The Necessary Qualities of a Good Political Leader: Weber's Politics as a Vocation

In January of 1919, Max Weber gave a now-famous lecture on the nature of politics in the modern Western administrative state called Politics as a Vocation. It was particularly focused on the qualities that leaders (such as PMs or Presidents) must have if stable and reasonable conditions would prevail. When he wrote the lecture, Germany had lost WW1, and Weber had attended the Peace Conference in Versailles where a damning"guilt clause" with impossibly large fines was imposed on Germany. Like Keynes, Weber warned that it was an unwise and vindictive settlement that might cause a backlash. Meanwhile, within Germany, radical leftists, various reformers, liberals and conservatives were descending in a vortex of intellectual and physical violence against one another. In that climate, Max Weber-- then the most prominent public intellectual in Germany-- was much sought after in the role of an advisor during the chaos. What should we do? Which party should we support? Students, intellectuals,  journalists and politicians wanted to know.

At first Weber turned the invitation down. He believed strongly in the ideal of keeping one's personal views out of respectable Political Sociology, the field he did much to invent. But for whatever reason, he ultimately accepted the invitation by the liberal Student's Union that invited him to give the lecture. Weber warned that it would probably disappoint those who had come for practical advise regarding the "issues of the day." But though Weber did an end run around mere political advocacy of this or that party or ideology, he spoke to more enduring themes he clearly thought were the source of the political divisions and chaos in 1919 Germany (and elsewhere in that era). The lecture, and the essay it became, is broad ranging but famously centers on the question, "What makes a political leader a good political leader?" The main question is thus one of ethics and character vis a vis powerful political leaders in modern nation-states.

After a fairly in-depth summary of his pioneering work in comparative political and historical studies (some of which is discussed in a short supplementary video below), Weber focuses on modern administrative states of a kind we might loosely call 'democratic' or 'parliamentary' systems with  powerful leaders at the top (PM or President for example). Such states (like our own) are based on legal-bureaucratic authority  (the rule of law) which, however, can get stuck in a mechanical mode when changes are required to meet the problems that arise contingently (e.g. when challenges to the Law of the Land were made by civil rights activists in the 60s). At such times, and other critical ones, such as Germany's post WW1 crisis, Weber thinks we are likely to see the emergence of  charismatic leaders (e.g. Churchill, Roosevelt, Hitler) who rise up from within the system yet initiate actions that challenge or deviate from some of the existing legal and bureaucratic procedures-- particularly during times of trouble. While Weber thinks strong charismatic leaders are necessary to counterbalance the largely mechanical behavior of career politicians in parties and organizations, he is aware that this can result in demagogues, would-be tyrants, and dictators if those with charismatic appeal turn out to be unable to live up to certain ethical criteria that should be carefully evaluated during the selection or election of political leaders.  How can we separate out merely charismatic leaders from good charismatic leaders?

He notes that politics in the West has increasingly become a profession but not necessarily a vocation. A vocation is a job, of course, but also retains the sense of "a calling." A good politician can only be such if s/he is not simply"living OFF their job but FOR it." to paraphrase Weber's distinction of "living FROM vs. living FOR politics." (Weber: p. 318) So, according to Weber,  politicians must be passionately committed to their ultimate convictions, and not just employees of the State. This "passion" must be in play for serious and plausible leaders in an age of relatively petty partisans and bureaucrats fighting each other for their own limited interests. There must be someone who feels called upon to mediate all of that; someone-- yes-- with vision but with a cool detachment enabling reasonable compromise as necessary. This balance of passionate commitment to an ultimate vision (i.e. Weber's "ethic of ultimate ends/convictions") and sense of responsibility for the grave impacts of all decisions for society and history ("ethic of responsibility") is ultimately something that involves a sober-headed ability to reason --i.e. to engage in mature rational assessment even of one's own strongest convictions,  desires and one's vision if necessary in order to stay in touch with the obligations of having the awesome powers conferred on leaders of nation-states (PM's, Presidents and the like).

