Tocqueville, Weber, and Democracy: The Condition of Equality and the Possibility of Charisma in America (Part I)

Both Tocqueville and Weber confronted the injection of mass suffrage into the liberal democratic polity with trepidation and caution but for different reasons: for Tocqueville, democracy produced a condition of social equality and Cartesian pragmatism that could lead to individualism, cultural mediocrity, and ultimately majority tyranny, while for Weber the domination of administrative bureaucracy and its use of instrumental rationality created a crisis of legitimacy for liberal democracy. Because each thinker focused on different aspects of mass liberal democracy, the solutions they proposed are different from each other. Weber sought to incorporate charismatic leaders into the political process, thereby permitting someone who will assert control and provide direction to the administrative bureaucracy. The mass electorate process would be nothing more than deciding the ultimate political values for the regime in the selection of a charismatic leader. By contrast, Tocqueville looked to civil society as a solution to majority tyranny. Because of the condition of social equality, Tocqueville did not believe that charismatic leaders could emerge from mass liberal democracy; consequently legitimacy for the regime must reside in its civic organizations.

Surprisingly, when reviewing the literature on this topic, very little is found on whether charismatic leadership can emerge in mass liberal democracy. Most of the scholarship in leadership studies assumes leadership, including charismatic, can exist in mass liberal democracy. For example, the traits approach on leadership assume that leaders are born with specific characteristics that predispose them to positions of power and influence, although later empirical research demonstrates that there is no correlation among personal traits, physical characteristics, and leadership.[1] Another school of thought on leadership is Fiedler’s contingency model, where he analyzes three factors that lead to conditions favorable to leadership: positions of power, the task structure of the leader, and the relationship between the leader and his followers.[2] A third approach in examining leadership is House’s path-goal theory that focuses on a leader’s communicative style to his followers in order to determine the leader’s effectiveness, while Hersey and Blanchard suggest that the maturity level of a leader’s followers and their relational orientation to their leader are the crucial factors for leadership effectiveness.[3] Building on this analysis, the leadership-members exchange theory contends that leaders make decisions concerning the inclusion or exclusion of followers, with those of the “in-group” performing their tasks more effectively than those of the “out-group.”[4] Finally, the functional approach looks at a leader’s conformance to certain task-related roles such as the maintenance of group cohesion.[5]

Of the scholarship that focuses on charismatic leadership, most of it is perfunctory lip-service to Weber’s work. A few examples should suffice: Burns’ distinction between “transformation ” and “transactional” leadership, with the former being “empowering and inspiring” and the latter “ordinary and routine”; Peters’ and Waterman’s case studies of charismatic leaders who are able to “get things done” in the business world; and Trice’s and Beyer’s list of the components of Weber’s conceptualization of charisma.[6] The more theoretical literature on charismatic leadership is subdivided into schools, such as the psychoanalytical approach that employs Freudian concepts of regression, transference, and projection to conceptualize and explain charismatic leadership.[7] Other examples are the political approach that merely looks at successful political leaders in large and small countries; the behavioral school that attempts to quantify charismatic and non-charismatic leaders; the attribution theory that defines charisma in terms of the follower’s perceptions; and the communicative approach that again focuses on a leader’s communication style.[8] Although these various schools differ in their accounts and sequencing of a follower’s personal identification and internalization process with a charismatic leader, they all assume charismatic leadership is possible, especially in mass liberal democracies. Even such recent accounts of leadership, such as Keohane’s and Skowronek’s, assume charismatic leadership is possible.[9] But, as Mommsen put it: “Indeed, it remains to be seen whether the personal legitimacy of the political leader can be a permanent substitute for the belief in the legitimacy of the political system as such, as Weber seems to have assumed at the time.”[10]

The studies on Weber also ignore this question of whether charismatic leadership can emerge in liberal democracy. Granted that Weber was concerned with bureaucratic domination as opposed to Tocqueville’s concern about the equality of condition in mass liberal democracies, nonetheless, the question of whether charismatic leadership can emerge from a society of mediocrity is not explored either by Weber or subsequent Weberian scholars. Parsons uses Weber’s works, along with Durkheim’s and Pareto’s, to create his theory of structural functionalism, while Shils borrows Weber to create a general theory of society and Benedix employs Weber in the service of “historical sociology.”[11] Weber is also used to create “political sociology,” revitalized the Enlightenment tradition in modernity, and reconstruct western history and rationality.[12] Even contemporary accounts overlook whether Weber’s concept of charismatic leadership is possible in mass liberal democratic societies: Behnegar makes Weber a “Straussian”; Breiner reconstructs a Weberian defense of mass political liberalism; and Mommsen examines Weber’s theories of legitimacy with the assumption that charismatic leadership exists.[13] With respect to a conversation with Tocqueville, there is Kim’s Max Weber’s Politics of Civil Society, but he passes over the question of the possibility of charismatic leadership in mass liberal democracies.[14] Simply put, charismatic leadership is assumed to exist in a mass liberal democratic society in the Weberian scholarship.

