Interpreting Weber’s Ideal-Types

1. The Task of Theory

Max Weber’s notion of ideal-types has sometimes been deemed a vital contribution to social science (Burger 1976; Hekman 1983; Schroeder 1992; Ringer 1997; Coenen-Huther 2003). But the more convincing reaction has been critical, even dismissive (Andreski 1968, 47; Cebik 1971; Runciman 1972; Agassi 2007, 76). Conceding that Weber’s pronouncements cannot be cleansed of all inconsistencies or other deficiencies, I propose to resolve the main ones and uphold the merits of his notion.

A central passage in which Weber states his case concerns what is involved in theorizing about “the ‘Christianity’ of the Middle Ages” regarding which:

[W]e are applying a purely analytical construct created by ourselves. It is a combination of articles of faith, norms from church law and custom, maxims of conduct, and countless concrete interrelationships which we have fused into an “idea.” It is a synthesis which we could not succeed in attaining with consistency without the application of ideal-type concepts. (Weber 1949, 96)

And there is this about embryonic ideal-types already present in economic theory, for example when postulating “rigorously rational conduct” in market transactions:

This procedure can be indispensable for heuristic as well as expository purposes. The ideal typical concept . . . is no “hypothesis” but it offers guidance to the construction of hypotheses. It is not a description of reality but it aims to give unambiguous means of expression to such a description. (Weber 1949, 90)

Weber goes on to say that ideal-types are constructed “not as an average of” their instances, but by selecting and accenting elements such that it is then a matter “of determining in each individual case, the extent to which this ideal-construct approximates to or diverges from reality . . .” (Weber 1949, 90)

Among the questions thus for us to address are: if ideal-types are offered as one-sided constructs for explanation, how exactly do they connect with reality and especially with the subjective understanding of agents that is a keystone of Weberian theory? And if Weberian ideal-types are versions of existing models in economics, not to mention natural science, what in Weber on the topic is original?

We may begin our answers by looking for illustration to Weber’s theory about the Protestant ethic, which presumably applies an ideal-type to explain specifically how he resolves the query about why Calvinist Puritans, while believing in predestination and otherworldly concerns, launched capitalism. Weber’s answer (whether historically correct or not) involves setting aside what plain logic suggests should have been their orientation: fatalism and a total withdrawal from the world, or, oppositely, giving oneself over to hedonism since what would that matter anyway? The actual implication for the believers that Weber brings out is different. People avoided the anxiety over their ultimate fate by being always busy and productive in the world, and by living in a simple and presumably virtuous way, without self-indulgence. Notice, thus, that Weber’s ideal-type of the historical agents in question draws on their subjective understanding but then reaches beneath and beyond it for the purposes of explanation.

To elaborate on this we need to properly connect ideal-types with other basic notions in Weber’s methodology because they or their implications are often misunderstood. In a much-cited passage Weber tells us: “Sociology . . . is a science concerning itself with the interpretive understanding of social action and thereby with a causal explanation of its course and consequences” (Weber 1978 1:4). Before taking up the reference to causality, I remark that interpretive understanding here refers initially to such by social agents, subjective meaning, and not (yet) an interpretation by theorists. The familiar and fundamental postulate for Weber is that human consciousness and agency must focus an otherwise unfocused world of experience, by selecting and structuring sensory input in accord with specific kinds, categories, and linkages of elements. The linkages are forged sometimes by means of strict logic but often by more general forms of conceptual connection such as association of ideas, analogy, and symbolic reference. What sociology addresses, then, is normally already in some sense cognized by agents: focused, synthesized, and oriented by them.

In a further foundational plank of his methodology, Weber distinguishes systematically different ways in which conceiving or acting can be meaningful, and at times shade off into not being meaningful while remaining interesting as contrast cases. I allude here to Weber’s fourfold classification of rationality whereby action can be: rational as a means to some end; rational in being an expression of a value that is taken to need no further justification, as with doing something solely for the sake of honor; rational in being an expression of or based on an emotion, but in a focused and coherent way, as with anger at a particular (alleged) offense, an emotion unlike rage of a pathological or unfocussed sort; rational in deliberately following a custom, which is different from being unknowingly influenced or automaton-like. The attention to agents’ meaning and orientation in any of these ways, though, is only a first step to understanding and explanation by the Weberian sociologist.

