GOVT 1001

MAX WEBER AND BUREAUCRACY

Dr. Bishnu Ragoonath

Semester II 2018/2019
 TOPIC OBJECTIVE
Authority and Leadership
Bureaucratic Theory
Dictatorship of the Official
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
MAX WEBER (1864-1920)
I. Max Weber (1864-1920)

• German scholar of Catholic interests.

• Held professorships in Economics, Law and
Political Science.
• Possessed extensive knowledge of History,
Anthropology and Sociology
• Most significant contribution to Public
Administration is his analysis of the social and
historical context of Administration and Bureaucracy
in particular.
• Author of, inter alia, the Protestant Ethic and the
Spirit of Capitalism (1905).
DIFFERENT FORMS OF LEADERSHIP
 I. DOMINATION BASED ON AUTHORITY
 Domination is a subset of power, which he defines as the possibility of
imposing one’s will on the behaviour of other persons, despite their
resistance.

 It is distinguished from other exercises of power on the basis of the

perceived legitimacy of its exercise.

 In systems of domination based on authority (typically found in

legal/bureaucratic relationships), obedience is dependent on the
perception of legitimacy.
 WEBER’S PURE TYPES OF AUTHORITY
 Weber asserts that there are three sources of legitimacy for domination
based on authority:
1. Charisma
2. Tradition
3. Legality.

 These pure/ideal types are rarely found in reality.

 The bases of legitimacy usually occur in mixtures in their historical

manifestations.
 Charismatic Authority/Leaders
 Charisma=gift of grace
 Self-appointed leaders whose authority hails from the personal
qualities of the leader.
 People submit because of their belief in the leader’s magical powers,
revelations, or heroism.
 Appears only briefly in contrast to the relatively more enduring
structures of traditional and legal authority.
 Does not embrace permanent institutions like bureaucratic
departments.
 Examples: Prophets, Military/Political leaders.
 Advantages of Charismatic Authority
 Force for revolutionary change; makes a sovereign break with all
tradition or rational norms.
 Not bound by any intellectual analyzable rule.
 Leader’s authority is constrained only by his/her personal judgment;
s/he is not governed by any formal method of adjudication.
 Disadvantages of Charismatic Authority
 Relationship between leader and follower is usually unstable.
 Leaders must constantly prove themselves through victories and successes.
 Administration is loose and unstable.
 Disciples do not have regular occupations.
 No procedure for appointment, dismissal, promotion.
 No career tracks, advancement, salary, or regulated and expert training.
 No continuing hierarchical assignment of tasks, since the leader can intervene
in the performance of any task.
 No mechanisms to protect against arbitrary exercises of power
 No system of formal rules to ensure equal treatment and due process.
 Problems of succession
 Traditional Authority/Leaders
 Based on respect for the eternal past, belief in rightness and
appropriateness of tradition/custom.
 Piety for what actually, allegedly, or presumably has always existed.
 Rulers enjoy personal authority and followers are subjects.
 Routine governs conduct.
 Example: Patriarchal Societies
 Advantages of Traditional Authority
• Simplicity
• Consistency
 Disadvantages of Traditional Authority
• Particularism
• Tasks and powers are commissioned and granted by a leader through
arbitrary decisions.
• Administration tends to be irrational because the development of
rational regulations is impeded.
• Likely absence of staff with formal, technical training;
• Wide scope for the indulgence of personal whims.
• A person, not an order, is obeyed; leader claims the performance of
unspecified obligations and services as his personal right.
• Justice is a mixture of constraints and personal discretion
 Legal-Rational Authority
 May develop through the routinisation of charisma or breakdown of the
privileges of traditional authority.
 Recognition of authority is treated as a source of legitimacy rather than
a consequence of authority.
 Legitimacy is based on a belief in reason.
 Laws are obeyed because they have been enacted by proper procedures.
 The organization of the administrative staff is bureaucratic in form.
 Typically found in Bureaucratic Organisations
 Advantages of Legal-Rational Authority
 Leaders act in accordance with their duties as established by a code of
rules and regulations.
 Submission to authority is based on an impersonal bond to a generally
defined “duty of office”.
 Official duty is fixed by rationally established norms.
 Obedience constitutes deference to an impersonal order, not an
individual.
 The giving of a command represents obedience to an organisatonal
norm rather than the arbitrary act of the person giving the order.
 Disadvantages of Legal-Rational Authority
 Disadvantages of Bureaucratic Organisations (slide 25)
 WHAT IS THE BUREAUCRACY?

