Max Weber and the Mandate of Heaven

Abstract

How can China's eminence in the global economy during the era from 1000 to 1750 be reconciled with its Confucian system of government and administration, which allegedly did not focus on the economy at all? The answer might lie in the concept of the Mandate of Heaven, which provided the Confucian bureaucracy with a severe performance imperative, a point made forcefully if very implicitly—almost unconsciously—by Max Weber in his Confucianism study. Perhaps because of this implicitness, however, no study on the MoH so far has apparently utilized Weber, while Weber-on-China studies have only rarely looked at his use of the Mandate of Heaven. This essay fills these lacunae from the Public Administration perspective, bringing the discussion up to today.