Max Weber

The Types of Political Authority

·  When something is described as political, what is always meant is that interests in the distribution, maintenance, or transfer of power are decisive for answering the questions and determining the decision or the official’s sphere of activity

·  Those active in politics strive for power either as a means in serving other aims, ideal or egoistic, or as “power for power’s sake”

·  There are three basic inner justifications (legitimations) of domination: traditional domination, charismatic domination, domination by virtue of legality

·  Two motivations to be a politician: material reward, social honor

·  All party struggles are struggles for the patronage of office, as well as struggles for objective goals

Politics and Ethics

·  The career of politics grants a feeling of power

·  There are three pre-eminent qualities that are decisive for the politician: passion, strength and faith

·  There is an abysmal contrast between conduct that follows the maxim of an ethic of ultimate ends and conduct that follows the maxim of an ethic of responsibility, in which case one has to give an account of the foreseeable results of one’s action

·  No ethics in the world can dodge the fact that in numerous instances the attainment of good ends is bound to the fact that one must be willing to pay the price of using morally dubious means or at least dangerous ones and facing the possibility or even the probability of evil ramifications

·  There is a strong existence of ethical paradoxes that must be recognized by those who wish to engage in politics

·  Man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible… but to do that, a man must be a leader, and not only a leader, but a hero as well

Charismatic Authority

·  The natural leaders in times of distress have been neither holders of specific gifts of the body and spirit… these gifts have been believed to be supernatural, in that they are not accessible to everybody… this gift is described as charisma

·  The charismatic structure knows nothing of a form or of an ordered procedure of appointment or dismissal… it directly contrasts any kind of bureaucratic organization of offices

·  Charisma knows only inner determination and inner strength

·  The holder of charisma seizes the task that is adequate for him and demands obedience and a following by virtue of his mission

·  By its nature, the existence of charismatic authority is specifically unstable

·  The charismatic leader gains and maintains authority solely by proving strength in his life