Chapter 19: The Types of Legitimate Domination

After reading Weber’s take on, “The Types of Legitimate Domination” it seems pretty clear on the way a government or a society has to be set up in order to maintain a community and in a civilized manner. Weber explains that there are basically three types of legitimate domination which comprised on rational ground, traditional grounds, and charismatic grounds. These types of dominations help to maintain the stability or the effectiveness of domination of another group of persons. Furthermore I will be focusing on the aspects of the concepts and levels that need to be taken to espouse the ideals of legal authority with a bureaucracy and its administrative staff. In order for legitimate domination to take place these ideas and steps need to be accepted by the community and followed.

The concepts that are mentioned consist with the willingness of a society to accept a legal norm and have it imposed with in that society and all the persons in it and its surrounding areas. Next would be after the imposition of the laws put on the society officials with in the administration in power must apply and hold to the rules set and enforced. Moreover the officials and the superiors of this system must subject themselves to the ideals that they have set and maintain their position through their actions and acts of authority.
In addition to that the people under the authority of the system in place should comply with the authority only as a ‘member’ and what he follows should be considered ‘the law’. Furthermore the member, who is under the authority of the superiors in power, shouldn’t have to ‘obey’ those who control them as themselves, but rather as a member of that society. It is basically saying that a person need be forced to have obedience they just need to have the societal obligation to adhere to the rules set forth by those in power.
There have been many types of authority with in societies but he purest of the types of legal authority would have to be one that has the ‘bureaucratic administrative staff’. In this type of authority there is only one superior or person in complete control and has the upper hand over the ranks of authoritative officials beneath him. The administrative staff then itself complies with certain criteria and guidelines that have to be implemented in order to maintain this purest form of legal authority.
Some of the attributes and restrictions that are compulsory to hold a position with in the administrative staff are that the person in this position they are ‘personally free and subject to the authority only with respect to their impersonal official obligations; then the staff is divided into different levels of offices with in the system; the administrative staff also has knowledge of what is needed to perform and sustain authority in their position; every position is opened to free selection (in other words not really elected yet they are appointed because they are the best qualified forth job); next the staff is obligated to as certain salary according to their rank in the hierarchy; the staff member treats this position as the main occupation they have. The system in which they are in consist of possible advancement in the in the system, which is only determined by the superiors of that system in call. Moreover the position is not choices that they official is making but that of his superiors and the person in question is not to take ownership of the methods or orders in which are given to them, although obligated to the disciple and control that the office demands from him as an official.
I think control over an individual is usually wrong but in this case legitimate domination over members with in a society is a way to prevent chaos and maintain a civilized form of obedience. Legitimate domination over a society is a good way for a community to not lose control over themselves and also have a sense of security of who they are and where they belong in the system.