The next step in working out the agent-observer dialectic that is the key to Weber’s sociology and notion of ideal-types comes with his demand, cited above, for linking the interpretive understanding of agents’ thoughts and actions with a causal explanation of them. In these matters Weber carved out vital middle ground in the debate that was ongoing in his time and continues in ours between an interpretivist approach to the social sciences that rejects these being assimilated to the model of the natural sciences and a positivist approach that calls for the unity of all the sciences. So, in what sense and why does Weber claim that causal explanations are essential to complete the project of the interpretive understanding of social agents? And why have other theorists insisted that grasping the subjective meaning of things for agents is very different from giving a causal explanation? One argument presented by these latter theorists is that reasons are in no way causes because reasons are conceptually, logically, linked to beliefs and to actions, whereas causes are separate events from their effects and contingently linked to them. Moreover, causes are commonly deemed physical factors whereas, it seems, reasons are in a sense immaterial or ideational. But Weber’s response to the considerations so far adduced is conclusive: in some manner reasons should be causes, though at times they may fail to be.

Pointing to something as an agent’s reason does not thereby establish the cited element as what explains the belief or action, even if this accords with the agent’s own honestly offered reason. The seemingly evident reason may have been only a partial factor in leading to the belief or action, and possibly not a contributing factor at all if the agent was systematically unaware of his or her own real motivation (Aronovitch 1978). Hence, as Weber states (1978 1:9), the proffered reason, which is to say the interpretation of the agent’s situation whether by an observer or by the agent, is only a hypothesis concerning what brings about the belief or action. Additional empirical evidence is needed to establish that it actually has operative force, that it brought about the belief or action. What is needed is determining factually whether the reason, in contrast to some other potential factor, caused the belief or action (cf. Davidson 2001). Introducing causality in this way does not derogate from the worth of reasons but rather can serve to confirm that they are—if indeed they are—the operative factors as opposed to idle or ineffective ones. Weber offers, in effect, a way out of the so-called hermeneutic circle, the circle whereby data that are selectively interpreted and a coherent story about them each reinforce each other without an independent basis for testing whether that combination corresponds to anything that actually occurs. Where agents’ reasons are idle or are not operative in the way the agents intend, other factors as causes must be uncovered to explain the beliefs and actions, such as fears, pressures, interests or the like. Together with bringing out that the agent’s reasons are ineffective, these other factors will show how the agent’s grasp of the situation is incomplete or erroneous.

But what, then, about the causal claims needed for this, for showing that the agent’s reasons play a proper explanatory role if indeed they do, or showing the opposite if not? Here, Weber’s insight (cf. Ringer 1997, 63-91) is that what serves in the explanation or as the backup to it are not necessarily or normally causal laws, but instead singular causal explanations or sequences. Weber writes:

Wherever the causal explanation of a cultural phenomenon—an “historical individual” is under consideration, the knowledge of causal laws is not the end of the investigation but only a means. It facilitates and renders possible the causal imputation to their concrete causes of those components of a phenomenon the individuality of which is culturally significant. (Weber 1949, 79)

Contrary to the view associated with Hume and positivists, Weber holds that causal claims need not take the form of generalizations or universal laws nor even imply or rely upon them. Weber holds instead that singular causal claims are often what is crucially relevant and sufficient, both in everyday life and in social theory, and that these can be adequately supported. After all, in ordinary life we often know with reasonable certainty what caused a particular accident or success in battle without calling upon definitive causal generalizations. Approximate or rule-of-thumb ones may well play a role as background knowledge, for example when realizing that haste or distraction can often cause accidents or that greater numbers or an element of surprise can be what wins a battle—even though any precise generalization proposed on these matters would almost surely be false. Often as well, just specifying the details that fill out the steps of a particular case can suffice to grasp the causal linkage. These are welcome lessons for the social sciences since they are continually under challenge to come up with the precise and properly generalized causal laws that the natural sciences have arrived at.

