civil service weakened democratic guardrails by framing institutions as illegitimate obstacles to popular will. In both cases, personal loyalty to the leader superseded institutional role fidelity.
The analysis further draws on contemporary theories of democratic erosion and authoritarian survival. Scholars such as Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018) demonstrate that modern democratic breakdown often occurs not through coups, but through the gradual degradation of norms by elected leaders who weaponize polarization and distrust.
While Caligula ruled an imperial system already transitioning away from republican governance, his reign illustrates an earlier variant of the same phenomenon: institutional hollowing through personalized domination. The comparison thus reveals personalist leadership as a transhistorical risk factor, capable of corroding institutional integrity regardless of regime type.
By situating Caligula and Trump within a shared analytical framework, this article contributes to political sociology and leadership studies in three ways. First, it demonstrates the continued relevance of historical comparison when anchored in theory and empirical mechanisms rather than rhetorical analogy.
Second, it underscores personalist authority as a recurrent mode of power consolidation that destabilizes institutions across time. Finally, it challenges the assumption that modern democratic systems are immune to leadership pathologies observed in premodern or autocratic regimes.
The enduring lesson is not historical equivalence, but structural vulnerability: when leadership becomes untethered from institutional restraint, the erosion of governance norms follows with remarkable consistency across epochs.
Literature Review and Theoretical Framework
Critical Race Theory and Racialized Power
This article advances an integrated theoretical framework that synthesizes Weberian charisma, Linzian theories of democratic breakdown, and Critical Race Theory (CRT) to account simultaneously for leadership dynamics and the racialized structuring of political power.
Rather than treating leadership style, institutional erosion, and race as discrete analytical domains, this framework conceptualizes them as mutually reinforcing processes through which authority is constructed, legitimated, and contested.
Such synthesis is particularly necessary for comparative political sociology, as it enables the examination of how personalist leadership operates not only through institutional mechanisms, but also through historically embedded racial hierarchies that shape whose authority is recognized, whose grievances are amplified, and whose democratic rights are rendered contingent.
Max Weber’s conception of charismatic authority provides the foundational lens for understanding personalist leadership. Weber defined charisma as a form of domination resting on devotion to the exceptional sanctity, heroism, or exemplary character of an individual, rather than on legal rationality or traditional norms (Weber, 1978).
Empirically, charismatic leaders destabilize bureaucratic governance by subordinating formal rules to personal loyalty and by reframing institutional constraints as illegitimate impediments to popular will.
This process weakens rational–legal authority, as bureaucrats, courts, and legislative bodies are pressured to demonstrate allegiance to the leader rather than fidelity to institutional mandates. Weber’s framework thus explains how personalist leadership generates instability not through overt institutional abolition, but through the gradual erosion of procedural legitimacy and professional autonomy.
Juan Linz’s theory of democratic breakdown further clarifies how such leadership dynamics translate into systemic political decay. Linz argued that democratic collapse rarely results from sudden coups in consolidated systems; instead, it emerges through executive aggrandizement, polarization, and the normalization of institutional deviance (Linz, 1978).
Contemporary empirical scholarship expands this insight by demonstrating that elected leaders can hollow out democratic institutions while maintaining formal constitutional structures (Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018).
These processes include the delegitimation of electoral outcomes, attacks on judicial independence, politicization of bureaucratic agencies, and the erosion of informal norms of mutual toleration and institutional forbearance. Within this framework, personalist leaders exploit legal ambiguities and partisan loyalty to weaken checks on executive power while claiming democratic legitimacy.
While Weber and Linz illuminate the mechanics of personalist authority and democratic erosion, they do not fully account for how race structures these processes. Critical Race Theory addresses this limitation by foregrounding race as a constitutive element of state power rather than a peripheral or episodic factor.
CRT scholars argue that legal and political institutions are historically embedded within racial hierarchies that shape access to rights, resources, and legitimacy (Bell, 1992; Crenshaw, 1991).
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From this perspective, democratic norms are not applied uniformly; rather, they are differentially enforced in ways that protect dominant racial groups while rendering marginalized populations more vulnerable to state coercion and exclusion.
Empirical studies informed by CRT demonstrate that racialized narratives are routinely mobilized to legitimate executive authority and suppress dissent. Political leaders often invoke racialized constructions of criminality, citizenship, and national belonging to justify extraordinary measures, from voter suppression to militarized policing.
Racial threat narratives also function to consolidate in-group loyalty, framing the leader as the sole defender of the “real” nation against internal or external enemies. These dynamics align closely with Weberian charisma, as racial symbolism amplifies emotional attachment to the leader while delegitimizing institutional constraints portrayed as captured by undeserving or “outsider” groups.
