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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8. The origins of rational bureaucracy in Europe: Weber's unfinished analysis
Weber does not succeed in explaining the historical causes of Western rationalization; his
elaborate conceptualization of its results is only marginally connected to them, Weber does
not answer the question which is at the center of his analysis of the development of modern
Western bureaucracy: why did this type of bureaucracy only grow on European soil ? I will
show that this question can only be answered if one abandons the view that 'formal
rationality' and 'rationality' are identical; not only does one have to relativize the pretense of
an 'objectivity' which is said to be guaranteed by a formal rational procedure, and see it as a
belief - as Weber himself did - but one also has to connect this belief to specific historical
circumstances and interests.
The text in which Weber posed his question about the origins of modern bureaucracy in
Europe is to be found in his essay on 'Feudalism, Ständestaat and Patrimonialism'; it reads
as follows:
'The feudal association and the Ständestaat are by no means indispensable intermediate links in the
development from patrimonialism to bureaucracy; on the contrary, under certain circumstances, they present
considerable obstacles to bureaucracy. The beginnings of a genuine bureaucracy can be found everywhere in
relatively uncomplicated forms of patrimonial administration; the transition from the patrimonial to the
bureaucratic office is fluid and the typological attribution dependent not so much upon the nature of the individual
office, but upon the manner in which offices in general are set up and administered. However, the fully developed
Ständestaat as well as the fully developed bureaucracy grew only on European soil, for reasons to which we will
turn later.In the meantime we will deal with certain intermediate and transitional forms, which preceded pure
bureaucracy within feudal and patrimonial structures.
'
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In the German edition the editor, Johannes Winckelmann, adds to this text one of his few
annotations, which I translate as follows:
'The execution of this intention has been prevented by the death of Max Weber.
'
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At the end of his life Weber was still working on Economy and Society. His widow, Marianne
Weber-Schnitger, edited the unfinished manuscripts,
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but in a order different from the one
Weber had planned in his table of contents. Johannes Winckelmann in his edition of 1956
restored the intended order. Weber's plan begins with a conceptual exposition of the
different ideal types and ends with explanations and argumentations of these concepts. The
last part, however, he wrote first, the conceptual exposition last. The passage I cited above
is from an earlier part of the book; the conceptual exposition therefore could possibly contain
further attempts to answer the question of what the unique characteristics of Western
European bureaucratic developments are. I have indeed found some causal connections
which have been stated in the conceptual exposition as well in the essay on The City Weber
wrote after his treatment of 'Feudalism, "Ständestaat" and Patrimonialism'; these
connections I will present in my last two chapters.
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ES p. 1087, WuG p. 638.
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Winckelmann further refers to the 8th Abschnitt of the same edition, in which he edited parts of two of Weber's
political essays: 'Parlament und Regierung im neugerordneten Deutschland' and 'Politik als Beruf', which Weber
wrote in the last year of his life; see below, Ch. 2,2. The editors of the American translation, who did not translate
Winckelmann's footnote, do not deal with this question at all.
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with Melchior Palyi, see the Introduction by Marianne Weber to the first edition of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft,
1921.
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