In addition to universal suffrage, people in democracies also have more freedom than in other forms of government. Figure 14.1 “Freedom in the World (Based on the Extent of Political Rights and Civil Liberties)” shows the nations of the world according to the extent of their political rights and civil liberties. The freest nations are located in North America, Western Europe and some other parts of the world, while the least free are in Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Surprisingly, Parsons never translates the term “dominion” as “dominion.” He suffers when he has to translate “rule” from the German original – cf. MWG, Volume 23, 2013, p. 210 – where domination is obviously not simply an authority – a respectable exercise of power – that he invents the difficult concept of “imperative control” (Weber 1947, p. 152). This term captures the tone of the concept better than authority, but still lacks the idea of “subordination” found in “domination.” Weber pointed out that charismatic authority in its pure form (i.e. when authority resides in someone solely because of the person`s charisma, and not because the person also has traditional or rational-legal authority) is less stable than traditional authority or rational-legal authority. The reason is simple: as soon as charismatic leaders die, their authority also dies. While the example of a charismatic leader may inspire people long after the leader has died, it is difficult for another leader to control people`s devotion as intensely.
After the death of all the charismatic leaders mentioned in the previous paragraph, no one managed to replace them in the hearts and minds of their followers. Compare MWG, Volume 22-4, Volume 4 (written in 1914 or earlier) and MWG, Volume 23 (written in 1919/1920), where the term authority hardly appears. When he defined domination in the first published version of Economy and Society, he used the term domination in parentheses and quotation marks “authority” as follows: Herrschaft (“Authority”), cf. Weber 1978, Vol. I. p.212 or MWG 2013, Volume 23, p. 449. For example, New Zealand has a well-staffed and well-funded organization, the Electoral Enrolment Centre (EEC), which regularly conducts intensive advertising campaigns to encourage New Zealanders to register to vote. (Voter registration in New Zealand is compulsory, but voting itself is not.) The EWG systematically evaluates the effectiveness of its communications activities to ensure they are as effective as possible and, if necessary, makes changes for future efforts. In order to promote the registration of young people and members of certain ethnic groups who have traditionally had low voter registration, ECE visits its households in the hope that personal contacts will encourage them to register more effectively. The EWG also offers provisional registration for 17-year-olds who fill out a form with information that is automatically added to the official registration list when they reach voting age in New Zealand. The EEC`s extensive efforts in compulsory registration, although no one has ever been prosecuted for non-registration, result in a voter registration rate of about 95%, one of the highest rates of any democracies (Thiessen, 2006).
Thiessen, E. (2006). Making the electoral process as easy as possible: Elections New Zealand. In A. Ellis, M. Grachev, J. H. Pammett, & E. Thiessen (ed.), Engaging the electorate: Initiatives to promote voter turnout from around the world (pp. 28-30). Stockholm, Sweden: International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Support.
Traditional authority can be closely related to race, class, and gender. In most societies, for example, men are more privileged than women and are therefore more likely to hold positions of authority. It is not uncommon for a man to be the automatic head of a family unit; In some countries, however, it is the woman who is the alleged perpetrator. In any case, most contexts provide a traditional structure of authority, even within the family unit. Similarly, members of dominant racial groups or upper-class families gain respect more easily. In the United States, the Kennedy family, which produced many prominent politicians, is an example of this model. If society as a whole approves of the exercise of power in some way, then power is considered a “legitimate authority.” Weber named ten necessities: “How individual officials are appointed and work.” Administrative staff are subordinated to supreme authority for legal authority in a bureaucratic administrative style. Wars occur both between nations and within nations when two or more factions are involved in an armed conflict. War between nations is called international war between nations, while war between nations is called civil war in nations. The most famous civil war for Americans is, of course, the American Civil War, also known as the War Between States, which pitted North to South from 1861 to 1865. More than 600,000 troops on both sides died on the battlefield or from disease, a number that exceeds American deaths in any other war the United States has fought.
It is estimated that more than 100 million soldiers and civilians died during the international and civil wars of the 20th century (Leitenberg, 2006). Leitenberg, M. (2006). Died in wars and conflicts in the 20th century. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Peace Studies Program. Many novels and films depict the heroism with which soldiers fight, while other novels and films show the horror that war brings. Like Sydney H. Schanberg (2005), Schanberg, S. H. (2005, May 10). Not a nice picture. The Village Voice, p.
1. A former New York Times reporter covering the wars in Vietnam and Cambodia bluntly noted, “History,” Hegel said, “is a slaughterhouse. And war is how carnage is fought. Weber`s belief that rational legal authority did not exist in imperial China was heavily criticized and did not have many adherents in the early 21st century. Like United Russia in 2007, Hungary`s ruling party, FIDESZ, won a supermajority in parliament in 2010. With the power to amend the constitution, he adopted a new constitution. It can change the composition and rights of the constitutional courts – which has been done – and administer the electoral system to its advantage. For my reasoning, however, the most important development is the “weakening” of property rights.
Orbán`s party was briefly in government between 1998 and 2002. When they lost in a tight election campaign, Orbán admitted a mistake he had made as prime minister: he did not create his own bourgeoisie. It`s a mistake you don`t make twice. When it confidently won elections in 2010 and 2014, it sought to create and maintain a loyal base, and its core had to be a propertied bourgeoisie. During the second term of the FIDESZ government (2010-2014), he redistributed small property rights. A smart move was to create a retail monopoly for tobacconists. Small grocery stores and gas stations derived much of their profits from the sale of tobacco: henceforth, only licensed specialty stores had a monopoly on tobacco retailing. Obtaining such a license did not make anyone a billionaire, but it was a source of handsome profit, so the beneficiaries of such licenses could be expected to reward the ruling party by voting for it, and they did indeed do so in 2014. This cannot be achieved in a liberal, legal-rational system of authority, where property rights are guaranteed, executive powers are controlled by the legislature and judiciary, and the media are free.