The Theoretical Framework and Causal Methodology

Reference either to the familiar components of Max Weber’s methodology, such as ideal types, methodological individualism, and the method of Verstehen, or to major aspects of his work, such as “the Protestant ethic thesis,” status groups, and charismatic and bureaucratic rulership, fails to exhaust his mode of causal analysis. It also prominently includes, albeit buried deeply in his fragmented and incomplete works, a demarcated theoretical framework and a rigorous causal methodology. This chapter seeks to reconstruct both of these pivotal components of the mode of causal analysis practiced by Weber in his comparative-historical sociology.2