Max Weber’s General Economic History.

Chapter 28 – Citizenship

Outside the occident there have not been cities in the sense of a unitary community. Occidental cities originally arose through the establishment of a fraternity; it was in its beginnings first above all a defense group, an organization of those economically competent to bear arms, to equip and train themselves. These folks owned their own arms: this is key.

In places like Egypt, Asia, India and China, irrigation was a big issue, and so kings’ bureaucracies developed. The king and his staff required the compulsory service of the dependent classes; they in turn were dependent on that bureaucracy. The king also held a military monopoly. In the west, self-equipment and religious brotherhoods (eg, crusaders) meant kings did not have a military monopoly, and so cities could be formed in a western sense, based on mutual defense.

Also, ideas and institutions in the orient connected with magic, which supported such systems as caste systems, did not exist in such strength in the occident.

From Politics As A Vocation

The decisive means of politics is violence. … A state is defined by the specific means peculiar to it: the use of physical force. The state is a human community that successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. Politics, then, means striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power, either among states or among groups within a state. The state is a relation of men dominating men by means of legitimate violence.

Basis of Legitimacy

Legitimacy may be ascribed to an order by those subject to it in the following ways:

  1. tradition, belief in legitimacy of what has always existed.

  2. affected attitudes, legitimizing the validity of what is newly revealed or is a model to imitate.

  3. rational belief in its absolute value.

  4. legality. Readiness to conform with rules which are formally correct and have been imposed by accepted procedure.

Submission to an order is almost always determined by a variety of motives.