There is here, though, an important point on which we need to clarify and partially contest Weber’s view and that of supportive commentators. Ringer asserts (1997, 167) that “the ideal Puritan is neither a real nor an average individual,” and that by way of empirical support for this ideal-type, “Weber does cite statistics; but he also offers textual interpretations [of Puritan writings] that really contribute more than any numerical data to the explanation of the outcome that interests him.” What arises in response to this statement is a twin worry. First, there is the concern that Ringer and possibly Weber, notwithstanding their both being elsewhere alert to the problem, are claiming that something is the actual meaning for a certain category of individuals when it may be no more than an intriguing and plausible possibility, not a proper, factually supported finding. We can allow that what Weber seeks to capture is the essence or underlying tendency of certain persons or practices, elements that may not be visible or prominent in the majority of cases. Still, veering too far away from what is generally shown by commonly testable means provokes once more the worry that an ideal-type is a theorist’s construction imposed upon reality rather than the basis for a genuine hypothesis derived from or clearly confirmed by reality. The lesson is that there must be a closer fit than Weber standardly admits or allows between ideal-types and the usual or average manifestations and tendencies as empirically observable. Even in the case of a single individual whose orientation we are trying to comprehend and explain, there is a need to collect multiple facts and see what empirically ties them together and constitutes their inner drift, not just what might seem to do so. This reservation does not reduce an ideal-type to a statement about average facts but it does warn that ideal-types must tack toward them. In sum, what is needed is for the theorist to identify and spell out the agents’ implicit or presumptive reasons, the ones that agents would offer or assent to as the best articulation of their situation, which means their interpretive orientation in its best rendering. And that best rendering leaves open that their reasons are less than consistent or coherent, perhaps seriously defective in these regards, and, in any case, possibly not operative, such that the theorist must proceed to correct and supplement the hypothesis as need be to explain the outcomes.

2. On Models and Evaluations

Ideal-types are integral to this process and as such indispensable for and unique to the social sciences. The social theorist must construct an ideal-type—of the Puritan-minded capitalist, the charismatic leader, the bureaucratic official, the system of traditional authority of tribes, and of whatever other figures or institutions are being studied—in order to portray as fully and as coherently as possible the assumptions, aims, and expectations of the personage, role, or practice in question. But the social theorist’s ideal-type must ultimately reveal whether and how the agents’ understanding of the situation has to be altered or amended to provide the needed explanation of it. An ideal-type is only provisional (a “work in progress”) until this last stage is completed.

Let us spell all this out by first going back to see more precisely why theoretical models in the natural sciences that depict idealized situations or phenomena not found in reality, as with a perfect vacuum or a frictionless surface, do not constitute ideal-types in Weber’s sense. This is so for two related reasons. Initially it is because Weber’s notion of ideal-types has no foothold or applicability if inanimate matter or mindless forces are the topic of explanation. In all cases, there must be agents who adopt some meaningful orientation to the world, but selectively so. That qualification signals a second way in which Weber’s notion of ideal-types is different from the pure or perfect models in the natural sciences such as a frictionless surface and the like.

“Ideal” in reference to Weber’s types does not signify perfection or purity as such, of some absolute kind. Rather it signifies the most appropriately selective or distilled account of agents’ reasons, what they comprehend, intend, presume and aim at, and this can mean more and/or less than what they cognize. Weber pointedly reminds, “One need not have been Caesar in order to understand Caesar,” and the context makes clear that he is really saying that in order to understand Caesar one may well have to be other than Caesar, that is, have a wider, more critical, and chronologically more complete outlook on Caesar than Caesar himself had or could have had (Weber 1978 1:5). It is a rare and almost unimaginable person who sees fully the consequences and even the true meaning and motivation of his or her own beliefs and actions; and this is all the more true in the case of personalities and also institutions that shape or embody major elements of their time. So, an ideal-type says in effect: here is how agents of this or that kind interpret their experience, ascribe meaning to various selected elements of it, orient themselves and act; or rather here is how all this is so in a way that best explains what these agents were actually thinking, seeking, and so on. At times this can result in bringing out a greater degree of logical consistency and coherence than the agents actually have in mind, but still somehow presuppose. At times, however, what may emerge is a rationally diminished or inverted version of their mode of thought and conduct.

