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Critical Remarks on Weber's Theory of Authority*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Peter M. Blau
Peter M. Blau*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Extract

Max Weber has often been criticized for advocating a wertfrei, ethically neutral approach in the social sciences and for thereby denying to man, in the words of Leo Strauss, “any science, empirical or rational, any knowledge, scientific or philosophic, of the true value system.” On the other hand, Carl Friedrich points out that Weber's “ideal-type analysis led him to introduce value judgments into his discussion of such issues as bureaucracy.” There is some justification for both these criticisms. Indeed, a characteristic of Weber's work is that it can be and has been subjected to opposite criticisms, not only in this respect but also in others. Historians object to his disregard for the specific historical conditions under which the social phenomena he analyzes have taken place, which sometimes leads him to combine historical events that occurred centuries apart into a conception of a social system. Sociologists, in contrast, accuse him of being preoccupied with interpreting unique historical constellations, such as Western capitalism, instead of studying recurrent social phenomena which make it possible to develop testable generalizations about social structures. His methodology is attacked as being neo-Kantian, but his concept of Verstehen is decried as implying an intuitionist method. While his theories are most frequently cited in contradistinction to those of Marx, they have also been described as basically similar to Marx's.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 57 , Issue 2 , June 1963 , pp. 305 - 316
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1963

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Footnotes

*

A paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D. C., September 1962.

References

1 Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (University of Chicago Press 1953), p. 41Google Scholar; see also pp. 35-80.

2 Friedrich, Carl J., “Some Observations on Weber's Analysis of Bureaucracy,” in Merton, R. K.et al. (eds.), Reader in Bureaucracy (Glencoe, 1952), p. 31.Google Scholar

3 Notably in his conceptions of religious systems; see Weber, Max, Gesammelte Aufsaetze zur Religionssoziologie, 3 vols. (Tuebingen, J. C. B. Mohr, 1920-1921)Google Scholar.

4 Strauss, op cit., pp. 76-78.

5 See Loewith, Karl, “Max Weber und Karl Marx,” Archiv fuer Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, vol. 67 (1932), pp. 53-99, 175–214Google Scholar.

6 See his criticism of functionalism in Weber, Max, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York, Oxford University Press, 1947), pp. 101-09Google Scholar.

7 Bendix, Reinhard, Max Weber (Garden City, Anchor-Doubleday, 1962), pp. 387-88, 490-94Google Scholar.

8 Bendix focuses upon the non-linear and dialectical elements in Weber's theory of social change (op. cit., pp. 325-28), whereas Talcott Parsons focuses on Weber's emphasis on progressive rationalization, The Social System (Glencoe, 1951), pp. 500-02Google Scholar, and Parsons, Talcott and Smelser, Neil, Economy and Society (Glencoe, 1956), pp. 291-93Google Scholar.

9 Weber presents slightly different definitions of power (Macht) in two parts of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 2 vols. (Tuebingen, J. C. B. Mohr, 1925)Google Scholar, which are translated, respectively, in The Theory. … p. 152, and in Max Weber on Law in Economy and Society (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1954), p. 323Google Scholar.

10 The term Herrschaft (domination, translated by Parsons as imperative control) is apparently intended by Weber as a subcategory of power and as a more general concept than authority, but he does not use the term consistently, sometimes including under it the power that rests on constellations of interest, and sometimes confining it to the power of command that rests on the duty to obey; see Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, pp. 603-12, translated in Max Weber on Law …, ch. xii.

11 This criticism is the basis of Amitai Etzioni's typology of power in A Comparative Analysis of Complex Organizations (New York, Free Press, 1961), pp. 4–19, esp. p. 14Google Scholar.

12 Weber, , The Theory …, p. 324.Google Scholar

13 Simon, Herbert A., Administrative Behavior (New York, 1952), pp. 126-27Google Scholar.

14 Max Weber on Law …, p. 328.

15 Ibid., pp. 325-27.

16 The Theory …, p. 325.

17 Even as sympathetic an interpreter as Bendix notes that Weber takes the existence of traditional and legal authority as given; see op. cit., pp. 386-87. While Bendix adds that Weber traces how legal authority develops from the other two types, even in this case Weber's concern is not with the development of legitimate authority out of other forms of power.

