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Somayya · #2 Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Authority

Weber's discussion of authority relations also provides insight into what is happening in the modern world. On what basis do men and women claim authority over others? Why do men and women give obedience to authority figures? Again, he uses the ideal type to begin to address these questions. Weber distinguished three main types of authority:

1. Traditional Authority

2. Rational-legal Authority

3. Charismatic

Rational legal authority is anchored in impersonal rules that have been legally established. This type of authority (which parallels the growth of zweck-rational) has come to characterize social relations in modern societies. Traditional authority often dominates pre-modern societies. It is based on the belief in the sanctity of tradition, of "the eternal yesterday”. Because of the shift in human motivation, it is often difficult for modern students to conceive of the hold that tradition has in pre-modern societies. Unlike rational-legal authority, traditional authority is not codified in impersonal rules but is usually invested in a hereditary line or invested in a particular office by a higher power. Finally, charismatic authority rests on the appeal of leaders who claim allegiance because of the force of their extraordinary personalities.

Again, it should be kept in mind that Weber is describing an ideal type; he was aware that in empirical reality mixtures will be found in the legitimization of authority). The appeal of Jesus Christ, for example, one of the most important charismatics in history, was partly based on tradition as well.

Causality

Weber firmly believed in the multi-causality of social phenomenon. He expressed this causality in terms of probabilities. Weber's notion of probability derives from his recognition of the system character of human societies and therefore the impossibility of making exhaustive predictions. Prediction becomes possible, Weber believed, only within a system of theory that focus our concern on a few social forces out of the wealth of forces and their interactions that make up empirical reality. Within such constraints, causal certainty in social research is not attainable. The best that can be done is to focus our theories on the most important relationships between social forces, and to forecast from that theory in terms of probabilities.

In this connection, it is often said that Weber was in a running dialogue with the ghost of Karl Marx. But contrary to many interpretations, Weber was not attempting to refute Marx; he was very respectful of Marx's contributions to understanding human societies. But he did disagree with Marx's assertion of the absolute primacy of material conditions in determining human behavior). Weber's system invokes both ideas and material factors as interactive components in the socio-cultural evolutionary process. "He was most respectful of Marx's contributions, yet believed, in tune with his own methodology, that that Marx had unduly emphasized one particular causal chain, the one leading from the economic infrastructure to the cultural superstructure”. This, Weber believed, could not adequately take into account the complex web of causation linking social structures and ideas.

Weber attempted to show that the relations between ideas and social structures were multiple and varied, and that causal connections went in both directions. While Weber basically agreed with Marx that economic factors were key in understanding the social system, he gave much greater emphasis to the influence and interaction of ideas and values on socio=cultural evolution .

Gerth and Mills (1946) summarize Weber's posited relationship between material conditions and ideas in the following passage:

There is no pre-established correspondence between the content of an idea and the interests of those who follow from the first hour. But, in time, ideas are discredited in the face of history unless they point in the direction of conduct that various interests promote. Ideas, selected and reinterpreted from the original doctrine, do gain an affinity with the interests of certain members of special strata; if they do not gain such an affinity, they are abandoned.

It is in this light that the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism must be read.

The Protestant Ethic

Weber's concern with the meaning that people give to their actions allowed him to understand the drift of historical change. He believed that rational action within a system of rational-legal authority is at the heart of modern society. His sociology was first and foremost an attempt to explore and explain this shift from traditional to rational action. What was it about the West, he asks, that is causing this shift? In an effort to understand these causes, Weber examined the religious and economic systems of many civilizations.

Weber came to believe that the rationalization of action can only be realized when traditional ways of life are abandoned. Because of its erosion, modern people may have a difficult time realizing the hold of tradition over pre-industrial peoples. Weber's task was to uncover the forces in the West that caused people to abandon their traditional religious value orientation and encouraged them to develop a desire for acquiring goods and wealth. After careful study, Weber came to the hypothesis that the protestant ethic broke the hold of tradition while it encouraged men to apply themselves rationally to their work. Calvinism, he found, had developed a set of beliefs around the concept of predestination. It was believed by followers of Calvin that one could not do good works or perform acts of faith to assure your place in heaven. You were either among the "elect" or you were not. However, wealth was taken as a sign that you were one of the God's elect, thereby providing encouragement for people to acquire wealth. The protestant ethic therefore provided religious sanctions that fostered a spirit of rigorous discipline, encouraging men to apply themselves rationally to acquire wealth.

Weber studied non-Western cultures as well. He found that several of these pre-industrial societies had the technological infrastructure and other necessary preconditions to begin capitalism and economic expansion, however, capitalism failed to emerge. The only force missing were the positive sanctions to abandon traditional ways. "By such a comparative analysis of causal sequences, Weber tried to find not only the necessary but the sufficient conditions of capitalism". While Weber does not believe that the protestant ethic was the only cause of the rise of capitalism, he believed it to be a powerful force in fostering its emergence.

