Individualism and legitimation paradoxes and perspectives on the political sociology of Émile Durkheim

Abstract

Sociology competes with other social scientific disciplines not only with regard to the interpretation of social crises but also with respect to the development of particular models of legitimation. For this reason, early sociology was once aptly described as the 'science of order' (Negt 1974). In actual fact sociology is not only concerned with the analysis of social crises; it also sees itself as a science of political legitimation. Max Weber devised the typology which lead to the decisive conceptual broadening of political sociology and which is still of fundamental importance today. According to this typology, forms of domination can be defined by looking at the typical claim to legitimation made by the authority which holds sway at the time, independently of the specific motives or purposes of the social superiors or subordinates involved. It is on this basis that the three well-known forms of domination—traditional, bureaucratic legal and charismatic—can be distinguished. Furthermore, the structure and continuity of power relations are determined by the internal organization of their associations, particularly by the distribution of executive powers between leaders and subjects as well as within the administrative ranks (Weber 1976: I22ff and 548). Weber's contemporary and the co-founder of sociology, Emile Dur kheim, takes up the problem of political legitimation and looks at it under a different theoretical perspective. He is primarily interested in the insti tutional preconditions of stable political order in the light of the specific conditions of integration of modern societies. The theory of the social division of labour, the anomie hypothesis, as well as the structural analysis of social change in the period of transition towards modernity presented Durkheim with new theoretical challenges in the area of political thought. Just as social cohesiveness no longer appeared to be 'automatically' guaranteed by premodern forms of integration, so according to Durkheim the political system, and above all the State in 'organic' society, were faced with fundamentally new problems of legitimation. The great ideological debates and political conflicts which shook the France of the Third Republic—from the Dreyfus affair, which cast its shadow over everything, to the scandal over the financing of the Panama Canal and the assassination attempts of the anarchists, from the strengthening of organized socialism to school and university reforms—caused Durkheim to subject the structures