Authority

This article is about authority as a political concept. For other uses, see Authority (disambiguation).

The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest judicial authority in the United States of America.

Authority is commonly understood as the legitimate power of a person or group over other people. In a civil state, authority is practiced by the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government. The term authority has many nuances and distinctions within various academic fields ranging from sociology to political science.

In the exercise of governance, the terms authority and power are inaccurate synonyms. The term authority identifies the political legitimacy, which grants and justifies the ruler's right to exercise the power of government; and the term power identifies the ability to accomplish an authorized goal, either by compliance or by obedience; hence, authority is the power to make decisions and the legitimacy to make such legal decisions and order their execution.

History

Ancient understandings of authority trace back to Rome and draw later from Catholic (Thomistic) thought and other traditional understandings. In more modern terms, forms of authority include transitional authority (exhibited in, for example, Cambodia), public authority in the form of popular power, and, in more administrative terms, bureaucratic or managerial techniques. In terms of bureaucratic governance, one limitation of the governmental agents of the executive branch, as outlined by George A. Krause, is that they are not as close to the popular will as elected representatives are. The claims of authority can extend to national or individual sovereignty, which is broadly or provisionally understood as a claim to political authority that is legitimated.

Historical applications of authority in political terms include the formation of the city-state of Geneva, and experimental treatises involving the topic of authority in relation to education include Emile, or On Education by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. As David Laitin defines, authority is a key concept to be defined in determining the range and role of political theory, science and inquiry. The relevance of a grounded understanding of authority includes the basic foundation and formation of political, civil and/or ecclesiastical institutions or representatives. In recent years, however, authority in political contexts has been challenged or questioned.

Political philosophy

There have been several contributions to the debate of political authority. Among others, Hannah Arendt, Carl Joachim Friedrich, Thomas Hobbes, Alexandre Kojève and Carl Schmitt have provided some of the most influential texts.

In European political philosophy, the jurisdiction of political authority, the location of sovereignty, the balancing of notions of freedom and authority, and the requirements of political obligations have been core questions from the time of Plato and Aristotle to the present. Most democratic societies are engaged in an ongoing discussion regarding the legitimate extent of the exercise of governmental authority. In the United States, for instance, there is a prevailing belief that the political system as instituted by the Founding Fathers should accord the populace as much freedom as reasonable; that government should limit its authority accordingly, known as limited government.

Political anarchism is a philosophy which rejects the legitimacy of political authority and adherence to any form of sovereign rule or autonomy of a nation-state. An argument for political anarchy is made by Michael Huemer in his book The Problem of Political Authority. On the other side, one of the main arguments for the legitimacy of the state is some form of the social contract theory developed by Thomas Hobbes in his 1668 book, Leviathan, or by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his political writings on the social contract.

Sociology

An inhabited initial from a 13th-century French text representing the tripartite social order of the Middle Ages: the ōrātōrēs (those who pray – clerics), bellātōrēs (those who fight – knights, that is, the nobility), and labōrātōrēs (those who work – peasants and members of the lower middle class).

In sociology, authority is the legitimate or socially approved power which one person or a group possesses and practices over another. The element of legitimacy is vital to the notion of authority and is the main means by which authority is distinguished from the more general concept of power.

Power can be exerted by the use of force or violence. Authority, by contrast, depends on the acceptance by subordinates of the right of those above them to give them orders or directives.

The definition of authority in contemporary social science remains a matter of debate. Max Weber in his essay "Politics as a Vocation" (1919) divided legitimate authority into three types. Others, like Howard Bloom, suggest a parallel between authority and respect/reverence for ancestors.

Types

The types of political authority were first defined by Max Weber in his essay "Politics as a Vocation" and his other writings in 1919–1920. In this essay he emphasized that the political authority that controlled the state can be composed of the following types of authority, or what is called in German, Herrschaft.

Traditional authority: Power legitimized by respect for long-established cultural patterns.

Charismatic authority: Power legitimized by extraordinary personal abilities that inspire devotion and obedience.

Rational-legal authority: Also known as bureaucratic authority, is when power is legitimized by legally enacted rules or regulations.

Max Weber on authority

See also: Monopoly on violence

Max Weber, in his sociological and philosophical work, identified and distinguished three types of legitimate domination (Herrschaft in German, which generally means 'domination' or 'rule'), that have sometimes been rendered in English translation as types of authority, because English-speakers do not see domination as a political concept. Weber defined domination (authority) as the chance of commands being obeyed by a specifiable group of people. Legitimate authority is that which is recognized as legitimate and justified by both the ruler and the ruled. Legitimated rule results in what Weber called the monopoly over the use of coercive violence in a given territory. In the modern world, such authority is typically delegated to police and the court system.

