Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy. 1994
Chapter 8 Connections between formal rationality and patriarchal-patrimonial domination
over and through men
144
The relationship between feudalism and the development of rational patrimonialism is thus
very complex and even contradictory. Feudalism checks the development of rational
patrimonialism; yet, although no feudal system developed in Tsarist Russia, or in the late
Roman, the Byzantine, Babylonian, Persian, Hellenistic or Islamic empires, none of these
empires saw the development of a formal-rational bureaucracy.
This contradiction can only be understood by looking for a connection between feudal status
honor, which according to Weber is indispensable to the building of cohesive and loyal
status groups of officials, on the one hand, and formal rationality, on the other. I will discuss
this connection in my next chapter.
Here I will first follow Weber's analysis of the growth of formal rationality, as he presents it in
his description of the construction of the patrimonial bureaucracy and the several ways in
which it was rationalized.
5. Formal-rational legitimation of patrimonialism: the reception of the formal structures of
Roman law
Weber conceptualized the contradiction between arbitrariness and formal rationalization in
his chapter on sociology of law, where he stated that the patrimonial rulers on the Western
European continent used formal-rational arguments when fighting the privileges of the
Estates, and material-rational ones to enlist the support of the masses. In his conceptual
exposition he emphasizes the unique historical importance of the contribution of the jurists,
trained in civil and canon law, to the rationalization of patrimonial administration. At the same
time he states that the strength of patrimonialism once it had revived did not lie in its formal,
but in its material rationality: it legitimized patriarchal domination by taking care of the
welfare of the subjects. Yet in order to succeed in creating a really material-rational law the
patrimonial rulers first had to break the influence of the reception of the formal structures of
Roman law, which earlier they had used to support their own sovereignty.
Reviving patrimonialism developed along the lines of the Ständestaat: its justice was first of
the "estate" type, in which the legal order is 'rigorously formal but thoroughly concrete and in
this sense irrational',
and in which '"administration" is negotiation, bargaining, and contracting about "privileges",
the content of which must then be fixed.'
27
Administration and justice of this type follow the
same procedure and are not clearly differentiated.
Formal rational law could be used by the monarchical administration to eliminate the
supremacy of estate privileges, since it stresses formal legal equality, substituting
'reglementation' for 'privilege'.
28
The estates, however, demanded fixed rules and
guaranteed 'rights' which would limit the arbitrary patriarchal discretion of the ruler. Of those
the bourgeoisie made the most pressing demands, since they
the manner of the noblesse de robe, but not for a personal "honorable" relationship to the lord and a
corresponding ethos.' ES p. 1068, WG p. 623.
27
ES p. 844, WG p. 485.
28
ES p. 846, WG p. 487.
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