Max Weber's Categorization Of The Forms Of Authority Essay

Sociology Term Paper

Syed Mohd Ali Rizwi

20161069

Question:

Describe Max Weber’s categorization of the various forms of authority. – Illustrate each form of authority using examples (personal/political/social) from India.

Max Weber:

Max Weber (1864 –1920) was a German sociologist and philosopher. Weber is credited with Marx and Durkheim as the builder of the discipline of sociology. His major works include: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, The Methodology of the Social Sciences.

Max Weber views:

Power and Domination:

According to Max Weber, power is an aspect of social relationships. It refers to the possibility of imposing one’s will upon the behaviour of another person. Power is present in social interaction and creates situations of inequality since the one who has power imposes it on others.

Weber defines domination "as the probability that certain specific commands (or all commands) will be obeyed by a given group of persons". Obedience, interest, belief, and regularity are the features associated with domination. Weber notes that "every genuine form of domination implies a minimum

While a charismatic leader or movement might emerge, the dominant tendency was for organizations to become more routinized, rational and bureaucratic.

Example:

In modern societies, rational/legal authority is in large part exercised on the basis of bureaucracies. Bureaucracy refers to both a body of nonelective government officials and an administrative policy-making group. Historically, a bureaucracy was a government administration managed by departments staffed with non-elected officials.Today, bureaucracy is the administrative system governing any large institution, whether publicly owned or privately owned. The public administration in many countries is an example of a bureaucracy, but so is the centralized hierarchical structure of a business