Weber: Social Action and Its Types

The ideal type

What it is. A deliberately constructed model which accentuates certain features of a phenomenon into a logically coherent, pure form. It is a measuring rod, not a description and not an ideal in the evaluative sense.

Why it is needed. Social reality is infinitely complex and cannot be described exhaustively; the researcher must select. The ideal type makes the selection explicit and permits comparison: one asks how far a real case approximates the model, and the divergence is the finding.

The examples on this syllabus are all ideal types: the four types of social action; the three types of authority; bureaucracy; and the spirit of capitalism.

What it is not: it is not an average, not a description of any real case, and not a statement of what ought to be. Confusing the ideal type with an ideal is the commonest error about Weber, and saying that no real bureaucracy matches the model is not a criticism of it but a use of it.

The four types of social action

Each is defined by what makes the action meaningful to the actor.

1. Instrumentally rational action (zweckrational)

Action determined by expectations about the behaviour of objects and of other people, those expectations being used as means to attain the actor's own rationally pursued and calculated ends. The actor weighs means against ends, ends against other ends, and consequences against each other.

Example: an engineer choosing materials by cost and strength; a litigant deciding whether to settle by comparing the expected outcome, the cost and the delay.

It is the type Weber saw expanding, since the process he called rationalisation is the spread of this form of action through more and more of life, and it is the theme underlying all four of his topics on this syllabus.

2. Value rational action (wertrational)

Action determined by a conscious belief in the value for its own sake of some ethical, aesthetic, religious or other form of conduct, independently of its prospects of success.

The distinction from the first type is exact and is the most examined thing here. The instrumentally rational actor asks whether the action will produce the desired result. The value rational actor asks whether the action is right, and does it whether or not it succeeds.

Example: an advocate who declines to advance a case they know to be false, at cost to themselves; a person who resigns on principle; a soldier who stands by a post that cannot be held.

3. Affectual action

Action determined by the actor's feelings and emotional state: anger, grief, joy, fear. It lies at the boundary of meaningful conduct, since an uncontrolled reaction may have no meaning attached to it at all, and Weber said so expressly.

Example: striking out in rage; an act of spontaneous generosity.

Its legal significance is direct: the difference between an act done in calculated pursuit of an end and one done in a state of emotional disturbance is a distinction the criminal law itself draws.

4. Traditional action

Action determined by ingrained habituation, done because it has always been done. Like affectual action, it lies at the border of what can be called meaningful, since much of it is automatic.

Example: customary observances, forms of greeting, the way a ritual is performed, and a great deal of everyday routine.

Weber's own estimate is worth giving: the great bulk of everyday action is close to this type, which is a corrective to any impression that he regarded people as calculators.

Using the types

They are ideal types, so a real action is a mixture. A person marrying may be acting traditionally as to the form of the ceremony, value rationally as to their obligations, affectually as to the person, and instrumentally as to the settlement. The types are used by asking which predominates, not by sorting acts into boxes.

They are not stages and no society consists of one type.

Their analytical use is comparative: the rationalisation thesis is the claim that instrumentally rational action displaces the other three across more and more spheres of modern life, in the economy, in administration, in law and in science, and the four types are what make that claim statable.

Rationalisation, and where it leads

The theme that unites Weber's work and should be named in any answer on him.

Rationalisation is the process by which conduct is increasingly governed by calculation, by explicit rules and by the systematic pursuit of stated ends, and by which traditional and affectual determinants recede. It appears in the economy as capitalist accounting, in administration as bureaucracy, in law as the systematic and predictable legal order of [Weber: Power and Authority], and in religion as the disenchantment of the world.

Disenchantment is his term for the loss of magic and mystery: the belief that there are no incalculable forces, and that in principle everything can be mastered by calculation.

And his ambivalence, which distinguishes him from Comte's optimism. Rationalisation brings efficiency, predictability and freedom from arbitrary power, and it also produces the iron cage, an order of rules and calculation within which people live without being able to choose otherwise. Weber is the theorist of modernity who least believed that it was progress, and saying so is what makes an answer about him accurate.

Criticisms

1. Subjective meaning is not observable, so interpretations cannot be checked as observations can, and Weber's requirement of causal adequacy is easier to state than to satisfy.
2. The types are not exhaustive or exclusive, and real action is always mixed.
3. Methodological individualism. Explaining everything through the meanings individual actors attach leaves structure, and the constraints that operate whatever people intend, hard to accommodate. Durkheim's social facts are the standing objection.
4. Rationalisation is not universal, and traditional and affectual action have not receded as much as the thesis suggests, as the persistence of religion and of custom shows.
5. The ideal type is chosen by the researcher, so the values that guide selection enter at that point, which Weber accepted as value relevance in [Social Research: Nature and Purpose].

