Max Weber and federal democracy

Abstract

This article challenges the received view of Max Weber as a supporter of unitary centralised state presided over by a plebiscitary leader. His wartime writings on Germany’s political situation demand the end of Prussian hegemony and the abolition of the three-class voting system. Democracy in the mass age means that all citizens of the state have equal voting rights, political parties can freely compete for votes and parliamentary representative democracy, argued Weber, is superior to all forms of direct democracy. Weber strongly supported federal democracy and argued for the division of executive, administrative and political functions between the Reich and the separate German states, not unlike the constitution of today’s German federal state. Weber advances a number of process arguments about how large states within a confederation are able to exert control that is insufficiently accountable to parliaments. It is suggested his views on federal democracy can be used as a critique of hegemonic and undemocratic features of today’s European Union.