Ideal type

About: Ideal type is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 400 publications have been published within this topic receiving 8012 citations.

Democratization in World-Historical Perspective

Abstract: Max Weber’s writings contain no full-scale treatment of democracy, but they bear on the question in several ways. His direct treatments of the topic, concerning the nature of the political calling and the prospects of parliamentary democracy in post-war Germany, treated parliamentary supremacy and the patterns of party machine politics and of election of notables as variants within the more central phenomenon of the development of professionalized political administration. In the end, Weber made his choice for parliamentary democracy above all as a testing ground for political charisma, and as a counterbalance to the charisma-deadening and substantively irresponsible dominance of bureaucratic routine. This conservative defence of democracy from the viewpoint of open-eyed sociological realism, original as it is, does not provide a theory of the historical conditions which brought about democracy in the first place.

The Specific Nature of “Russian State Power”

Abstract: The author develops a dynamic theory of "Russian state power" as an ideal type and emphasizes the roles played by frames, symbols, and rituals. He considers the conditions under which the cycle of disintegration and restoration of authoritarian regimes may be broken.

Max Weber's Axiological Critique of the Methodology of the Human Sciences: The Methodenstreit and Ideal Types*

Abstract: As has been pointed out by many Weber scholars, an atomized and fragmented view of Weber has emerged due to the lack of adequate understanding of the intellectual context in which Weber wrote about the methodology of the social sciences. Although a number of monographlength studies about Weber’s methodology of the social sciences stress the importance of the Methodonstreit in understanding Weber’s ideal type methodology, none of these studies seizes upon the fact that Weber’s criticisms of the Historical School as well as the Austrian School were based on his particular conception of the “distinctive aim” of the human sciences. As I hope to demonstrate in this article, Weber attempted to resolve the main issues of the Methodenstreit by shifting the controversy from the methodological level to the “axiological” level, that is, by invoking the distinctive aim of the social sciences. Weber’s axiological critique of the two opposing camps enabled him to develop his methodology of ideal type as an alternative strategy of theory construction in the social sciences.

The sociologist’s professional identity: contributions to its analysis

Abstract: The (re)formulation of the sociologist’s professional identity has been, and it is, a process of permanent search for legitimation and institutionalisation. This paper aims to discuss the sociologist’s professional identity, thus seeking to add to a deepening of this subject. For this purpose, a bibliographic search was carried out on this topic, starting from the situation of Sociology in Portugal. Furthermore, the authors’ experience in teaching and research in the area of Sociology and related social sciences of about 20 years was also used. It is concluded that, in analytical terms, it is possible to differentiate ideal type profiles of the sociologist’s professional identity. Yet, there is the need to be aware, on the one hand, of the possibility that the same sociologist can share features of more than one type, and, on the other hand, of the fact that, over time, both the sociologist’s professional identity and the typology itself may be subject to changes.