Max Weber’s Concept of Authority

Weber defined domination (authority) as the chance of commands being obeyed

by a specifiable group of people. Legitimate authority is that which is recognized
as legitimate and justified by both the ruler and the ruled. ... In the modern world,
such authority is typically delegated to police and the court system
The sociologist and philosopher Max Weber distinguishes three types of authority—
charismatic, traditional and legal-rational—each of which corresponds to a brand of
leadership that is operative in contemporary society. Jeffry Ocay, a scholar in critical
theory, explains that the achievement of a particular form of political order in any
democracy depends on prevailing conditions “in which different forms of society
cohere” and different ways “in which consensus is achieved.”
First, charismatic authority points to an individual who possesses certain traits that
make a leader extraordinary. This type of leader is not only capable of but actually
possesses the superior power of charisma to rally diverse and conflict-prone people
behind him. His power comes from the massive trust and almost unbreakable faith
people put in him.
Second, traditional authority indicates the presence of a dominant personality. This
leader is someone who depends on established tradition or order. While this leader is
also a dominant personality, the prevailing order in society gives him the mandate to
rule. This type of leadership, however, is reflective of everyday routine and conduct.
Third, legal-rational authority is one that is grounded in clearly defined laws. The
obedience of people is not based on the capacity of any leader but on the legitimacy
and competence that procedures and laws bestow upon persons in authority.
Contemporary society depends on this type of rationalization, as the complexities of
its problems require the emergence of a bureaucracy that embodies order and
systematization.
All three forms exhibit a specific weakness or problem.
First, charismatic leadership can be problematic because it is somehow based on
some form of a messianic promise of overhauling an unjust system. It is not
impossible, however, to find such type of a leader, as history would show. Consider
Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., or Nelson Mandela. A charismatic leader
holds the mission to unite his people amid adversity and differences in order to
attain an almost insurmountable goal.
Second, traditional authority poses its particular difficulty insofar as it is based on
some kind of a dominant power. For Weber, all authority exhibits some form of
domination. A traditional leader may rely on or even exploit prevailing practices.
Traditional authority may suffer from a lack of moral regularity in the creation of
legal standards.
Third, legal-rational authority makes manifest the power of the bureaucracy over the
individual. In the exercise of authority, the administration of power, laws and rules,
including institutional duties and protocols, have control over individuals. While
order and systematization are desirable, the bureaucracy may not be able to fully
address the problems and concerns of everyone, as what the development of nation-
states today suggests.
Modern societies rely on legal-rational authority in terms of finding a common
ground in which consensus may be achieved. But consensus on the basis of
agreements often lacks flexibility, which may embody the dominance of a
bureaucratic mentality of which government service is sometimes accused.
Weber’s analysis of modern societies also points to the idea that capitalist states do
give rise to bureaucratic authority. Instrumental reason, grounded in the “means to
an end” discourse, can be found in the exercise of authority on the basis of laws,
rules and procedures that govern citizens. For Weber, legal-rational authority has
been successful in Protestant countries because Protestantism fills the bill in terms of
responsible capitalism. The basic point is that Protestant ethics emphasizes hard
work and individual responsibility, which are both necessary in order to maintain
and pursue the ends of capitalism.
As a people, Filipinos not only need to have the knowledge about the character traits
of the leaders we so desire. More importantly, we have the moral duty to understand
collectively the basic requirements that confer legitimacy on the mandate of
government officials in whom we entrust the future of this nation. Democracy is
about how and why power must be reconfigured so that it emanates from the center
in order to capacitate the peripheries. But democratic change cannot be achieved
simply by means of rewriting our laws. An ideal discourse situation in the grassroots
must be present.
The Philippines has always been a difficult case. Right now, what the country needs
is a unifying leader who must exhibit both political will and charisma, one who can
bring about social and political cohesion in the pursuit of public interest. Given the
problems that we have, becoming the country’s leader should be an unenviable
position. But we have to make the right choice. The continuing saga that is
Philippine democracy is not wanting in terms of potential heroes and villains.
 Max Weber’s Social Action Theory
Max Weber (1864-1920) was one of the founding fathers of Sociology. Weber
saw both structural and action approaches as necessary to developing a full
understanding of society and social change.
Max Weber believed that it was social actions that should be the focus of study in
sociology. To Weber, a 'social action' was an action carried out by an individual
to which an individual attached a meaning. Therefore, an action that a person does
not think about cannot be a social action.
For the purposes of A level Sociology we can reduce Weber’s extensive
contribution to Sociology to three things:

 Firstly he argued that ‘Verstehen’ or empathatic understanding is crucial to

understanding human action and social change, a point which he emphasised in his
classic study ‘The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism’;
 secondly, he believed we could make generalisations about the basic types
of motivation for human action (there are four basic types) and
 thirdly, he still argued that structure shaped human action, because certain
societies or groups encourage certain general types of motivation (but within these
general types, there is a lot of variation possible).
This final point can be illustrated by a quote from one of his most important works
‘Economy and Society’, first published in the 1920s, in which he said ‘Sociology is
a science concerning itself with interpretive understanding of social action and
thereby with a causal explanation of its course and consequences.’
Social Action and Verstehen
Weber argued that before the cause of an action could be ascertained you had to
understand the meaning attached to it by the individual. He distinguished between
two types of understanding.
First he referred to Aktuelles Verstehen – or direct observational understanding,
where you just observe what people are doing. For example, it is possible to
observe what people are doing – for example, you can observe someone chopping
wood, or you can even ascertain (with reasonable certainty) someone’s emotional
state from their body language or facial expression. However, observational
understanding alone is not sufficient to explain social action.
The second type of understanding is Eklarendes Verstehen – or Empathetic
Understanding – in which sociologists must try to understand the meaning of an act
in terms of the motives that have given rise to it. This type of understanding would
require you to find out why someone is chopping wood – Are they doing it because
they need the firewood, are they just clearing a forest as part of their job, are they
working off anger, just doing it because they enjoy it? To achieve this Weber
argued that you had to get into the shoes of people doing the activity.

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

In this famous work, Weber argued that a set of religious ideas were responsible
for the emergence of Capitalism in Northern Europe in the 16-17th century. Weber
argued that we need to understand these ideas and how they made people think
about themselves in order to understand the emergence of Capitalism. (NB The
emergence of Capitalism is one the most significant social changes in human
history)
 The video below, from the School of Life, offers a useful summary of Max
Weber’s ideas about the emergence of Capitalism

Weber’s Four Types of Action (and types of

society)
Max Weber didn’t just believe that individuals shape society – societies encourage
certain types of motive for action – for example, the religion of Calvinism
encouraged people to save money, which eventually led to capitalism
Weber believes that there are four ideal types of social actions. Ideal types are used
as a tool to look at real cases and compare them to the ideal types to see where they
fall. No social action is purely just one of the four types.

1. Traditional Social Action: actions controlled by traditions, “the way it has

always been done”
2. Affective Social Action: actions determined by one’s specific affections and
emotional state, you do not think about the consequences
3. Value Rational Social Action: actions that are determined by a conscious
belief in the inherent value of a type of behavior (ex: religion)
4. Instrumental-Rational Social Action: actions that are carried out to achieve a
certain goal, you do something because it leads to a result
To illustrate these different types of action consider someone “going to school” in
terms of these four ideal types: Traditionally, one may attend college because her
grandparents, parents, aunts, and uncles have as well. They wish to continue the
family tradition and continue with college as well. When relating to affective, one
may go to school just because they enjoy learning. They love going to college
whether or not it will make them broke. With value rational, one may attend
college because it’s a part of his/her religion that everyone must receive the
 proper education. Therefore, this person attends college for that reason only.
Finally, one may go to college because he/she may want an amazing job in the
future and in order to get that job, he/she needs a college degree.
Max Weber was particularly interested in the later of these – he believed that
modern societies encouraged ‘Instrumental-Action’ – that is we are encouraged
to do things in the most efficient way (e.g. driving to work) rather than thinking
about whether driving to work is the right thing to do (which would be value-
rational action.
Weber believed that modern societies were obsessed with efficiency – modernizing
and getting things done, such that questions of ethics, affection and tradition were
brushed to one side – this has the consequence of making people miserable and
leading to enormous social problems. Weber was actually very depressed about
this and had a mental breakdown towards the end of his life.

Evaluations of Max Weber’s Social Action Theory

 Positive – He recognized that we need to understand individual meanings to
understand how societies change (unlike Marxism)
 Positive – The idea that individual motives can lead to huge structural level
changes such as the emergence of Capitalism is especially interesting!
 Negative – Still too much focus on society shaping the individual – symbolic
interactionism argues that individuals have more freedom to shape their identities.
 Negative – there might well be more types of motivation than just four types
 Negative – his theory of the emergence of capitalism has been criticized as
there is evidence of some forms of capitalism existing BEFORE Protestantism.