What he's really worried about is the intoxicating effect of political power on anything less than a disciplined, judicious and appropriately detached individual. He's trying to describe what might be called political integrity, though he didn't put it in those exact words. The "2 fatal flaws" of political leadership, he says, are "a lack of objectivity" [rd. detached perspective, ability to rise above the passions of the moment] and  "vanity, the need to thrust oneself as far as possible into the foreground" [perfectly embodied in politicians like Trump and many demagogues]. Weber argues that it is the ethical makeup of a leader that is decisive over and above the exact ideology or party that happens to rule. He was lecturing as a venerated public intellectual to an audience that expected him to endorse the socialists or the conservatives or liberals, all of whom were fighting  each other for power (literally, assassinations--such as that of Rosa Luxenburg-- were occurring throughout Germany as he lectured). Instead of concentrating on party and ideology,  he said that the real need was for someone who can rise above the fray.  Someone who is spirited, yes, but can reign in the passions of the heart when necessary, and certainly restrain the lower instincts for petty gains and the lust for grandeur.This entails applying a cool, measured reasoning that never loses track of the fact that leaders of nation-states have the ability (for better and worse) to change the course of history. This awful responsibility must always be a decisive and humbling factor in keeping the leader well above rash and emotionalistic indulgences which we see in so many leaders-- especially demagogues.

So this is nothing less than an ethical evaluation on Weber's part, after years of study in comparative politics and history, of what the ideal traits, or character structure of a good political leader in the modern nation-state might look like. Though I hope this short summary of W's thought on political leadership is reasonably good,  I am posting an excerpt from the lecture/essay. The following is taken from what I believe to be one of the most important sections of Politics as a Vocation, and it is deservedly famous.

As we contemplate the question of just who should take the political position of perhaps the most powerful person on the planet, the president of the US, we could do worse than to consult Weber's answer to the question of just what kind of human being has what it takes to wield such power in a passionate yet responsible manner-- ever balancing core convictions and clear-headed responsibility to the citizens.

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Excerpt From Politics as a Vocation

by Max Weber

What kinds of inner joy does politics have to offer, and what kinds of personal qualifications does it presuppose in anyone turning to this career?

Well, first of all, it confers a feeling of power. The professional politician can have a sense of rising above everyday existence, even in what is formally a modest position, through knowing the he exercises influence on people, shares power over them, but above all from the knowledge that he holds in his hands some vital strand of historically important events [emph. added] But the question facing such a person is which qualities will enable him to do justice to this power...and thus to the responsibility it imposes on him. This takes us into the area of ethical questions, for to ask what kind of human being one must be in order to have the right to seize the spokes of the wheel of history, is to pose an ethical question.

One can say that three qualities are preeminently decisive for a politician: passion, a sense of responsibility, and judgment. Passion [is] the sense of concern for the thing itself  [i.e. the issue or matter at hand]  or the passionate commitment to a 'cause.'[This is not to be confused with]... what my late friend Georg Simmel called 'sterile excitement' [such as that we see]... amongst our own intellectuals at this carnival being graced with the proud name 'revolution; it is the 'romanticism of the intellectually interesting' directed into the void, and lacking all objective [sachlich] sense of responsibility. [This refers to the intellectual and quasi-military violence between socialists, liberals and conservatives fighting for control of the state in 1919 Germany. Many intellectuals, for example on the left, called themselves "revolutionaries" while Weber saw mainly a tragic loss of the ethic of responsibility for the fate of the country on all sides. He also mentions "many though by no means all Russian intellectuals" of the late 19th and early 20th century, and, of course, during the revolution and subsequent civil war that was raging in Russia as he lectured - ed.]. Simply to feel passion, however genuinely, is not sufficient to make a politician, unless in service to a 'cause,' responsibility  for that cause becomes the lode-star of all action. This requires (and this is the decisive psychological quality of a politician)  judgment, the ability to maintain one's composure and calm while being receptive to realities, in other words distance from people and things. A lack of distance [i.e. critical distance, capacity for cool, detached reasoning when everyone around you is inflamed or carried away by emotion- ed.] is one of the 'deadly sins' of the politician, and...will condemn our future intellectuals to political incompetence if they cultivate it. For the problem is precisely this, how are hot passion and cool judgment to be fused together in one soul? Politics is an activity conducted with the head, not with other body parts or the soul. Yet if politics is to be meaningful action rather than some frivolous intellectual game, dedication to it can only be sustained by passion.   Only if one accustoms oneself to distance...can one achieve that powerful control over the soul [i.e. self-restraint in the heat of the moment] which distinguishes the passionate politician from the mere 'sterile excitement' of the political amateur. The strength of a political personality means first and foremost the possession of these qualities