Oligarchy

Weber noted the dysfunctions of bureaucracy in terms of the impact that it had on individuals. Its major advantage, efficiency in attaining goals, makes it unwieldy in dealing with individual cases. The impersonality, so important in attaining efficiency of the organization, is dehumanizing. But the concern over bureaucracy's threat to the members of a particular organization has served to overshadow its effects on the larger society. Weber was very concerned about the impact that rationalization and bureaucratization had on socio-cultural systems.

By its very nature bureaucracy generates an enormous degree of unregulated and often unperceived social power. Because of bureaucracy's superiority over other forms of organization, they have proliferated and now dominate modern societies. Those who control these organizations, Weber warned, control the quality of our life, and they are largely self-appointed leaders.

Bureaucracy tends to result in oligarchy, or rule by the few officials at the top of the organization. In a society dominated by large formal organizations, there is a danger that social, political and economic power will become concentrated in the hands of the few who hold high positions in the most influential of these organizations.

The issue was first raised by Weber, but it was more fully explored by Robert Michels a sociologist and friend of Weber's. Michels (1915) was a socialist and was disturbed to find that the socialist parties of Europe, despite their democratic ideology and provisions for mass participation, seemed to be dominated by their leaders, just as the traditional conservative parties. He came to the conclusion that the problem lay in the very nature of organizations. He formulated the 'Iron Law of Oligarchy': "Who says organization, says oligarchy."

According to the "iron law" democracy and large scale organization are incompatible. Any large organization, Michels pointed out, is faced with problems of coordination that can be solved only by creating a bureaucracy. A bureaucracy, by design, is hierarchically organized to achieve efficiency--many decisions that have to be made every day cannot be made by large numbers of people in an efficient manner. The effective functioning of an organization therefore requires the concentration of much power in the hands of a few people.

The organizational characteristics that promote oligarchy are reinforced by certain characteristics of both leaders and members of organizations. People achieve leadership positions precisely because they have unusual political skill; they are adept at getting their way and persuading others of the correctness of their views. Once they hold high office, their power and prestige is further increased. Leaders have access and control over information and facilities that are not available to the rank-and-file. They control the information that flows down the channels of communication. Leaders are also strongly motivated to persuade the organization of the rightness of their views, and they use all of their skills, power and authority to do so.

By design of the organization, rank and file is less informed than their "superiors." Finally, from birth, we are taught to obey those in positions of authority. Therefore, the rank and file tends to look to the leaders for policy directives and is generally prepared to allow leaders to exercise their judgment on most matters.

Leaders also have control over very powerful negative and positive sanctions to promote the behavior that they desire. They have the power to grant or deny raises, assign workloads, fire, demote and that most gratifying of all sanctions, the power to promote. Most important, they tend to promote junior officials who share their opinions, with the result that the oligarchy becomes a self-perpetuating one. Therefore, the very nature of large scale organization makes oligarchy within these organizations inevitable. Bureaucracy, by design, promotes the centralization of power in the hands of those at the top of the organization.

Societal Oligarchy

While it is easy to see oligarchy within formal organizations, Weber's views on the inevitability of oligarchy within whole societies are a little more subtle. The social structure of modern society has become dominated by bureaucracy. Bureaucracies are necessary to provide the coordination and control so desperately needed by our complex society (and huge populations). But while modern societies are dependent on formal organization, bureaucracy tends to undermine both human freedom and democracy in the long-run. While government departments are theoretically responsible to the electorate, this responsibility is almost entirely fictional. It often happens, in fact, that the electorate (and even the congress) does not even know what these bureaucracies are doing. Government departments have grown so numerous, so complex, that they cannot be supervised effectively.

The modern era is one of interest-group politics, in which the degree of participation of the ordinary citizen in the forging of political positions is strictly limited. Our impact on political decision making depends, to a large extent, on our membership in organizational structures. The power of these groups, in turn, depend in large part on such organizational characteristics as size of membership; and commitment of membership to the goals of the organization; and wealth of the organization. But it is through organization that we lose control of the decision making process.

Those on top of bureaucratic hierarchies can command vast resources in pursuit of their interests. This power is often unseen and unregulated, which gives the elite at the top of these hierarchies vast social, economic, and political power. The problem is further compounded by huge corporations, economic bureaucracies that have tremendous impact over our lives, an impact over which we have little control. Our control over corporations is hardly even fictional any longer. Not only do these economic bureaucracies affect us directly, they also affect our governments--organizations supposedly designed to regulate them. To quote Peter Blau on this topic: "The most pervasive feature that distinguishes contemporary life is that it is dominated by large, complex, and formal organizations. Our ability to organize thousands and even millions of men in order to accomplish large-scale tasks--be they economic, political, or military--is one of our greatest strengths. The possibility that free men become mere cogs in the bureaucratic machines we set up for this purpose is one of the greatest threats to our liberty."