Weberian Ideal Type Research Articles

The Weberian ideal type in political economy: obsolete match or fruitful encounter?

ABSTRACT This article highlights the analytical contribution of the Weberian ideal type to the field of political economy. Major strands of political economy have continued to integrate ideal type thinking to understand better the dynamics of national, regional and global economic systems. While there is an unbroken popularity of this methodological tool in the social sciences, we argue that it shows particular strengths and weaknesses in the interface between comparative and international political economy. To make this point, we first analyse the aims of the Weberian ideal type and investigate how it has been applied in the Varieties of Capitalism approach (VoC), dominant in much of comparative political economy (CPE). We then explore standard criticisms especially in the extension and reformulation of this approach to include the reasoning of international political economy (IPE). Main patterns of ideal type construction are identified to capture the CPE/IPE interaction and to point to some of the standard pitfalls when using the Weberian device. To maintain its strong position in the toolbox of political economy researchers need to take its heuristic purpose more seriously and be aware of its limitations.

Where Two Are Fighting, the Third One Does What? Digitalisation and Its Effects on Social Entrepreneurship’s Social-Economic Hybridity

Simultaneously pursuing social and economic value, social entrepreneurship (SE) builds on hybrid organisations that need to align competing institutional logics. But what influences this alignment? Despite digitalisation’s growing importance, there is no systematic analysis of how digitalisation influences SE’s hybridity, that is, its social and economic logic and their compatibility. To address this gap, we first operationalise SE’s digital orientation as a matter of digital depth and digital breadth. We then briefly illustrate the positive and negative effects of digitalisation on social and economic value creation. Our findings then identify nine specific forms of how digitisation can affect SE’s logic compatibility in positive, negative, and neutral ways. For future research, our discussion presents initial suggestions for measuring SE’s digital orientation, provides a Weberian ideal type definition of digital social entrepreneurship, and invites investigating the institutional implications of digitising SE.

The epistemological status of subsidiarity in organizations: An insight from the notion of principle in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas

AbstractSubsidiarity is often implicitly conceived as an organizational model or a Weberian ideal type. The purpose of this paper is to show that, in contrast, subsidiarity is a principle in the sense of the tradition originating from Thomas Aquinas. Considered as an ideal type, subsidiarity may be perceived as impossible to apply because of its ideal status, abstracted from the circumstances. Here, we will demonstrate the consequences of the fact that subsidiarity is one of the common principles of practical moral reasoning of particular prudence. Because it is a principle, subsidiarity does not have a visualizable substance or prescribe an organizational model, unlike the ideal type. It thus avoids the indiscriminate application of organizational models to contexts that are not appropriate, and in the context of tension between external consultants and managers, it rehabilitates the prudence of leaders who know the circumstances of their organization.

MULTISTAGE SAMPLING FOR TRANSLATIONAL COMMUNITY RESEARCH: ZOOMING OUT TO HONE IN ON PLACE-BASED HEALTH DISPARITIES

Abstract ​​Whereas researchers strive for generalizability, community-engaged research (CEnR) typically involves only a few specific communities. Drawing on Weberian ideal type, I outline the use of an innovative blended-methods approach to sample the communities in which CEnR practitioners would collect in-depth data. To complement typical practices of entering a community without preconceived ideas, understanding how communities in the sampling frame relate to one another is important for equigenic (place-based health equity) implementations. The selection of neighborhood communities from quadrants in 2x2 matrices allows pertinent concepts to emerge and relevant solutions to be drawn from thriving communities to aid program co-creation and implementation in other communities. For example, this has led to the identification of communities in British Columbia with differing socioeconomic status, social capital, and coping during COVID-19. This methodological innovation is congruent with asset-based community development (ABCD) to minimize arbitrariness in sampling decisions and advance health equity in our cities.

