AUTHORITY

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 576.

Basic Concepts

FURTHER READING

Ball, T., Farr, J. and Hanson, R. L. (eds), Political Innovation and Conceptual Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

Bellamy, R. (ed.), Theories and Concepts of Politics: An Introduction (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1993).

Birch, A. H., The Concepts and Theories of Modern Democracy (London and New York: Routledge, 1993).

Gallie, W. B., ‘Essentially Contested Concepts', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,56, 1955/6, pp. 157–97.

Heywood, A., Political Theory: An Introduction (London: Macmillan, 1999).

Rorty, R. (ed.), The Linguistic Turn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967).

White, J. B., When Words Lose Their Meaning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).

Williams, P., Mahayana Buddhism (London and New York: Routledge, 1989).

Authority, in its broadest sense, is a form of *power, sometimes thought of as ‘legitimate power'. Whereas power is the ability to influence the behaviour of others, authority is the right to do so. Authority is therefore based upon an acknowledged duty to obey rather than any form of coercion or manipulation. In this sense, authority is power cloaked in *legitimacy or rightfulness. However, authority may be used as either a normative or a descriptive term. As a normative term, used by political philosophers, it refers to a ‘right to rule' and takes the form of a moral claim. This implies that it is less important that authority is obeyed than that it should be obeyed. Leaders, for example, could in this sense continue to claim the right to rule, on the basis of election results, constitutional rules, divine right or whatever, even though the majority of the population does not recognise that right.

Political scientists and sociologists, on the other hand, treat authority as a descriptive term. Max Weber (1864–1920) thus defined authority simply as a matter of people's belief about its rightfulness, regardless of where that belief came from and whether or not it is morally justified. Authority, in this sense, is ‘legitimate power'. Weber distinguished between three kinds of authority, based upon the different grounds on which obedience can be established. Traditional authority, in this sense, is rooted in history and tradition; charismatic authority stems from the power of personality; and legal-rational authority is grounded in a set of impersonal rules associated with an office rather than the office holder. An alternative distinction can be made between de jure authority and de facto authority. De jure authority, or authority in law, operates according to a set of procedures or rules which designate who possesses authority and over what issues. People described as being ‘in authority' can be said to possess de jure authority: their ‘powers' can be traced back to a particular office. Both traditional and legal-rational authority

can therefore be viewed as forms of de jure authority. De facto authority, or authority in practice, operates in circumstances in which authority is exercised but cannot be traced back to a set of procedural rules. This includes all forms of charismatic authority, and also what is called expert authority, when a person is recognised as being ‘an authority' by virtue of his or her specialist skills or knowledge.

Significance

Authority has been one of the most basic and enduring issues in political analysis. In a sense all studies of *government or the *state are really examinations of the nature and workings of political authority. Indeed, probably no system of rule could survive long without exercising some measure of authority, since to rule through power alone involves such a great expenditure of coercive resources as to be unsustainable. Nevertheless, there are recurrent debates about both the nature of authority and its value. Liberals and socialists tend to view authority as instrumental, believing that it arises ‘from below' through the *consent of the governed. From this perspective, authority is rational, purposeful and limited, a view reflected in a preference for legal-rational authority and public *accountability. Conservatives, by contrast, see authority as arising from natural necessity, being exercised ‘from above' by virtue of the unequal distribution of experience, social position and wisdom. Those who exercise authority do so for the benefit of others, but this does not set clear limits or checks upon authority, and it may blur the distinction between authority and *authoritarianism.

The justifications for authority include, most basically, that it is essential for the maintenance of *order and is thus the only means of escape from the barbarity and injustice of the ‘state of nature', a society without political rule. Authority also establishes common norms and values that bind society together, and thereby gives individuals a social identity and sense of rootedness. Critics of authority, including, particularly, libertarians and anarchists, point out that authority is by definition the enemy of *freedom; that it threatens reason and critical understanding by demanding unquestioning obedience; and that it is psychologically, and perhaps morally, corrupting in that it accustoms people to controlling or dominating others.