Latest news with #MaxWeber
Mail & Guardian
a day ago
- Politics
- Mail & Guardian
The Mandela legacy: Might ‘quiet diplomacy' work in conflicts such as Ukraine and Russia?
Nelson Mandela chose to negotiate with his enemy, the apartheid state, because he believed that emotions such as hate got in the way of strategy. Nelson Mandela Day was officially declared by the United Nations in November 2009 and has since been celebrated internationally on 18 July to mark the charismatic leader's birthday. German sociologist, Max Weber, described charisma as a 'gift' characterised by exceptional qualities that the average person lacked, but those who were so gifted were likely to be 'treated as leaders'. Mandela was such a natural-born leader. Even though he was sentenced to life imprisonment at Robben Island, he chose to negotiate with his arch enemy — the apartheid regime that put him there — rather than waste his time hating it. He believed that emotions such as hate clouded the mind and got in the way of strategy, something he thought no leader could afford to lose sight of. Mandela's choice to initiate negotiations rather than hold grudges, serves as a prime example of a choice made in the service of the greater good. The decision of whether to engage with an enemy he considered morally repugnant could not have been easy. Yet, rather than demonising the opponent, Mandela set aside his moral judgments in favour of a rational assessment of the prevalent reality and the likely costs and benefits of negotiations. The legacy he bestowed upon us is our ability to recognise that lasting peace requires more than just a ceasefire; it demands a deep understanding of the underlying issues. Mandela believed that dialogue, not pointing a gun, was key to resolving disputes and fostering stability. And he proved his point by helping South Africa abandon apartheid and transition to democracy through peaceful negotiations. We could certainly use an astute and charismatic statesman of his calibre now as we find ourselves in the midst of multiple global crises unfolding simultaneously and amplifying each other in unpredictable ways. One such major crisis is the Russia-Ukraine conflict with more lives claimed each day and with no end in sight. The war has already led to substantial shifts in global economic and geostrategic configurations. And now it resembles a political power ball that is being kicked around by Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin with the hapless Volodymyr Zelenskyy ducking it in midfield, as his country bleeds. Although the member states of the European Union strongly condemn Russia's aggression and reaffirm continued support for Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, their position to positively influence events has been weakened by several factors. First, they seem to be sidelined by Trump, whose hostility towards the EU is quite clear and who is still convinced that he alone can end the conflict — though no longer in one day as he once claimed. Second, the 27 states do not speak with one voice as they pursue their own, sometimes clashing, agendas. Third, their concern has less to do with ending the war and more with their own security in case Russia ups the ante by expanding its territorial ambitions further. This latter concern has become evident during the meeting of the Nato military alliance in June 2025 where Russia was declared a long-term threat to the alliance's collective security, with member states pledging increased defence spending and reaffirming their support for Ukraine. Meanwhile, the likes of China, North Korea and Iran have all rushed in to aid their Russian ally. This appeared to be the right time for little South Africa to step in and do again what it did so splendidly once before by managing to negotiate the demise of apartheid that few believed could be accomplished peacefully. What qualifies South Africa to play the mediator's role is the country's adherence to non-alignment in its foreign policy, signalling that other middle powers, particularly in the Global South, can also productively participate in the ongoing geopolitical strife while protecting their own national interests in the process. Not to mention that South Africa is also in a favourable position to mediate the Russia-Ukraine conflict by virtue of the historically friendly relations with the two countries as they both supported the anti-apartheid struggle led by the ANC. The talks between presidents Cyril Ramaphosa and Zelenskyy held on 24 April 2025 in Pretoria marked the beginning of the conversation. Ramaphosa emphasised South Africa's readiness to continue supporting multilateral efforts to achieve a sustainable and comprehensive peace. In response, Zelenskyy extended his gratitude for the shared understanding that the war needs to end as soon as possible. Both presidents pledged common commitment to multilaterism and respect for the rule of law in international relations. They also acknowledged the central role of the UN in global governance and in the maintenance of global peace and security. Zelenskyy underscored that South Africa's current presidency of the Group of 20 (G20) offered an opportunity to strengthen the group's pledges to defend peace and democracy. In his effort to help end the war in Ukraine, Ramaphosa scored an unexpected bonus point when he received a call from Trump. In reference to the discussions during the visit to South Africa by Zelenskyy, Trump wished to also state that the war in Ukraine should come to a rapid end. At the same time, the US president agreed to meet Ramaphosa in the near future. The proposed in-person meeting between Ramaphosa and Trump did indeed take place. The Oval Office encounter was tough on the South African leader, who was shown videos purporting to portray the persecution and genocide of white farmers in his country, a claim since found baseless. To his credit, Rhamaposa — a negotiator from the Mandela era in his own right — remained unruffled. In the subsequent media briefing, he remained upbeat, confirming that engagement between South Africa and the US would continue — and that there was a possibility Trump would attend the G20 summit in Johannesburg in November 2025. If that were to take place, it would be a major achievement for the South African government and a positive development for the country. Then again, events move so rapidly and in such an unpredictable fashion that no one can tell what tomorrow might bring. Nevertheless, opting for negotiation instead of confrontation is what Madiba would have done. Professor Ursula van Beek is the director of the Centre for Research on Democracy at Stellenbosch University.
