Max Weber and James Bryce: The Constitution of Responsibility

Abstract

While much has been written about Max Weber’s “ethic of responsibility,” less has been written about the more general “sense of responsibility” he thought politicians needed and, particularly, its place as a main goal of Weber’s constitutional theory. Here I offer an interpretation of Weber’s constitutional theory as designed to cultivate personal responsibility in rulers. I advance this interpretation by examining an underappreciated influence on Weber—the constitutional writings of James Bryce (1838–1922), the British Liberal historian, Gladstonian statesman, and diplomat. In his arguments for parliamentarism in Germany and later for a plebiscitary presidency, Weber adopted and adapted from Bryce (and, through Bryce, from Woodrow Wilson and Walter Bagehot) a principle that responsible government requires a publicly visible concentration of power subject to effective accountability mechanisms. This principle remains important as a remedy for pathologies of irresponsible government that persist among us today.