From the chapter on the types of legitimate domination:
The members of the administrative staff may be bound to obedience to their superior (or superiors) by custom, by affectual ties, by a purely material complex of interests, or by ideal motives. The quality of these motives largely determines the type of domination. Purely material interests and calculations of advantages as the basis of solidarity between the chief and his administrative result, not in other connexions, in a relatively unstable situation. Normally other elements, affectual and ideal, supplement such interests. In certain exceptional cases the former alone may be decisive. In every day life these relationships, like others, are governed by custom and material calculation of advantage. But custom, personal advantage, purely affectual or ideal motives of solidarity, do not form a sufficiently reliable basis for a given domination.
What does the word “former” refer to – custom, affectual ties, material interest, or ideal motives (the first order of listing) or purely material interests, affectual ties, and ideal motives (the second ordering, without custom)? Is it “custom” in the “exceptional situation” or “material interests” that are decisive? The editors provide no help with the original German and it seems some obscurity has resulted during translation. Or I’m just an idiot who can’t figure out something rather simple.
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I think the answer must be in what he goes on to talk about. It sounds like a preamble.
That’s a possibility, but he immediately turns to a discussion of legitimacy. Given the logical relation he establishes between “the staff” and “the chief,” it seems impossible that legitimacy is “alone… decisive” in the “exceptional case.” But I could still be reading it wrong.
The paragraph I quoted above ends, “In addition there is normally a further element, the belief in legitimacy.” He writes in the next paragraph:
It seems that legitimacy is an additional element and not the decisive element as such.
I take it he’s referring to “purely material interests and calculations of advantages,” as opposed to “other elements, affectual and ideal.”
My vote is that “former” refers to “other elements, affectual and ideal” from the preceding sentence.
He’s talking about a range of possibilities: “Purely material interests and calculations of advantages” as one extreme and “other elements, affectual and ideal” as the other extreme (“in certain exceptional cases”, remembering here that he’s talking about the specific context of managerial relations, in which case the purely affectual and ideal would be rather exceptional).
Those are the extremes — either purely material/calculative or purely ideal/affectual — but “Normally … affectual and ideal [elements] supplement such [material and calculative] interests”.
Then, “In every day life these relationships [i.e. of obedience], like others, are governed by custom and material calculation of advantage.”
That’s my take, anyway.
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