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rational-legal authority (modern law and state, bureaucracy). These three types are ideal types and rarely appear in their pure form. According to Weber, authority (as distinct from power (German: Macht)) is power accepted as legitimate by those subjected to it. The three forms of authority are said to appear in a "hierarchical development order".
Weber's ideal type of bureaucracy was characterised by hierarchical organisation, delineated lines of authority in a fixed area of activity, action taken on the basis of written rules, bureaucratic officials needing expert training, rules being implemented neutrally, and career advancement depending on technical qualifications judged by ...
Weber argued that some of those attributes have existed in various time or places, but together they existed only in Occidental civilization. The conditions that favoured this were Emergence of rational-legal rationality (various status groups in the Occident promoted that emergence) Emergence of modern officialdom (bureaucracy), which required
Weber's theory of bureaucracy claims that it is extremely efficient, and even goes as far as to claim that bureaucracy is the most efficient form of organization. [20] Weber claimed that bureaucracies are necessary to ensure the continued functioning of society, which has become drastically more modern and complex in the past century. [ 21 ]
Bureaucratic formalism is often connected to Weber's metaphor of the iron cage because the bureaucracy is the greatest expression of rationality. Weber wrote that bureaucracies are goal-oriented organizations that are based on rational principles that are used to efficiently reach their goals. [ 10 ]
Thinkers like John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx began to theorize about the economic functions and power-structures of bureaucracy in contemporary life. Max Weber was the first to endorse bureaucracy as a necessary feature of modernity, and by the late 19th century bureaucratic forms had begun their spread from government to other large-scale ...
In the tripartite classification of authority, the sociologist Max Weber contrasts charismatic authority (character, heroism, leadership, religious) against two other types of authority: (i) rational-legal authority (modern law, the sovereign state, bureaucracy) and (ii) traditional authority (patriarchy, patrimonialism, feudalism).
According to Weber, the ability to possess power derives from the individual's ability to control various "social resources". "The mode of distribution gives to the propertied a monopoly on the possibility of transferring property from the sphere of use as 'wealth' to the sphere of 'capital,' that is, it gives them the entrepreneurial function and all chances to share directly or indirectly in ...