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Weber developed a multidimensional approach to social stratification that reflects the interplay among wealth, prestige and power. Weber argued that power can take a variety of forms. A person's power can be shown in the social order through their status, in the economic order through their class, and in the political order through their party.
rational-legal authority (modern law and state, bureaucracy). These three types are ideal types and rarely appear in their pure form. According to Weber, authority (as distinct from power (German: Macht)) is power accepted as legitimate by those subjected to it. The three forms of authority are said to appear in a "hierarchical development order".
It is the legitimate power which one person or a group holds and exercises over another. The element of legitimacy is vital to the notion of authority and is the main means by which authority is distinguished from the more general concept of power. Power can be exerted by the use of force or violence.
In these works he alludes to an inevitable move towards rationalization. [6] Weber believed that a move towards rational-legal authority was inevitable. In charismatic authority, the death of a leader effectively ends the power of that authority, and only through a rationalized and bureaucratic base can this authority be passed on.
In sociology, the iron cage is a concept introduced by Max Weber to describe the increased rationalization inherent in social life, particularly in Western capitalist societies. The "iron cage" thus traps individuals in systems based purely on teleological efficiency, rational calculation and control.
Under rational-legal authority, legitimacy is seen as coming from a legal order and the laws that have been enacted in it (see also natural law and legal positivism).. Weber defined legal order as a system where the rules are enacted and obeyed as legitimate because they are in line with other laws on how they can be enacted and how they should be obeyed.
In his 1938 work, The Structure of Social Action, he quoted Weber's definitions and integrated them into the theory he called "social harmonized action systems. [6]: II:642–3 He called his theoretical framework a "means-end schema" in which individuals coordinate their instrumental actions by an "efficiency-norm and their value-rational ...
Rationalists are prone to favor Weber's value rationality. They assume a human deductive capacity for immediate knowledge of meaningful beliefs and behaviors—fact-free human ends. Empiricists, by contrast, favor Weber's instrumental rationality. They assume a human inductive capacity to recognize how brute facts work as value-free means.