In light of these comments, we must add to what we said above when we distinguished Weber’s ideal-types from idealized notions in the natural sciences (such as a frictionless surface). We need to see that what Weber himself suggests about the similarity between his notion of ideal-types and idealized notions in economics can be misleading by misrepresenting his own intentions or the true originality of his notion. We saw above that Weber suggests a parallel between his notion of ideal-types and the appeal to “rational economic man” as an explanatory tool in economics. Something further in that vein he says is this, the import of which must not mislead us:

For the purposes of a typological scientific analysis it is convenient to treat all irrational, affectually determined elements of behavior as factors of deviation from a conceptually pure type of rational action. For example a panic on the stock exchange can be most conveniently analysed by attempting to determine first what the course of action would have been if it had not been influenced by irrational affects; it is then possible to introduce the irrational components as accounting for the observed deviations from this hypothetical course. (Weber 1978 1:6)

This seems to suggest that Weber is presenting as supremely rational in some definitive, overall sense the mindset of the coolly and correctly calculating investor or speculator whose aim is to maximize a profit on stock-market transactions, a mindset seldom or ever to be found in reality where actual investors and speculators, not to mention agents of other sorts, think and act with imperfect calculations and under the extraneous influence of emotions and circumstances. The explanation of such actual behavior is then to be in terms of deviations of one kind or another from the model of supreme rationality. Now, much that we have just been supposing Weber is here saying is true to his intent but for one key fact: Weber is not endorsing the view that the calculative mindset in question, even at its best, is rational in some absolute sense. For one thing, Weber is aware that the model here of the investor or speculator, the model in other words of Rational Economic Man, assumes a certain sort of rationality, and so prizes one of the four kinds that Weber identifies over the others (something that, admittedly, Weber himself at times appears to do). But even as regards this special kind of rationality, instrumental rationality, there is a significant extent of selection and interpretation that necessarily occurs on the part of the agents in specifying what being rationally instrumental entails. It may be answered that given the context, there is a clear and definite meaning to being instrumentally rational, namely, profiting to the maximum through buying low and selling high. However, this simplified view of what constitutes instrumental rationality is just that, a simplified view, even here, for there is much that is assumed and maybe questionably so by the logic as indicated. Over what timespan is the transaction or are the transactions to be counted as maximizing? And what about side effects such that numerous acts of this maximizing kind by many persons can create a bubble, which then bursts and ruins market conditions for a time for all concerned, including our hypothetically successful investor or speculator?

To see the force of these questions, we have only to think of the events that precipitated the global economic recession of 2008-2009. There was at the time what seemed, and in hindsight may still seem, rationally profit-maximizing behavior by those who sold subprime mortgages and made much money in so doing and, even more, by those financiers who bundled these mortgages into securities (including the notorious “derivatives”), again making huge sums at the time. The result, though, was a colossal financial bubble that collapsed with consequences that proved subversive for those who had previously profited from it, such that a few years after their “successful” run in the market, they and their institutions had incalculable debts and went bankrupt or had to be bailed out. I am at the moment drawing attention not to any directly moral considerations involved but only to purely economic ones in order to bring out that some seemingly fixed or clear-cut notion of instrumental rationality, in this case of economic rationality, as an objective or “ideal” model of behavior is itself a variable and questionable conception as to its rationality. The interesting further twist to the matter, however, is that this very sort of unexamined or unchallenged conception of instrumental rationality was indeed at work as the mindset of the agents mentioned, and often is at work elsewhere. This means that if Rational Economic Man (to continue with the old and familiar label) is called upon as a model for explaining market behavior, what must be seen from an external standpoint is not only that erroneous deviations from the model are in need of special explanation by way of additional factors (of emotions, special value considerations, and the like), but also that the model itself is in need of being explained or contextualized with regard to its particular assumptions and focus at any time. Referring to a specific claim about alleged economic optimization, Weber comments critically:

