like to spend as much time as I can on Durkheim's methodology.

I have lots of notes.

This is the twenty-fourth lecture, note,

this semester for this course.

But let me rush through of the test questions and just to tell

you how I would like to deal with them.

I think the first one is very obvious, probably a bit too

obvious.

The question is how can you make it interesting?

I hope that the distinction between power and domination is

clear.

Right?

Power means that somebody can impose its will on somebody

else, even if that other person opposes it.

There is a strong element of coercion involved.

Right?

You can coerce people to obey your command.

Domination implies that you do not have to use coercion

systematically, because people tend to

internalize the reasons those who have power use in order to

legitimate why they should have power.

Right?

And then this brings us to the notion of legitimacy.

Right?

Legitimacy are the claims which are made by those who have

power, which try to justify why it is

reasonable that they should issue commands and others should

obey it.

So far, very simple. Right?

What is kind of controversial about this?

It's controversial the way how Weber uses the notion of

legitimacy.

Normally we, in modern democratic theory,

we believe--right?--a system is legitimate when it has popular

consent.

We think about universal suffrage.

People go to free and fair elections, and then they elect

leaders, and then they follow those elected to office this

way.

Then power is legitimate.

But I think Weber wants to have a broader notion of legitimacy.

Because free and fair elections, operating with

universal suffrage, go back one-hundred years in

human history, and in some countries it still

does not exist.

And Weber does not want to describe the last ten minutes of

human history for human history's twenty-four hours.

Right?

He wants to offer some conceptual tools to understand

the whole twenty-four hours.

So that's why he has this interesting notion of

legitimacy; which it does imply that people

have to have a certain degree of belief in the validity of the

legitimacy claims.

But it is a rather passive notion of belief.

They don't have to love the person in position of authority;

they do not have to elect it.

They simply--it's enough if they think, "Well I cannot

think of a better alternative."

Right?

Another dictator could be worse than this one.

Right?

This is a dictator, but a reasonable one.

And Weber will say, as long as this is happening,

the person in authority will not have to use coercion

systematically, and therefore it will be

legitimate.

Right?

Let me also just say--of course, the coercive element is

also in domination.

Right?

If people disobey the law, then they will be coerced.

There is certainly a promise of coercion, even in modern free

democracies.

People are put in jail; in this country people are even

executed.

Right?

So there is an element of coercion.

Just the real question is how systematic that coercion should

be?

And for Weber, pure exercise of authority is

relatively rare and marginal.

I would say, for instance,

the sort of last year or two or three of Hitler was fairly

illegitimate.

Hitler had to use massive coercion.

Certain epochs of rule of Stalin in the Soviet Union were

illegitimate, not all the rule of Stalin.

During the Second World War he established some legitimacy.

But when he had to imprison ten million people--

right?--and to kill tens of thousands or hundreds of

thousands, that is an indication that this

is illegitimate.

Okay?

So that's the way how I would handle it--right?--to work

around this interesting conception of legitimacy,

and what is for and against this.

Well this is again a very simple question,

traditional and legal-rational authority.

Right?

The basic difference is--right?--that traditional

authority, you have a personal master.

In legal-rational authority you do not have a personal master.

You obey the laws, and the people who are in

charge, who are superiors, will also have to obey the same

laws, what you are required to do.

And traditional authority is legitimated by the sanctity of

age-old rules.

Here again I think the interesting issue,

if I would write about this, will be, well this is a big

historical distinction.

But Weber also uses it to describe, in contemporary

society, different types of organizations.

So contemporary theory has a big dose of traditional

authority in it--right?--and I would try to elaborate on this.

Well this is--right?--one of the trickier questions:

Why does Weber believe that bureaucracy is efficient?

And you may agree or may disagree with him.

So first of all, I would state why Weber

believes that bureaucracy is efficient.

I would emphasize that he thinks that bureaucracy is the

most efficient, in the technical terms--not

necessarily otherwise.

And then, of course, the way how he defines

bureaucracy.

People are put into position in terms of their competence.

There is a rule of law.

It is a predictable environment, a bureaucratic

environment.

There is a hierarchy of appeals; if somebody makes a mistake,

how to appeal.

