[MWS 10.2 (2010) 235-249] ISSN 1470-8078 Jeffrey Alexander on Weber and Democracy: A Critical Note Sandro Segre Preliminary Observations Jeffrey Alexander's four-volume work Theoretical Logic in Sociology, published in the early 1980s, pursued the goals of providing sociol ogy with new epistemological principles, reconstructing the thought of Marx, Dürkheim, Weber and Parsons, and evaluating it according to these principles. Alexander's work produced a spate of commen taries, mostly critical. We shall consider the volume on Max Weber (Alexander 1983), and focus on Alexander's discussion of Weber's democratic theory rather than evaluating this work in general (as in Collins 1985). Alexander's interpretation will be presented, com pared with other interpretive works on Weber's democratic theory, and then evaluated in terms of its consistency with Weber's texts. Alexander's Theoretical Project. A Synopsis Alexander examines Max Weber's writings on democracy in the course of his discussion of rational-legal domination, which is a constitutive part of his theoretical project. A brief presentation of this project, as formulated in several of Alexander's works, is there fore appropriate before considering his interpretation of Weber, and Weber's democratic theory in particular (see especially Alexan der 1987b: 379-80; 1988; 1990:1-27; 1998: 210-33; 2003:11-26; 2005). As a research program, Neofunctionalism includes, in Alexander's judgment, a new definition and conceptualization of the relations between culture and society. It does not presuppose social inte gration, in contrast to Parsons, but rather considers carefully the existence of tensions between subcultures, and also between the social and the cultural systems. The program of Neofunctionalism is multidimensional, to the effect that it sets out to offer descrip tions, explanations, and interpretations of social life which are not reductionist insofar as the problems of action and the social order are concerned.© Max Weber Studies 2011, Clifton House, 17 Malvern Road, London, E8 3LP. 236 Max Weber Studies Alexander's 'strong program' contends that culture is autonomous from all social determination, and therefore involves a new mode of conducting sociological inquiry. Action is viewed as resulting from, on the one hand, the actors' voluntary commitment to pursue their goals and make moral norms binding, on the other hand, as constrained or conditioned by an external environment. This epis temological program is of relevance to all the social sciences, and makes no distinction among them. It calls for a systematic reference to the subjective meanings individual and collective actors confer to reality, and takes into consideration the constraints actors have to deal with in their social life. All the cultural products originat ing in the social scientists' scientific community are included in this research program. Investigations that are in keeping with the 'strong program' presuppose, from an epistemological viewpoint, that the knowledge produced by the social sciences—in the sense of understanding and explaining social reality—be premised on an interpretation of cultural phenomena. These phenomena, according to this interpretation, are social products, but are in no way determined by, and are in fact autono mous from the social structure, and in general from the contents and meanings of social life. It is rather culture that shapes social life by constituting an environment which surrounds the actor, and is ana lytically separate from it. In Alexander's vocabulary, general pre suppositions are non-empirical, 'metaphysical' assumptions having a most general nature. They are not ideological, but inform ideolog ical judgments and political commitments, and provide orientation to sociological analysis in its choice of theoretical models, method ological principles, and empirical observations (Alexander 1982: 2-5, 36-46,124). The generalized problems of action and order are 'pre suppositional questions' that raise the epistemological issues of 'the sociological relevance of subjectivity and objectivity, freedom and determinism' (Alexander 1982: 90). The 'strong program' attributes great importance to meanings, symbols, narratives, beliefs, ideologies, collective representations, and in general to the cultural features of social life. It endeavors to interpret and provide a detailed reconstruction of the constitutive elements of culture. To this end, individual and collective actors are identified, and the hierarchies and social institutions that medi ate between actors and culture are taken into consideration...