Charisma, tradition, and rationalization

Weber helps answer questions like ‘Why do we respect authority?’ Why should we obey laws, for instance? Or why should women accept female circumcision and control by others over their sexuality as a rite of passage into womanhood? Weber would say that authority by force is expensive-much better to find other means to dominate. Yes, police and/or military can enforce laws and punish lawbreakers (we’re not even broaching the subject of who gets to write the laws … ), but that gets expensive at some point. Weber discusses three forms of legitimate authority that have been used by societies to maintain social order without resorting to violence. These are:

1. Charismatic
2. Rational-legal
3. Traditional

Charismatic

Can you think of examples of states, companies, families that were held together by an individual with a charismatic personality? For example, Ghandi, the Jonestown cult in Guyana, the Ayatollah Khomeni and the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Fidel Castro in Cuba. Other common examples might include a church minister/pastor/evangelist, university president (heh, a little higher ed joke there), social activist (ML King, Malcolm X), high-ranking military officer, etc.

Charismatic individuals can enjoy widespread legitimacy. But succession is often a problem. What happens when the individual dies/leaves? The ‘trick’ is for leaders to ‘routinize’ authority, to base the legitimacy ultimately on something besides personal charisma. This often doesn’t work. Charismatic leaders can accomplish impressive feats–the ‘benevolent dictator’ comes to mind, although I can’t think of any off hand. Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya began as a benevolent dictator, but his reign ended in corruption. At least the more notorious and well-known were psychopaths (Adolph Hitler from Nazi Germany, Joseph Stalin from Russia, Pol Pot from Cambodia, Idi Amin in Uganda, Jean Bedel Bokassa in the Central African Republic).

Barack Obama and Donald Trump each had a charisma about them that attracted followings of millions (but in radically different ways). There have been some corporate executives who also created a sort of cult-like atmosphere–Steve Jobs and Elon Musk come to mind (again, for wildly different reasons). Sometimes charisma is manufactured through clever PR and propaganda.

Traditional

Traditional authority is, well, rooted in tradition. Another way of thinking about it is, ‘this is the way it’s always been done.’ This is often the rationale behind cultural explanations and justifications people give (some women’s support of female genital cutting fits this explanation). An example of traditional authority comes from the monarchy, the alleged ‘divine right of kings’ (i.e., in countries where a king’s right to rule is believed to come straight from God). And how could you ask for a much better claim to authority and legitimacy than that?? Gerontocracies are also examples of traditional authority (e.g., the elders hold the highest positions, based on the belief that elders hold great wisdom and knowledge). There are plenty of examples of traditional authority in organized religion (and sometimes these overlap with charismatic individual leaders, but for instance the Pope’s authority comes from the Church, not from his own persona).

Rational-legal

This is based on impersonal rules, laws. Examples include countries’ constitutions, by-laws of an institution, formal rules (e.g., the EOU handbook). The U.S. Constitution has been a source of enduring legitimacy–many other countries have had major constitutional crises that the U.S. has more or less avoided.

So how does rational-legal authority work? We all pretty much know what’s legal and what’s not, and most of us agree that when people break the law they deserve to be punished (this is not to say there is considerable disagreement about who wrote/writes the laws and who benefits most from them); ultimately, these laws may be backed up by force, but if the source of rational-legal authority is a powerful one, then the legitimacy it produces will diminish the need to ever use that force.

Who benefits from rational legal authority? Well, everyone presumably knows the rules, and can have some expectations of how they’ll be applied; officeholders don’t ‘own’ their offices, they’re supposed to follow written rules and procedures that are generally public knowledge. Take the case of forced marriages in many parts of the developing world. One way to address this would be to pass legislation that made it illegal to force women to marry against their will. Then a key question becomes, does the culture consider this legitimate, or are their other, more widely recognized sources of authority? People in positions of legitimate power benefit, and often, especially in the third world, abuse this source of legitimacy to the point where government no longer has much credibility with people. They may obey out of fear, but often government officials are seen as hopelessly corruptible.

Who pays? Rational-legal authority is often symbolized by the impersonal bureaucracy, by red tape and mindless rules. In addition, it can lead to institutional discrimination. In cases such as the World Bank and World Trade Organization, these multilateral agencies have legitimacy with the powerful, wealthy countries, who are overrepresented, and can promote their agendas for free trade which seem to favor multinational corporations and economic globalization (in the terms of Immanuel Wallerstein’s world systems theory, they represent the ‘core’ countries, or what we might call the countries of the North, versus the ‘periphery’ or countries of the South).

Hopefully you can distinguish between these three forms of authority. We’ve certainly seen examples of traditional authority, for instance in Durkheim’s notion of mechanical solidarity. A more rationalized, formal authority prevailed with organic solidarity, in cities, where the mixing of cultures and the differentiation of work (‘division of labor’) required different sorts of institutions to maintain some sort of social order. Durkheim saw this as ‘functional’ for society. Marx saw it as captured by the capitalists. Weber said that bureaucracy itself was merely a powerful organization vehicle for achieving specified ends, but that it could be co-opted or captured by elites and used to serve their interests, rather than those for which an organization might have been created (for instance, the Democratic party claims to serve the interests of the poor, but the nature of contemporary US politics suggests their actions reflect the interests of their large donors who fund campaigns).

