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‘Toward the Iron Cage of Future Serfdom’? On the Methodological Status of Max Weber's Ideal-Typical Concept of Bureaucratization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2009

Wolfgang J. Mommsen
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Extract

The terms bureaucracy and bureaucratization are altogether loaded with emotional connotations. In order to get beyond this and to reach an understanding of what is actually meant when we talk of bureaucracy and bureaucratization it is worth while turning to Max Weber. Weber was among the first sociologists to discuss systematically the consequences of bureaucratization for Western societies. He developed an ideal-typical theory bureaucratization which has been extremely influential far beyond the confines of sociology as such. Undoubtedly it is of major interest to historians as well, for though systematic in its intent, it draws on a wide range of historical cases; furthermore, it was intended to throw light on significant historical developments, in particular the processes nowadays associated with the concept of modernization. Indeed, Günther Roth pointed out recently with good reason that Max Weber's retreat from history was in fact strategic rather than fundamental; his ideal-typical systematizations were meant to serve as tools and guidelines for empirical historical research just as much as for sociological analysis. ‘Socio-historical models (such as bureaucracy, patrimonialism, feudalism or the charismatic community) are useful to us in so far as they organize historical knowledge in a specifically sociological way, that is, in the form of generalizations that emphasize the general and repetitive side of history without assuming the existence of laws in any strict sense.’ Moreover, in Weber's methodology ideal types are then used in a genuine historical manner.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 30 , December 1980 , pp. 157 - 181
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1980

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References

1 On this issue see, for instance, Miller, S., ‘Bureaucracy Baiting’, The American Scholar, 47 (1977), 205–22.Google Scholar

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3 Ibid., p. 126.

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5 See Weber, Max, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie [hereafter RS, I], I (Tübingen, 1920), p. 204.Google Scholar

6 A more detailed exposition of this central theme of Weber is to be found in Mommsen, W. J., The Age of Bureaucracy. Perspectives on the Political Sociology of Max Weber (Oxford, 1974), p. 56Google Scholar. See also Mommsen, W. J., Max Weber. Gesellschaft, Politik und Geschichte (Frankfurt, 1974), p. 97Google Scholar, and Wilson, H. T., ‘Reading Max Weber: The Limits of Sociology’, Sociology, 10 (1976), 308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 For a more detailed assessment of these attitudes, see Mommsen, W. J., Max Weber und die deutsche Politik (Tübingen, 1974), pp. 115–16.Google Scholar

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9 It is impossible to give here a full account of the extensive scholarly debate on these issues. For a survey of it, see Mommsen, W. J., ‘“Verstehen” und “Ideal typus”Google Scholar. Zur Methodologie einer historischen Sozialwissenschaft’, Max Weber. Gesellschaft, Politik und Geschichte, pp. 208–32Google Scholar. See also Burger, T., Max Weber's Theory of Concept Formation. History, Laws, and Ideal-Types (Durham, North Carolina, 1976)Google Scholar, and Runciman, W. G., A Critique of Max Weber's Philosophy of Social Science (Cambridge, 1972).Google Scholar

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32 On the difficult issue of the history of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, and in particular the various versions of the theory of the ‘Three Pure Types of Legitimate Rule’, see Mommsen, , The Age of Bureaucracy, p. 16, n. 22Google Scholar, and recently Roth, G., ‘Abschied oder Wiedersehn?’Google Scholar, review of the fifth edition of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft by Winckelman, J.Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 2 (1979), 318–26.Google Scholar

33 Gesammelte Politische Schriften, ed. Winckelman, J. (Tübingen, 1971)Google Scholar [hereafter PS], p. 118Google Scholar (author's translation).

34 Ibid., p. 333.

35 Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Soziologie und Sozialpolitik (Tübingen, 1924), p. 414Google Scholar (author's translation).

36 A more elaborate discussion of this point is in Mommsen, , Max Weber und die deutsche Politik, p. 118.Google Scholar

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44 WL, p. 214Google Scholar (author's translation). See Shils, and Fince, , Methodology, p. 112.Google Scholar