Abstract
Max Weber’s political sociology provides a powerful framework for interpreting the defeat of Hillary Clinton as a crisis of legitimacy and the election of Donald Trump as an example of charismatic leadership. Even so, the effectiveness of Trump’s demagogy places in grave doubt Weber’s normative analysis of political leadership, which implicitly depends on his understanding of charisma. This application and critique hinges on the links between intuitional charisma and charismatic legitimacy, on the one hand, and on the links between political vocation and charisma, on the other.
A highly similar version of this argument was previously published as “Charisma, Value and Political Vocation: Max Weber on the 2016 US Election.” Study of Comparative Cultures (Morioka University, Japan) 27 (2017): 5–19.
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Notes
- 1.
Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” in The Vocation Lectures, ed. David Owen and Tracy B. Strong (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2004), 32. See also Max Weber, Basic Concepts in Sociology, Reissue ed. (New York, NY: Citadel, 1976), 120.
- 2.
Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” 34.
- 3.
David Beetham makes the same point, although in much greater detail, “Max Weber and the Legitimacy of the Modern State,” Analyse & Kritik, 13 (1991): 39–40.
- 4.
See below, Sect. 2.
- 5.
Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” 33.
- 6.
Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” 33.
- 7.
“Second, there is the authority of the extraordinary, personal gift of grace, or charisma.” Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” 33. Emphasis original.
- 8.
“Communalization is, in the sense used here, normally the opposite of ‘struggle.’” Weber, Basic Concepts, 93.
- 9.
Weber, Basic Concepts, 91. Emphasis original.
- 10.
See Aristotle’s discussion of use-friendships in the Nicomachean Ethics, book VIII.
- 11.
Weber, Basic Concepts, 92.
- 12.
Weber, Basic Concepts, 92. Emphasis original. Moreover, this implies that even sustained relationships whose end is economic acquisition are to some extent communities. Anyone who has enjoyed having dinner with a colleague or client knows this.
- 13.
This is most obviously the case in situations of “cross-cutting cleavages”, as described in such pluralist theorists as Seymour Martin Lipset, Stein Rokkan, Robert Dahl, and in earlier writers like David Truman, and ultimately in the theory of the extended republic articulated in Federalist Paper No. 10 by James Madison.
- 14.
Max Weber, On Charisma and Institution Building (Heritage of Sociology Series), ed. S. N. Eisenstadt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 177. Emphasis original.
- 15.
The typical example of a communalized relationship which is not a status group would be lovers, whose shared sense of solidarity stems from their emotional attachment. Friendships, too, would fall under the heading of communal but not status groups.
- 16.
Eisenstadt, “Introduction,” in Weber, On Charisma and Institution Building, xxxii. I am indebted to Eisenstadt for showing the crucial linkage between social order and institutionalized charisma.
- 17.
Weber, On Charisma and Institution Building, 22.
- 18.
Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” 18. He rejects immanentist solutions to this problem, whether by Aristotle or Hegel.
- 19.
Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” 17, 16.
- 20.
Max Weber, Economy and Society, 1209. Quoted in Guenther Roth and Wolfgang Schluchter, Max Weber’s Vision of History: Ethics and Methods. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 134. See also Weber, Basic Concepts, 82.
- 21.
For example, “A system of authority will appear to be (a) conventional, where its validity is externally guaranteed by the probability that deviation from it within a definable social group will be met with relatively general and significantly perceptible disapproval. (b) Such a system of authority will be considered as law if it is externally guaranteed by the probability that unusual behavior will be met by physical or psychic sanctions aimed at compelling conformity or at punishing disobedience…” Weber, Basic Concepts, 75. Emphasis original.
- 22.
Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” 76.
- 23.
Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” 83.
- 24.
I: 9. Niccolo Machiavelli , Discourses on Livy. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 29.
- 25.
Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” 78.
- 26.
This is built into his definition of politics as “only the leadership, or the exercise of influence on the leadership, of a political organization, in other words, a state,” and the state as defined “only sociologically by the specific means that are peculiar to it, as to every political association, namely, the use of physical violence.” Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” 32–33. Emphasis original.
- 27.
Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” 90.
- 28.
“‘Nature’ and ‘Reason’ are the substantive criteria of what is legitimate from the standpoint of natural law.” Weber, On Charisma and Institution Building, 100.
- 29.
For a defense of this mindset, see Ezra Klein, “Hillary Clinton and the audacity of political realism,” Vox.com , January 28, 2016. Accessed December 12, 2016. http://www.vox.com/2016/1/28/10858464/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-political-realism.
- 30.
Russell Berman, “Hillary Clinton’s Blunt View of Social Progress,” Atlantic.com , August 22, 2015. Accessed December 12, 2016. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/08/hillary-clintons-blunt-view-of-social-progress/402020/.
- 31.
Jeff Stein, “What 20,000 pages of hacked WikiLeaks emails teach us about Hillary Clinton ,” Vox.com , October 20, 2016. Accessed March 15, 2017.