Whereas practically no scholarship exists to see whether Weber’s charismatic principle can exist in mass liberal democracy, the scholarship on Tocqueville equally overlooks the possibility of charismatic political leadership in America. Tocqueville himself has been analyzed as an aristocratic apologist and reactionary conservative, a democratic liberal, and a French nationalist, while his ideas have been used to contribute to various schools of thought in the social sciences.[15] Some scholars, like Parsons, even deny Tocqueville status as a theorist, particularly when compared to Weber, Durkheim, Tonnies, and Scheler.[16] By contrast some scholars—especially those who study civil society—contend that Tocqueville was a theorist of the first order.[17] Finally, there are those who place Tocqueville in the context of political philosophy and the history of ideas. These scholars often compare and contrast Tocqueville’s philosophy with Rousseau’s, and even to Aristotle’s.[18] But, when it comes to the topic of charismatic leadership, scholars have not used Tocqueville’s account of mass liberal democracy, especially his definition of the equality of condition, as a context to examine Weber’s charismatic principle. Although the possibility of greatness is studied, the question of whether charismatic leadership can exist is not pursued.[19] This article does not answer this question, but tries to establish the theoretical context in which this question can be examined.

Notes

[1]  R. M. Stodgill, “Personal Factors Associated with Leadership: A survey of the Literature,” in Journal of Psychology 25 (1983): 35-71.

[2]  F.E. Fiedler, A Theory of Leadership Effectiveness (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967); “Personality, Motivational Systems, and Behavior of High and Low LPC Persons,” Human Relations 25 (1972): 391-412; “The Contingency Model and Dynamics of the Leadership Process,” in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, ed. L. Berkowitz (New York: Academic Press, 1978), 60-112. For criticism of this approach, refer to A. S. Ashour, “The Contingency Model of Leadership Effectiveness: An Evaluation,” Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 9 (1973): 339-355; S. Kerr and A. Harlan, “Predicting the Effects of Leadership Training and Experience from the Contingency Model: Some Remaining Problems,” Journal of Applied Psychology 57 (1973): 114-117; C. A. Schriesheim and S. Kerr, “Theories and Measures of Leadership: A Critical Appraisal,” in Leadership: The Cutting Edge, eds. J. G. Hunt and L. L. Larson, (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Press, 1977), 9-45.

[3]  R. J. House, “A Path-Goal Theory of Leader Effectiveness,” Administrative Science Quarterly 16 (1971): 321-338; P. Hersey and K.H. Blanchard. Management of Organizational Behavior: Utilizing Human Resources (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1996).

[4]  G. B. Graen and J. F. Cashman, “A Role-Making Model of Leadership in Formal Organizations: A Developmental Approach,” in Leadership Frontiers, eds. J. G. Hunt and L. L. Larson, (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1975), 143-165.

[5]  C. I. Barnard, The Functions of the Executive (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1938); K. D. Benne and P. Sheats, “The Functional Role of Group Members,” Journal of Social Issues 4 (1948): 41-49.

[6]  J. M. Burns, Leadership (New York: Harper and Row, 1978); T. J. Peters and R. H. Waterman, Jr., In Search for Excellence (New York: Harper and Row, 1982); H. M. Trice and J. M. Beyer. The Cultures  of Work Organizations (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1993); W. G. Bennis and B. Nanus. Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge (New York: Harper and Row, 1997); J. M. Kouzes and B. Z. Posner. The Leadership Challenge: How to Get Extraordinary Things Done in Organizations (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002); B. J. Avolio, and B. M. Bass. Developing Potential Across a Full Range of Leadership: Cases on Transactional and Transformational Leadership (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002).

[7]  R. P. Hummel, “Psychology of Charismatic Followers,” Psychological Reports 37 (1975): 759-770; A. Zaleznik, “Managers and Leaders: Are They Different?” Harvard Business Review 55 (May-June 1977): 67-78; R. A. Wilner, Charismatic Political Leadership: A Theory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Center for International Studies, 1986).

[8]  For an example of the political approach, refer to A. Schweitzer, The Age of Charisma (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1984); and R. A. Wilner, The Spellbinders: Charismatic Political Leadership (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984); for the behavioral approach, refer to R. J. House “A 1976 Theory of Charismatic Leadership,” in Leadership: The Cutting Edge, eds. J. G. Hunt and L. L. Larson, (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1977), 189-207; for the attribution approach, refer to J.A. Conger and R.N. Kanungo, “Toward a Behavioral Theory of Charismatic Leadership in Organizational Setting,” Academy of Management Review 12 (1987): 637-647; for the communicative approach, refer to R.J. Richardson and S.K. Thayer, The Charisma Factor (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1993).

