V. Max Weber.
Weber is the Rodney Dangerfield of social theory—he gets no respect. The far-left likes their reductionist Marx class theory, while the right wants Smith’s capitalism uninhibited by Smith’s other principles. Weber is the man for Ivy League elites and lawyers, the great-grandfather of Clintonism. But he reminds us more systematically than de Tocqueville that institutions matter, and that our values and our economics are not in a linear cause and effect relationship, but in a long back and forth dance.
For our purposes, Weber’s breakdown of modes of legitimate political authority had two particularly prominent categories–the charismatic and the bureaucratic. The bureaucratic mode is the rational and legalistic companion to that rational and efficient economic mode, capitalism. Weber believed in the importance of experience in politics as with any professional endeavor—and that’s what a permanent bureaucracy has in contrast to officials elected for short terms. Weber’s dark view of the bureaucratic-capitalist future as an “iron cage” wasn’t just a value judgment, but a statement of factual constraint–that’s there’s no way to run a modern nation-state without some of that cage.
On the other end of the spectrum, the charismatic figure is the one who, in oppositions bureaucratic legalisms and rationality, says, “It is written but I say unto you.” At their best, charismatic figures can be vehicles of necessary change, but paradoxically, those changes only gain permanence through institutionalization.
Weber’s analysis would seem to imply that, with its democratic fusion of charismatic and bureaucratic systems, of political amateurs and professionals, America’s government couldn’t really work over the long haul. But in fact, he must have been impressed that we’d pulled it off for so long, because when the time came to help draft the Weimar Constitution, he may have been inspired by our model to advocate a strong presidency. In his essay “Politics as a Vocation,” Weber described the need for a charismatic yet competent leader. The leader would have to be capable of wielding his caesarist mandate to effectively limit the bureaucracy. Weber was more afraid of the depersonalizing force of bureaucracy than the emotional force of the Leader. He gave this hybrid concept of government an ill-omened name: Fuhrerdemokratie.
Indeed, the Weimar constitution tried to do too much and left an authoritarian loophole. Weber advocated the emergency powers provision that the Nazis were able to use to destroy German democracy. Weber’s reputation has always been somewhat tarnished by this failure in the practical sphere.
After so much American hubris about Weber’s mistakes, he might be amused by our own constitutional failure. Though it arose with a charismatic promise to limit our bureaucracy, our current regime does not also possess the political competence that Weber believed would be necessary for success in governing. The ascension of a pure amateur bent on not merely limiting the bureaucracy but on slashing the necessary stores of rationality and experience in government would have been Weber’s nightmare, regardless of the new leader’s particular ideology.
Will the regime learn from experience and become more capable, more instrumentally rational in achieving its values? There’s no sign of it yet, and with its normal balance between the charismatic and the bureaucratic sharply skewed, what Weber found great in America is likely to suffer.