The Nature, Conditions, and Development of Bureaucratic Herrschaft

C H A P T E R S I X
Introduction: Bureaucracy
“Bureaucracy” is the essay where Weber develops his ideas about rationalization to the greatest extent. In doing this, he builds on his earlier writings about social stratification and discipline. What he describes is a world that becomes mechanistic—both in the private or public sector. Weber’s point is that the purely technical advantages of the bureaucratic machine takes on a life beyond its creator, whether the creator was the charismatic Napoleon Bonaparte or Otto von Bismarck. The slow accretion of power reflects the “dilettantism” of generations of gentry, nobles, and other types of faceless Honoratioren.
“Bureaucracy” as a meditation about the nature and origins of modern institutions fits well into both public administration and business administration Weber describes the English legal system in, at times, tedious detail. But in doing this, he creates a legal history of the rationalization, bureaucratization, and powers underpinning English and German legal systems. This history illustrates well how mastery of the technical details of a legal system becomes the center for power in the modern state. This happens because bureaucracy is “technically the most advanced means for wielding power in the hands of those who possess it (p. XXX).”

Reading “Bureaucracy”

Bureaucracy was organized by Weber very systematically into untitled subsections, which are reflected in the outline at the beginning of the essays, and the subheadings that were probably added by Marianne Weber (see Weber 2005a:155–156). In this translation, this outline has been preserved and slightly modified to facilitate easier reading.
A key section is on p. XXX where bureaucracy itself is defined as a phenomenon. Other sections, including the earlier sections of the essay where Weber describes and defines the nature of bureaucracy, are organized around this definition. For Weber, the questions are, how did this concentration of power emerge, and what are the consequences for the wielding of power by public and private bureaucracies alike?
The conclusion to “Bureaucracy” is anti-climatic. The chapter simply ends with a rhetorical question about what types of Herrschaft domination were eliminated by bureaucracy. The question itself is not directly answered, but its obvious answer is “feudalism.” It is taken up again in “Politics as Vocation,” and other sections of Economy and Society.