Cambridge Review of International Affairs

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International organizations, their staff and their

legitimacy: Max Weber for IR

Álvaro Morcillo Laiz & Klaus Schlichte

To cite this article: Álvaro Morcillo Laiz & Klaus Schlichte (2016) International organizations,
their staff and their legitimacy: Max Weber for IR, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 29:4,
1441-1447, DOI: 10.1080/09557571.2017.1313564

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Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 2016
Vol. 29, No. 4, 1441–1447, https://doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2017.1313564

Introduction
International organizations, their staff and their
legitimacy: Max Weber for IR

Álvaro Morcillo Laiz

Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE)

Klaus Schlichte
University of Bremen

If the journal was to fulfil its given task, it obviously had to seek capitalism wher-
ever it was available, without any consideration of national boundaries … This sys-
tematic expansion towards the possibly broadest territory granted the Archiv an
international character in even a higher degree than other publications within the
discipline.

Werner Sombart, Max Weber and Edgar Jaffé

Foreword of the editors to the new series of the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und
Sozialpolitik

The burgeoning interest among international relations (IR) scholars in Max

Weber’s ideas and in social theory more generally can be considered a further
instance of the tendency in IR to adapt theories generated in other disciplines.
In the last few decades, scholars have increasingly made a use of microeconomic
theory and rational choice, at least in the United States (US), while distinctly Euro-
pean approaches to IR are frequently either historical, as in the English School, or
sociological, as predominantly in France (Badie and Smouts 1992; Bayart 2004).
Albeit more so in Europe than in the US, social theorists like Michael Foucault,
Jürgen Habermas and Pierre Bourdieu have become increasingly important to IR
(Adler 2013). The IR debate on the opportunities offered by dialogue within inter-
national organizations is unthinkable without Jürgen Habermas’s theory of com-
municative action (Risse 2000; Habermas 1984). Similarly, security studies would
not be the same without the approach inspired by Michel Foucault and Pierre
Bourdieu (Bigo 2011). While constructivism in IR does not draw directly from any
of these major figures, its forefathers are eminent sociologists like Alfred Schütz,
Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann. Behind them is, of course, Weber’s ‘under-
standing sociology’ [verstehende Soziologie]. In reality, not only constructivists in
sociology are in debt to Weber, but so are Foucault, Bourdieu and Habermas, albeit
in different ways (on Bourdieu, see Galindo and Sabido 2015). If such is the case,
we could do worse than go back to the source.

© 2017 Department of Politics and International Studies

1442 Álvaro Morcillo Laiz and Klaus Schlichte

The increasing use of social and other theories generated outside IR has
brought the gradual abandonment of IR-specific theories and paradigms. As a
broader trend, this should be welcome, but we think that the application of the-
ories developed with a clearly defined purpose, like microeconomics, to a wide
range of problems obviates important aspects of what we study, at least in some
cases. Conversely, the attempt to alter extant theories taken from other disciplines
in order to devise specific theories to study IR threatens to isolate the subfield from
the rest of the political and the social sciences. By contrast, we argue that Webe-
rian thought constitutes a particularly valuable alternative, which may also help
to mitigate the isolation of IR. It was devised for the social sciences as a whole,
with the goal of illuminating all kinds of social phenomena, economic and non-
economic, rational and irrational. The scope of Weber’s thought encompasses
questions, problems and social relations that are of great interest to IR scholars and
that Weber simply considered a specific set of social phenomena. From Weber’s
perspective, most of what IR scholars study is simply a consequence of the expan-
sion of modern capitalism, ‘the most fateful power of our modern life’ (Weber
1930, 17), rather than something separated from intra-state politics or from the
economy. In brief, we leave aside the attempts to apply one theory to all types of
phenomena as well as to devise a specific one for IR. Instead, we resort to Weber’s
comprehensive approach to social sciences.
Weber’s strategy for conducting social enquiry was not to construct ‘theory’,
a term of which he was weary. Weber was sceptical about the possibility of cre-
ating a comprehensive theory that could explain all facets of social life. His more
‘modest’ attempt consisted in proposing a number of ‘ basic concepts’ that could
be used as ‘modules’ in order to clarify specific empirical-historical problems like
the rise of modern capitalism and its different components: the modern state, the
life conduct of the ‘professional human beings’ [Berufsmensch], and rational law.
The method he used—to build ideal-typical concepts out of an intense examina-
tion of historical-empirical material—is unfamiliar to us, but provides one of the
arguments for using Weber in IR. He distilled his extensive knowledge of different
civilizations into concepts that could be used to study human life in a comparative
fashion, from its most ‘simple’ expression in social relations to complex modern
states. Ironically, Parson’s adaptation of Weber contributed to the decoupling of
US social science from historical knowledge, but Weber himself did not proceed
deductively, as Parsons did. Instead, he used vast amounts of mainly historical
evidence and tried to subject it to the conceptual discipline that ideal types require.
Drawing from Austrian microeconomics, Weber tried to base the social sciences
on a relational unit of analysis, ‘social action’. Subsequently, he built upon this a
typology of increasingly complex forms of social life, such as closed and open
social relation, legitimate order, statute, validity, conflict and organization. The
cumulative way Weber devised the noted ‘basic concepts’ [Grundbegriffe] in his
Economy and society explains why he has played a significant role in the debate
on the micro–macro link (Hedström and Swedberg 1998), as we discuss in our
contribution to this special issue. Some of his ‘basic concepts’ contribute to a
‘developmental history’ (Schluchter 1981), that is, to study the middle- and long-
term transformation of organizations and leadership, as in Guenther Roth’s study
of some US social movements during the 1960s (1975). However, only a few of
Weber’s concepts have made their way into IR scholarship, such as his definition
of the state, while other possibilities of dialogue between his basic concepts and
 Max Weber for IR  1443

