Authority Tpyes and Max Weber

I chose to focus on Max Weber's different authority types he believes occur in societies. The three different authority types he explains are Rational, Traditional, and Charismatic. Traditional authority means that its legitimized by tradition. In traditional authority the right to rule is usually passed down in the family. The main things to understand what traditional authority is to recognize that it doesn't change over time, and doesn't facilitate social change and decisions are more inconsistent and irrational,. According to Weber in traditional authority the creation of laws that differ from traditional norms is not possible. Charismatic authority is found in leaders that influence and persuade others. Weber believed a charismatic leader is someone that is instilled with super natural powers. He believed a charismatic leader would hold positions of importance such as president, leaders of social movements, or people in roles that can influence others. I personally think Weber seemed to favor charismatic authority and he spend a lot of time talking about it. He also thought it played a very strong role in traditional authority so the two kind of overlap. The important things to note in a charismatic authority are that it can undergo change, we have order and structure because of influential leaders and we also would have staff or people that follow the leader and act on his behalf. Rational authority means it's empowered by the law or natural law. Law refers to being legal and natural law refers to rationality. This is where the term legal-rational comes from. The best example of legal-rational authority according to Weber is a bureaucracy. Legal-rational is often found in modern state, voluntary associations, city governments, and private and public corporations. The simplified way to describe each type of authority is that traditional is un-dynamic, charismatic is personal, and legal-rational is rational. Weber explained that an authority over time can lose its power and transform into a different type of authority. An example of this would be charisma and tradition which are both more irrational weakening legal-rational authority.
I'm going to provide examples of each type of authority now and explain which type I think is the most efficient and effective. An example of traditional authority is kings that have attained their power from tradition. They received this power because their father had been a king and it has been passed down through family not through popularity or personal traits that qualified them to take over the role of king. An example of a charismatic leader would be President George W. Bush's bush to send us to war against Iraq. He only had a little bit of military experience but he was able to persuade the people that we needed to move into Iraq in an urgent matter and people followed him because he was such an authoritative figure. An example of rational-legal authority are the police arresting someone for a DUI because it is against the law. I personally believe that rational-legal is the most efficient and effective. With rational-legal there are no grey areas to what is right and what is wrong. We follow a set of laws and regulations and there is no questions to what is right and what is wrong. In traditional authority people can attain authority by not being qualified. I believe in personal achievement and traditional is more based on hereditary. I think charismatic authority is effective, however Hitler was a charismatic authority and look at how he took advantage of his authority and abused his power. I believe rational-legal can be very tedious and may be more work and paperwork to have all of the laws written out to be followed, but it is the most effective and it is working for us in the United States.

I chose this picture because I believe it helps show terms that can be associated with rational-legal authority. I wanted to focus the picture on rational-legal authority because it is the type of authority that I think is most effective.