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
150
He can only retain his power by a system of 'divide and rule', that is, by instituting collegiate
bodies of experts.
52
Because the ruler tries to make the collegiate bodies a synthesis of specialized experts and
therefore has to educate them in 'Sachlichkeit', 'matter-of-factness', his use of such agencies
advances formal rationalization; moreover, the collegiate bodies, in which he could also
place socially influential persons, came to function as 'enduring structures independent of
the person' and thus as the first 'public authorities'.
53
The collegiate principle was extended to lower authorities, of which those of the city were
already used to a collegiate administration by notables
54
. It disappeared again when the
rulers preferred 'a strictly unified administrative leadership' to 'thoroughness in the
preparation of administrative decisions.'
It is problematical that Weber, when describing the influence which the creation of the
collegiate bodies had on the rationalization process, does not explain what 'expert
knowledge', 'specialisiertes Fachwissen' is; nor does he explain why the need for it
increased. For an answer to these questions one has to analyze his typification of 'formal
rational domination'; however, since this type is conceptualized as a 'rational marginal case'
of modern domination and legitimation, only the results of the rationalization process are
presented, not the process itself. Weber explains only the 'specialized knowledge' of modern
bureaucracies, in which the public sphere is definitively separated from the private sphere;
he defines it as knowledge of the rules - technical rules or norms - by which all domination is
now legitimated, and as knowledge of their application.
55
This knowledge cannot be
separated from knowledge 'growing out of experience in the service', since the facts and
documentary material are accessible to the bureaucrats only, who treat them as 'official
secrets'. It is a product of the officials' 'striving for power'
56
.
Weber elsewhere explains that formal rationality cannot be separated from the 'instinct' for
power of the officials and of the bureaucratic institution as a whole, since it is 'inseparably
fused with this canonization of the abstract and "objective idea of "reasons of state."' Behind
bureaucratic decisions to maintain official power stands 'a system of rationally debatable
"reasons"', 'namely, either subsumption under norms, or a weighing of ends and means.'
57
52
'He keeps one expert in check by others, and by such cumbersome procedures seeks personally to gain a
comprehensive picture as well as the certainty that nobody prompts him into arbitrary decisions.' ES p. 995, WG
p. 574.
53
ES p. 996, WG p. 575; Weber further points out that these collegiate bodies must not be confused with
advisory 'councils' or 'boards', see also ES p. 1089, WG p. 639.
54
ES p. 997, WG p. 575.
55
ES p. 218, WG p. 126.
56
ES p. 225, WG p. 129.
57
'The rule and the rational pursuit of "objective" purposes, as well as devotion to these, would always constitute
the norm of conduct. Precisely those views which most strongly glorify the "creative discretion of the official, as
the ultimate and highest lodestar for his behavior in public administration, the specifically modern and strictly
"objective" idea of "raison d'état". Of course, the sure instincts of the bureaucracy for the conditions of
maintaining its own power in the home state (and through it, in opposition to other states) are inseparably fused
with this canonization of the abstract and "objective idea of "reasons of state."'(_)'The only decisive point for us is
that in principle a system of rationally debatable "reasons" stand behind every act of bureaucratic administration,
namely, either subsumption under norms, or a weighing of ends and means.' ES p. 979, WG p. 565.
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