[9]  Nannerl O. Keohane “On Leadership” Perspectives on Politics 3:4 (December 2005): 705-722; Stephen Skowronek, “Leadership by Definition: First Term Reflections on George W. Bush’s Political Stance,” Perspectives on Politics 3:4 (December 2005): 817-831.

[10]  J. Wolfgang, The Political and Social Theory of Max Weber Collected Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1989), 44-52.

[11]  Richard Benedix, “Max Weber’s Interpretation of Conduct and History,” American Journal of Sociology 51 (1945-46): 518-216; Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences, eds. and trans. Edward Shils and Henry A. Finch, (New York: 1949); Talcott Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990).

[12]  H. H. Gerth, and C. Wright Mills, eds. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (London: 1948); H. Stuart Hughes Consciousness and Society (London: 1959); Wolfgang Schlucter, Die Entwicklung des okzidentalen Rationalismus: Eine Analyse von Max Webers Gesellschaftgeschicte (Tübingen: 1979); Rationalismus der Weltbenherrschung: Studien zu Max Weber (Frankfurt: 1980); Jürgen Kocka, ed. Max Weber, der Historiker (Göttingen: 1986); Wolfgang J. Mommsen, “Personal conduct and societal change,” in Max Weber: Rationality and Modernity, SamWhimster and Scott Lash, eds., (London: 1987), 35-51.

[13]  Nasser Behnegar, Leo Strauss, Max Weber, and The Scientific Study of Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003); Peter Breiner, Max Weber and Democratic Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996); Wolfgang J. Mommsen, The Political and Social Theory of Max Weber Collected Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1989), 44-52.

[14]  Sung Ho Kim, Max Weber’s Politics of Civil Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

[15]  For Tocqueville as a conservative, refer to Tocqueville’s The European Revolution and Correspondence with Gobineau, ed. and trans. J. Lukacs, (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1968), 1-28; N. Smelser, and Warner. Comparative Methods in the Social Sciences (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1976), 38; as a liberal, refer to J. S. Schapiro, “Alexis de Tocqueville, Pioneer of Democratic Liberalism in France,” Political Science Quarterly 57 (1942): 545-563; S. Drescher, Tocqueville and England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), 1-17; Tilton, “Alexis de Tocqueville and the Political Sociology of Liberalism,” Comparative Social Research 2 (1979): 263-287; as a French nationalist, refer to M. Richter, “Tocqueville on Algeria,” Review of Politics 25 (1963): 362-398; as someone who influenced the social sciences, refer to G.A. Almond, The American People and Foreign Policy (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1950); David Riesman with R. Denney and N. Glazer. The Lonely Crowd (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950); D. J. Boorstin, The Genius of American Politics (Chicago, Phoenix, 1953); L. Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York: Harcourt Brace Joanovich, 1955); W. Kornhausser, The Politics of Mass Society (New York: Free Press, 1959); C. W. Mills, The Power Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959); R. A. Nisbet, Community and Power (New York: Galaxy, 1962); R. Benedix,  Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962); M. Lipset, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1963); R. Dahl, Democracy in the United States: Promise and Performance (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1969); F. R. Piven, and R. A. Cloward. Poor People’s Movement: Why They Succeed, How They Fail (New York: Vintage, 1979).

[16]  Parsons denies Tocqueville status as a theorist (1954: 349, Parsons, T. Essays in Sociological Theory (New York: Free Press).

[17]  N. Smelser and Warner. Comparative Methods in the Social Sciences (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1976); W. Pope, Alexis de Tocqueville His Social and Political Theory (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1986); Robert Putnam, “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital,” Journal of Democracy 6:1 (1995): 67;  N. Rosenblum, Membership and Morals: The Personal Uses of Pluralism in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998); P. Berkowtiz, Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999); R. Dagger, Civic Virtue: Rights, Citizenship, and Republican Liberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); M. Sandel, Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996); J. B. Elshtain, Democracy on Trial (New York: Basic Books, 1995); W. Galston, Liberal Purposes: Goods, Virtues, and Diversity in the Liberal State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

[18]  John Koritansky, Alexis de Tocqueville and the New Science of Politics (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1987); James Ceaser, Liberal Democracy and Political Science (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1990); Stephen G. Salkever, Finding the Mean: Theory and Practice in Aristotelian Political Philosophy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990); Wilhelm Hennis “In Search of the ‘New Science of Politics,’” in Interpreting Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, ed. Ken Masugi, (Savage, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1991), 27-62;  Peter Augustine Lawler and Joseph Alulis, Tocqueville’s Defense of Human Liberty Current Essays Vol. 149 (New York: Taylor and Francis, 1992).

[19]  Joseph Romance, ed., Romance and Excellence: Concord or Conflict (Westport, CDT: Greenwood Publishing, 2005); Peter Augustine Lawler. The Restless Mind: Alexis de Tocqueville on the Origin and Perpetuation of Human Liberty (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1993).