Reason and domination. Legitimacy in Weber as symbolic orientation for political action

Abstract

This article presents Max Weber's political sociology and at the same time develops an original perspective of his legitimacy theory. First, it establishes a necessary link between the typical forms of legitimate domination and the social interests, in such a way that every political action that purse the realization of its interests has to legitimate itself before the general will. Second, it explains the legitimation crises as a response to identity changes at the social base of the political domination and, in so doing, it introduces a dynamic concept of legitimacy. Third, it states that the values that dwell in the legitimate forms of political domination are used as symbolic orientations by particular political actions, in a way that each form of authority legitimation encapsulates, in its own premises, the arguments that justify struggles toward the modification of the domination schemes.