Actors can attribute legitimate validity to an order on four basic grounds—tradition, affective or e… — Max Weber

Actors can attribute legitimate validity to an order on four basic grounds—tradition, affective or emotional belief, value‑rational belief in absolute certainty, and belief in legality of positively enacted statutes—with legality itself deriving its legitimacy either from agreement among interested parties or from imposition justified by belief in legitimate personal rule.

By Max Weber, from Economy and Society

Key Arguments

Weber enumerates four generic bases of legitimacy: 'Actors can ascribe legitimate validity to an order a) by virtue of tradition: the validity of the ever-existing; b) by affective, especially emotional, belief: the validity of the newly revealed, or the exemplary; c) by virtue of value-rational belief: the validity of that which has been revealed to be absolutely certain; d) by virtue of positive statute, whose legality is believed.'
He further analyzes legality as a special case that can itself rest on two types of justification: 'Legality with such a positive source can be treated as legitimate α) by virtue of an agreement among interested parties; β) by virtue of its imposition, on the basis of the legitimacy ascribed to the rule of man by man, and conformity.'
By presenting these as exhaustive headings and postponing details to the sociology of rule and law, Weber indicates that these are foundational types for his later typology of domination.
The distinction between agreement‑based legality and imposed legality foreshadows his later analysis of democratic and authoritarian forms of rule.

Source Quotes

For this reason, nothing can be said about this in general. §7. Actors can ascribe legitimate validity to an order a) by virtue of tradition: the validity of the ever-existing; b) by affective, especially emotional, belief: the validity of the newly revealed, or the exemplary; c) by virtue of value-rational belief: the validity of that which has been revealed to be absolutely certain; d) by virtue of positive statute, whose legality is believed. Legality with such a positive source can be treated as legitimate α) by virtue of an agreement among interested parties; β) by virtue of its imposition, on the basis of the legitimacy ascribed to the rule of man by man, and conformity.

Actors can ascribe legitimate validity to an order a) by virtue of tradition: the validity of the ever-existing; b) by affective, especially emotional, belief: the validity of the newly revealed, or the exemplary; c) by virtue of value-rational belief: the validity of that which has been revealed to be absolutely certain; d) by virtue of positive statute, whose legality is believed. Legality with such a positive source can be treated as legitimate α) by virtue of an agreement among interested parties; β) by virtue of its imposition, on the basis of the legitimacy ascribed to the rule of man by man, and conformity. Further details (apart from some concepts that will be elaborated below) will be dealt with in the sociology of rule and of law.

Legality with such a positive source can be treated as legitimate α) by virtue of an agreement among interested parties; β) by virtue of its imposition, on the basis of the legitimacy ascribed to the rule of man by man, and conformity. Further details (apart from some concepts that will be elaborated below) will be dealt with in the sociology of rule and of law. Here it can be observed that 1.

Key Concepts

Actors can ascribe legitimate validity to an order a) by virtue of tradition: the validity of the ever-existing; b) by affective, especially emotional, belief: the validity of the newly revealed, or the exemplary; c) by virtue of value-rational belief: the validity of that which has been revealed to be absolutely certain; d) by virtue of positive statute, whose legality is believed.
Legality with such a positive source can be treated as legitimate α) by virtue of an agreement among interested parties; β) by virtue of its imposition, on the basis of the legitimacy ascribed to the rule of man by man, and conformity.
Further details (apart from some concepts that will be elaborated below) will be dealt with in the sociology of rule and of law.

Context

§7 introductory list, where Weber systematically classifies the main types of legitimacy of orders that will underpin his later theory of legitimate domination.