Gulf Today
07-07-2025
- General
- Gulf Today
Social trust is crucial for capitalism, vibrant democracies
Ask someone what a calling is, and they'll probably say something like 'doing work you love.' But as a management professor who has spent two decades researching the history and impact of calling, I've found it's much more than personal fulfillment. The concept of calling has deep roots. In the 1500s, theologian Martin Luther asserted that any legitimate work — not just work in ministry — could have sacred significance and social value, and could therefore be considered a calling. In this early form, calling wasn't merely a vocation or passion; it was a way of living and working that built character, competence and social trust. That's because calling is an ethical system — a set of thoughts and actions aimed at producing 'good work' that is both morally grounded and quality-focused. As such, it's not just a feel-good idea. Today, we know that calling can strengthen social trust by reinforcing its key elements: confidence in product quality, stable institutions, adherence to rules and laws, and relationships. Social trust is crucial for capitalism and vibrant democracies. And when those systems weaken, as they are now, it's calling — not cunning or charisma — that can help repair them. Although calling's original meaning has faded, I contend that it's worth reviving. That robust spirit of work still has practical value today, especially since social trust has been declining for decades. We've been here before — in the late 19th century, when the US entered its first Gilded Age. Innovation surged, but so did corruption and inequality as lax regulations enabled tycoons to accumulate extraordinary wealth. Rapid social change sparked conflict. Meanwhile, rising authoritarianism, shifting national alliances and economic jolts unsettled the world. Sound familiar? Today, in the US, trust in institutions has reached an all-time low, while measures of corruption and inequality are up. Meanwhile, American workers are increasingly disengaged at work, a problem that costs US$438 billion annually. America's fractured and flawed democracy ranks 28th globally, having fallen 11 slots in less than 15 years. These aren't just economic or political failures — they're signs of a moral breakdown. Over a century ago, sociologist Max Weber warned that if capitalism lost its moral footing, it would cannibalise itself. He predicted the rise of 'specialists without spirit,' people who are technically brilliant but ethically empty. The result: resurgence of a cruel, callous form of capitalism called moral menace. Some leaders act as moral menaces, which law professor James Q. Whitman describes as an efficient but exploitative form of capitalism. Moral menaces extract value and treat people callously, which erodes trust that sustains markets and society. In contrast, others are what I call 'moral muses' — leaders who are examples of a calling in action. They're not saints or celebrities, but people who combine skill, care and moral courage to build trust and transform systems from within. President Franklin Roosevelt and Yvonne Chouinard are two examples. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated in 1933, amid the Great Depression, an aide told Roosevelt if he was successful, he'd become America's greatest president. Roosevelt replied, 'If I fail, I shall be the last one.' He succeeded by restoring trust. Through New Deal policies, Roosevelt enhanced institutional trust, which stabilised democracy and helped rescue capitalism from its excesses. Today, the US remains highly innovative, competitive and wealthy, in part because of moral muses like Roosevelt. Or take Yvon Chouinard, the founder of clothing label Patagonia, who built a billion-dollar company while building trust around a moral mission. He urged customers not to buy more gear, but instead to repair their old products to curb consumer waste. Chouinard filed over 70 lawsuits to protect public land, and he gave away his company to climate-change nonprofits in 2022, declaring, 'Earth is now our only shareholder.' Relatedly, Patagonia's employee turnover is far lower than the industry standard, reporting shows. Why? Because people trust leaders who live their values. History shows that such leaders aren't born; they are trained. For 15 years, I've taught an MBA module named 'The Calling to Leadership.' Students study moral muses like Roosevelt and Chouinard — not for their fame, but for how they live their callings to cultivate talent and trust, and transform systems. Students learn to identify moral injuries that lead to disengagement, spot trust gaps, reflect on their own moral core, and practice ethical decision-making. They also engage in reflective practices that sharpen their ethical judgment, which is essential to create moral markets. As Lynn Forester de Rothschild, the founder of the Council for Inclusive Capitalism, put it: 'At its best, the basis of capitalism is a dual moral and market imperative.' Democracy and capitalism won't be strengthened by charisma, cunning or exploitative ambition, but by people who answer a deeper calling to do 'good work': work that builds trust and strengthens the social fabric.