IR theory have been discussed only more recently. Elsewhere, we have attempted
to make clear how Weber’s treatment of rationalization and bureaucratization
goes well beyond the customary version of constructivist IR theory (Morcillo and
Schlichte 2016). Put differently, from its most simple to its most complex aspects,
Weber offers an overarching interpretation of past and present social life, of which
international relations are an integral part.
Thus, the conceptual and methodological aspects of Weber’s oeuvre offer argu-
ments for employing his ideas in IR research. A further argument is his diachronic
comparisons among civilizations, which may compensate for ‘the retreat of IR
scholars into the present’, to paraphrase Norbert Elias (1987). Weber conducted
wide-ranging analysis of economic ethics for major civilizations, some of them
based on a detailed knowledge of primary sources and their languages (1986; the
poor quality of the translations into English makes their use unadvisable, but see
Weber 1951; 1952; 1958). Despite being dated, these multi-volume studies may
help us to understand the differences among ‘modernities’ outside the West.
Drawing from these five studies, Weber wrote several theoretical pieces that for
decades were an inspiration for sociologists of religion like Robert Bellah (1963;
1999) and Martin Riesebrodt (1998; 2010). By contrast, postcolonial studies have
disregarded him, despite Weber’s serious interest in non-Western civilizations.
Negative opinions in this literature ignore basic aspects of his thought (Go 2012,
36; Bhambra 2011, 6), but Parsonian modernization theory and area studies char-
acterizing Weber as a prophet of capitalism and progress (Derman 2012, chapter 6)
have not made postcolonial scholars curious about his work. Even if occasionally
these criticisms are well informed (Zimmerman 2006), particularly about Weber’s
nationalism, less so on his alleged antisemitism, Roth’s (2005a; 2005b) nuanced
portraits of Weber as a cosmopolitan seem more accurate to us. If one consid-
ers his vision of the world under the spell of modern capitalism, his historically
grounded concepts and his global, developmental history and adds to this the
significance of his work for authors increasingly influential in IR like Foucault,
Bourdieu and Habermas, we think it becomes obvious why historically and socio-
logically oriented IR scholars should delve into Weber’s oeuvre.
There is no Weberian approach to all IR problems, though. He wrote succinctly
on a number of topics related to our discipline, but he never dealt with them
thoroughly or in a systematic fashion. For instance, even if he made scattered
comments on gender in different contexts, which feminist thinkers have used
(Mitchell 2006; Bologh 1990; Hoffman 2000), feminist IR theory has not attempted
a serious dialogue with Weber (although what he said about patriarchalism may
still be informative for the field; for a critical appraisal, see Adams 2005). Fur-
thermore, a number of important IR topics are completely unrelated to Weber,
despite the breadth of his scholarship. An obvious example is the implications of
nuclear warfare for international security. Another issue is his unequal treatment
of world regions: Weber tells us very little about the rise of China, since he fore-
saw a world in which Anglo-Saxons and Russians would fight for supremacy. On
modern Africa, Weber left only a few remarks on law and anthropology that are
of little use to IR scholars.
Whilst on some IR problems nothing of substance can be said from a Webe-
rian perspective, on many others new arguments can be made. This special issue
focuses on two Weberian topics that are basic to IR, the state and international
organizations. After placing the Weber–IR link in broader perspective, our piece
1444 Álvaro Morcillo Laiz and Klaus Schlichte