A worked example

A person owes money to a shopkeeper in their locality.

Instrumentally rational: they pay because they calculate that non-payment would cost them credit in future, or attract a proceeding whose cost exceeds the debt.

Value rational: they pay because a debt ought to be paid, and they would pay even if they were certain that non-payment carried no consequence whatever.

Affectual: they pay in a burst of gratitude or of shame, or refuse to pay in anger at a slight.

Traditional: they pay at the customary time, in the customary manner, because that is how it is done in that locality and no other course occurs to them.

Why this matters to a lawyer. The law of contract is built on the first type: it assumes calculating parties who respond to enforceable consequences. Most payment in most societies is produced by the other three, which is why enforcement is so rarely necessary and why a legal system that had to compel every performance would collapse. It also explains the practical observation that a party who has stopped paying for value rational or traditional reasons will not be moved by an argument about consequences, and that a party in the affectual type will not be moved by any argument at all until the state passes.

Quick revision

1. Weber, 1864 to 1920. Economy and Society published posthumously from writings of 1921 to 1922.
2. Sociology is the interpretive understanding of social action in order to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and effects.
3. Action carries subjective meaning; it is social where the meaning takes account of others and is thereby oriented.
4. Verstehen: direct observational and explanatory or motivational understanding. An interpretation must be adequate at the level of meaning and causally adequate.
5. Ideal type: a deliberately accentuated model used as a measuring rod. Not an average, not a description, not an ideal to be pursued.
6. Four types: instrumentally rational (means calculated to ends), value rational (right for its own sake, regardless of success), affectual (emotion), traditional (habituation). Real action is a mixture; ask which predominates.
7. Rationalisation is the spread of instrumentally rational action through economy, administration, law and science; disenchantment; and the iron cage. Weber is ambivalent about it, unlike Comte.
8. Criticisms: meaning is unobservable; types are not exhaustive; methodological individualism neglects structure; rationalisation is not universal; the ideal type embeds the researcher's selection.

Test yourself

1. How did Weber define sociology and social action? As the science which seeks the interpretive understanding of social action in order thereby to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and effects. Action is human conduct to which the acting individual attaches a subjective meaning; it becomes social action where that meaning takes account of the behaviour of others and is thereby oriented in its course. The definition makes meaning the essential datum, so that observing behaviour without recovering its meaning is not yet sociology.

2. What is verstehen, and what guards it against being mere guesswork? The interpretive understanding of the meaning an actor attaches to their conduct, in two kinds: direct observational understanding, where the meaning is apparent from the act, and explanatory understanding, where the act is placed in a context of motive. Weber's guard is a double requirement: an interpretation must be adequate at the level of meaning, making the conduct intelligible, and it must also be causally adequate, supported by evidence that acts of that kind are in fact followed by outcomes of that kind. A plausible story with no evidence behind it is not an explanation.

3. What is an ideal type, and what is it not? A deliberately constructed model which accentuates selected features of a phenomenon into a pure and logically coherent form, used as a measuring rod against which real cases are compared, the divergence being the finding. It is not an average of real cases, not a description of any actual instance, and not an ideal in the sense of something to be pursued. Observing that no real bureaucracy matches the model is therefore a use of the concept rather than an objection to it.

4. Distinguish the four types of social action. Instrumentally rational action calculates means against ends and consequences against each other in pursuit of the actor's own chosen ends. Value rational action is determined by belief in the value of a course of conduct for its own sake, and is undertaken whether or not it succeeds. Affectual action is determined by the actor's emotional state and lies at the boundary of meaningful conduct. Traditional action is determined by ingrained habituation, done because it has always been done, and Weber thought the bulk of everyday conduct close to this type.

5. What is rationalisation, and what was Weber's attitude to it? The process by which conduct comes increasingly to be governed by calculation, explicit rules and the systematic pursuit of stated ends, while traditional and affectual determinants recede; it appears as capitalist accounting in the economy, bureaucracy in administration, systematic and predictable rules in law, and the disenchantment of the world in religion. Weber's attitude was ambivalent rather than celebratory: rationalisation brings efficiency, predictability and freedom from arbitrary power, and it also builds an iron cage of rules and calculation within which people must live whether they wish to or not.