Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy. 1994
Chapter 10 Hidden Masculinity: impersonal bureaucracy as a result of the unsolvable conflict between
fraternity and patriarchy
174
absolutist kings who were therefore dependent on the goodwill of the prebendaries, to whom
the purchase price of their office had to be restituted in case of dismissal, and that these
prebendaries formed an important part of the 'noblesse de robe', which led the 'tiers état'
against the king and the landowning or court aristocracy.¹ Weber does not explain,
however, how the burgher Estate - or a new class of entrepreneurs outside of the cities -
formed its revolutionary coalition with the propertyless women and men who fought in the
revolution; he conceptualized only the final result, the 'plebiscitary democracy', which
according to him was created in the Occidental autonomous cities.
In the bourgeois revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries the principle of the sovereignty of
the people was established: all men were proclaimed to be free and equal. Thence
domination could only be formal-legal, legitimated by the laws by which the representatives
of the people have established both the competencies of those who have to execute those
laws and the limits of these competencies. In this way the revolutionary dictator finds a
legitimation for his wish to establish an administrative machine in order to destroy 'traditional,
feudal, patrimonial, and other authoritarian powers and privileges'.²
In his conceptual exposition - which was written later than the chapter on Feudalism,
Ständestaat and patrimonialism and the essay on the city - Weber presents the plebiscitary
democracy as another transformation of charisma: a transformation in an anti-authoritarian
direction. Although Weber does not formulate it very clearly, formal legality appears to be a
direct result of the anti-authoritarian charismatic domination³, and to have no connection to
patriarchal patrimonialism.
Weber elaborates on this when investigating the relationship between anti-authoritarian
charisma and the economy:
'The anti-authoritarian direction of the transformation of charisma normally leads into the path of rationality. If a
ruler is dependent on recognition by plebiscite he will usually attempt to support his regime by an organization of
officials which functions promptly and efficiently. He will attempt to consolidate the loyalty of those he governs
either by winning glory and honor in war or by promoting their material welfare, or under certain circumstances,
by attempting to combine both. Success in these will be regarded as proof of the charisma. His first aim will be
the destruction of traditional, feudal, patrimonial, and other types of authoritarian powers and privileges. His
second aim will have to be to create economic interests which are bound up with his regime as the source of their
legitimacy. So far as, in pursuing these policies, he makes use of the formalization and legalization of law he may
contribute greatly to the formal rationalization of economic activity.'
4
Weber, however, leaves room for the alternative possibility that plebiscitary regimes weaken
the formal rationality of economy and law; this happens when they take the form of 'social
1
ES p. 1034, 1039, WG p. 600, 603.
2
ES p. 269, WG p. 157.
3
See for the medieval autonomous towns Ch. 7,2 above and for the revolutions of the modern period ES p. 269,
WG p. 157: 'The process of routinization of revolutionary charisma then brings with it changes similar to those
brought about by the corresponding process in other respects. Thus the development of a professional army in
England goes back to the voluntary army of the faithful in the days of Cromwell. Similarly, the French system of
administration by prefects is derived from the charismatic administration of the revolutionary democratic
dictatorship.' The economic rationalization process is reinforced when the charismatic ruler, in his efforts to
create 'economic interests which are bound up with his regime as the source of their legitimacy', 'makes use of
the formalization and legalization of law'.
4
ES p. 269, WG p. 157.
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