emphasizes the importance of legitimacy, rather than violence, to understanding

how an organization wields domination. This, as we argue, allows one to consider
the modern state to be not so different from other supposedly rational organiza-
tions. Questions of domination and legitimacy—both epistemic and political—are
also at the centre of Philipp Lottholz’s and Nicolas Lemay-Hébert’s contribution,
although they focus on how different strands in Weber’s work have influenced
the theory and practice of international state-building. The two remaining articles
deal with international organizations; these were theorized by Weber’s contem-
poraries, but, as Jens Steffek shows, these thinkers held some illusions about the
promise of bureaucracies as instruments to solve, rather than create, problems.
One of the reasons why a sceptical view is in order lies in the membership of the
administrative cadre. Employees of international organizations stick to their own
agendas. Stephen Hensell argues that officials employed by international organi-
zations live a differentiated life and benefit from their relative autonomy in terms
of promotion, rewards and credentials, as shown in his case study of the European
Union. Differentiated life conduct and relative autonomy isolate the international
staff, which in some cases explains why international organizations feel account-
able to external actors, rather than to locals, which brings us back to the problem
of legitimacy.
The reasons why Weber has received limited attention from IR scholars, and
why this should change, are multifarious. Here we make an impressionistic sum-
mary of Weber’s presence in IR, and then go on to criticize how the concept of the
state has been understood. We begin by placing Weber’s famous definition of the
state as holder of the monopoly of violence within the broader frame of the ‘basic
concepts’. Then, we show that Weber’s understanding of the state, even if linked
to the characteristic monopoly of violence, can only be fully understood if the
legitimacy of the leaders and the cadre of the organization receive due consider-
ation. To pay more attention to Weber’s concept of organization also throws new
light on the worldwide process of rationalization, which is our second main point.
Conventional approaches advanced by sociological institutionalists disregard that
organizations, whether scientific, altruistic or professional, establish relations of
domination between their leader and their members, and frequently third parties
too. Because of this failure to reckon with this core trait of any organization John
W. Meyer and his collaborators (Meyer et al. 1997; Meyer 2010), for example, tend
to overlook the role of domination in organizational diffusion and isomorphism.
In reality, trans-border international domination is ubiquitous, just like political
conflict and resistance.
Along similar lines, Philipp Lottholz and Nicolas Lemay-Hébert argue that the
reception of Max Weber’s work in IR and social science generally is distorted and
does injustice to the wealth of conceptual insight he offers to a sociological and
post-positivist IR. They show how this ‘exegetical bias’—most evident in the work
of Talcott Parsons—is at the heart of neo-Weberians’ narrow conceptualization of
the state. Their understanding could be summarized as the monopoly of violence
‘capacity’ combined with ‘legal-rational institutions’, and accompanied by a con-
ception of legitimacy tantamount to a population’s acquiescence to coercive prac-
tices. Moving beyond the critique of neo-Weberian institutionalist state-building
practice, our authors propose a relational understanding of the state, in which the
distinction between state and society is not so clear-cut. In practice, they suggest,
this re-focusing on the subjects of peace in post-conflict and developing countries
 Max Weber for IR  1445

in the global South would necessitate serious engagement with the traditional
and charismatic ideal types of legitimacy developed by Weber—a call that some
organizations, such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Develop-
ment, already seem to follow.
The earliest proposals for an international organization can be examined from
a Weberian perspective. In his ‘Max Weber, modernity and the project of inter-
national organization’, Jens Steffek reads the writings of functionalist IR authors
like Paul Reinsch, James Salter and David Mitrany as proposals for ‘societal and
political modernization’ by means of establishing rational bureaucracies. The
superiority of transnational public administration would derive from formal law,
bureaucratic organizations and scientific knowledge. While all three authors,
Weber’s contemporaries, share a modernist faith in bureaucracies as a solution
for ‘the asynchrony of progress between domestic societies and international soci-
ety’, their proposals differ in significant respects: coordination of national admin-
istrations (Reisch), trans-governmental links among national ministries (Salter)
or supranational bureaucratic organizations (Mitrany). Accordingly, Mitrany
assumed more dire consequences for national sovereignty than the first two. The
other possibility, that sovereign nation-states would identify shared problems and
agree upon solutions for them, has proved illusory, as foreseen in Weber’s empha-
sis on conflicting values.
Weber’s lasting contributions to the study of bureaucracies explain his—
limited—presence in the literature on international organizations. However,
Stephan Hensell claims that crucial Weberian insights have remained ignored,
among them ‘sociological’ elements in Weber’s description of a bureaucracy and
its tendencies, in particular the characterization of bureaucrats as members of a
status group. While subject to organizational discipline, officials employed within
a bureaucracy live a separate, distinctive life and expect third parties to behave
with respect for their special status, a claim that civil servants frequently base on
the prestige of their educational credentials. Put another way, Weber zooms into
bureaucracies and their employees in order to argue that not only do adminis-
trative cadres possess certain characteristics, but their members also do. Draw-
ing from this claim, Hensell offers an improved understanding of the conflicts
surrounding recruitment, promotion, and career advancement in an international
organization like the European Commission. Through Weber’s lenses, interna-
tional organizations and their staff become actors of their own, rather than mere
agents of nation-states.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor
Álvaro Morcillo Laiz is assistant professor of international relations at the Center
for Teaching and Research in Economics (CIDE) in Mexico City. He obtained his
PhD at the Humboldt University of Berlin (2007). His research interests are Euro-
pean politics and integration as well as the international diffusion of European
social thought, in particular Max Weber’s ideas, in the US and Latin America.
1446 Álvaro Morcillo Laiz and Klaus Schlichte

Klaus Schlichte is professor of international relations at the University of Bremen.

His main research interest is global political sociology and he has conducted re-
search in Senegal, Mali, Serbia, France and Uganda. Klaus Schlichte is the author
of In the shadow of violence: the politics of armed groups (Campus, 2009) and
the editor of The dynamics of states: the formation and crises of state domination
(Ashgate, 2005).

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