The Star
21-06-2025
- Science
- The Star
Iron cage in the AI age
IF Max Weber were alive today, I'm pretty sure he'd be less worried about bureaucrats in grey suits and more about engineers writing code in Silicon Valley or Shenzhen. That's because the 'iron cage' of rationality – the term the German sociologist coined over a century ago to describe how modern life gets trapped in systems designed for efficiency, predictability, and control – has found its most advanced form in artificial intelligence (AI).
New York Times
16-06-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Charisma Rules the World
The 2020s should have been the decade when American politics began to make sense. The multibillion-dollar industry of public opinion polling can turn vibe shifts into tweetable bar graphs and trend lines. Surveys have found that affiliation with traditional religious institutions has mostly declined over the past generation, so one might conclude that more Americans now form their worldviews and choose leaders based on cool logic and material interest. And over this data-driven landscape extends the lengthening shadow of our artificial intelligence overlords, who promise to rationalize more and more of our lives, for our own good. Yet somehow, despite the experts' interactive graphics and the tricks that large language models can do, it has only gotten harder to understand the worldviews and political choices of half the country (whichever half you don't belong to). Perhaps, then, we should pay more attention to the human quirks that confound statisticians and that A.I. can't quite crack — desires and drives that have not changed much over the centuries. That means rescuing a familiar word from decades of confusion and cliché: charisma. In New Testament Greek, the word means gift of grace or supernatural power. But when we use it to describe the appeal of a politician, a preacher's hold over his congregation or a YouTube guru with a surprisingly large following, we are taking a cue from the sociologist Max Weber. He spent much of his career studying what happens to spiritual impulses as a society becomes more secular and bureaucratic. A little more than a century ago, he borrowed 'charisma' from the Bible and Christian history to describe the relationship between leaders and followers in both religion and politics. Charisma, he wrote, is a form of authority that does not depend on institutional office, military might or claims on tradition. Instead, charisma derives from followers' belief that their leader possesses a supernatural mission and power: 'a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men.' Weber described himself as 'religiously unmusical' and insisted that he was reinventing charisma in a 'completely value-neutral sense.' But the magnetism that he observed in some leaders — and their followers' sense of calling and duty — seemed to demand a spiritual description. The secular vocabulary developing in his corner of academia, the new disciplines of the social sciences, was not up to the task. 'In order to do justice to their mission, the holders of charisma, the master as well as his disciples and followers, must stand outside the ties of this world,' he wrote. Even as he resisted his colleagues' tendencies to reduce human behavior to animal instincts and reflexes, Weber missed a key element. Charisma is not something that leaders have; it's something that they do. Charisma is a kind of storytelling. It's an ability to invite followers into a transcendent narrative about what their lives mean. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Economist
13-06-2025
- Business
- Economist
Can you pass the toughest tests in the world?
Civil-service exams in China and India are notoriously difficult. But they shape their countries' societies Max Weber, sensible German intellectual that he was, considered bureaucracy the best way to organise large societies. And societies don't come any larger than China and India, where the decisions of bureaucrats shape the lives of more than a quarter of the world's people. Even as the countries' private sectors have grown in recent decades, jobs in their civil services remain deeply coveted. Government jobs in India, especially in the federal services that run the country, remain a ticket to prosperity, prestige and better marriage prospects. In China, where the economy has slowed, securing a top-tier state job (known locally as 'landing ashore') is back in fashion—quite literally. Young people sometimes don 'cadre-style' attire—windbreakers in muted colours and high-waisted suit trousers—in order to emulate officials. But perhaps the biggest similarity between the two bureaucracies is the brutality of their selection processes, which hinge on a gruelling set of examinations. To give you a taste of the difficulty, The Economist has chosen some questions from the first part of recent exams. Have a go: Such questions are only a small part of a much larger process. In India those who pass the first exam in May or June must sit a second later in the year. This features nine papers taken over 27 hours. In China the written test takes place on one day in late November or early December. Candidates do a multiple-choice exam and then write a series of essays testing their understanding of policy, as well as their writing skills. Both countries hold in-person interviews as a final filter. Only a fraction survive the ordeal. Last year 1.1m people applied to join the top tier of India's civil service, but around 1,000 (0.2% of those who actually sat the first exam) were offered a spot. In China a record 3.41m people registered and passed the initial screening for the national civil-service exam last year—well over twice the number who did so in 2014. Just over 39,700 (1.5% of those who sat the exam) secured a job. In both countries the exams are considered the fairest way to filter candidates. Indeed, in India they were introduced by British colonial masters after Indians complained about the previous patronage-based system. In China, the guokao, as the exam is called, is modelled on the keju, which was instituted in 587 and was lauded for being relatively corruption-free and meritocratic. Candidates' ability to leapfrog