Racial formation theory further deepens this analysis by explaining how political actors actively produce and transform racial meanings in response to structural conditions (Omi & Winant, 2015).
Race is not merely exploited by personalist leaders; it is strategically rearticulated to construct grievance, justify hierarchy, and normalize exclusion. Through policy rhetoric, media framing, and symbolic performance, leaders racialize social conflict in ways that align institutional power with racialized conceptions of legitimacy and order. This process reinforces authoritarian tendencies by recasting democratic accountability as a threat to racialized national identity.
Synthesized together, Weberian charisma, Linzian democratic erosion, CRT, and racial formation theory reveal that personalist leadership becomes especially corrosive when embedded within racialized hierarchies.
In such contexts, institutional degradation is unevenly experienced: dominant groups often perceive executive norm-breaking as strength or authenticity, while marginalized populations bear the brunt of legal instability, surveillance, and rights erosion. The result is a stratified democracy in which formal institutions persist, but substantive democratic protections are selectively applied.
This integrated framework thus advances political sociology by demonstrating that personalist leadership is not merely a behavioral or institutional phenomenon, but a racialized mode of power consolidation.
By linking leadership style to democratic erosion and racial hierarchy, the framework provides a robust analytical foundation for understanding how modern and premodern political systems alike become vulnerable to institutional decay when authority is concentrated in the figure of the leader and legitimized through exclusionary constructions of belonging.
Charismatic Authority and Personalism
Max Weber’s (1978) concept of charismatic authority provides the foundational framework for understanding leader-centered legitimacy and the conditions under which political power becomes personalized.
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Weber defined charismatic authority as domination resting on devotion to the perceived exceptional sanctity, heroism, or exemplary character of an individual, rather than on adherence to legal–rational rules or traditional norms.
Empirically, charismatic authority emerges most forcefully during periods of social uncertainty, institutional crisis, or declining elite legitimacy, when established governance mechanisms are viewed as ineffective or corrupt.
In such contexts, followers transfer allegiance from institutions to the leader’s persona, creating a political environment in which authority is validated through emotional identification rather than procedural compliance.
When unchecked, charismatic authority facilitates the personalization of power by weakening institutional constraints and subordinating bureaucratic norms to individual discretion.
Weber warned that charisma is inherently unstable because it stands in tension with rational–legal authority, requiring continual validation through symbolic performance, confrontation, or spectacle. Leaders who rely on charisma therefore tend to delegitimize institutional oversight, portraying courts, legislatures, and administrative agencies as obstacles to popular will.
Empirical research demonstrates that this dynamic erodes professional autonomy within state institutions, as officials are incentivized to display personal loyalty rather than rule adherence, accelerating the decline of bureaucratic rationality.
This leadership pattern aligns closely with the concept of personalist regimes articulated by Geddes, Wright, and Frantz (2018). Personalist systems are defined by the concentration of political power in a single leader whose political survival depends primarily on loyalty networks rather than rule-bound governance or institutionalized succession mechanisms.
In such regimes, formal institutions persist but are hollowed out, functioning as instruments of the leader’s authority rather than autonomous checks on power. Decision-making becomes centralized, elite turnover increases, and policy coherence is subordinated to the leader’s immediate political needs.
Although Caligula ruled within an imperial autocracy and Donald J. Trump governed within a formally democratic constitutional system, both exhibit personalist tendencies consistent with this model. Caligula’s reign was marked by the systematic humiliation of the Roman Senate, arbitrary punishment of elites, and the replacement of institutional governance with personal whim.
Historical accounts describe how loyalty to the emperor superseded legal norms, producing an environment of elite fear and institutional paralysis. The emperor’s authority rested less on imperial office than on performative dominance and the symbolic assertion of personal supremacy.
Similarly, Trump’s presidency demonstrates empirically observable features of personalist leadership within a democratic framework. These include repeated attacks on the legitimacy of electoral outcomes, efforts to politicize the judiciary and civil service, and the public shaming or dismissal of officials perceived as insufficiently loyal.
Rather than abolishing democratic institutions outright, Trump systematically undermined their credibility, framing institutional resistance as sabotage by unaccountable elites. Political loyalty increasingly functioned as a criterion for access, protection, and political survival, while bureaucratic expertise and procedural norms were openly disparaged.
The comparative significance of these cases lies not in regime equivalence, but in the shared mechanisms through which personalist authority erodes institutional constraint. Both Caligula and Trump illustrate how charismatic legitimacy, when fused with loyalty-based governance, destabilizes political systems by shifting the locus of authority from institutions to individuals.
