A Sociology of Liberal Democracy?1 (original) (raw)

famously described three sources of legitimate authority: charisma, tradition, and rational laws. He did not include democracy itself, for he saw its legitimacy as coming from charismatic political leaders whose election might shake up state bureaucracies or at least give them direction. He was obsessed with how basic values might infuse political systems-but always from the outside. The systems were means, not ends, and so proper procedures could not be the source of values. (Even his legal-rational basis of authority depends more on expert knowledge than on rational procedures themselves.)