Student Volunteer Ideal Type Formation in Community Gardens

A community garden (CG) is a piece of land in which community members come together to grow plants, often food. Historically, gardening programs in the United States have been a response to economic shocks, emphasizing personal responsibility by growing one’s own food to overcome economic issues. Frequently, their purposes include creating social capital and more sustainable food options, with many other ancillary benefits in health, education, value formation, and financial gain. Volunteers are necessary to achieve this. However, student volunteerism in a CG carries many challenges. College towns, including Gainesville, Florida, have a large proportion of transient college-aged residents because of the dominant role that a university holds in that city. These volunteers, being transient, may not contribute to or benefit from the community building central to a CG’s purpose. This is exacerbated by a town-gown divide, the long-standing tensions between the university and the rest of a city. This paper draws from field notes and informal interviews in a community garden located in a college town to investigate these issues. A Weberian ideal type model for student volunteers is constructed, identifying four key characteristics: consistency, willingness to learn, social competency, and self-sufficiency. This ideal type model is then compared to reality in the garden, providing insight into why universities should prepare student volunteers to maximize impact and bridge the town-gown divide.

Weberian ideal type construction as concept replacement

AbstractThis paper contains a novel and coherent reading of Weberian ideal type construction, based on recent philosophical approaches to conceptual engineering. This reading makes transparent the dialectics of Weber's approach, resulting in a more nuanced interpretation of his methodological work. It will become apparent that Weber, when introducing his notion of an ideal type, did not merely summarize his views on methodology in the social sciences, but, rather, presented a two‐step argument in favor of these views. The reconstruction will directly bear on issues in the methodology of the social sciences. Weber not only presented a methodology that is, at some level of abstraction, strikingly similar to Carnapian explication (the canonical point of reference in the contemporary debate on conceptual engineering). He also diagnosed, in a systematic fashion, types of problems we face when dealing with ordinary and scientific concepts that play a key role in the description of social reality, and he foreshadowed what is today sometimes described as “debunking” projects. From a philosophy of science perspective, I propose Weber's view (on the reconstruction proposed here) as a serious candidate for an adequate theory of concept replacement in the social sciences.

Modernist Ambivalence about Christianity

Kern argues that the responses of Friedrich Nietzsche, James Joyce, André Gide, D. H. Lawrence, and Martin Heidegger to Christianity made up a Weberian ideal type. Accordingly: They all were raised as Christians but lost their faith when they began university studies. They all criticized the impact that they believed the anti-sexual Christian morality, with its emphasis on sin, had had, or threatened to have, on their love life. For that reason they were militantly anti-Christian but also ambivalent about Christianity. They worked to replace the loss of Christian unity with non-Christian unifying projects in literature and philosophy. Virginia Woolf, who was raised as an atheist, conformed to many of these elements of the ideal type but added another in criticizing the fragmenting patriarchal society that supported the dominant patriarchal Church of England. She envisioned new man-womanly and woman-manly types who could cultivate their understanding and love for one another in less polarizing and more humanizing ways.

The Importance of Models in Sociology: The Example of Max Weber

Sociological research method may be resumed by three concepts of Karl R. Popper, “problems-theories-critics”. Within this field, the role of theoretical models is central. In particular, the concept of model is comparable to the one of ideal type conceived by Max Weber. As a matter of fact, Weberian ideal type is still one of the most popular methodological instruments in social sciences. Conceived as a non-normative form of conceptualization finalized to simplify and reduce external social world complexity, ideal type allows the organization of an increasing knowledge acquaintance. It is shown that as a significant character of understanding sociology, ideal type is founded on an individualistic and nomological epistemological substrate. Conceived in these terms, it is argued that ideal type is therefore the expression of a unique method of explanation which can be traced in some examples showing how models construction is one of sociology’s most used instruments.

Trajektoria trwania opancerzonych demokracji

MILITANT DEMOCRACIES’ TRAJECTORY OF CONTINUANCEThe theoretical category of militant democracy in Karl Loevenstein’s meaning is described well in world scholarly literature. Notwithstanding, there is no comprehensive typology of militant democracy which would allow for identifying and diversifying various political regimes which meet the distinctive features of the Weberian ideal type of militant democracy. Therefore, the main aim of this paper is to formulate a typology of militant democracies which would be a useful analytical tool for studying diverse political regimes. Importantly, this paper contributes to the field by proposing the framework of the theory, i.e., militant democracies’ trajectory of continuance which consists of the types of militant democracies and the relationships between them. It is significant to assume that the subjects of militant democracy use offensive and defensive strategies which are characterised by the following degrees of intensity: low, moderate, and high. Hence, nine types of these strategies’ configurations are determined. They generate nine types of militant democracies. Moreover, there are nine factorial relationships between them, which are useful for assessing whether and how empirical exemplifications of political regimes change. This proposal of the typology of militant democracies is highly applicable to empirical studies and worth developing in a theoretical way on the basis of new criteria such as the potential of regime regeneration.

