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Weber's Ideal Types As Models in The Social Sciences
Weber's Ideal Types As Models in The Social Sciences
Social Sciences
FRIEDEL WEINERT
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Friedel Weinert
energy of the hydrogen atom and the derivation of the Ritz and
Balmer series) which are still regarded as perfectly valid today.
Equally, economic theory uses the utility theory to make predic-
tions about household consumption choices.
It is in this connection that Weber's ideal types enter the pic-
ture. Ideal types, too, are hypothetical constructions of a socio-
economic, political or historical nature which seek to delineate
pure cases, abstracted from the empirical data but with complete
disregard for their diversity. Weber was concerned with logically
precise conceptions and not with their exact correspondence to
empirical cases. His pure types of legitimate authority—which are
subdivided into charismatic, traditional and rational forms—were
not expected to be descriptions of historico-empirical realities.
Rather, they were understood as ideal limits against which empiri-
cal cases could be gauged. Once such pure types were constructed,
empirical occurrences of social action could be regarded as 'factors
of deviation' from the ideal type.2 Paradoxically, Weber claimed
that the reality of the social or economic life in a given society
could be understood by comparison to the ideal cases which never-
theless claimed no correspondence to reality. Empirical reality was
always an overlapping mixture of several ideal types with additional
accidental features into the bargain.
It should not be taken for granted that ideal types can simply
be understood as models in the social sciences. An ideal type for
Weber is no more than a means to an end with no correspondence
to reality; but most models in the natural sciences have more than
just heuristic functions. They are used to represent aspects of the
real world. In addition, hypothetical models seem to be more
complicated than Weber's ideal types: although economic agents
are not strictly and exclusively rational, they largely do act
according to rational principles, although these are intermingled
with other elements. The hypothetical model states what the
agent would do under certain conditions. Finally, there is one
important aspect of models in the natural sciences which is not
accounted for in Weber's ideal types; models in the natural sci-
ences may be improved with the emergence of more sophisticated
data and can thus achieve a better approximation to reality. This
happened with Bohr's planetary model of the hydrogen atom. Are
Weber's ideal types amenable to this treatment? And is there a
way in which we can speak of them as hypothetical models in the
social sciences?
2
M. Weber, Economy and Society, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus
Wittich, (New York: Bedminster Press, 1968), p. 6.
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Weber's Ideal Types as Models in the Social Sciences
in, say, the throwing of dice. There is of course 'no numerical mea-
sure of chance' by which an historical event may occur, given cer-
tain antecedent conditions. Still it is possible to determine, even in
the field of history, with a certain degree of certainty which condi-
tions are more likely to bring about an effect than others.34
In a characteristic passage of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Weber
points to the as //"construction of ideal types:
The ideal types of social action which for instance are used in
economic theory are thus unrealistic or abstract in that they
always ask what course of action would take place if it were
purely rational and oriented to economic ends alone.35
This characterization does not necessarily conflict with the emphasis
on the heuristic functions of ideal types noted earlier, especially if
we are ready to accept a purely instrumentalist interpretation of
ideal types. But given Weber's wavering between objective possibil-
ity and objective probability, and his concern for the empirical rele-
vance of ideal types, the alternative would be to understand ideal
types not as heuristic devices but as hypothetical models. It is typi-
cal of models in the natural and social sciences to make abstractions
from certain real factors to such an extent that the consequent
behaviour is only true ceteris paribus, i.e., under the assumption that
the other factors do not interfere or have no real influence on the
parameters under consideration. This does not prevent these models
from claiming empirical relevance and hence from having signifi-
cance as statements about the real world. How is this achieved?
Whilst Weber failed to move ideal types clearly towards objec-
tive probabilities, Howard Becker and J. C. McKinney have
attempted to develop Weber's ideal types into a tool of empirical
science. Rather than speaking of ideal types, they call their con-
structions constructed types which McKinney defines as
a purposive, planned selection, abstraction, combination, and
(sometimes) accentuation of a set of criteria with empirical refer-
ents that serves as a basis for the comparison of empirical cases.36
34
'Objective Possibility and Adequate Causation', p. 183.
