Showing papers on "Ideal type published in 2009"

Morgenthau as a Weberian Methodologist

Abstract: Hans Morgenthau was a founder of the modern discipline of International Relations, and his Politics among Nations was for decades the dominant textbook in the field. The character of his Realism has frequently been discussed in debates on methodology and the nature of theory in International Relations. Almost all of this discussion has mischaracterized his views. The clues given in his writings, as well as his biography, point directly to Max Weber’s methodological writings. Morgenthau, it is argued, was a sophisticated user of Weber’s views who self-consciously applied them in the sphere of International Relations in such a way that Realism provided an ideal-typical model of the rational and responsible statesman. This interpretation both explains Morgenthau’s views and shows them to be a serious, complex, and compelling response to the issues which have animated the controversies over International Relations theory after Waltz’s presentation of the methodological basis for his neo-Realism.

The Disregard for Weber's Herrschaft

Abstract: The great relevance of Max Weber's ideal type of bureaucracy for understanding modern public administration is insufficiently acknowledged. Critical examination of the claims made to support "new c...

International Society as an Ideal Type

Abstract: The English School’s contribution to the study of international relations is often seen as a set of descriptively rich concepts that may be employed within a variety of theoretical approaches.1 Nevertheless, few scholars think that this conceptual vocabulary is adequate. Some take the extreme view that the problems with it are so serious that we should use a different set of concepts, such as ‘global society’ or ‘global civil society’, to replace familiar English School ideas such as ‘international society’.2 But that is a very sweeping judgment and one that threatens to overlook the value of, among others, the historical insights of the English School. A much more common approach is to begin with the conceptual apparatus provided by the school, expanding or redefining some of its central terms. This has been done from a variety of social theoretical perspectives.3 A prominent recent example is Alexander Wendt’s refashioning of Martin Wight’s ‘three traditions’ of ‘international theory’ into an account of three different kinds of ‘international social structure’, depending on whether the predominant form of interaction involves enmity (Hobbesian), rivalry (Lockean) or friendship (Kantian).4 More recently still, Barry Buzan has tried to build the English School’s tripartite distinction between international system, international society and world society into a more robust taxonomy, embracing, for example, a distinction between global and regional international societies, and firming up the school’s rather ambiguous idea of world society, in order to create a framework that will allow us to monitor structural changes in international relations particularly with a view to charting processes of globalization.5

The Colonial Foundations of the State of Exception: Juxtaposing the Israeli Occupation of the Palestinian Territories with Colonial Bureaucratic History

Abstract: Shortly after the war in 1967 and the occupation of the west bank and Gaza by the Israeli army, Israel declared the territories as a closed military zone . Military rule was established by the Military Commander of the Territories, through geographically dispersed military governors (known as 'moshlim') ruling a distinct area, having close contact with local leadership and a central administrative body that would evolve in 1981 into the Civil Administration of the Territories. It had separated between the bureaucratic civil administrative apparatus in the territories from organized military action, and the management of the everyday lives of the Palestinians, from military actions, creating ostensibly two bureaucratic spheres of control. Our main objective is to describe the morphology of a colonial model of bureaucracy and to suggest that it should serve as the proper framework against which colonial situations should be measured and compared, including the Israeli occupation in the Palestinian territories. The paper is structured as follows. First, we discuss the political-theological perspective, which calls attention to the rule through 'exception' rather than the rule of law as a growing phenomenon in the postcolonial world as well as in western democracies. Second, we present the essentials of Lord Cromer's ideal type of bureaucracy, which challenged the liberal universal law and extended racially based through political 'exception' as the main arbiter of the ruling reality. Thus we offer an alternative ideal type of bureaucracy which introduces racial hierarchies into the administrative structure rendering Weber’s prerequisites “without scorn and bias” all but obsolete. Third, we provide several illustrative examples from Egypt, India, and Occupied Palestine to show how the model was implemented in practice. We end with a theoretical reflection that turns the gaze from the colonies to the metropole. In so doing we challenge the modernist interpretation of Weber’s ideal type, and show that the Weberian model itself may be subject to political-theological interpretation, a neglected aspect in the literature on bureaucracy and domination.

Transnationalizing Comparison: The Uses and Abuses of Cross-Cultural Analogy

Abstract: This essay explores the role of cross-national and cross-cultural comparison within the race and multicultural debates as they play across various national and cultural zones—most notably U.S.-American, French, and Brazilian. Rather than "do" comparison, it analyzes the variegated modalities of comparison itself. The essay deploys a relational and transnational method that seeks, ultimately, to compare comparisons, eludicating the insights and blindspots of different comparative approaches and frameworks, as well as the limitations of comparison itself. The essay discusses the ways that asymmetries of power impact the discourse and rhetoric of comparison, making them reciprocal or unilateral, dialogic or monologic. The essay explores as well the ways nation-states define themselves with and against other nations in a diacritical process of identity formation, partially through a rhetoric of (sometimes invidious) comparison. Cross-cultural and transnational comparisons, the essay argues, serve myriad purposes. Negotiating constantly between the facile universalism, which denies difference ("we're all human beings!") and the bellicose stigmatization of difference (good versus evil; us-versus-them), comparison at its best can trigger a salutary deprovincialization and mutual illumination. A particularly invidious kind of comparison, however, takes the form of civilizational ranking. Nationalist and pan-ethnic exceptionalisms sometimes go hand in hand with an especially invidious form of comparison: ranking. In Hegel's The Philosophy of History, for example, every attribute of Hegel's personal and national identity becomes associated with supreme rank. The methodological problem with comparison is the reciprocal reification of differences and the erasure of commonalities. "Ideal type" generalities homogenize very complex and variegated national formations, while denying common features. In a bipolar method of comparison, all individuals line up in conformity with a set of a priori characteristics. Roberto DaMatta's comparisons of the United States and Brazil, for example, leave both Brazilians and inhabitants of the United States locked up in a prison of identity in which there is no room for contradictions and anomalies, resulting in the "ontologization" of cultural difference. The essay then explores the variations in comparative method in three French commentators on Brazil: Jean de Lery, Levi-Strauss, and Roger Bastide. It concludes with metaphors and proposals that bring us beyond comparison through metaphors that lead to Atlanticist and diasporic approaches that bypass the nation state as frame.