This dynamic underscores a central insight of political sociology: personalist leadership represents a transhistorical mode of power consolidation capable of undermining governance structures across vastly different political contexts.
When charisma replaces legality as the primary source of legitimacy, institutional degradation becomes not an anomaly but an expected outcome.
Democratic Backsliding and Norm Erosion
Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018) argue that contemporary democracies rarely collapse through overt military coups or abrupt constitutional suspensions. Instead, democratic erosion more commonly unfolds through incremental norm-breaking by elected leaders who operate within the formal boundaries of constitutional systems while steadily undermining their substantive foundations.
This process is particularly insidious because it preserves the appearance of legality, allowing democratic decay to proceed without triggering immediate institutional or public resistance. As a result, democracies may continue to hold elections, maintain courts, and retain legislatures even as their capacity to constrain executive power is progressively weakened.
Central to Levitsky and Ziblatt’s framework is the concept of informal democratic norms, specifically mutual toleration and institutional forbearance. Mutual toleration refers to the recognition of political opponents as legitimate actors with an equal right to govern, even amid deep ideological disagreement.
Institutional forbearance, in turn, involves the self-restraint of political actors in exercising their formal powers, avoiding maximalist or legally permissible actions that would undermine democratic reciprocity.
These norms function as the invisible architecture of democratic stability, shaping behavior in ways that formal rules alone cannot enforce.
Empirically, the erosion of mutual toleration is observable in the delegitimation of political opponents through rhetoric that frames them as existential threats, enemies of the nation, or inherently corrupt actors. When leaders portray opposition parties, independent media, or civil society organizations as traitors or subversive forces, political competition is transformed into moral warfare.
Comparative studies demonstrate that such delegitimation precedes democratic backsliding in diverse contexts, including interwar Europe, contemporary Hungary, and Turkey. Once opponents are cast as illegitimate, extraordinary measures against them become politically justifiable, weakening democratic pluralism.
The breakdown of institutional forbearance further accelerates democratic vulnerability. Leaders who abandon forbearance exploit legal loopholes, executive discretion, and partisan control to entrench power, often while claiming procedural legitimacy.
Empirical indicators include the politicization of judicial appointments, the manipulation of electoral administration, the weaponization of oversight mechanisms, and the erosion of bureaucratic independence. While these actions may remain technically lawful, their cumulative effect is to distort the balance of power and erode trust in democratic institutions.
Crucially, Levitsky and Ziblatt emphasize that the erosion of informal norms often precedes formal institutional breakdown. Democracies become vulnerable not when constitutions are violated outright, but when political actors cease to respect the spirit of democratic restraint.
This norm erosion lowers the cost of future transgressions, creating a feedback loop in which each violation normalizes the next. Over time, democratic guardrails weaken, allowing executive overreach to intensify with diminishing resistance from coequal institutions.
The persistence of formal democratic structures amid norm erosion creates a paradoxical condition in which democracy exists in name but not in substance. Elections may continue, yet their fairness and legitimacy are increasingly contested.
Courts may remain operational, yet their authority is undermined by partisan capture or public delegitimation. Legislatures may convene, yet function as instruments of executive dominance rather than sites of genuine accountability.
In this sense, the erosion of informal norms represents not a peripheral threat, but a central mechanism through which modern democracies decay from within.
Political Psychology and Narcissistic Leadership
Political psychology scholarship has long identified narcissistic and malignant leadership traits as significant predictors of authoritarian behavior and institutional degradation (Fromm, 1973; Post, 2015).
At the core of malignant narcissism are grandiosity, an inflated sense of entitlement, a fragile ego structure, and an intense hypersensitivity to criticism, all of which combine to produce coercive and retaliatory leadership patterns.
Empirical studies demonstrate that leaders high in narcissistic traits are more likely to personalize political power, frame opposition as existential threat, and conflate personal loyalty with institutional legitimacy (Rosenthal & Pittinsky, 2006; Watts et al., 2013).
These psychological dispositions do not merely reflect individual pathology but interact dynamically with political opportunity structures, particularly in moments of institutional stress or democratic erosion.
Quantitative research in political psychology has shown that narcissistic leaders display elevated risk tolerance, diminished empathy, and a tendency toward moral disengagement, enabling punitive responses to perceived disloyalty (Judge et al., 2009).
Such leaders often employ zerosum cognitive frameworks, interpreting dissent not as deliberative disagreement but as betrayal. This perception fuels authoritarian behaviors such as purging rivals, undermining independent institutions, and weaponizing state apparatuses against opponents (Post, 2015).