Every day and every hour, therefore the politician has to overcome a quite trivial, all-too-human enemy which threatens him from within: common vanity, the mortal enemy of all dedication to a cause and of all distance-- in this case, of distance to oneself

Vanity is a very widespread quality, and perhaps no one is completely free of it. In academic and scholarly circles it is a kind of occupational disease. In the case of the scholar, however, unattractive as this quality may be, it is relatively harmless in the sense that it does not, as a rule, interfere with the pursuit of knowledge. Things are quite different for the politician. The ambition for power  is an inevitable means with which he works. 'The instinct for power,' as it is commonly called, is thus indeed one of his normal qualities. The sin against the [metaphorically] holy spirit of his profession begins where this striving for power becomes detached from the task in hand and becomes a matter of purely personal self-intoxication instead of being placed entirely at the service of the 'cause.' For there are ultimately just 2 deadly sins in the area of politics: a lack of objectivity...and a lack of responsibility. Vanity, the need to thrust one's person as far as possible into the foreground, is what leads the politician most strongly into the temptation of committing one or other (or both) of these sins, particularly as the demagogue is forced to count on making an 'impact', and for this reason is always in danger both of becoming a play-actor and of taking the responsibility for his actions too lightly, and being concerned only with the 'impression' he is making... For although, or rather precisely because power is the inevitable means of all politics, and the ambition of power therefore one of its driving forces, there is no more pernicious distortion of political energy than when the parvenu boasts of his power and vainly mirrors himself in the feeling of power-- or indeed any and every worship of power for its own sake. The mere "power politician" , a type whom an energetically promoted cult is seeking to glorify here in Germany as elsewhere, may give the impression of strength, but in fact his actions merely lead into emptiness and absurdity. On this point the critics of 'power politics' are quite correct. The sudden inner collapse of typical representatives of this outlook has shown us just how much inner weakness and ineffectuality are concealed behind this grandiose but empty pose. It stems from a most wretched and superficial lack of concern for the meaning of human action, a blase attitude that knows nothing of the tragedy in which all action, but quite particularly political action is, in truth, enmeshed (Weber: 1994,  pp. 352-5)

Source:
Max Weber: Political Writings, ed. Peter Lassman and Ronald Speirs
Cambridge U. Press, New York; 1994, pp. 318-20 and 352-355

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The following 6 min. video focuses on Weber's conception of power (macht) and the manner in which it becomes legitimate authority (herrschaft). In the modern era the focus, thinks Weber, will be on the need to balance charismatic leaders with the impersonal rule of law or "legal-rational authority." This may help to situate the above passage from Weber. In the long lecture, Weber discussed many other things including types of power and authority. Since there isn't room for everything in the post, this video may be useful, particularly the closing comments on the "comeback" of Charismatic Leaders in times of crisis and social disunity in modern law based states. ( see 4:59 ff).

Possible Questions/Topics: 

-Does Weber's assessment of leadership in the modern state seem relevant to the current situation in the US (or for that matter the UK and other nation-states currently characterized by disunity bordering on crisis)? If so, discuss. If not, then why not?

-Sometimes pundits in the media talk about the "character" of political candidates and/or leaders. Weber's emphasis is largely on the moral character of the politician and the virtues which constitute it. How important to you are the characteristics he describes in candidates and/or leaders for whom you might (or did) vote?

-Weber (himself known as a liberal at the time of the lecture) chose not to "take sides" or support any of the parties that were engaged in sometimes-violent fighting. He refers to the struggle for power around him as a "carnival"(see above) and discusses the qualities of leadership he thinks none of those around him possess but need to understand. Was this a "cop-out" or do you think Weber goes beneath the self-proclaimed ideologies to address a deeper crisis of ethics? How important are ideology and party? How important are ethics?

(Note: These are merely a suggestions. Please write whatever seems important to you in relation to the post.)