This, of course, all makes it efficient.

Now we know that bureaucracies are often inefficient.

So how to reconcile this?

Well it's not that Weber was totally insensitive to the

problem of inefficiencies of bureaucracies,

and he formulated it how that bureaucracies are caught between

formal and substantive rationality.

That's the way how I would probably defend Weber--to say he

was not that naīve to believe that bureaucracies are

always efficient.

They would be efficient if they would be purely formally

rational, but they are not.

And one good example is welfare bureaucracies,

which do establish a kind of patron-client

relationships--right?--between bureaucracies and clients.

Some people refer to this as welfare dependency,

which makes it, of course, a cause of

inefficiency.

Well this is a nice question to answer, and we discussed this a

great deal.

We know that charismatic leaders appear in times of

crisis, when people are looking for a change.

Right?

So Barack Obama, during the presidential

campaign, he has read Weber carefully;

he knew how to frame--right?--his message

exactly as a charismatic message.

It was all about change, and it was about hope.

Right?

In contrast with Hillary Clinton or John McCain.

Both of them emphasized that "we are experienced'.

This is not what people wanted to hear when they wanted to have

change.

So yes, in this respect, Barack Obama did have a

charismatic appeal, and this charismatic appeal did

gel.

Right?

Many people responded to his charisma.

He was criticized by his opponent that he's a rock

star--right?--because people got so excited about him.

So he could appeal to the emotion of people.

Right?

He could appeal to them.

But, of course, as we again discussed in

discussion sections-- also briefly in class--Barack

Obama has a charismatic appeal, but he operates in a

legal-rational authority.

Right?

And we just have seen that very recently--right?--making a

decision about the war in Afghanistan.

Right?

Well he had to deal with realities.

Right?

So well Weber would--in the classical sense,

charisma in Weber is reserved to great religious leaders,

such as Muhammad or Jesus or whatever,

or the great prophets.

And in this sense charisma is not really applicable to

politicians operating in legal-rational authority.

So Weber would have some unease to call Barack Obama a

charismatic leader.

I would think he would concede that certainly Barack Obama had

charismatic features, as such.

Now the fifth question: Durkheim and the study of law.

Why on earth he starts from the study of law in analyzing

society?

Because he's a methodological collectivist,

and because he wants to capture something like the collective

conscience, which is more than the sum

total of individual consciousness.

But he's also a scientist, and I hope I will have a little

time to talk about the methodology.

He wants to be very rigorous, and he doesn't want to start

with ideas; he wants to start with facts.

Well he's caught in--right?--a contradiction.

So collective conscience is ideas.

Right?

How on earth you study them objectively?

And law is a great example, because law is written down.

Right?

There is written law.

You can study it objectively, and it is not only individual

consciousness what guides us all.

So I think this is the major reason why his point of

departure is--as an example--law because this is what he can

rigorously study.

It can be seen as a social fact--right?--

that this is the law, and to understand why this law

came into being, under what circumstances,

and how does it influence people?

Well, of course, the inspiration comes from

Montesquieu.

All right.

Well agreement and disagreement.

I think the real question is whether you buy into

methodological collectivism or not.

Some of you may be methodological individualists.

Especially if you are an Econ major, you tend to be an

economic individualist, a methodological individualist.

Right?

You tend to believe that there are rational individual actors

who pursue interest, and you are very skeptical

about anything which is assumedly above the individual.

So in that case, if you are a methodological

individualist-- and, in fact,

I think the dominant trend in social sciences today is

methodological individualism and a great deal of skepticism about

methodological collectivism-- that can be a kind of critical

handle on it.

Or at least you can show this is the way how it can be

criticized, and you can show why you

actually think that methodological collectivism is

reasonable.

Okay, the sixth question, organic and mechanical

solidarity, and how this is related to Weber's typology of

authority.

I mean, it's pretty simple.

There are very important distinctions--di

fferences--between Durkheim and Weber.

Durkheim looks at what brings society together.

The central concept is solidarity.

Weber looks at social conflict, what takes society apart.

So he looks at struggle around power.

Right?

Weber is coming from the lineage of, I would say,

Hobbes and Nietzsche.

Right?

That's where the Weberian view comes from.