Health care and the concept of legitimacy

Health sector planning is here analyzed in terms of three forms of social legitimacy put forward by Max Weber: rational-legal, traditional and charismatic. Health care planning which is completely legitimated by rational-legal means in bureaucratic institutions usually leaves populations at the periphery of the system ill-provisioned, especially in societies such as many in Africa in which productive resources are in the rural countryside. A proposal is offered for the integration of legal-rational health care organization with traditional health care such that both sectors serve best for that which they are qualified, although not at the expense of the other.