Hegemony, Ideology, Governmentality: Theorizing State Power after Weber

Max Weber once claimed that the growth of bureaucratic power in late modernity may henceforth render political revolutions impossible. In this article, I stage a conversation between Weber and several of his later interlocuters on the Left. I suggest that the concepts of hegemony (Gramsci), ideology (Althusser), and governmentality (Foucault) can be read, in part, as responses to Weber. These theorists each develop distinct versions of what I call a nominalist theory of power: by starting from the ground up and showing how the state is supported by granular relationships of power that circulate outside its grasp, they hope to discover new modes of resistance and social change. I explore these distinct theories and trace their interconnections. In the end, however, I suggest that nominalist theories of power have inherent limitations and that Weber’s initial diagnosis retains important insights.