Rosemary O`Kane challenged Beetham`s claim that legitimacy is an essential concept for explaining regimes and regime change. While endorsing Beetham`s attempt to refine Weber, it raises three general types of objections to its reformulation: (a) the definition of legitimacy in relation to moral beliefs is circular, (b) it is difficult in practice to separate tolerance or conformity due to faith from that derived from other factors, and (c) the emphasis on legitimacy leads to misleading assessments of the direction of causality (O`Kane 1993). This suggests that we limit the criteria for assessing legitimacy to “legal validity” (the easiest criterion to evaluate empirically) and shift our attention from legitimacy to support. “A direct examination of the nature of support,” she argues, “may be more useful in understanding how political systems work” (O`Kane 1993, p. 476). In fact, “support” approaches a rational notion of legitimacy of Ronald Rogowski, which defines a “rationally legitimate” government as one that maximizes the expected benefits of its citizens (Rogowski 1974, p. 43). Weber`s belief that there was no rational and legal authority in imperial China was heavily criticized and did not have many followers in the early 21st century. Okay, let me start with what the pure type of legal-rational authority is. And there are really two issues that we need to talk about very briefly. There are several ways to set laws and standards. We are already starting to look at whether the rule of law and democracy are the same or, you know, whether they can be democratic or whether they do not necessarily have to be. And then the question arises, who obeys what and who, under the legal authority? Weber defined the legal order as a system in which rules are promulgated and followed as legitimate because they conform to other laws, how they can be promulgated, and how they must be followed.

Moreover, they are enforced by a government that monopolizes their implementation and the legitimate use of physical force. While scientific management focused on the management of work and employees, administrative management dealt with issues related to the overall structure of an organization. This concept is focused on position with leaders who are considered to formulate the company`s goal, regulating employees and maintaining communication. Managers react to change, not to organizations or employees. They are considered professionals who can be trained and developed. Max Weber, a remarkable promoter of administrative management, saw in the structure the search for a “predictability of rational results, precision, stability, discipline and reliability” (Weber 1947, p.332). The immigration officer is a specialist in his field, trained to implement all the procedures established by law to ensure a rational movement of citizens across borders. And then comes the question of representations and the different forms of representation.

Well, there are – again, representations may be democratic, but they are not necessarily so democratic. In fact, there is a possibility of representation when representation is made by hereditary means. Traditional authority; People born into certain positions, like Montesquieu himself, should represent certain interests, which goes beyond the personal interests of the person – right? should represent the interests of the entire estate, for which he stood. Well, it`s also – nowadays we have a representation where representations can be selected by rotation or by batch – in ancient Greece, this happened – and there may be a limited mandate; They do not necessarily represent the interests of the constituency and can be recalled. This was typical of communist bureaucracies. Or there may be what he calls free representation – that`s what we would associate with democracy – where the representative is elected instead of being chosen or appointed. For Weber, rationalization was the inevitable consequence of industrialization and modernization of society. And then, of course, the legal system must be reasonably coherent – this is important for the predictability of the system – and must be established consciously.

Right? This does not happen by accident, but was determined intentionally. But the main point I wanted to make – isn`t it? – that legal-rational authority, according to Weber, can in fact be an authoritarian system. Let`s say that Chile under Pinochet, in the last days after its establishment – consolidated its power; It was a tyrannical rule. But later, Pinochet established a legal and rational order, although it was not at all democratic. Right? It operated with a legal system imposed on the people. And in history, we have a number of cases where we can say, “This country is a country of law and order. We know what the laws are; In fact, we believe that the laws are not unreasonable. But it was imposed on us by a certain power. So, and a little bit about legal-rational authority.