Experimental studies further suggest that narcissistic leaders are especially prone to escalation under threat, as criticism activates defensive aggression rather than self-correction (Bushman & Baumeister, 1998).
Historically, these traits are observable across radically different political systems. Ancient autocratic regimes often lacked formal checks on executive power, allowing psychologically unstable rulers to externalize personal insecurity through repression and spectacle.
Roman imperial leadership, for instance, institutionalized personal loyalty through patronage networks and public punishment, reinforcing the ruler’s grandiose self-image while disciplining elite dissent. Contemporary democratic systems, though structurally distinct, are not immune.
Empirical analyses of modern populist leaders indicate that narcissistic personalities exploit mass media ecosystems and partisan polarization to bypass institutional constraints, substituting charismatic authority for procedural legitimacy (Moffitt, 2016; McAdams, 2016).
Importantly, political psychology emphasizes that narcissistic authoritarianism is rarely spontaneous; it emerges through reciprocal reinforcement between leader personality and follower psychology.
Studies on authoritarian followership reveal that individuals experiencing economic precarity, cultural threat, or identity destabilization are more receptive to grandiose leaders who promise restoration of status and order (Altemeyer, 1996; Norris & Inglehart, 2019).
Narcissistic leaders, in turn, amplify fear narratives and symbolic enemies to consolidate loyalty, transforming personal grievance into collective ideology. This feedback loop accelerates democratic backsliding, as institutional norms are reframed as obstacles to the leader’s “authentic” will.
Thus, narcissistic and malignant leadership traits function not merely as individual aberrations but as catalysts for authoritarian consolidation when embedded within permissive political environments.
Across historical epochs, the convergence of grandiose self-conception, punitive responses to dissent, and mass legitimation through fear remains a consistent pathway through which personal psychology reshapes political order. Understanding this interaction is essential for explaining how authoritarian tendencies reemerge even within ostensibly democratic systems, underscoring the enduring relevance of political psychology to comparative leadership analysis.
Methodology
This study employs a comparative–historical research design integrating process tracing and theory-guided comparison to examine patterns of personalist leadership and institutional erosion across two structurally distinct political contexts: Roman imperial autocracy and modern U.S. constitutional democracy.
Comparative–historical analysis is particularly suited to identifying causal mechanisms and patterned social processes that unfold over time while remaining sensitive to contextual specificity (Mahoney & Rueschemeyer, 2003; Skocpol, 1984). Rather than seeking deterministic equivalence, this approach allows for analytically bounded comparison across divergent institutional regimes.
Process tracing is used to identify recurrent leadership behaviors—such as spectacle governance, elite humiliation, grievance mobilization, and norm defiance—and to assess how these behaviors interact with institutional constraints, elite responses, and public legitimation processes (George & Bennett, 2005).
Primary and secondary historical sources, leadership communications, legal actions, and institutional responses are analyzed to reconstruct sequences through which personalist authority consolidates or destabilizes governance structures.
This method foregrounds mechanisms over outcomes, emphasizing how authoritarian tendencies emerge incrementally rather than as abrupt regime transformations.
Comparative Analysis – Personalization of Power
Caligula openly conflated his person with the Roman state, reportedly declaring himself divine and demanding ritualized displays of submission from senators (Suetonius, trans. 2007).
Governance became an extension of imperial whim rather than institutional deliberation. Trump similarly personalized executive authority through rhetoric and practice.
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Statements such as “I alone can fix it” and repeated assertions of personal loyalty as a governing criterion reflect a leader-centric conception of power (Moffitt, 2016). While lacking divine claims, Trump’s exceptionalism functioned symbolically to elevate personal authority above institutional mediation.
Contempt for Institutional Norms
Caligula routinely violated senatorial conventions, appointed loyalists irrespective of competence, and employed arbitrary punishment to discipline elites (Winterling, 2011). These actions hollowed out remaining republican norms within the imperial system.
Trump’s tenure was marked by sustained norm violations, including attacks on judicial independence, politicization of the Department of Justice, and refusal to accept electoral defeat (Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018). Though constrained by law, these behaviors reflect norm erosion consistent with democratic backsliding theory.
Spectacle as Governance
Caligula governed through spectacle—lavish games, shocking decrees, and theatrical cruelty—using public astonishment as a mechanism of control (Veyne, 1990). Spectacle displaced administrative rationality.
Trump’s reliance on media spectacle, rallies, and social media provocations parallels this dynamic. Governance became performative, with attention domination substituting for policy coherence (Debord, 1967; Moffitt, 2016).