This action is then “objectively” evaluated as “economically correct.” But the flaw in this assertion is that it—and every similar statement—treats a number of presuppositions as self-evident when they really are not self-evident. (Weber 1949, 36)

Weber spells out that the assumptions and presumed conditions, include:

that there are given wants, that all these wants and their rank order are accepted, and that finally a given type of economic order exists—and with the reservation that preferences regarding the duration, certainty and exhaustiveness, respectively, of the satisfaction of these wants may often conflict with each other. (Weber 1949, 35-36)

The lesson about Weber’s notion of an ideal-type and any association it has with the model of economic rationality is that his ideal-type does not designate the standard sort of economic rationality, or any other sort, as the true or correct kind in a contextless and uncritical way. Rather, it depicts that standard sort, of “rational economic man” or marginal utility theory, as a particular interpretive conception and in ways a questionable conception of (instrumental) rationality. Weber’s ideal-type here is meant to capture and does capture, when fully articulated, how rationality is being selectively, one-sidedly, construed by agents and what that does and not explain about their thought and conduct. Weber’s ideal-type can thus permit and even necessitate seeing that what is presumed to be instrumentally rational, means-ends maximization par excellence, actually amounts to being so in one way while also being in another way its opposite.

This double-edged character to the behavior, notice, is another instance of the kind of thing that Weber captured about the early practitioners of the Protestant ethic; though the aspects and mix of what is and is not rational vary as between the cases. The capitalist behavior of the Puritans stood out in one way as irrational because of being so continually driven and also so disconnected from their fatalistic views, but in another way, when comprehended by Weber’s diagnosis, it was seen to be instrumentally rational because of how it mitigated existential anxiety. Above, in a very different manner but still with a contradictory character, the economic agents act in accord with a certain conception of instrumental rationality which is “perfectly” rational and yet, at times, is potentially self-defeating. Indeed, Weber explicitly remarks that there are “cases in which an incorrect assumption or a self-defeating action would be more serviceable as ideal-types . . .” (Weber 1949, 42). So, again, the “ideal” element signifies not perfection of some absolute kind and certainly not some pristine kind of rationality, but instead the specially focused and distilled terms that depict the meaning and implications a situation has for agents, all of which then is material for a higher-level interpretation and also evaluation by the theorist deploying the ideal-type. Drawing on Amartya Sen, the final picture may be deemed, not with condescension but with human comprehension and compassion, a case of “rational fools” (Sen 1997).

An ideal-type is in effect a theorist’s interpretation of the agents’ interpretation of experience. It therefore involves selectivity at the theoretical level, just as interpretation of experience by agents involves selectivity at the existential level. But an ideal-type also involves evaluation as part of the theoretical explanation. Hence, again, an ideal-type is not completely formulated for Weber so long as it considers only the agents’ subjective sense of things, their reasons. That, evidently, is one of my key claims. For the theorist must, implicitly if not explicitly, determine whether the meaning and significance that agents attach to a situation correctly captures their intentions, actions, and the outcomes of these, which is to say, adequately depicts and explains these. Just as one need not be Caesar to understand Caesar, and in fact must be other than and later than Caesar to understand him and his context more fully than he can, so in general for the Weberian sociologist—and that implication does not contradict Weber’s famous position on value neutrality.

That position has been repeatedly subjected to oversimplification and misrepresentation. Weberian value-neutrality requires that the social scientist avoid the stance and the presumption of being a preacher or prophet, declaiming with alleged expertise about the ultimate goals and goods of life; but Weberian value-neutrality does not entail, and cannot entail consistently with all else in Weber, explaining behavior in terms of subjective meanings and modes of rationality without thereby also evaluating these. That unavoidability is signaled by the dual character of ascriptions of rationality: both explaining behavior and also evaluating it as regards its intelligibility or appropriateness (always of course from some point of view). But even if the term “rationality,” or a synonym for it, is not employed, the twin tasks it signifies are entailed for the theorist, who must “make sense” of what agents do or show why and how that is not possible on their terms (cf. MacIntyre 1978). It is worth stressing here that Weber has often been criticized for not seeing the very thing he at core recognizes: that rationality, above all instrumental rationality as one way of making sense, can contain and conceal questionable assumptions which the theorist of these matters should bring out.

