Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy. 1994
Chapter 6. Feudalism. Decentralization of patrimonialism into political domination by an hierarchy of
free men
109
7. Weber's contrast between feudal Great Britain and patrimonial Germany
In distinguishing between 'estate patrimonialism' and 'patriarchal patrimonialism' Weber
meant to conceptualize the difference between modern Germany and modern England, and
to explain why German men were unmanned by bureaucracy, while English gentlemen
succeeded in proving their manhood in military and economic world domination. His own
analysis, however, shows that the characteristics the two systems, formed as they are by
feudalism and patrimonialism both, have in common, are far greater than the contrasts.
Because of his personal interest in changing government and administration in Germany,
Weber was looking for arguments for the need of a stronger parliament, which would create
a breeding ground for the 'real politicians' or 'caesarist leaders' he saw in Great Britain. To
explain the differences between Germany and England he constructed a contrast between a
linear rationalization process of 'patriarchal patrimonialism' at the one hand and
'administration by feudally influenced honoratiores' at the other. By emphasizing the feudal
elements in the English modernization of manhood ideals - which according to him even
survived the merging of rural rentier groups with urban ones - he could confront the German
'patriarchally dominated' officials and politicians with British 'gentlemen'.
However, Weber only later, in his essay on 'The City', analyzed the influence the bourgeois
fraternizations of the cities on the Western European continent had on the modernization of
manhood ideals. In his essay of patrimonialism in part two of ES he presents the bourgeois
influence in England as marginal; there the continental development of patrimonialism is
reduced there to a linear rationalization of patriarchal patrimonialism. Only in the conceptual
exposition of patriarchal patrimonialism he does refer to bourgeois influence.
Both the different estates on the continent of Western Europe and the English ones merged
into new, contradictory, forms. In my view this was possible because they were 'estates',
honorable fraternizations of 'real men', who possessed common characteristics beside
contrasting ones.
It is plausible that the centralized Norman feudal system in England and the mentality it
produced and spread even among small squires, decisively influenced the formation and
character of the status groups of local officials and also the piecemeal development of the
English patrimonial bureaucracy. However, the question remains whether the continental
development of 'estate patrimonialism' in other Western European countries, which was
influenced by both feudalism and by the bourgeoisie, differed from the English developments
in a decisive degree. Weber deduces this difference from the circumstance that the later
continental rulers succeeded in defeating the estates and in establishing a rational
patrimonial bureaucracy, while the English kings did not - with the result that
bureaucratization took off so much later in England than it did in Germany and France that in
Weber's time it had not yet been completed.
In my view Weber's question of why the modern bureaucracy 'grew only on European soil'
cannot be answered by accentuating the difference in the degree of bureaucratization in
Germany and Great Britain; emphasis should instead be placed on the unique
characteristics of the European developments of patrimonialism - first into feudalism and
'estate patrimonialism', later into a renewed patriarchal patrimonialism with a more or less
rational bureaucracy, influenced by developments in the 'occidental city' - contrasting them
with patrimonialism in the rest of the world.
To understand these specific European developments Weber's analysis of 'the occidental
city' is of primary importance. Therefore, before discussing the revival of European
 |
 |
 |