35
Economy and Society, p. 21. 'Jene idealtypischen Konstruktionen
sozialen Handelns, welche z.B. die Wirtschaftstheorie vornimmt, sind
also in dem Sinn "wirklichkeitsfremd", als sie—in diesem Fall—durch-
weg fragen: wie wiirde im Falle idealer und dabei rein wirtschaftlich ori-
entierter Zweckrationalitat gehandelt werden ... ' M. Weber, Wirtschaft
und Gesellschaft, ed. J. Winckelmann, (Fifth edition, J. C. B. Mohr,
Tubingen, 1972), p. 10.
36
J. C. McKinney, Constructive Typology and Social Theory (New
York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1966), p. 25; italics added.
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2.40
Supply
Surplus of of tapes
2 million tapes
& 2.00 at £1.60 a tape
-a
c
3
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a 1.60
1.20
0.80
Demand
Shortage of for tapes
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Figure 1. Equilibrium (from M. Parkin and D. King, Economics
(Addison Wesley, 1992). p. 73).
during one cycle or in terms of the price determination. Thus
these models represent the functional dependence of parameters.
Structural models do not give functional information by relating
several parameters but place a number of parameters in some
order to represent, again in an abstract way, the structure, usually
of microsystems. Often these models combine topologic and alge-
braic features. In the case of quantum mechanics, these structural
models often grew out of analogue models. For instance the
Rutherford-Bohr model of the hydrogen atom was inspired by an
analogy with planetary systems in which one planet orbits a central
massive gravitational body. But as quantum mechanics progressed,
these early models gave way to more precise structural models
which become more abstract—less representational in a pictorial
sense—but again accompanied by a considerable gain in structural
information. This can be illustrated by reference to the model of
the normal Zeeman effect (Figure 2), i.e. the splitting of energy
levels of an atom when placed in an external magnetic field. This
model illustrates the function of tractability: First, it gives the
energy levels under the abstracting condition that there is no
orbit-spin interaction; but it still contains precise mathematical
information about the interaction of the orbital angular momen-
tum of the electron and the influence of a uniform magnetic field.
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Weber's Ideal Types as Models in the Social Sciences
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m,= 0
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V VV
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Weber's Ideal Types as Models in the Social Sciences
they agree on the usefulness of the ideal type, may disagree about
the deviation and the factors which can be safely regarded as acci-
dental and those which are essential. This may have an effect on
any attempt to establish the approximation of the ideal type to its
corresponding empirical reality. This is probably the most serious
difference between the natural and the social sciences in their
respective employment of hypothetical models.56 There are numer-
ous examples in the physical sciences where an improvement in
the approximation of the parameters in the hypothetical model to
the parameters in the real physical system has led to a better corre-
spondence between the equations in the model and the physical
system: examples are the transition from the simple pendulum to
the physical pendulum and from the ideal gas laws to the van der
Waals' equation. If ideal types are to function as hypothetical or as
if models in the social sciences on a par with similar models in the
natural sciences, a serious obstacle presents itself: Deviations from
or empirical exceptions to the models must be explicable in terms
of independent factors or even lawlike regularities. In other words,
it must be known whether the exception is only apparent and can
be accounted for by appeal to some additional boundary condi-
tions or whether the exception is genuine and constitutes a 'refuta-
tion' of the model.57 Furthermore, the model should be sensitive to
improvements by bringing some of its parameters into closer
approximation with parameters in the real system which is being
modelled. In other words there must be an increase in output sen-
sitivity to variations in input error.58 These obstacles present
themselves under the interpretation of ideal types as hypothetical
models and their concomitant representational nature. If the
approximation of the ideal-typical situation to the real cannot be
handled in an appropriate way and if exceptions cannot be properly
classified as genuine or apparent, the danger for ideal types is that
they are reduced to the purely logical constructs or heuristic
devices in which at least one strand of Weber's thinking cast them.
But then they are threatened by vacuity, creating a source of ten-
sion for Weber's conception of sociology as an empirical science.
56
Laymon, 'The Computational and Confirmational Differences'.
" Pietroski and Rey, 'When Other Things Aren't Equal'. Weinert, 'On
the Status of Social Laws'.
58
Laymon, 'The Computational and Confirmational Differences',
p. 250. A. Rosenberg, Philosophy of Social Science, second edition
(Boulder: Westview Press 1995), pp. 159-161.
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