The fact that an aspect of Weber’s view was an insistence on the plurality of values, even of contradictory or incommensurable ones, does not undermine the evaluations which are integral to explanations of behavior, nor imply that Weber should not countenance such evaluations. Some commentators (for example, Oakes [1998]), have argued that Weber’s methodology would be fundamentally at odds with itself in these ways. However, Weber regularly provides explanations that encompass these elements, often by revealing how humanly meaningful goals and goods come at the expense of others. The explanation that roots capitalism in the Protestant ethic is an example of this, as at times, in ways just discussed, are his diagnoses of appeals to the standard sense of economic rationality.

By way of one further elaboration along these same lines, we do well to consider how ideal-types apply to the topic of bureaucracy and the larger theme of rationalization in the modern world. ¹ On this topic, Weber’s explanations and especially evaluations are markedly ambivalent or equivocal: on the one hand seeing the developments as a progressive and almost unavoidable tendency toward greater efficiency and, on the other hand, as more and more hampering autonomy, creativity and, in the plain sense, humanity (Weber 1978 2:973, 975). All this suggests that in deploying his notion of ideal-types to these matters Weber highlights a tension between what makes sense in terms of the agents’ intentions or presumptions and what does not make sense thus and even subverts them. Modern organizations tend increasingly to be bureaucratic because they do promote efficiency, but efficiency of a certain narrow kind; efficiency in a broader sense could conceivably come from more fully realized human capacities.

Why now remark on these things? With the answers, several points emerge that can conclude our analysis of what Weber achieves with his notion of ideal-types. The first point is, again, a warning of the need to tie Weber’s ideal-types to facts supported by empirical research, especially on the topic of bureaucracy. Weber himself, of course, did significant research about bureaucracies of various kinds, ancient and modern. But still, one general question for current and future studies is whether bureaucracies that are strongly hierarchical, entirely controlled by specialists, overly focused on technical means which thus become ends in themselves, and so forth—whether, in other words, bureaucracies in the rather negative light that they are often painted by Weber are typically and necessarily such. Extensive studies by, for example, Chris Argyris (2004) as a leading theorist of contemporary organizations support Weber but also indicate ways in which bureaucracies can indeed be more open and fluid and thereby actually more effective rather than less.

A second, related consideration requires stressing that Weber’s most fundamental concern has to do with explaining how modes of thought and practice come about, become socially entrenched, and then are or are not open to various transformations. We lose sight of all this if we think of ideal-types too much in terms of their initial purpose of grasping the subjective meaning of things for agents, without adding that ideal-types are ultimately for causal explanation (Weber 1949, 43), and emphasizing that the key causal claims for Weber are singular ones. The resulting sequences reveal historical origins and developments, and comparative instances of these, and focus Weber’s abiding contribution and question: how has this or that kind of economic system, or structure of authority, or type of organization, or mode of rationality, emerged in a given context and then altered it or been altered by it?

Third, as emphasized throughout, integral to all this are not just explanations of dominant forms of thought and conduct, but also, unavoidably, evaluations in some measure of them. These latter enter regarding how far agents are aware of the presuppositions and tendencies of the structures in which they live. Ideal-types focus these things. And they thereby also focus for us, when equipped with them, social choices or a new awareness of our options. Weber famously says that one who finds intolerable the modern world with its disenchantment, that is, its loss of traditional meanings, may understandably choose to return to or try to revivify the Church or some such structure of authority and meaning (Weber 1946, 155). That, clearly, is not Weber’s own choice. But here again, with alternatives mapped, and in ways evaluated, the sociologist ceases to speak. As instruments for illuminating options and also the limits to specialized knowledge for deciding ultimately between them, ideal-types are unique and valuable contributions by Weber to the methodology of the social sciences.