Elite Humiliation and Loyalty Tests
Elite Humiliation and Loyalty Tests
Authoritarian leadership frequently relies not only on mass persuasion or coercion but on the systematic management of elites through humiliation, degradation, and loyalty testing.
Political sociology and comparative authoritarianism literature demonstrate that elites—rather than masses—pose the most immediate threat to personalist rulers, as they possess institutional knowledge, social capital, and the capacity to mobilize opposition from within the state apparatus (Pareto, 1935; Mills, 1956).
Consequently, authoritarian leaders often engage in deliberate strategies designed to fracture elite cohesion, subordinate independent power centers, and replace institutional loyalty with personal allegiance. These strategies are observable across historical epochs, including the reign of Roman Emperor Gaius Caligula and the presidency of Donald J. Trump.
Caligula: Humiliation as Elite Subjugation
Caligula’s reign exemplifies the use of elite humiliation as a mechanism of authoritarian consolidation. Ancient sources and modern historiography converge on the conclusion that Caligula systematically degraded members of the Roman Senate to neutralize their political authority and symbolic legitimacy (Winterling, 2011).
Senators were compelled to engage in acts of public abasement, including running beside the emperor’s chariot, standing silently during extended monologues, or witnessing their own political impotence during mock consultations that stripped deliberation of meaning.
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These acts were not random expressions of cruelty but calculated performances of domination that inverted the Senate’s traditional role as a governing institution.
From a political-psychological perspective, humiliation served a dual function. First, it reinforced Caligula’s grandiose self-conception as the sole locus of authority, collapsing the distinction between imperial office and personal will. Second, it generated anticipatory obedience among elites, as the unpredictability of punishment created a climate of chronic fear
(Fromm, 1973). Winterling (2011) emphasizes that Caligula’s governance did not rely on formal legal repression alone but on symbolic violence that transformed senatorial identity from autonomous political actor to submissive courtier.
This erosion of elite dignity undermined collective resistance, as humiliation individualized fear and discouraged solidarity.
Empirical studies of autocratic regimes corroborate this pattern. Elite humiliation fragments opposition by forcing individuals to prioritize personal survival over institutional norms (Svolik, 2012).
By compelling senators to participate in their own degradation, Caligula effectively converted Rome’s governing elite into instruments of his personalist rule, thereby eliminating rival centers of legitimacy without dismantling formal structures outright.
Trump: Loyalty Tests and Performative Discipline
While operating within a constitutional democracy rather than an imperial autocracy, Donald Trump employed analogous strategies of elite management through public shaming, ritualized loyalty tests, and the degradation of institutional authority. Empirical analyses of
Trump’s leadership style documents a persistent pattern of humiliating cabinet members, military officials, intelligence leaders, and civil servants who failed to demonstrate personal loyalty (McAdams, 2016; Post, 2015). High-profile firings—often announced via social media—served not merely as personnel changes but as performative warnings to remaining elites.
Political science research identifies such practices as hallmarks of personalist authoritarian leadership, even within formally democratic systems (Geddes, Wright, & Frantz, 2018).
Loyalty tests—such as demands for public praise, affirmations of personal allegiance, or silence in the face of norm violations—functioned to reorient elite behavior away from constitutional accountability and toward individual fidelity. Officials who upheld institutional norms, such as judicial independence or intelligence autonomy, were frequently labeled “disloyal,” “weak,” or “traitorous,” framing professionalism itself as betrayal.
Empirical evidence suggests that public humiliation increases elite compliance by raising the reputational and career costs of dissent (Kellerman, 2004). Trump’s repeated disparagement of military leaders, inspectors general, and civil servants exemplified this logic.
Rather than engaging in substantive policy disagreement, Trump personalized conflict, transforming governance into a loyalty contest. This approach mirrors what Geddes et al. (2018) describe as authoritarian elite management: rulers weaken institutions not necessarily by abolishing them, but by ensuring that advancement within them depends on personal allegiance rather than competence or legality.
Comparative Analysis: Structural Continuities Across Regime Types
Despite vast differences in institutional context, Caligula and Trump demonstrate strikingly similar elite-control strategies rooted in humiliation and loyalty enforcement. In both cases, elites were not merely dismissed or punished; they were symbolically subordinated.
Political psychology suggests that such practices are particularly attractive to leaders with narcissistic or malignant traits, as humiliation restores a sense of dominance threatened by elite autonomy (Bushman & Baumeister, 1998).
Comparative authoritarian scholarship emphasizes that elite loyalty tests serve as early indicators of democratic erosion (Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018). When leaders frame institutional independence as disloyalty, they invert democratic norms and legitimize authoritarian behavior without overt regime change.