The Politics of Unreason: The Frankfurt School and the Origins of Modern Antisemitism

The Politics of Unreason: The Frankfurt School and the Origins of Modern Antisemitism

Inner gnawing, outward clawing - The role of existential crises in crime causation

Abstract This paper provides an interdisciplinary perspective on the role of existential crises in crime causation. The theory presented in this paper is that a crisis of meaning is interrelated with other criminogenic factors, and that these factors together lead to frustration, which in turn may lead to aggression in some cases. Specifically, factors of anomie, boredom, mass entertainment, subculture, and gender are explored. This framework traces the influence of both social structure and culture on the individual level of motivation. This paper follows in the theoretical tradition advanced by Dollard et al., linking frustration to aggression and positing “there is a strong tendency for inhibited direct aggression to be displaced, i.e., not to disappear but to be expressed in altered form or to be directed toward individuals who were not the source of the frustration.” (Dollard, 1967). The paper develops a Weberian ideal type of the anomic individual within the criminal subculture. For an additional layer of social psychological perspective, the analysis continually engages with Merton's theory of anomie. Overall, this framework invites the reader to explore the interaction of psychological, sociological, and cultural variables. By appreciating the relationship between these variables, we might recognize the motivational power of the subjective experience of acute frustration present during existential crises. The results of this analysis are directly applicable to the perennial social issue of aggression. Scholarly elucidation of the criminogenic existential crisis can provide vivid guidance to teachers, parole officers, social work professionals, and therapists from a variety of traditions. The existential perspective provides an important reason to remain attuned to the psychological vulnerability of young people. Primarily, the need for meaning-oriented leadership should be seriously considered. Another basic precept of prevention should be to provide young people with a third way between models of ostentatious affluence and nihilistic ego gratification. Additionally, boredom should be recognized as a criminogenic state of being. Importantly, the pervasiveness of criminal subcultures must be reckoned with. Rather than denying the pervasiveness of such subcultures, preventive policy should incorporate destructive or unflattering norms and behavior into a positive framework of counseling or therapy. Finally, supervision during the period of inner crisis is absolutely vital. Constructive supervision would consist of ensuring that external control is concurrent with purposeful activity and outlets for inevitable frustrations. This framework has implications for criminal justice. By focusing closely -as this paper does- on psychological drives, we begin to perceive limitations to punitive policy. As this paper suggests, external controls may merely redirect inner drives, which will tend to discover or create outlets once the external control is removed.

The developmental state and social enterprise in South Korea

Purpose– This paper aims to examine the distinctiveness of South Korean social enterprises from a historical institutionalism perspective. From this perspective, the author focuses on the proactive roles played by the government in the process of emergence and formulation of social enterprises in South Korea. The author roots this paper in the concept of the developmental state and examines how this concept applies to newly emerging social enterprises in South Korea.Design/methodology/approach– This paper first introduces the process of South Korean social enterprises’ emergence as an independent phenomenon. The author explains the process with a link to governmental actions, such as the introduction of public programs and government acts. Second, this paper introduces the concept of developmental state which captures the proactive role of the state in social, economic and political development in South Korea. Third, this paper applies the institutional framework proposed by Kerlin (2013) to see how the South Korean social enterprise model can be located from a comparative perspective and how the South Korean model can contribute to the expansion of the existing framework.Findings– This paper finds that the state involvement in South Korea is a reflection of the historical path of the developmental state. The cross-comparison of South Korean social enterprises from a historical institutionalist approach finds that the South Korean case may contribute to the ongoing scholarly debate by suggesting taking a Weberian ideal type of an interventionist state into account for an extension of the proposed framework. This paper also uncovered the strategic approach of the South Korean Government in utilizing this public policy tool by adopting and combining existing social enterprise models.Research limitations/implications– This paper demonstrates the state’s intents to mobilize economic and societal resources as public policy intervention tools, which can be understood from a developmental state context. This role would be distinct when compared to those in Europe and the USA. This paper has a limitation to restrict its analytical scope to formally recognized social enterprises because it focuses on the role of the state in utilizing social enterprises for public policy agenda: social development and social welfare provision.Practical implications– As a practical implication, this study might provide an insightful framework for South Korean public policy makers, outlining the contributions and limitations of state-led public policies associated with social enterprises. As seen in the historical path of governmental interventions, governmental public policies do not necessarily guarantee their sustainable community impacts without the consideration of private or nonprofit actors’ spontaneous involvements. The flip side of state-led interventions requires policy makers to become more cautious, as they address social problems with public policy intents.Originality/value– The majority of current studies on social enterprises in South Korea mainly focus on reporting the quantitative increase in the number of registered social enterprises. Beyond this quantitative description of its achievement, this paper also provides a historical narration and philosophical background of this phenomenon. Additionally, it shows how this artificial government intervention in social enterprises could be accepted from a historical perspective and brought remarkable responses from the private and civil society sectors in South Korea.

