Sociologist Jan Mertl: Quisling or a Victim of Circumstances?

TL;DRAbstract

The article analyses the life and academic contribution of one of the most prominent interwar Czech sociologists, Jan Mertl (1904-1978), whose studies in political sociology studies were highly innovative in his day, in both the Czech and the international context. Mertl was a follower of Max Weber and focused on the comparative historical-sociological analysis of political partisanship and party systems. He also devoted extensive study to changes in the relationship between state administration/bureaucracy and political representation. He enriched the field of (Czech) sociological theory with his concept of the 'self-regularity of social phenomena', dealing with the unintended outcomes and latent functions of social action, and he attempted to distinguish between Weberian ideal types and 'historical types'. He also made the first systematic analysis of modern bureaucracy, using the Weberian concept of the 'iron cage of modernisation'. However, Mertl is a significant figure in the hist

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