Caligula achieved this through spectacle and terror; Trump leveraged media saturation, partisan polarization, and populist rhetoric. Yet the underlying mechanism—replacing institutional loyalty with personal devotion—remains consistent.
Importantly, elite humiliation also reshapes follower behavior. Studies show that when elites model submission, mass publics are more likely to accept norm violations as legitimate exercises of power (Norris & Inglehart, 2019). Thus, elite degradation functions not only as an internal control strategy but as a public signal that authority flows downward from the leader alone.
Elite humiliation and loyalty testing represent durable strategies of authoritarian consolidation across historical and institutional contexts. Caligula’s degradation of the Roman Senate and Trump’s public disciplining of political and bureaucratic elites reveal a shared logic of personalist rule: the systematic erosion of elite autonomy through fear, spectacle, and reputational violence.
Empirical scholarship confirms that such practices weaken institutional checks, fragment opposition, and accelerate the personalization of power. Recognizing these patterns underscores the value of cross-temporal comparative analysis in identifying the psychological and structural continuities that enable authoritarian leadership to recur under radically different political conditions.
Table 1
Comparative Elite-Control Mechanisms: Caligula and Donald J. Trump
| Dimension | Caligula (Roman Empire) | Donald J. Trump Analytical Significance (United States) | |
| Political System Context | Personalist autocracy embedded within imperial institutions | Demonstrates that eliteElectoral democracy control strategies with constitutional transcend regime type constraints when leaders pursue personalist power | |
| Primary Elite Threat | Roman Senate as symbolic and institutional rival | Elites pose threat due to Bureaucratic, military, institutional legitimacy intelligence, and judicial rather than mass elites opposition | |
| Method of Elite Humiliation | Forced public abasement (chariot | Public shaming, Humiliation operates as derogatory nicknames, | |
| symbolic violence to erode running, silence, mock social media attacks, elite dignity and autonomy consultations) televised firings | |||
| Caligula (Roman Dimension Empire) | Donald J. Trump Analytical Significance (United States) | ||
| Obedience to arbitrary commands; silence Loyalty Tests under insult; ritual submission | Public praise, personal Loyalty redefined as allegiance, silence personal devotion rather during norm violations than institutional duty | ||
| Punishment for Exile, execution, loss Disloyalty of status and property | Dismissal, demotion, Punishment individualized reputational destruction, to deter collective elite political marginalization resistance | ||
| Unpredictable cruelty Use of Fear and spectacle | Fear produces anticipatory Unpredictable firings obedience and elite selfand rhetorical attacks censorship | ||
| Relationship to Senate hollowed out Institutions but formally retained | Institutions Institutions weakened delegitimized without formal abolition rhetorically but formally — key authoritarian tactic maintained | ||
| Public rituals of Role of Spectacle domination and humiliation | Media spectacle Spectacle normalizes elite amplified through mass submission in public and social media consciousness | ||
| Elite Individualized Fragmentation degradation prevents Strategy senatorial solidarity | Divide-and-rule through Fragmentation prevents selective praise and coordinated opposition punishment | ||
| Psychological Grandiosity, sadism, Leadership hypersensitivity to Traits perceived disrespect | Narcissism, Aligns with malignant vindictiveness, leadership profiles in hypersensitivity to political psychology criticism | ||
| Policy instability; Impact on governance Governance subordinated to personal whims | Policy volatility; erosion Personal loyalty displaces of bureaucratic rational-administrative professionalism governance | ||
| Leader as sole authentic Elite submission Signal to Mass Emperor as sole source Public of authority representative of “the legitimizes authoritarian people” rule among followers Personalist tendencies Confirms Geddes et al. Comparative Personalist autocracy within competitive (2018) elite-management Classification authoritarianism framework | |||
Mobilization of Grievance
Moralization, Polarization, and Authoritarian Legitimation
Comparative research demonstrates that grievance mobilization functions as a gateway to authoritarian legitimation by converting political pluralism into moral absolutism (Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018).
In both cases, grievance narratives justified extraordinary measures by positioning the leader as the sole protector against existential threat. Caligula’s repression of senatorial elites and Trump’s attacks on democratic institutions were framed not as power grabs but as acts of restoration and justice. This moralization reduced tolerance for opposition and normalized punitive responses to dissent.
Empirical studies on affective polarization show that grievance-driven rhetoric increases in-group loyalty while intensifying out-group hostility, weakening democratic norms of mutual toleration (Iyengar et al., 2019).