So . . . Is one form of legitimacy any ‘better’ than another?? What happens when two forms of legitimacy conflict (for instance, women in Afghanistan might gain constitutional rights that ban forced marriages, but the practice may continue in rural areas, and most people may not even be aware of any changes to the law)?

Weber believed that there was an historical process toward rationalization. That is, when it comes to authority, that rational-legal bases for authority would become more important over time. We’ve seen the virtual disappearance of the monarchy and the rise of the nation-state. But a constitution is a document–only if there are mechanisms in a society that ensure its enforcement, and the independent interpretation and updating of the intentions of its framers, can a population have confidence that it serves the public good and protects democratic process. It is necessary, but insufficient, as economists might say.

Weber’s ideas in the age of ‘culture wars’

Since the campaign of Donald Trump, there has been a marked observed increase in partisan conflict, and the politicization of large swaths of public life, increasingly manifest at the community level, whether it be the grocery store, the doctor’s office, the school board, city council, public square, in traffic, a Covid vaccine policy, etc. Weber contended that rationalization would represent a response to systems (in this case, social) experiencing growth in size and complexity. The hyperpartisan nature of public discourse might fit well into this theoretical realm. The bureaucracy emerged as a means to impose some measure of social order and efficiency over the functioning of complex organizations. New organizing principles were needed to accommodate the greater diversity of ideas, perspectives, and cultures that accompany growth and mobility on a mass scale. And it’s important to keep in mind it wasn’t happening in isolation–every institution was experiencing some version of a mismatch between institutions and changing social, political and economic conditions.

The hyperpartisan conflict is often couched in terms of ‘returning to traditional values’ (which often tends to resemble white, Judeo-Christian ideology, or rural libertarianism). Critical race theory has been caught in the political crossfire, as has open discussion of queerness and gender fluidity. If it were pushback against increasing rationalization amid some corners of society, Weber might perceive this in part as a clash between traditional and rational-legal forms of legitimately recognized authority. A ‘culture war.’ Steve Bannon, one of Donald Trump’s early advisers, preached that ‘culture is upstream from politics,’ meaning that appealing to ‘hot-button’ issues, and sowing division largely along lines that eerily resemble the national (republican and democrat) party apparatuses, would influence public perceptions and possibly the distribution of political power.

This is my own interpretation, of course, just here to prompt you to think about how contemporary phenomenon might be explained by different theoretical perspectives, and Weber has one that seems to offer valuable insight. But to further follow this Weberian logic, he would no doubt have paid close attention–because if Marx saw society in terms of classes, Weber would be examining organization(s).

Organizations represent rational, effective and efficient means to accomplish complex tasks. Remember that–you don’t want to find that you’re learning it anew in your 30s, missing out on the insights it could have afforded you in the interim. Yet while there is this seeming trend, in the early 2020s, towards greater conflict over politicized ‘culture war’ issues that calls for as a solution a return to ‘traditional values,’ it has realized its successes based on sophisticated manipulation of public opinion, with some help from artificial intelligence and algorithms, to arrive at ‘talking points’ that resonate with a target audience, one that is identified with increasing precision over time.

That’s not exactly good ol’ fashioned homespun family values and traditional authority.

Weber likely would have seen this as a response to a relentless march of rationalization, which has brought most modern societies greater measures of protection for their most marginalized populations, whether based in race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, nationality, culture, social class, religious affiliation, etc. If Weber’s theorizing holds, these efforts to restore tradition as a primary source of legitimate authority–amid increasing recognition of pluralities or rights, intersectionalities, etc., and institutions seeking to respond to these changes (somewhat more efficient than a trial and error process, but uneven and imperfect)–may slow but not stop or much less reverse this ‘master trend of history.’

But Weber was somewhat agnostic, in his analyses–he wasn’t advocating for this to improve the lots of the unfortunate (although he would have likely considered that a side benefit). He was all about contingencies–much different than, for instance, Marx’s linear stages of historical materialism–and groups advocating for a return to tradition would seek other organizational means to achieve their objectives, including possibly an appropriation of power, democratic or otherwise. Authoritarianism is also more likely as a form of governance to be associated with traditional forms of authority recognized as legitimate.

The apparent geographic trend of ‘self-sorting’ (the so-called ‘Big Sort‘) has also led to people moving to areas where they perceived locals to be more like-minded–at least as far as partisan views and political ideologies. This has led to an increase in the number of ‘landslide’ counties–where the margin of difference between parties in an electoral outcome was greater than 20% (the counties on this map are clickable for information).

Landslide or no, of course, this may lead those whose attachment to place or meager financial means discourage them from relocating, and who do not share the narrow ideological views of the majority, to feel more marginalized, but with little recourse through local government. Weber might wonder, can a steady march toward greater rationalization–not because it is superior, but because it seems to manifest in self-organizing systems, like societies, where growth and complexity increase–be short-circuited by an electoral majority or minority, through carefully calculated political strategies? In the name of tradition, but clearly through the use of rationalized techniques.