Mises versus Weber on Bureaucracy and Sociological Method

This article begins by contrasting the distinctive methodological starting points of Weber and Mises, and proceeds to review and discuss each thinker’s analysis of bureaucracy, both as a theoretical construct and as a dynamic element within a society’s structural and cultural organization. It finishes by assessing the scientific utility of Mises’s and Weber’s descriptions of bureaucracy, concluding that the dynamism inherent in Mises’s emphasis upon human action offers not only a better description of the emergence of bureaucracy, but also a superior scientific and ethical assessment of its dangers.

Volume 18, Number 1 (2004)