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Trump’s framing of media as “enemies of the people” exemplifies this dynamic, delegitimizing independent institutions while reinforcing emotional bonds between leader and followers. Similarly, Caligula’s depiction of senators as treacherous elites fostered elite isolation, rendering repression politically acceptable within the imperial court.
Structural and Psychological Convergence Across Epochs
Despite stark differences in political structure, the grievance strategies employed by Caligula and Trump reveal a shared authoritarian logic. Both leaders exploited grievance to personalize authority, redefine legitimacy, and collapse institutional accountability into moral loyalty.
Political sociology emphasizes that grievance narratives are particularly potent when institutional trust is low and social identity is salient (Skocpol, 1979; Norris & Inglehart, 2019). In such contexts, grievance becomes a mobilizing resource that substitutes emotional allegiance for procedural legitimacy.
Furthermore, grievance mobilization interacts with elite control strategies. As grievance intensifies, elites face heightened pressure to demonstrate loyalty or risk being labeled traitors. This dynamic reinforces loyalty testing and elite humiliation, creating a self-reinforcing authoritarian cycle.
Empirical evidence suggests that once grievance narratives dominate political discourse, institutional checks are increasingly perceived as obstacles to justice rather than safeguards of democracy (Svolik, 2019).
The mobilization of grievance represents a durable and cross-temporal mechanism of authoritarian consolidation. Caligula’s betrayal narratives and Trump’s populist grievance mobilization, though embedded in distinct political systems, operate through similar psychological and structural processes.
By moralizing political conflict and redefining dissent as treachery, both leaders legitimized repression, weakened institutional constraints, and deepened polarization. Empirical scholarship confirms that grievance, when strategically mobilized, transforms personal resentment into collective ideology, enabling authoritarian tendencies to emerge and persist even within ostensibly democratic systems.
Key Differences and Structural Constraints
Key Differences and Structural Constraints
While cross-temporal comparison reveals important behavioral continuities between Caligula and Donald J. Trump, critical structural differences decisively distinguish the two cases and delimit the scope of authoritarian consolidation.
Most fundamentally, Caligula governed within a personalist autocratic system characterized by the absence of codified executive constraints, judicial independence, or electoral accountability.
As Roman emperor, Caligula exercised direct lethal authority, commanding military force without institutional mediation and deploying execution, exile, and confiscation as routine instruments of rule (Winterling, 2011). Violence functioned as both a governing tool and a symbolic assertion of sovereignty, reinforcing the fusion of personal will and state power.
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By contrast, Trump operated within a fragmented constitutional democracy structured by formal separation of powers, independent courts, federalism, and periodic elections. Although Trump demonstrated authoritarian tendencies—particularly through norm erosion, institutional delegitimation, and personalist leadership practices—his capacity to deploy coercion was constrained by legal, bureaucratic, and political barriers (Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018).
Empirical studies of democratic backsliding emphasize that authoritarian-inclined leaders in democratic systems often pursue incremental institutional weakening rather than overt repression, relying on rhetorical intimidation, bureaucratic capture, and loyalty enforcement rather than direct violence (Bermeo, 2016).
The contrast between Caligula’s assassination and Trump’s electoral defeat illustrates these divergent constraint environments. Caligula’s removal through elite conspiracy underscores the instability of personalist autocracy, wherein rulers lacking institutional legitimacy depend on fear rather than durable consent.
Political science research demonstrates that personalist autocrats face elevated risks of violent overthrow precisely because power is concentrated in the ruler rather than embedded in institutions (Geddes, Wright, & Frantz, 2018).
Caligula’s assassination thus reflects the absence of routinized succession mechanisms or institutionalized limits on elite retaliation.
Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential election, by contrast, reflects partial democratic resilience rather than authoritarian collapse. Despite sustained efforts to undermine electoral legitimacy, pressure state officials, and contest vote certification, Trump ultimately failed to override institutional constraints (Svolik, 2019).
Courts rejected unfounded legal challenges, state and local election administrators upheld procedural integrity, and military leadership reaffirmed civilian constitutional authority. These outcomes illustrate what comparative scholars describe as “containment” rather than prevention—institutions bent under pressure but did not break (Levitsky & Way, 2020).
Importantly, the presence of constraints does not negate authoritarian risk. Research on competitive authoritarianism demonstrates that leaders can pursue personalist domination without fully dismantling democratic institutions, particularly when polarization, partisan loyalty, and media fragmentation weaken accountability (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2017; Norris &
Inglehart, 2019). Trump’s behavior aligns with this pattern: while unable to consolidate autocratic power, he normalized norm violations, reframed institutional resistance as illegitimate, and mobilized grievance to sustain personal loyalty beyond electoral defeat.
