NCSA 2020 Presidential Address: Luck, Weber, and Constant Crisis

ABSTRACT The past four years in the United States has been rife with constant crisis, even preceding the COVID19 pandemic. The Trump Administration regularly caused upheaval by refusing to following traditional protocol for the presidency across official appointments, staffing, domestic policy and international relations, among others. The inability to stop these violations despite strong negative reactions to them highlight the United States cultural overreliance on structural expectations. Weber cautioned again the growing influence of bureaucratic organizations while also reminding us the voluntary compliance necessary to make authority legitimate. Coupled with a broad misunderstanding of the Weberian sources of authority for the office of the president and use of homogenous sources of information, we have been lucky that such upheaval has not occurred in the past 240 years. Perhaps now our luck has run out. This essay is a modified version of the 2020 NCSA Presidential Address given virtually by Robert Carrothers after the cancellation of the in-person conference due to the COVID19 pandemic.