Authority

Authority is commonly understood as the legitimate power of a person or group over other people.[1][2] In a civil state, authority may be practiced by legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government,[3] each of which has authority and is an authority.[4] The term "authority" has multiple nuances and distinctions within various academic fields ranging from sociology to political science, including religious studies.

The term authority identifies the political legitimacy, which grants and justifies rulers' 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.[5]

## Contents

* 1 History
* 2 Political philosophy
* 3 Sociology
* 3.1 Max Weber on authority
* 3.2 Children and authority attributes
* 4 Religious studies
* 4.1 Operation of religious authority
* 5 United States
* 6 See also
* 7 References
* 8 Further reading
* 9 External links

## 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),[6] 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.[7] 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.[8]

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.[9]

## Political philosophy

Main article: Philosophy:Political authority

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,[10] 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.[3] 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 and dominant group, including dominant minority and dominant majority.

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.[11][12] It only exists to the extent that it is recognized.[13] As Andreas Dorschel put it: "Authority may in fact go unquestioned, even for a long period of time, but it is never beyond questioning because whosoever grants can also withhold."[14]

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.[15]

### Max Weber on authority

Main articles: Social:Tripartite classification of authority, The Three Types of Legitimate Rule, and Monopoly on violence

Max 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.[16] The concept of authority has also been discussed as a guiding principle in human-machine interaction design.[17]

Genetic research indicates that obedience to authority may be a heritable factor.[18]

### 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.[19]

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 who 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 over 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 multiple 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 .[20]

## Religious studies

Religious authority refers to the organizational control and decision-making power within a social system.[21] It operates through three forms: authoritative objects (e.g. sacred texts), religious figures or social positions (e.g. clergy, institutional leaders), and absent authority figures (e.g. gods). The authority can be understood as a kind of projection, reflecting individuals' own ideas through processes such as selective privileging,[22] and it is maintained through social recognition, particularly the acceptance of decisions made by clergy or religious leaders.[23]

### Operation of religious authority

Religious authority operates through social processes, including creation, maintenance, and transformation. It is established to improve social coordination through shared rituals and organizational social expectation.[24] Then, it is maintained by religious institutions' structures, recognized roles, sacred texts, and relevant ideas, which strengthens authority by communication (online/offline).[25] At the same time, religious authority can be changed. Especially, in modern society, the increase in the use of new media has an impact on the decentralization of authority, challenging traditional sources of religious authority.[26]

## United States

The foundation of American legitimate authority rests on the consent of the governed. This 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 was referenced in the unanimous United States Declaration of Independence:[27]

> We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Later, speeches by the 16th president of the United States Abraham Lincoln would reiterate this fundamental source of legitimacy. "Our government rests in public opinion," Lincoln said in 1856.[28]: 21 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."[28]: 47 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."[28]: 48

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, and 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.[29] 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.[29]

## See also

* Anti-authoritarianism
* Appeal to authority
* Auctoritas
* Authoritarianism
* Authority (management)
* Authority bias
* Legitimacy
* List of sociology topics
* Milgram experiment (sociological experiments measuring obedience to authority figures)
* Patrimonialism
* Petty authority
* Power distance
* Question authority
* Soft power