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These differences substantively reclassify Trump not as a full autocrat but as a case of proto-authoritarian personalism—an early or incomplete form of authoritarian leadership constrained by institutional architecture. Political sociology emphasizes that proto-
authoritarianism is not defined by the absence of elections or violence alone, but by the leader’s orientation toward power personalization, elite subordination, and norm erosion (Svolik, 2012).
Trump’s presidency exemplifies this condition: authoritarian intent constrained by democratic structure.
Thus, the Caligula–Trump comparison is analytically productive precisely because it avoids equivalence while illuminating risk trajectories. Caligula represents unconstrained personalist autocracy; Trump represents a constrained personalist project that tested, strained, but did not fully overcome democratic safeguards.
Recognizing this distinction is essential for understanding both the persistence of democratic resilience and the conditions under which such resilience may erode over time.
Discussion
The comparison reveals that personalist leadership operates as a sociological pattern independent of regime type. When charisma, grievance, and institutional hostility converge, leaders can degrade governance structures even without formal dictatorship.
Caligula illustrates the endpoint of unconstrained personalism; Trump illustrates its early-stage manifestation within a democratic framework.
Conclusion
This study demonstrates that comparative political sociology, when empirically grounded and theoretically disciplined, can illuminate recurring leadership pathologies without collapsing historical specificity or institutional context.
By situating the Trump–Caligula comparison within established frameworks of personalist leadership, political psychology, and comparative authoritarianism, the analysis identifies durable mechanisms—elite humiliation, grievance mobilization, loyalty enforcement, and institutional degradation—that recur across radically different political systems. Importantly, these continuities do not suggest historical sameness but rather reveal patterned pathways through which personalist leaders attempt to consolidate power.
The comparative findings underscore that personalist leadership constitutes a distinct threat to institutional governance regardless of regime type. Empirical research consistently demonstrates that leaders who personalize authority undermine procedural legitimacy by substituting loyalty for competence and moral absolutism for deliberation (Geddes, Wright, & Frantz, 2018; Svolik,
2019). In the Roman imperial context, Caligula’s unconstrained authority enabled the rapid translation of personal grievance into lethal repression, culminating in elite conspiracy and violent regime termination.
In contrast, Trump’s presidency illustrates how similar leadership impulses operate within a democratic framework, where formal constraints limited coercive capacity but did not prevent sustained norm erosion and institutional delegitimation (Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018).
A central empirical contribution of this study lies in clarifying the role of elites as both enablers and potential restraints on authoritarian consolidation. Comparative evidence shows that authoritarian projects succeed not primarily through mass support alone, but through elite compliance, fragmentation, or capitulation (Mills, 1956; Svolik, 2012).
Caligula’s humiliation of the Roman Senate destroyed collective elite resistance, while Trump’s loyalty testing and public shaming pressured political and bureaucratic elites to prioritize personal allegiance over institutional obligation.
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Conversely, moments of elite resistance—judicial independence, bureaucratic professionalism, and electoral administration integrity—emerged as decisive factors in constraining Trump’s authoritarian trajectory. These findings reinforce elite behavior as a critical variable in democratic resilience.
The analysis further demonstrates that institutional norms are not self-enforcing. Political sociology emphasizes that democratic stability depends as much on informal norms—mutual toleration, restraint, and respect for institutional autonomy—as on formal rules (Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018). Trump’s presidency revealed the fragility of these norms under sustained personalist challenge, as repeated violations normalized behavior previously considered disqualifying.
The survival of democratic procedures in this case reflects not institutional invulnerability, but contingent resilience shaped by timing, elite choices, and structural constraints.
Normatively, the study cautions against equating democratic survival with democratic health. Empirical research on democratic backsliding indicates that erosion often occurs incrementally, through the normalization of personalist practices that weaken accountability while preserving electoral form (Bermeo, 2016; Levitsky & Way, 2020).
Trump’s electoral defeat does not negate the authoritarian risks identified; rather, it illustrates a case of proto-authoritarian personalism arrested but not eliminated by institutional resistance. This distinction is crucial for avoiding complacency in the face of democratic stress.
In conclusion, the Trump–Caligula comparison affirms the enduring relevance of comparative political sociology for diagnosing authoritarian tendencies and assessing democratic vulnerability.
By tracing how personalist leadership exploits grievance, disciplines elites, and challenges institutional constraints, this study highlights the conditions under which democratic systems either withstand or succumb to authoritarian pressure.
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The findings reaffirm that democratic preservation depends not solely on constitutional design, but on the continuous reinforcement of elite accountability, normative restraint, and institutional courage in the face of personalized power.
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