4.7 A leader and the rules

from common people and is regarded as equipped with supernatural, superhuman or at least unusual powers or characteristics. These are of such a kind that they do not apply to the common individual. They are looked upon as having divine origin or a divine prototype, and such traits make an individual fitted to be considered a leader.‛ The charisma is looked upon as transmitting a calling and those who for different reasons can recognize this calling, answer it with a decisive yes. These individuals experience that ‛it is the duty of those who have been called to a charismatic assignment to acknowledge its intent and to act in harmony with it.‛40

Weber did not attach any moral strings to his referred categories, which on the contrary were considered to be neutral, descriptive and scholarly. Even the term legitimacy was to him a purely empirical designation: ‛What is alone important is how the individual is actually regarded by those subject to charismatic authority, by his 'followers' 26 or 'disciples'.‛41

4.7 A leader and the rules

The American sociologist Tommas F. O'Dea finds three characteristics in Weber’s analysis of the charisma. He says ‛The charisma is unusual and distinguishes itself radically from habit and everyday life. It is spontaneous in contrast to the stable, well established social forms. It gives rise to new forms and new currents and is therefore creative in fundamental sociological respect.‛42

Traditional authority is always linked to and limited by the inherited tradition and is oriented to standard forming rules. Bureaucratic authority is specifically rational in the sense that it is bound to intellectually analytical rules. Charismatic authority on the other hand ‛is specifically irrational in the sense of being foreign to all rules … Within the sphere of its claims, charismatic authority repudiates the past, and is in this sense a specifically revolutionary force.‛43

At the same time as Weber simplified his models in order to get at the ideal types he was well aware of the fact that the different systems

_________________ 40 Weber 1969, p. 358, 359. 41 Weber 1969, p. 359. 42 O'Dea 1967, p. 38. 43 Weber 1969, p. 361, 362.