Main articles: Tripartite classification of authority and The Three Types of Legitimate Rule

Weber divided legitimate authority into three types:

• The first type discussed by Weber is legal-rational authority. It is that form of authority which depends for its legitimacy on formal rules and established laws of the state, which are usually written down and are often very complex.

A constitution may define the extent of the power of rational-legal authority. Modern societies depend on legal-rational authority. Government officials are the best example of this form of authority, which is prevalent all over the world.

• The second type of authority, traditional authority, derives from long-established customs, habits and social structures. When power passes from one generation to another, it is known as traditional authority. The rule of hereditary monarchs furnishes an obvious example. The Tudor dynasty in England and the ruling families of Mewar in Rajasthan (India) are examples of traditional authority. In Economy and Society (1921) Weber clarifies a distinction among three terms (as he defined them): Patriarchy, Patrimonialism depending on the sole authority of an Absolute Monarch (Emperor, Empress, King, Queen) and Patrimonialism where the divine right of the sole ruler is somewhat modified by feudal aristocratic legitimate authority (e.g. feudal barons in England). The feudal variant of Patrimonial legitimate authority is characteristic of Tudor England. But the earlier variant of Patrimonial legitimate authority is the most widespread form of traditional authority structures ("systems") in world history. Reinhard Bendix discusses these distinctions. [citation below].
• The third form of authority is charismatic authority. Here, the charisma of an individual or of a leader plays an important role. Charismatic authority is that authority which is derived from the leader's claims to a higher power or inspiration that is supported by his or her followers. An examples in this regard can be NT Rama Rao, a matinée idol who became one of the most powerful Chief Ministers of Andhra Pradesh. Charismatic authority is also attributed to religious innovators like Siddharta Gautama (as the "Buddha") and Yeshua of Nazareth (as a or the Masiach-Messiah.)

History has witnessed several social movements or revolutions against a system of traditional or legal-rational authority started by charismatic authorities. According to Weber, what distinguishes authority from coercion, force and power on the one hand, and leadership, persuasion and influence on the other hand, is legitimacy. Superiors, he states, feel that they have a right to issue commands; subordinates perceive an obligation to obey (see also Milgram experiment). Social scientists agree that authority is but one of several resources available to incumbents in formal positions. For example, a Head of State is dependent upon a similar nesting of authority. His legitimacy must be acknowledged, not just by citizens, but by those who control other valued resources: his immediate staff, his cabinet, military leaders and in the long run, the administration and political apparatus of the entire society.

Authority can be created expressly when public entities act publicly, using the same means to communicate the grant of authority to their agents that they use to communicate this to third parties, apparent authority describes the situation when a principal has placed restrictions on an agent that are not known to a third party, and restrictions on government agents are accomplished in the open, through laws and regulations. In this setting, all parties concerned is assumed or supposed to know the laws and regulations of government.

Recently the concept of authority has also been discussed as a guiding principle in human-machine interaction design.

Genetic research indicates that obedience to authority may be a heritable factor.

Children and authority attributes

Authority and its attributes have been identified as of particular relevance to children as they regard their parents and teachers. The three attributes of authority have been described as status, specialist skills or knowledge, and social position. Children consider the type of command, the characteristics of the authority figure, and the social context when making authority conclusions.

Although children regard these three types of authority attributes, they first assess the legitimacy of the authority figure in question using the nature of the commands they give. For example, a teacher that does not appear to have legitimate power from the child's perspective (perhaps because she or he cannot control the class well) will not be obeyed. Regarding parenting, authoritative parents who are warm and high in behavioral control but low in psychological control are more likely to be seen as having legitimate authority by the child, and will believe themselves that they have a duty to obey them and internalize their values. While the study of children in modern capitalist societies does look at the psychological aspects of children's understanding of legitimate authority at the level of symbolic interaction it is also true that is an extrapolated assumption based on one interpretation of a broad Comparative Historical Sociological (CHS) analysis of legitimate authority in many societies over a long duration, not the micro social psychological study of children per se. There is nothing in Weber's published work in the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe that directly deals with children's perceptions in "formations" with traditional legitimate authority, prior to the emergence of modern capitalism .