Sociocultural factors and bureaucratic practices in universities in Ghana

Max Weber, one of the pioneers in bureaucratic organisational studies believes in the ultimate triumph of bureaucracy over the collegial culture of universities. This paper argues that rather than ultimate triumph of bureaucracy over the collegial culture of universities (Weber 1947), the interests of universities would be better served when the bureaucratic culture is designed to accommodate some core socio-cultural expectations of organizational members, without compromising productivity. The research examined the implications of some selected sociocultural factors for bureaucratic practices in selected universities in Ghana through a mix method approach. The findings show that, the authority structures of the two universities typify the Weberian Ideal type bureaucracy with hierarchical culture and standardized rules and procedures for carrying out every task. This notwithstanding, the societal culture was found to be influential in shaping the bureaucratic behaviour and conducts of organizations’ members. The paper aims at bringing to the fore the strength of the informal structures in reshaping bureaucratic culture and work behaviour, and the need to consider socio-cultural contexts in designing bureaucratic organizations.

From collective learning to Silicon Valley replication: The limits to synergistic entrepreneurship in Sophia Antipolis

Taking Silicon Valley as a “Weberian ideal type” of high-tech development, one can derive 10 key characteristics which together can be used to measure to what extent other regions of the world have been able to duplicate this “hot spot” of economic transformation. Comparisons of such synergistic entrepreneurship are illustrated by the case of Sophia Antipolis in France, characterized by initial large company involvement, a utopian environmental design by Pierre Laffitte and the process of high-tech innovation among small and medium-sized companies, particularly in the telecommunication sector.

Interest, sensationism and the science of the legislator: French ‘philosophie économique’, 1695–18301

For many centuries religion dominated the thought and behaviour of peoples. From the end of the seventeenth century, however, it was progressively replaced by political economy, which in turn developed its full influence during the nineteenth century, imposing a new ‘ethos’ and a new ‘conduct of life’. So that we might better understand this fact, a Weberian ideal-type is proposed: philosophie économique. Illustrated by the works of Boisguilbert, Quesnay, Turgot and Say, it elaborates three main elements: interested behaviour, sensationism and a specific conception of the ‘science of the legislator’.

The weight of history, a broad sense of the possible: Economic history, development studies, political economy and Bill Freund

The weight of history, a broad sense of the possible: Economic history, development studies, political economy and Bill Freund

Post‐bureaucracy and Weber's “modern” bureaucrat

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide a re‐examination of the Weberian corpus.Design/methodology/approachDiscusses the Weberian corpus and the discrepancies and lacunae in Weber's accounts. Outlines “Weberian” bureacracy in the post‐bureacracy literature, the use and utility of ideal types and the problems of ideal typifications.FindingsThe so‐called “Weberian ideal type” which is the standard reference point in bureaucracy versus post‐bureaucracy discussion is only ambiguously related to what Weber himself wrote. Usually “Weberian” bureaucracy is equated with rule‐governed hierarchy. This is a gross over‐simplification of Weber's thought, but his “ideal type” demands radical re‐tooling in order to be usable. The components he itemized and the importance he attached to them are inconsistent, they are abstracted from exemplars which Weber privileged without explanation, and he gave no unambiguous criteria for deciding which components this ideal type should include or exclude. Moreover, he equated bureaucratic organization with modernity, when on his own account there were fully bureaucratic organizations centuries before “modernity”. His ideal type thus cannot yield a clear distinction between bureaucratic and “post”‐bureaucratic organizations, unless “bureaucracy” is flattened into “hierarchy”, and “post”‐bureaucratic into “non‐hierarchical”. But hierarchy cannot be eliminated from complex organizations, and bureaucracy can be re‐theorized to include any non‐contradictory attributes. Therefore, there can be adaptations of bureaucracy, but ex hypothesi there cannot be a “post‐bureaucratic era”.Originality/valueThe paper shows that Weber's ideal type can be re‐theorized to include any “non‐contradictory attributes”.