18 As noted by Lazarsfeld, Paul F., “A Duality in Max Weber's Writings on Social Action,” paper delivered at the meetings of the American Sociological Society, Detroit, 1956.Google Scholar

19 The Theory …, p. 131.

20 The term “dynamic” is used in the specific sense of “producing social change.”

21 Bendix, op. cit., p. 369.

22 Ibid., p. 361; see pp. 329-81 for an excellent summary of the contrast between patrimonialism and feudalism, which is based on discussions of Weber that are dispersed in different parts of his writings.

23 See Dilthey, Wilhelm, Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften (Leipzig, Duncker & Hum-bolt, 1883)Google Scholar; Windelband, Wilhelm, “Geschichte und Naturwissenschaft,” lecture given in Strassburg, 1894, published in his Praeludien (Tuebingen, J. C. B. Mohr, 1907)Google Scholar; and Rickert, Heinrich, Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung (Tuebingen, J. C. B. Mohr), 1902Google Scholar.

24 The Theory …, p. 111.

25 von Schelting, Alexander, Max Weber's Wissenschaftslehre (Tuebingen, J. C. B. Mohr), 1934Google Scholar.

26 Parsons, Talcott, The Structure of Social Action (New York, 1937), pp. 606-09Google Scholar; and his comments in the introduction to Weber, , The Theory …, pp. 13 and 75Google Scholar.

27 Friedrich, op. cit., pp. 27-33.

28 Bendix, op cit., p. 275.

29 Parsons, op cit., pp. 58-60 (footnote 4), and Gouldner, Alvin W., Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy (Glencoe, 1954), p. 22Google Scholar.

30 The closely related concept of joint liability is used by Max Weber in his discussion of the Jews' relation to God, which is translated in Ancient Judaism (Glencoe, 1952), pp. 215-16Google Scholar, and to which my attention was called by Bendix, op. cit., pp. 230-41.

31 See Friedrich's discussion of authority as resting on the “potentiality of reasoned elaboration” of a communication in terms of existing beliefs and values, on the one hand, and as related to the exercise of discretionary power, on the other, in Friedrich, Carl J., ed., Authority (Nomos I), Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958, pp. 28–48Google Scholar.

32 The Theory …, p. 154 (italics in original).

33 This conceptualization was suggested by, although it differs from, the classification of organizations in terms of incentives in Clark, Peter B. and Wilson, James Q., “Incentive Systems.” Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 6 (1961), pp. 129-66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 See The Theory …, pp. 126-32.

36 Ibid, p. 310: “This legality … may derive from a voluntary agreement of the interested parties on the relevant terms. On the other hand, it may be imposed on the basis of what is held to be a legitimate authority.” A circular argument is involved in defining the legal order here as possibly resting on accepted authority and then using the existence of such an accepted order to account for the legitimacy of the legal authority.

38 Ibid, p. 337.

37 Friedrich, op. cit., p. 31.

38 From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York, Oxford University Press, 1946), pp. 224-28.Google Scholar

39 Ibid., p. 231.

40 Ibid., pp. 232-35.

41 Bendix, op. cit., p. 439.

42 See Weber, Max, Gesammelte, Politische Schriften (Muenchen, Drei Masken, 1921), pp. 182-83, 201-11Google Scholar, summarized in Bendix, op cit., pp. 446-47.

43 See the typology developed in Thompson, James D. and Tuden, Arthur, “Strategies, Structures, and Processes of Organizational Decision,” in Thompson, et al. (eds.), Comparative Studies in Administration (Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1959), pp. 195–216Google Scholar.

44 Michels, Robert, Political Parties (Glencoe, 1949)Google Scholar; for a case study of an exception to the tendencies Michels describes, see Lipset, Seymour M.et al., Union Democracy (Glencoe, 1956)Google Scholar.