In social science

Hofstede Insights details "Power Distance" as: "Power distance is defined as the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organisations within a country expect and accept that power is distributed unequally", which can be interpreted as respect for authority. Generally, ex-communist countries, poor countries, and non-Protestant countries have the highest power distance (respect for inequality in the distribution of power). According to Hofstede Insights 2021 country comparison, all countries with power distance below 50 are Western Protestant democracies, except for Austria. Such studies are attempts to apply ideas found in Weber that he himself did not postulate directly and they assume the nation-state as a basic unit of "countries" rather than look at all of the various political economic "formations" in which Weber himself was most directly interested.

United Kingdom and the Commonwealth realms

The political authority in the British context can be traced to James VI and I of Scotland who wrote two political treatises called Basilikon Doron and The True Law of Free Monarchies: Or, The Reciprocal and Mutual Duty Between a Free King and His Natural Subjects which advocated his right to rule on the basis of the concept of the divine right of kings, a theological concept that has a basis in multiple religions, but in this case, Christianity, tracing this right to the apostolic succession.

Sovereign kings and queens in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth realms are considered the foundations of judicial, legislative and executive authority.

United States

The understanding of political authority and the exercise of political powers in the American context traces back to the writings of the Founding Fathers, including the arguments put forward in The Federalist Papers by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and the first chief justice of the United States John Jay, and later speeches by the 16th president of the United States Abraham Lincoln. "Our government rests in public opinion," Lincoln said in 1856. In his 1854 speech at Peoria, Illinois, Lincoln espoused the proposition “that each man should do precisely as he pleases with all which is exclusively his own," a principle existing "at the foundation of the sense of justice." This sense of personal ownership and stewardship was integral to the practice of self-government as Lincoln saw it by a Republican nation and its people. This was because, as Lincoln also declared, "No man is good enough to govern another man, without that other's consent."

The U.S. president is called to give account to the legislature for the conduct of the whole government, including that of regulatory agencies. The president influences the appointments, the budgeting process and has the right and capacity to review regulatory rules on a case-by-case basis. Since the time of the Reagan administration the president was informed with a cost–benefit analysis of the regulation. The creation of a regulatory agency requires an Act of Congress which specifies its jurisdiction, the related authority and delegated powers. Regulatory authorities can be qualified as independent agencies or executive branch agencies, a choice which is the reason of struggle between congress and the president as well as with the American courts. The latter's role is limited by the authorities' power to regulate property rights without the due process rights mandatorily applied by the courts.

See also

• Anti-authoritarianism
• Appeal to authority
• Auctoritas
• Authoritarianism
• Authority (management)
• Authority bias
• Discipline
• Feudalism
• Fidelity
• Legitimacy
• List of sociology topics
• Milgram experiment (sociological experiments measuring obedience to authority figures)
• Morale
• Patriarchy
• Patrimonialism
• Petty authority
• Political theology
• Power distance
• Protection
• Question authority
• Sociology
• Soft power
• Tripartite classification of authority

Further reading

• Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (2005)
• Hannah Arendt, "Authority in the Twentieth Century." Review of Politics (1956)
• Hannah Arendt, On Violence (1970)
• Józef Maria Bocheński, Was ist Autorität? (1974)
• Renato Cristi, Hegel on Freedom and Authority (2005)
• Carl Joachim Friedrich, Authority. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (1958)
• Carl Joachim Friedrich, An Introduction to Political Theory: Twelve Lectures at Harvard. New York: Harper & Row (1967)
• Carl Joachim Friedrich, Tradition and Authority. London: Macmillan (1972)
• Robert E. Goodin (ed), The Oxford Handbook of Political Science (2011)
• Sebastian De Grazia. (1959). "What Authority Is Not". American Political Science Review 53(2): 321–331.
• Patrick Hayden, Hannah Arendt: Key Concepts (2014), esp. Chapter 8
• Alexandre Kojève, "The Notion of Authority" (2014)
• C. Naomi Osorio-Kupferblum: "Conceptualising ‘Authority’". In: International Journal of Philosophical Studies. Vol. 23, No. 2, 13 March 2015, pp. 223–236, doi:10.1080/09672559.2015.1020828
• Gail Radford, The Rise of the Public Authority: Statebuilding and Economic Development in Twentieth-Century America (2013)
• Rosen, Arie (2023). "Political Reasons and the Limits of Political Authority." Legal Theory 29 (1): 63–88.
• Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen [The Concept of the Political] (1932)
• Max Weber, Economy and Society (1922)
• Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation (1919)

External links

• The dictionary definition of authority at Wiktionary
• "Political Obligation". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• Christiano, Tom. "Authority". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• Four essays published in the International Journal of Philosophical Studies from the Robert Papazian Essay Prize Competition on Authority