Transcript Domination/authority

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
Summary:
› Specifies the characteristics and effects of
domination (authority) and legitimacy as they
relate to legal authority and bureaucratic
administration
› Examines historical context & relationship w/
capitalism, finding:
 bureaucratic administration under capitalist system
leads to social leveling via technical expertise, and
a formalistic and utilitarian impersonality
 sophisticated transportation and communication
systems tend to create more, not less,
bureaucracy
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
Domination/authority: the probability that
certain specific commands (or all commands)
will be obeyed by a given group of persons
1) Implies voluntary compliance, or an interest in
obedience
2) Requires a staff, or a special group that can
normally be trusted to execute the general policy
as well as the specific commands
3) Obedience can result from the following motives:
 Custom
 Affective ties
 Material interests – purely material interests, however,
result in a relatively unstable situation
 Ideal
 Belief in legitimacy
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Authority is defined by claim to legitimacy
 Weber specified three types:
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› Rational-legal authority: rests on a belief in the
legality of enacted rules
› Traditional authority: rests on the established
belief in the sanctity of immemorial traditions
› Charismatic authority: rests on the devotion to
the exceptional sanctity, heroism or exemplary
character of an individual person
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
Legal Authority rests on the acceptance of the
following mutually interdependent ideas:
› Any given legal norm may be established by agreement
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or by imposition, on grounds of expediency or value
rationality or both, with a claim to obedience at least on
the part of the members of the organization
Every legal norm consists essentially in a consistent system
of abstract rules that have been intentionally established
The superior is subject to an impersonal order by orienting
his actions to it in his own dispositions and commands
The person who obeys authority does so as a member of
the organization and what he obeys is the only law
The person who obeys authority does not obey a person in
authority as an individual, but rather as the superior of an
impersonal order
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The commands of a traditional authority
are legitimized in one of two ways:
a) partly in terms of tradition
b) partly in term’s of the master’s discretion
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So far as action follows principles at all,
they’re things like ethical commonsense,
equity, or utilitarian expediency
› Not formal principles
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Charismatic authority depends on
relationship between leader & followers
Recognition of charisma by subjects
II. Leadership must somehow benefit followers
III. Charismatic community forms and is animated
by charismatic qualities of leader & followers
IV. Charisma constitutes a “call,” “mission,” or
“spiritual duty”
I.
 despises traditional or rational everyday economizing or
seeking regular income thru continuous economic activity
V. Charisma has revolutionary force, it’s often
transformative
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By definition charismatic authority is
exceptional, not an everyday thing
 Charisma either fades away or becomes
routinized
 It cannot remain stable but must become
traditionalized or rationalized or both
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› Motives behind the transformation:
 Ideal and material interests of followers in the
continuation of the community
 Still stronger ideal and stronger material interests of
staff, disciples, and party workers continuing
relationship
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Does instrumental rationality accurately
characterize most social action?
 Does it even characterize our economic
behavior?
 Other motivations to consider?
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Storyline: An abandoned wife is evicted
from her home and starts a tragic
conflict with the house's new owners
› The ‘American Dream’ gone awry
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