social classes was so cherished that, say some academics, the riots that followed the exam's abolition in 1905 contributed to the toppling of the Qing dynasty, China's last imperial rulers, a few years later. The civil-service exam in China has shaped the country's evolution. The keju was the 'anchor of Chinese autocracy', according to Yasheng Huang, who has written a book about it. Mind-bogglingly difficult, it required total intellectual commitment, sometimes from the age of five, leaving the most talented and ambitious members of society no time to foment new ideas. Gui Youguang, a 16th-century writer, passed the exam's final stage aged 59, after decades of failed attempts, and died shortly after. The guokao, which can only be taken by those aged 35 or under, remains an important tool for the state. After China embarked on market reforms in the 1970s, the bureaucracy took on a more important role in a complex, open society. As a result, the guokao was tweaked to examine candidates' knowledge of laws and regulations. Over time the questions became more practical, testing common sense and numeracy. But in recent years the exam has also become a test of party loyalty, with ever more questions dedicated to Xi Jinping Thought. Chinese essay questions 'Dedicate yourself to your field, constantly 'refine' and 'repair', and silently contribute to a warm and steadfast order of life for the people, while progressing steadily.' Based on your understanding of this sentence, draw on real-life examples and experiences, choose your own angle and title, and write an essay. Write a report on the achievements, shortcomings and suggestions for improvement regarding the implementation of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Law. Conduct an in-depth analysis of the three dimensions of administrative law enforcement—'power' (力), 'reason' (理) and 'interest' (利). Draw on real-life examples and experiences, choose your own angle and title, and write an essay. India's civil service, in contrast, has remained relatively apolitical. After independence in 1947, leaders chose to retain the 'steel frame' of the Imperial Civil Service, but changed the role of the bureaucrats it hired from upholding colonial rule to ensuring development. By 1979 competition to enter the service was so fierce that a second set of exams was introduced to test candidates' breadth of knowledge. In 2012 a paper on ethics was added. India's civil service is associated with prestige—but also corruption. In a recent high-profile example, a young civil servant in the eastern state of Odisha was accused of accepting a bribe of 1m rupees ($11,683) from a businessman. Indian essay questions Is conscience a more reliable guide when compared to laws, rules and regulations in the context of ethical decision-making? Discuss. Child cuddling is now being replaced by mobile phones. Discuss its impact on the socialization of children. Thinking is like a game, it does not begin unless there is an opposite team. Discuss. Success in both exams requires immense toil. Many examinees do not work in the year, even years, leading up to the test; those holding down jobs end up studying early in the morning or late at night. Thousands seek the help of coaching centres; the best ones offer full-time training and board. Shikha Singh, for example, moved from a small town in central India to Delhi just to prepare for the exam surrounded by fellow aspirants. She has failed the test three times, but ramped up her efforts with each attempt. Ahead of her recent fourth try, Ms Singh put in ten-hour days, but worries that still might not be enough to cover the wide variety of subjects. In south-eastern China, Ms Zhong, a prospective civil servant from Jiangxi province, has put in similar shifts since quitting her job in 2023 and moving back in with her parents. Her concern is that preparation alone may not be enough in an exam that tests 'innate ability'. Even if they succeed, will their effort be worth it? Those who pass the exams reap instant and long-term benefits, such as housing and a pension (and often a job) for life. Once in their roles they are treated like royalty, with an army of staff to do their bidding and a special chair marked with a white towel. Research from India suggests some correlation between exam performance and effectiveness as a civil servant. But in both countries critics believe the exams filter candidates according to the wrong criteria. By screening for rote-learning and test-taking, they neglect to assess actual public-policy skills such as management, teamwork and communication. This contributes to the poor performance of the bureaucracy. On a measure of government effectiveness calculated by the World Bank, China and India rank in the 74th and 68th percentiles globally. In both countries efforts are under way to recruit people in other ways. China is experimenting with hiring some candidates for fixed terms according to their experience, rather than their exam performance. Similarly India has introduced a 'lateral-entry' scheme to allow private-sector specialists to join the public workforce. But these remain nascent initiatives. Exams will remain the backbone of public-sector recruitment. If the merits of this selection process are debatable, the costs—both human and economic—are more easily quantified. Aspirants who fail to meet the mark tend to try again. A cycle of application and rejection has an effect on morale: exam failure often pushes candidates to suicide in both countries. Ms Singh, the Indian candidate, feels she has lost social status because of her failed attempts. Her Chinese counterpart, Ms Zhong, is also weighed down by anxiety. 'Only a few people pass the exam,' she says. 'I wonder what those who fail do.' It is an important question. Years of youth spent in study, instead of work, are an economic loss. The exams force college graduates to delay employment, reducing their long-term consumption. And the subjects so feverishly swotted up late at night are not necessarily of use once the exams are over. Knowing big cats' biological intricacies or the details of Xi Jinping Thought might help candidates earn a civil servant's towel-covered chair—but perhaps not a place in the private sector.
