Empires and Bureaucracy: Means of Appropriation and Media of Communication
Sam Whimster|Peter Crooks|Timothy Parsons
The sociological writings of Max Weber (1864–1920) are an immediate starting point for analyzing bureaucracy. He offers two ideal types: his classic account rationally organized bureaucracy the modern state and organizations, far denser administration officialdom in premodern patrimonial state. In index these writings, ‘empire’ hardly appears at all, although adjective ‘imperial’ crops up frequently, usually descriptive passages exemplifying cases administration. This is somewhat surprising since stands wide-ranging comparative historical sociology and, a work as comprehensive Economy society, reader might well expect to find separate treatment empire structure power. part, this absence may be explained by fact that society remained unfinished time Weber's death. had hoped complete state, so have appeared there, recent scholarship suggests it was which he interested. An early draft chapter on political communities has section ‘Economic foundations “imperialism” ’, but provides only further work. We conclude, therefore, did not treat concept (G. Begriff).
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