- 32.
A fascinating example of this is her response to the question, “Have you always told the truth?” She replied, “I’ve always tried to. Always, always.” While lying is negotiable, she would not lie about lying. Liz Kreutz, “Hillary Clinton Says She’s ‘Always Tried’ to Tell the Truth to Americans,” abcnews.com , February 18, 2016. Accessed December 13, 2016. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hillary-clinton-shes-truth-americans/story?id=37043658.
- 33.
Reuters, “Clinton: Half of Trump Supporters Belong in ‘Basket of Deplorables,’” September 10, 2016. Accessed December 13, 2016. http://www.reuters.com/article/usa-election-clinton-idUSL1N1BM05L.
- 34.
For this distinction, see for example, Tom Nairn, The Modern Janus: Nationalism in the Modern World (London: Hutchinson Radius, 1990).
- 35.
John Wagner, “Clinton asks why she isn’t beating Trump by 50 points,” Washington Post, September 21, 2016. Accessed December 12, 2016. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/09/21/clinton-asks-why-she-isnt-beating-trump-by-50-points/?utm_term=09c3b49ca1d2.
- 36.
Mark Leibovich, “‘I’m the Last Thing Standing Between You and the Apocalypse’,” New York Times Magazine, October 11, 2016. Accessed December 12, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/magazine/hillary-clinton-campaign-final-weeks.html?_r=0.
- 37.
Associated Press, “2016 presidential advertising focused on character attacks,” Accessed December 13, 2016, http://bigstory.ap.org/article/6be6a1391cfe48598c5f65b0bc607426/2016-presidential-advertising-focused-character-attacks. The AP adds, “Between 1952 and 2008, 31 percent of the general election ads were character-based.”
- 38.
BBC.com, “Trump says Putin’s a leader far more than our president’”, September 8, 2016. http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37303057. CNN.com, “Donald Trump: ‘I will totally accept’ election results ‘if I win’”, October 20, 2016. http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/20/politics/donald-trump-i-will-totally-accept-election-results-if-i-win/. Trump also praised the dictator of North Korean, Kim Jong Un, saying, “You gotta give him credit … he was like 26 or 25 when his father died … he goes in, he takes over, and he’s the boss … It’s incredible. He wiped out the uncle, he wiped out this one, that one. I mean this guy doesn’t play games.” abcnews.com , January 10, 2016. Accessed December 12, 2016, http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-north-korean-leader-kim-jong-gotta-give/story?id=36198345.
- 39.
Trump at rally in Sioux Center, Iowa, January 23, 2016.
- 40.
“Publius Decius Mus,” “The Flight 93 Election,” Claremont Review of Books, September 5, 2016. Accessed December 13, 2016. http://www.claremont.org/crb/basicpage/the-flight-93-election/.
- 41.
Andrew Prokop, “Governor of Maine: maybe we need a Donald Trump to show some authoritarian power,” Vox.com , October 11, 2016. Accessed December 13, 2016. http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/10/11/13243344/trump-authoritarian-paul-lepage.
- 42.
The carry-over interest deduction allows general partners in certain businesses to pay taxes on income made for profits as capital gains rather than as individual income, typically at 20% instead of the top individual rate of 39.6%. For hedge fund managers on Wall Street—the quintessential one-percenters—this tax differential can be worth tens of millions of dollars. Both Clinton and Trump agreed the deduction should be eliminated.
- 43.
“Second U.S. Presidential Debate,” October 10, 2016. Accessed October 16, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/10/us/politics/transcript-second-debate.html?_r=0.
- 44.
Foa and Mounk have documented a dramatic decline in support for democracy in the West generally and in the United States in particular. Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk, “The Democratic Disconnect,” Journal of Democracy 27, no. 3 (July 2016): 5–17.
- 45.
Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” in The Vocation Lectures, 22. Emphasis original.
- 46.
Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” in The Vocation Lectures, 20.
- 47.
“There are two ways of engaging in politics as a vocation. You can either live ‘for’ politics or ‘from’ politics … Whoever lives ‘for’ politics makes ‘this his life’ in an inward sense. Either he enjoys the naked exercise of power he possesses or he feeds his inner equilibrium and his self-esteem with the consciousness that by serving a ‘cause’ he gives his life a meaning. In this inner sense, probably every serious person who lives for a cause also lives from it. The distinction, then, refers to a far weightier aspect of the matter: its economic dimension.” Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” in The Vocation Lectures, 40. Emphasis original.
References
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———. Basic Concepts in Sociology. Translated by H. P. Secher. Reissue ed. New York: Citadel, 1976.
———. The Vocation Lectures. Edited by David Owen and Tracy B. Strong. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2004.
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Sable, M.B. (2018). Charisma, Value and Political Vocation: Max Weber on the 2016 US Election. In: Jaramillo Torres, A., Sable, M. (eds) Trump and Political Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74445-2_15
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