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The article discusses sociologist Max Weber's missing authority type. "There are," according to sociologist Max Weber, "but three clearcut grounds on which to base the belief in legitimate authority." He presented these as three ideal types of authority: legal-rational, traditional and charismatic. His four types of action, however, three of which parallel his three authority types, seem to suggest the possibility of a missing fourth authority type. If Weber had carried his political studies to the same point of completion as his studies of religion, the fourth type would undoubtedly have been developed in an elaboration similar to the one to be presented here. Indeed, though particularly fragmentary, his political writings seem almost to contain the seed of the ideological type. Ideological authority, like legal-rational authority, implies a bureaucratic administrative structure. It too, has the characteristics of authority of the expert, separation of the administrator from the means of his administration, impersonality of relationships, and the like.