God-King Trump: A Weberian Examination of Executive Authority in the Trump Era

• In Event: 4325 - Theory Section Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 min): Table 2: Theorizing Polity and Society-2

Abstract

More than one hundred years ago, Max Weber argued that social institutions in the Western world, including governments, were becoming more “rationalized,” driven by a desire for greater efficiency to handle the administration of modern capitalist and democratic bodies. Enter Donald Trump. From driving out experienced bureaucrats, to naming unqualified successors, to blatantly violating (or at least attempting to violate) the limits of executive power and the independence of executive agencies such as the FBI, Trump has shown open distain for the rules and norms of the executive bureaucracy. These, among other actions, have caused some to accuse Trump of acting more like a king or a dictator rather than a president. Using the concepts provided by Max Weber and subsequent Weberian scholars, I argue that Trump does indeed seem to be acting more like a monarch or an authoritarian ruler than a president operating within the bounds of a rational-legal government. I apply Weber’s typology of legitimate authority as well as the specific concepts of bureaucracy and plebiscitarian democracy to analyze exactly how Trump has undermined our existing rational-legal system of government and how it is being remade, piece by piece, into something more resembling a traditional system of authority, with Trump himself at the top, acting in the role of a kind of “god-king.”

Author

• David R. Dietrich, Texas State University