Authority

Social psychology: Altruism · Attribution · Attitudes · Conformity · Discrimination · Groups · Interpersonal relations · Obedience · Prejudice · Norms · Perception · Index · Outline

In politics, authority (Latin auctoritas, used in Roman law as opposed to potestas and imperium) is often used interchangeably with the term "power". However, their meanings differ. "Power" refers to the ability to achieve certain ends, 'authority' refers to the legitimacy, justification and right to exercise that power. For example whilst a mob has the power to punish a criminal, such as through lynching, only the courts have the authority to order capital punishment.

Authority topics

Divine authority

Understanding the expectations and desires of one who is understood to be divine, infinite, and omniscient requires some kind of act of receiving direction. In various traditions, direction from God or from a god can be determined by contemplating utterances, texts, or visions that are considered to come from that divinity—an oracle, scripture, or the result of a ritual or a mystical experience—as well as by emulating or abiding by the dictates of those who are deemed to have access to the divine (such as priests or saints). Finally, in many traditions, there are times when it is necessary to inferred the divine will from a more general directive given.

For example, in Christian tradition, the act of observing the communion comes from a combination of divine utterance, scripture, emulation, and inference. Jesus directly states to his disciples that they are to partake of the commemorative rite (found in the gospels and rehearsed in the First Epistle to the Corinthians); there is an example of an apostle and others participating in this act of worship and obedience in the book of Acts, where the date for the observance is mentioned; and then there are the traditions of the various Christian churches around this rite.

Debate and political theory

Questions as to whom has what authority often lie at the heart of political debates, and answers to those questions normally stem from practical and moral considerations, from prior practices and from theories of criminal justice or of the just war.

Sociology and philosophy

The word authority derives from the Latin word "auctoritas", used in Roman law as opposed to "potestas". According to Giorgio Agamben (2005), "auctoritas has nothing to do with magistrates or the people's potestas or imperium. The Senator {which detains auctoritas} is not a magistrate".

In Weberian sociology, authority comprises a particular type of power. The dominant usage comes from functionalism, defining authority as power which is recognised as legitimate and justified by both the powerful and the powerless. Weber divided authority into three types:

Traditional authority which simply derives from long-established habits and social structures. The right of hereditary monarchs to rule furnishes an obvious example.
Rational-legal authority depends for its legitimacy on formal rules, usually written down, and often very complex. Modern societies depend on legal-rational authority.
Charismatic authority. Charismatic authority is authority derived from "the gift of grace," that is, when the leader claims that his authority derives from a "higher power" (e.g. God or natural law or rights) or "inspiration" that is superior to the validity of either traditional or rational-legal authority, and followers accept this and are willing to follow this higher or inspired authority in the place of the authority that they have hitherto been following. Charismatic authority sometimes becomes the inspiration of social movements or revolution against a system of traditional or legal-rational authority. The careers of Lenin, Martin Luther, Hitler, and Lech Wałęsa provide examples. Charismatic authority never lasts long (even when successful) and it inevitably gives way to either traditional or to legal-rational authority.

Conflict theory

Within conflict theory, "authority" is used both in the same sense as Weber's functionalist definition above and in a rather different sense. The latter is based on the observation that power is almost never endorsed in a moral sense by those who do not have it, and therefore this school of thought defines "authority" as power which is so institutionalised that it is largely unquestioned.

Obedience to authority seems thoroughly ingrained in most of the population: the Milgram experiment showed that over 60% of a sample of Americans demonstrated willingness to torture another person to death when given orders from an appropriate authority figure. This experiment produced similar results when replicated in several other cultures. A similar effect was found in the Stanford prison experiment.

Example of evolving authority: France

As an example of the development of legal-rational authority, consider the history of France. In medieval times a king ruled simply because he was the king (i.e., he held traditional inherited authority), but by the 17th century it became necessary to invent a doctrine claiming that Louis XIV ruled by "divine right"; in other words, to justify Louis' authority by a rational claim to his appointment by a legitimate superior (God). This served for another century but was threatened by the rival claim made to legal-rational authority by the various legislative bodies of the early years of the French Revolution. This legal-rational authority was eclipsed by the charismatic authority held by Robespierre and his cohort during the Reign of Terror. Next, Robespierre's authority was replaced by the legal-rational authority of the Directory. Finally, authority in revolutionary France was a mix of the legal-rational and charismatic types during the Consulate and First Empire (the charisma in this last case being that of Napoleon Bonaparte).

The Restoration (1814) marked a return to traditional authority but now with elements of the legal-rational as well, at least until the ascent of Charles X. His attempt to restore a more absolute monarchy brought on the July Revolution, which formally restored this balance of legal-rational and traditional in the form of a constitutional monarchy. The Revolution of 1848 passed rapidly into a legal-rational mode, falling ultimately to the Second Empire, which saw a blend of all three modes: the government Napoleon III retained a constitution of sorts and, in his person, he combined the Napoleonic charismatic claims with what was now a certain element of tradition, a Bonapartist dynasty to rival the Bourbons.

The complex pattern can be continued practically down to the present day, with a steadily diminishing role for traditional authority, except insofar as republicanism itself has become a tradition. In the 20th century, France had at least two charismatic leaders, Philippe Pétain and Charles de Gaulle. The constitution of the Fifth Republic, overtly a legal-rational system, was tailored specifically for the purpose of creating a presidency powerful enough that the charismatic leader de Gaulle would consent to accept it.

Government agency

An authority can also be a government agency set up with a particular competence and is able to deal with all matters within its charter, such as the Tennessee Valley Authority and a Port Authority. They are usually created by special legislation and are run by a board of directors. They are also usually required to be self-supporting through property taxes or fees for services. See Special-purpose district and Public Authority.

Institutional authority

The United States Supreme Court is an example of an institution that exercises its power largely through the broad and longstanding acceptance of its institutional authority. The Supreme Court's power rests almost entirely on its moral and institutional authority. In contrast to the Presidency or the Congress, it has neither the means of material force, the power of the purse, nor any special privileged access to information. The Supreme Court has the smallest budget of any branch of government; only since the September 11, 2001 attacks have they had a security force of their own even capable of defending them from a single armed attacker; and the only information they hold that is not generally available is about their own current deliberations. In any given case, their information comes from records of lower court trials, plaintiffs' and defendants' arguments, and amicus curiae briefs.

The Supreme Court relies on the executive branch of the government to implement and abide by its decisions; historically, the executive branch has not always done so. For example, in Worcester vs. Georgia, the Supreme Court said the Georgians should respect the autonomy of the Cherokee nation and release the wrongly imprisoned Worcester. Also, it deemed that the laws of Georgia had no jurisdiction in dealing with the Cherokee (at the time a dependent domestic nation) as the latter had a treaty with the federal government, not with Georgia.

At the time, many Georgians were burning Cherokee homes and attacking Cherokee citizens. President Andrew Jackson, who opposed the decision, refused to be the Court's "sword bearer" and told the Court to "enforce the decision yourselves". Not only did he fail to enforce the Court's decision: he sent the Army to Georgia where they imposed the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation to Oklahoma, which came to be known as the "Trail of Tears"; about one third of the Cherokee died on the grueling journey.

References

Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (2005) and Homo sacer
Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future (New York, Viking, 1961) "The Concept of Authority"
Max Weber

External links

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