Max Weber, "Politics as a Vocation"

In max Weber’s “Politics as a Vocation,” “the state is a relationship of men dominating men, a relation supported by means of legitimate (i.e. considered to be legitimate) violence”(2). He describes three legitimations of such domination: “traditional,” “Charismatic,” and “Virtue of Legality”(2). Weber states that these three forms only provide “legitimations”, whereas in reality obedience is compelled by motives of fear of punishment from the authority and hope for reward. Certainly fear is dominant in a “traditional” Hobbsian state; individuals are compelled to obey for fear of their lives. Weber argues that hope is most dominant for the cohesion of a Charismatic society; he describes a pyramid of power, where individuals obey in order to preserve the advantages of their social and political positions. However, in an Institutional State (from King’s lectures of the 3 Theories of a state, Sept 3) legitimized in a rational and legal manner, the power of fear is less apparent, and possibly less coercive than in any other theory of political authority. When a state institutionalizes previously known rational principles, they essentially “channel human behavior”(Sept 8) in right and orderly ways. Over time, Institutions conform rational behavior into social norms so that fear and hope play lesser roles in determining obedience. In forms of “charismatic” legitimacy, the power-holder maintained his followers with the hope of spoils—“that is, the exploitation of the dominated through the monopolization of office”(3). However rational Institutionalism completes “the separation of the administrative staff…from the material means of administrative organization”(4), and the hope of spoils is reduced to rational anonymous rules to which everyone can logically consent. A legal form of legitimacy results in most of society accepting that the governing rules are rational. Thus it is easy to internalize these rules as ways of living a good life; it is easy to associate these rules with morality. Thus, with widespread consent, obedience comes not from fear, but it becomes a habituated way of life.