Max Weber

Weber gave us the working vocabulary. Power is getting your way despite resistance; authority is power people accept as legitimate, and it comes in three kinds: traditional, charismatic and legal-rational, the last embodied in rule-bound bureaucracy, which he admired for its efficiency and feared as an "iron cage". The state is the body claiming a monopoly of legitimate violence. Start with his lecture "Politics as a Vocation" (1919), which also distinguishes an ethic of conviction from an ethic of responsibility.