Max Weber and the Reinvention of Popular Power

Political scientists are not generally accustomed to treating Max Weber’s unusual account of democracy—plebiscitary leader democracy—as a genuine democratic theory. The typical objection is that Weber’s account of democracy in terms of the generation of charismatic leadership is not really a democratic theory at all, because it contains no positive account of popular power: specifically, that it presents democracy in such a fashion that there is no capacity for the People to participate in the articulation and ratification of the norms, laws and policies governing the conduct of public life. This essay argues that Weber’s theory of plebiscitary leader democracy ought to be interpreted as rejecting, not any account of popular power, but only a traditional and still dominant vocal paradigm of popular power: one which assumes that popular power must refer to an authorial power to self-legislate the norms and conditions of public life, or at least to express substantive opinions, values and preferences about what kinds of decisions political leaders ought to be making. Properly understood, plebiscitary leader democracy embodies a novel, ocular paradigm of popular power according to which the object of popular power is the leader (not the law), the organ of popular power is the People’s gaze (not its voice), and the critical ideal associated with popular empowerment is the candor of leaders (not the autonomous authorship of laws). Thus, rather than abandon the concept of popular power, Weber’s theory of democracy reinvents its meaning under conditions of mass society.