## References

1. ↑ Bealey, Frank (1999). The Blackwell Dictionary of Political Science: A User's Guide to Its Terms. Wiley. pp. 22–23. ISBN 0-631-20694-9. https://archive.org/details/blackwelldiction00beal.
2. ↑ Miller, David (26 June 2003). "Political authority". Political Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction. Very Short Introductions. Oxford University Press. p. 20. ISBN 9780191577864. https://books.google.com/books?id=XQNmx06L3sgC. Retrieved 28 September 2024. "Political authority has two sides to it. On the one side, people generally recognize it as authority, in other words as having the right to command ... On the other side, people who refuse to obey are compelled to do so by the threat of sanctions ... And these two aspects are complementary."
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought Third Edition, Allan Bullock and Stephen Trombley, Eds. p. 115.
4. ↑ Covell, Charles (9 July 2009). "Rousseau, Kant and Hegel". The Law of Nations in Political Thought: A Critical Survey from Vitoria to Hegel. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9780230244450. https://books.google.com/books?id=0e3MCwAAQBAJ. Retrieved 28 September 2024. "[According to Kant, the] juridicial order of civil society found its concrete institutional embodiment in the civil state, as through the legislative, executive and judicial authorities that comprised the basis of the state constitution and the system of state government. Of the three state authorities, the legislative authority was understood by Kant to be foundational in that it stood as the sovereign authority in the state ..."
5. ↑ The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought, Third edition, Allan Bullock and Stephen Trombley, eds., pp. 677–678.
6. ↑ Widyono, Benny (Oct 2014). "United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC)".
7. ↑ Krause, George A. (2010). "Legislative Delegation of Authority to Bureaucratic Agencies". The Oxford Handbook of American Bureaucracy (New York: Oxford University Press): p. 524.
8. ↑ Glanville, Luke (2016). "Sovereignty". The Oxford Handbook of the Responsibility to Protect (New York: Oxford University Press): p. 153.
9. ↑ Laitin, David (1998). "Toward a Political Science Discipline: Authority Patterns Revisited". Comparative Political Studies 31 (4): 423–443. doi:10.1177/0010414098031004002.
10. ↑ Cristi, Renato (2005). Hegel on Freedom and Authority. Cardiff, Wales: University of Wales Press.
11. ↑ Anthony Giddens, Sociology. London: Polity Press, 1997, p. 581.
12. ↑ Max Weber in "Weber's Rationalism and Modern Society: New Translations for the 21st Century", translated and edited by Tony Waters and Dagmar Waters. pp. 137-138.
13. ↑ 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
14. ↑ Andreas Dorschel, Die Welt verändern. Zur Poetik des Manifests. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2026, p. 61: "Unbefragt kann Autorität bleiben, selbst lange Zeit hindurch; fraglos aber besteht sie nie, weil, wer etwas zuspricht, es auch absprechen kann." See the entire argument, ibid., pp. 60–64.
15. ↑ Bloom, Howard (2010). The Genius of the Beast: a radical re-vision of capitalism. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books. p. 186. ISBN 978-1-59102-754-6. https://archive.org/details/geniusofbeastrad0000bloo/page/186. "To validate an argument, we refer back to our ancestors – or to someone who, while still alive, has already garnered the sort of authority only ancestors normally have."
16. ↑ Max Weber in Weber's Rationalism and Modern Society, translated and edited by Tony Waters and Dagmar Waters, Palgrave Books 2015, pp. 136 [ISBN missing]
17. ↑ Flemisch, F., Heesen, M., Hesse, T., Kelsch, J., Schieben, A., & Beller, J. (2011). Towards a Dynamic Balance between Humans and Automation: Authority, Ability, Responsibility and Control in Cooperative Control Situations. Cognition, Technology and Work. Advance online publication. doi:10.1007/s10111-011-0191-6
18. ↑ Ludeke, Steven; Johnson, Wendy; Bouchard, Thomas J. (2013-08-01). ""Obedience to traditional authority:" A heritable factor underlying authoritarianism, conservatism and religiousness". Personality and Individual Differences 55 (4): 375–380. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2013.03.018. ISSN 0191-8869. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886913001384.
19. ↑ Laupa, 1991.
20. ↑ Reinhard. Bendix. Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, Doubleday & Company, Inc. 1960.
21. ↑ Chaves, M. (1994-03-01). "Secularization as Declining Religious Authority" (in en). Social Forces 72 (3): 749–774. doi:10.1093/sf/72.3.749. ISSN 0037-7732. https://academic.oup.com/sf/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/sf/72.3.749.
22. ↑ Martin, Craig; Martin, Craig (2014-09-11) (in en). A Critical Introduction to the Study of Religion (0 ed.). Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315729152. ISBN 978-1-317-54507-1. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781317545071.
23. ↑ Chaves, Mark (2003). "Religious authority in the modern world" (in en). Society 40 (3): 38–40. doi:10.1007/s12115-003-1034-8. ISSN 0147-2011. http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12115-003-1034-8.
24. ↑ McBride, Michael (2016). "A rational choice theory of religious authority" (in en). Rationality and Society 28 (4): 410–438. doi:10.1177/1043463116658870. ISSN 1043-4631. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1043463116658870.
25. ↑ Campbell, Heidi A. (2010). "Religious Authority and the Blogosphere" (in en). Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 15 (2): 251–276. doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2010.01519.x. https://academic.oup.com/jcmc/article/15/2/251-276/4064813.
26. ↑ Turner, Bryan S. (2007). "Religious Authority and the New Media" (in en). Theory, Culture & Society 24 (2): 117–134. doi:10.1177/0263276407075001. ISSN 0263-2764. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0263276407075001.
27. ↑ "The Declaration of Independence". http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm.
28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 28.2 Guelzo, Allen C. (2012). Lincoln Speeches. New York: Penguin Books.
29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 Ferejohn, John (2004). "The Authority of Regulation and the Control of Regulators". in Marie-Anne Frison-Roche (in en). Droit et économie de la régulation. Cairn.info. pp. 35–37. ISBN 9782724686463. OCLC 7292576035. https://www.cairn.info/droit-et-economie-de-la-regulation-1--9782247056965-page-35.htm?contenu=resume#.

## Further reading

* Noh, 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

* "Political Obligation". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://www.iep.utm.edu/poli-obl.
* Christiano, Tom. "Authority". in Zalta, Edward N.. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/authority/.
* Four essays published in the International Journal of Philosophical Studies from the Robert Papazian Essay Prize Competition on Authority

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