Bend sinister: how the constitution saved the republic and lost itself

Abstract: I n the construction of a state, legitimacy is everything and nothing. Students of the state have taken a wrong turn by following Max Weber's formulation of the ideal typical state as "a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physicalforce within a given territory" (Gerth and Mills 1946, 78).' Although an ideal type can be helpful, the concept can be frozen as an absolute. I call it Weber's syndrome because he left no place for illegit imacy. There is, for example, no reference to illegitimacy in Gerth and Mills' carefully compiled essays of Weber. And a Google search revealed that "political legitimacy" came up with 219,000 hits while "political illegitimacy" came up with 3,ooo hits. "Gov ernment legitimacy" earned 18,400 hits while "government ille gitimacy" received 195.2 It is highly probable that Americans make illegitimacy a taboo word because it suggests that makes us just another ordinary state. Every state is the cold remains of conquest, control-by-force. Thus, on the coat of arms of every dictatorship, monarchy republic, or democracy, including that of the U.S., there ought to be a promi

A methodological critique of the concept of ethnic democracy

Abstract: This article inquires into the reasons why the ideal type of ethnic democracy proposed by Sammy Smooha has no viable manifestation other than Israel. Ethnic democracy exists in the tensions between the two contradictory principles of inclusive and egalitarian democracy, on the one hand, and a preference for a majority ethnic group on the other. The archetype of the ideal type of ethnic democracy is Israel. Yet since the conceptual tool of ideal type was developed by Weber for the purpose of overcoming idiosyncrasies and discovering similarities, other manifestations of the ideal type must be found. Although Smooha presupposes that ethnic democracy is essentially “non-Western,” he finds its manifestations mainly in “Western” democracies. He tries to overcome this difficulty by characterizing Israel as the sole embodiment of the ideal type of ethnic democracy. However, a comparison with West European democracies renders the ethnic attributes of Israeli democracy empirically dubious and logically circular.

Power and Resistance: The Untold Stories in the Context of a Local Health Office

Abstract: This study is about the internal dynamics of power within a particular local Provincial Public Health Office: how power was used? ; what was the meaning behind its use?; and, was there any resistance to certain abuses of power? It is “autoethnography” design study, as a researcher also a subject for study along with three other key informants/co-researchers whose experiences are interviewed as “life narratives.” The concepts used to analyze and discuss are a) Max Weber’s concept of power and authority under the “ideal type of bureaucracy;” b) Michel Foucault’s concepts of power in the form of knowledge and truth as a discursive practice, discipline, and the “game of truth;” c) and, “weapon of the weak” from James C. Scott. The key finding is the transforming of the strong hold of Thai traditional culture of patron/client to more economic and political aspects gives rise to exploitation of subordinates and social resources for the superior good will. The favoritism toward cronies and “cooperative” subordinates, and corruption has become a normal practice. The struggle of recalcitrant subordinates will face the superior’s use of tactics like “the game of truth” and “discipline and punishment” by “the gaze of surveillance.” The disaster in their career and family life are then unavoidable.

Utopias e Distopias na Comunicação: Uma Breve Discussão Sobre os Modelos Idealizados da Comunicação

Abstract: In this article we purpose to analyze two communication paradigms, the totalitarian and the democratic ones as ideal types. We take the weberian notion of ideal type to identify these paradigms, evaluating them through dystopian or utopian perspective, according to its more common representations.

A taxonomy of rules: authority, dangers, and possibilities

Abstract: Rules, originally a means toward group solidarity, are the alternative to the need for ongoing physical dominance. Seemingly omnipresent in modern life, rules can be overt or subtle, explicit or tacit, rigidly enforced or overlooked. They may clash with our autonomy. This thesis names and explores different functional types of rules: safety, personal, socio-cultural, legal-religious, and technical. Rules in general are discussed from social and ethical theoretical viewpoints and using ideal type methodology. Understanding that there are different types of rules and the authority behind them makes it easier to determine one’s obligations to follow them, especially with the notion of prima facie duties. A century after Max Weber wrote of his admiration – and fear – of bureaucratic authority, we should be alarmed at the march toward bureaucratic, algorithmic “rule by a rule” that, in its attempts toward fairness and certainty, in fact dominates us by turning us into standardized “machines” rather than thoughtful, intuitive, creative people.