Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy.
Amsterdam 1994 Dissertation University of Amsterdam. Chapter 1. Max Weber's universalist
sociology of bureaucracy: the contradiction between public rationalism and private masculinism
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procedure. There are as many kinds of material rationality as there are possible value
orientations.
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Weber does not restrict his use of the concepts formal and material rationality to the
economic sphere. Sometimes he contrasts formal rationality as the modern form of
legitimate domination with 'material rationality' as a critical concept, for instance when he
states that the formal rationality of bureaucracy may conflict, 'as so often happens', with
material rationality. The conflict between them can be the result both of economic and of
social 'material rationality'; this may be the case when they are being eroded by formal
rationality: when it comes to producing goods or services, or a commitment to values that
are connected to the legitimation of the particular bureaucracy. Material rationality, however,
is the loser: though Weber discerns a 'tendency of officials to treat their official function from
a material-utilitarian* point of view in the *service of the dominated who have to be made
happy'
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, this interest becomes transformed into reinforcement of the rules: the result often is
more bureaucracy.
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Instances of 'material rational legitimation', however, did occur in history. We will see that
Weber himself gives the example of the 'welfare state', the European patriarchal-patrimonial
state of the 17th and 18th centuries, which acquired the support of the population by
alternating formal rational strategies with material rational ones. Bureaucratic domination in
modern democracies is legitimated in the same way; some material care for the poor is
combined with symbolic policies to implement humanitarian values. The dispossessed, in
their turn, claim material equality, asking for support of the state in order to improve their
position; but since they also do not want to lose their 'equality before the law' they have to
support material rationality itself.
In the last instance the concept 'material rationality' refers to private life and to its opposition
to public life. Officials, who are committed to their responsibility as private persons may be
inclined to meet human needs; however, as their private life is institutionally separated from
their public life, their private values have no relevance, and so cannot serve as a source of
inspiration for their office actions.
According to Weber material rational critique cannot be more than negative and marginal;
when formal rational institutions do not produce any of the intended results or even generate
reverse effects, the only remedy is to create more bureaucracy. Any implementation of
material rationality would involve a rational choice between values, which is impossible. On
the other hand one may say that in modern democracy no formal rational legitimation can be
maintained if no material rationality of bureaucratic actions is visible at all.
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'Formal and *material rationality, no matter by what standard the latter is measured, are always in principle
separate things, no matter that in many (and under certain very artificial assumptions all) cases they may
coincide empirically', ES p. 108, WuG p. 59. See on the discussion on Weber's concept of 'legality' note 7 above.
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ES p. 226, WuG p. 130; the irony of 'im Dienst der zu beglückenden Beherrschten' is lost in Roth & Wittig's
translation. Weber proceeds: 'This tendency to material rationality is supported by all those subjects to authority
who are not included in the group mentioned above as interested in the protection of advantages already
secured. The problems which open up at this point belong in the theory of "democracy"'. See also ES p. 980, WG
p. 565.
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This insight is the foundation of the post-war analyses of the 'dysfunctions', the 'ineffectivity' or 'inefficiency' of
bureaucracy and of the phenomenon that officials can provide services for their 'clients' only by breaking the
rules; see for instance Blau (1963), Crozier (1963), Merton (1967), Heymann (1975).
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