Realigning business, government and civil society

PurposeThis article aims to explore the character of an emerging model of corporate social responsibility (CSR)‐oriented societal governance in an exchange theoretical perspective and to examine the distinctive characteristics of the relations between civil society, business and government in the new model and the drivers behind it.Design/methodology/approachBy analyzing typical roles and role‐sets in political, commercial and regulatory exchange, the article pin‐points characteristics of the embedded relational governance/CSR model contrasted against liberal governance and the Keynesian welfare state. The analysis is stylized and conceptually based, in line with the Weberian ideal type concept and brings out stylized juxtapositions of the three governance models based on previous studies.FindingsAn emerging model of corporate social responsibility (CSR) or embedded relational governance seems to share the basic market orientation of the liberal model, yet, at the same time, sharing many of the social and collective goals of the welfare state. This combination is apparently achieved by embedding the social dimension into civil society and self‐regulatory market processes. Finally, the paper reflects on the drivers behind the new governance approach, in the context of a globalizing economy. The paper argues that NGO‐driven communicative intermediation interfacing with an increasing CSR and corporate governance focus in financial evaluation may serve to retain some of the social agenda from the welfare state, under the CSR‐ or embedded‐relational model, an agenda that seemed to be gradually losing out with the global competitive exposure of the welfare state.Research limitations/implicationsThe article presents a stylized analytical framework of CSR/embedded relational governance that lays a basis for further exploration and systematic testing through comparative empirical studies.Practical implicationsThe paper brings out the interplay between political, regulatory and commercial processes and gives a broader understanding of the societal implications of CSR.Originality/valueOriginal contributions of this paper: first, the analytical formulation of the societal governance implications of CSR; second, the exchange theoretical conceptualization of this mode of societal governance.

The Size, Composition, and Dynamics of the Russian State Bureaucracy in the 1990s

In this paper Robert J. Brym and Vladimir Gimpelson analyze changes in the size and social composition of the Russian state bureaucracy in the 1990s based on official data. Although the Russian state bureaucracy grew somewhat at the regional level in the 1990s, it actually shrank at the federal level. Comparing the Russian state bureaucracy to the Weberian ideal type of bureaucratic efficiency, the authors also demonstrate the existence of strong gender and age segregation, with women and young people concentrated at lower levels and men and older people concentrated at higher levels. Furthermore, because many public officials were formally educated in the pre-perestroika era, they are poorly adapted to the needs of a modern state. Finally, circulation of new personnel through the bureaucracy, or bureaucratic “renewal,” is slow and occurs mainly at low-status levels. Circulation of personnel at high-status levels is practically nonexistent. Consequentiy, young recruits have little incentive to remain in state service and older officials confront little competition from either below or outside the state bureaucracy. Much of the inefficiency of the Russian state bureaucracy stems from these realities.

Continuity and Change in Italian Corporate Governance: The Institutional Stability of One Variety of Capitalism

For a long time family capitalism has been considered to be one of the distinguishing characteristics of the Italian economy. In Italy also large business organizations rely very often on this form of corporate governance. This paper examines both the actual institutional shocks and the missed opportunity for institutional shocks that have diversified the Italian economy from the other advanced capitalist economies. We maintain that, in the midst of the numerous changes that have characterized the last ten years, the strong presence of families in the governance of large enterprises has been an important aspect of systemic continuity. Despite the intentions of the reformers, the Italian model of family capitalism has been even purified to the point that it has come to approach a sort of Weberian ideal-type. Indeed, the role of other spurious (but, perhaps, complementary) institutions has been dramatically reduced with the eclipse of the power of Mediobanca and the privatization of the State sector while no serious challenge has threatened the dominance of family capitalism.