On the Uses and Abuses of Weber for Comparative Political Science

My belated introduction to Lisa Wedeen’s work came in 2009—a decade after Ambiguities of Dominationwas first published— on the recommendation of a friend and trusted source onMiddle East politics. By that time, Wedeen already had published groundbreaking books on Syria and Yemen and was a leading scholar of comparative politics. Thus, I was not surprised to find in Ambiguities an innovative interpretive method and a probing analysis of how autocracy works, grounded in years of ethnographic research and a deep understanding of Syrian politics and society.What wasmore surprising, at least at the time, was the discovery of a profoundly theoretical work and a new model for the reintegration of the social sciences. I devoured Ambiguities as I also had done with the works of Barrington Moore, Reinhard Bendix, Charles Tilly, and James Scott, all part of a great tradition of comparative political science that furnished the larger discipline with core concepts and basic theories of politics. I viewed Wedeen’s work as the rebirth of this tradition and its significant reworking for a generation of scholars shaped by ordinary language philosophy, democratic theory, Marxism, poststructuralism, and postcolonial criticism. Ambiguities restored contact between the empirical and theoretical sides of the discipline and suggested a new type of political theory, rooted not in texts and traditions but rather in the symbols and signs of everyday life. Wedeen seems to depart from the classic tradition of comparative politics in one critical respect: her attitude toward Weber. She challengesWeber’s emphasis on legitimacy, showing that political authority can be secure without being legitimate or seeking legitimacy. On one level, then, ambiguity is an anti-Weberian concept. On another level, however, the whole of Ambiguities is an exercise in Weberian analysis. This is the position that I develop in this article: thatWeber is more significant to the implicit argument of Ambiguities than its explicit argument and the more frequent references to cultural Marxism and poststructuralism suggest. Indeed, what is striking about Ambiguities is how the lessons of Althusser, Foucault, and Žižek are fastened to what is basically a Weberian view of the state. The picture of Syrian politics is that of a charismatic authority vested in the leadership of Hafez alAsad.Wedeenmarvels that the Asad cult is “shabby” andmore like an “anxiety-inducing simulacrum” of charisma than the real thing (Wedeen 1999/2015, 3). However, this still interprets Syrian autocracy according to its (faux) charisma. The principle of ambiguity, although it replaces legitimacy, is still meant to anchor a theory of political authority. Stated another way, Ambiguities is the critical reconstruction of Weberian social science to render it more capacious and compatible with Marxism and other methods. I note that this procedure also is integral to the classic tradition of comparative politics. The risk in my reading is that Wedeen’s extraordinary empirical observation and acumen, her ethnographic detail and interpretive insight, all become secondary to a set of theoretical considerations. I impose the same disciplinary divisions onto a book that so effectively dismantles them. However, Ambiguities puts methods and interpretations in the service of a theory of autocracy: what it is, how it works, what distinguishes Syrian autocracy from other forms, and what distinguishes all forms of autocracy from representative government. I suggest that this theory owes more to Weber thanWedeen admits and that the precepts of Weberian social science are so foundational to the discipline that they are assumed by even its dissident voices. What she writes in her most recent book on Syria, that ideology can be “lived implicitly before it is embraced explicitly,” also might be said of the social sciences (Wedeen 2019, 151). The question is whether Weber is serving an ideological or a scientific purpose. To be clear: Ambiguities furnishes a critique of Weber that is powerful and persuasive. The argument, simply stated, is that legitimacy is the improper measure of political authority. Obedience is what matters. “Asad’s cult is a strategy of domination based on compliance, rather than legitimacy,”Wedeen writes. “The regime produces compliance through enforced participation in rituals of obeisance that are transparently phony both to those who orchestrate them and those who consume them” (Wedeen 1999/2015, 6). Against the assumptions ofWeberian social science, which defines the state as the legitimate monopoly on force, Wedeen defines Syrian autocracy as the ambiguous control of appearances. The regime is stabilized not by the use of force nor by the powers of persuasion but instead by ritual participation in its symbolism and rhetoric. Symbolic power permits the regime to saturate and overwhelm public life. Symbolic power is demonstrative, not deliberative. It reinforces dominance not by seeking agreement but rather by setting the parameters of the permissible. Wedeen notes the phoniness of the Asad cult, its overused and exaggerated imagery, and its manifest failure to convince. However, where the regime fails at legitimation, it succeeds at producing complicity and compliance. Where it cannot secure belief, it settles for behavior. This is precisely what makes Syrian autocracy distinctive and instructive. Observers—especially those limited by frames of reference to Western political