Ganske enkelt de beste? Legitim makt hos byråkratiske eliter i Europa

Note: Postponed due to strike 

If the bureaucratic elite are recruited to their positions of power on the basis of merit, as Max Weber argues, what is their merit? Which knowledge and skills represent legitimate sources to power in modern bureaucracies? John Scott insists on the specific role of expert knowledge: top bureaucrats’ coded, esoteric and exclusive specialized knowledge makes laypersons trust and defer power to them. However, analyzing documents, literature and semi-directive interviews with top bureaucrats, professors and students on the recruitment and promotion systems to senior civil service in Britain, France and Norway, this article provides evidence that such expert knowledge is not the most significant source to bureaucratic elite power: whereas Norwegian top bureaucrats are selected for their specialized expertise but have a weaker elite status, the British and French, who have an explicit elite status, are selected for their generalist knowledge. The valuing of generalist knowledge opens up for rearticulating traditional and charismatic authority in rational-legal terms for modern democratic bureaucracies.