Value Rationality

Against the background of the general decline in union membership in Western countries, this study analyses factors influencing an individual's choice whether to join a trade union. The focus is on the effects of workplace union density and individual political attitudes. Micro data covering the entire Danish workforce combined with European Social Survey data enable for the first time the statistical analysis of the effect workplace union density has on union recruitment. Workplace union density is used to measure the power of social custom in workplace union membership, constituting an instrumental motive for joining the union. Self-placement on a political left-right scale measures political attitude which is assumed to constitute a value-rational motive. The statistical results indicate that workplace union density is the main predictor of whether or not an employee is going to join a union, even when other variables such as gender, occupation and industry worked in are taken into consideration. In addition, the results indicate that political attitude is also an important factor. 2 Résumé Dans le contexte du déclin général de l'affiliation syndicale dans les pays

Unsurpassed in its ambition and historical scope, Max Weber's legal sociology centers around the four "categories of legal thought" that follow from his distinction between formal and substantive modes of rationality and irrationality in the conduct of lawfinding and lawmaking activity. At the same time, Weber's general sociology is built around four ideal types of possible meaningful conduct by individual actors, ranging from the instrumentally rational to the affective. Despite its visibility, the lack of meaningful connection Weber makes between these two categorical schemes has never adequately been remedied or even explained by his inheritors. This article seeks to do both by arguing that a clearer perspective can be gained on Weber's sociology of law by reconstructing his categories of legal thought in terms of his ideal types of meaningful action. Considered, instead, as ideal types of legal action by juristic actors in the course of undertaking lawmaking and lawfinding activity, Weber's categories of legal thought not only are rendered more intelligible but also more powerful in scope. For viewed in this way, Weber's choice of conceptually segregating the categories of legal thought from his general sociology of meaningful action is revealed as a precocious, even if ultimately unsuccessful, tactic for solving the problem of judicial legislation. In this way, Weber's legal scholarship was not just sociological but driven by much of the same concern that continues to preoccupy scholars of legal theory and jurisprudence into our own day. Therefore, the limitations of his solution are not simply of historical interest but vitally relevant to understanding the ongoing difficulties that have plagued our own contemporary attempts at elaborating an adequate philosophy of legal reason.