Video Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKIE3IUkkp8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIYfiRyPi3o
 II. WHAT IS BUREAUCRACY?
 Government Bureaucracies (members of the executive branch below the top
executive (president/monarch, prime minister, cabinet) are charged with
implementing government policy.
 Regarded as the administrative machinery of the State, these agencies
comprise civil servants and public officials.
WEBER’S BUREAUCRATIC THEORY
 III. WEBER’S BUREAUCRATIC THEORY
 Weber contributed one of the most famous descriptions and analysis of
the characteristics of bureaucratic organizations.
 He saw Bureaucracy as an ideal form of domination based on legal
authority, as opposed to tradition or charisma, and considered it to be
the most rational and efficient form of organization ever devised.
 Bureaucracy is the product of the intensive and qualitative enlargement
of administrative tasks.
 Bureaucracy is a power instrument for the one who controls the
bureaucratic apparatus.
 Characteristics of Bureaucratic Organizations
 Administration is executed on a continuous basis, not at the leader’s pleasure.
 Division of labour and work specialisation.
 Well-defined hierarchy and chain of command.
 Rules and regulations provide the standard operating procedures that facilitate
consistency in organisational and management practices.
 Formal selection of personnel based on meritocratic criteria.
 Administrators do not own the means of administration.
 Administration is based on written documents.
 Control is based on impersonally applied rational rules.
 Creates permanent authority relationships.
 Exist only in modern states and the most advanced institutions of capitalism.
 Position of the Official
 Officials are appointed by a superior authority (not elected) on the basis of a
contract and professional qualifications.
 A career structure exists where special examinations are prerequisites for
employment and promotion is based on merit.
 Officials enjoy security of tenure, have fixed salaries, pension rights, and their
posts are their sole/major occupation.
 The official is entrusted with specialized tasks.
 The official is subject to a unified control and disciplinary system in which the
means of compulsion and its exercise are clearly defined.
 The official cannot appropriate the office.
• Legal/life tenure is not recognized as the official’s right to the possession of
office.
 Position of the Ruled
 The ruled cannot dispense with or replace the bureaucratic apparatus of
authority once it exists as it rests upon expert training, a functional specialization
of work, and an attitude set for habitual and virtuoso-like mastery of single yet
methodically integrated functions.
 Advantages of Bureaucracy
1. Precision, speed, unambiguity, knowledge of files, continuity, discretion,
unity, strict subordination, reduction of friction and of material and
personal costs.
2. For complicated tasks, paid bureaucratic work is more precise and often
cheaper than even formally unremunerated honorific service.
3. Specialised administrative functions according to purely objective
considerations.
4. Offers elements of calculability and depersonalization.
 Disadvantages of Bureaucracy
1. Weber acknowledged that it subjects individuals to an oppressive routine,
limits individual freedom, renders the individual incapable of
understanding his/her own activities in relation to the organisation, and
favours the “crippled personality” of the specialist.
2. Lashi argues that it is characterized by a passion for routine in
administration, the sacrifice of flexibility to rule, delay in the making of
decisions and a refusal to embark upon experiments.
3. Bureaucrats exercise tremendous discretionary power which may endanger
citizen rights and liberties (Lord Hewart).
4. Merton argued that it is characterized by rigidity, over-emphasis on rules
and regulations rather than goals and objectives, lack of public relations
and class consciousness on the part of bureaucrats.
 Disadvantages of Bureaucracy
5. Its structural and procedural complexity may permit, if not encourage,
evasions of individual responsibility.
6. The aggrandizement of bureaucracy can subvert the rule of law, as the
bureaucracy, which cannot be inspected and controlled, becomes a law
unto itself.
7. Weber contends that permanent officials are more likely to get their
way than their elected, politically appointed superior, who is not likely to
be a specialist and thus may be at the mercy of their expert subordinate.
-knowledge becomes an instrument of political power, and secrecy
protects the bureaucrats monopoly on information.
DICTATORSHIP OF THE OFFICIAL
Weber distinguished on Socialism
 Weber and Marx on Socialism
 The concept of rational bureaucracy is played off against the Marxist concept of class struggle.
 Weber does not deny class struggles and their part in history, but he does not see them as the
central dynamic. Instead, he emphasizes the forces of rationalization and their organisational
counterpart, bureaucracy.
 Weber differs from Marx in believing that class divisions can be overcome within the capitalist
system and that workers and entrepreneurs have a common interest in the rationalization of
industry.
 Weber does not deny the possibility of a socialization of the means of production. He merely
disputes any hope of ‘socialism for our time’.
 Weber does not see anything attractive in socialism as socialization of the means of production
would merely subject an as yet relatively autonomous economic life to the bureaucratic
management of the state.
 The State would become total, and Weber, hating bureaucracy as a shackle upon individual
liberty, felt that socialism would thus lead to serfdom.
 ‘For the time being’, he wrote, ‘the dictatorship of the official and not that of the worker is on the
march’.
 IV. DICTATORSHIP OF THE OFFICIAL
• Weber’s emphasis on political leadership was prompted largely by his aversion to
bureaucratic domination.
• He argues that bureaucrats will develop interests of their own and start to shape policy,
increasing the danger that the rule of law will be undermined, in the absence of effective
political leadership.
• Thus, there is the danger of bureaucracy resulting in oligarchy/rule of the few officials at
the top of the organisation.
• Once in power, bureaucracy is difficult to dislodge because few among the governed can
master the tasks performed by the bureaucracy.
• Socialism will make autonomous economic action subject to the bureaucratic
management of the state.
• Economic transactions accomplished by political manipulation will replace the rationality
and individualism of a capitalist economy.
• He believes that a system of bureaucratic rule is inevitable, but socialism will accelerate
the process of bureaucratization and thus lead to serfdom.
THE PROTESTANT ETHIC AND THE
SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM

Video Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-0sIHDzsU4
 IV. THE PROTESTANT ETHIC AND
THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM
 For Weber, the source of the ethic of modern capitalism is Protestantism.
 The Reformation led to the creation of a new form of control in which a
religiously based secular ethic and a worldly asceticism replaced the
otherworldly asceticism of Catholicism and its indifference towards the
rewards of this life.
 The Protestant Ethic encouraged men to apply themselves rationally to their
work.
 It provided religious sanctions that fostered a spirit of rigorous discipline,
encouraging men to apply themselves rationally to acquire wealth.
 V. WEBER AND MARX ON CAPITALISM
WEBER MARX
1. Capitalism represents the highest stage of 1. The Modern economy is irrational.
rationality in economic behaviour
--an economic system based on a systematic
and deliberate adjustment of economic means
to attain pecuniary profit
 
2. Conditions under Modern Capitalism: 2. The irrationality of capitalism is the result
--Private ownership of the means of of:
production --A contradiction between the rational
--Formally free labour technological advances of the productive
--Limited government, which allows the forces and the fetters of private property,
market to operate relatively freely private profit, and unmanaged market
--System of finances, particularly a money competition
economy
END OF LECTURE