The Features of Authority
Chapter Fourteen
Syllabus topic 1.2.1, "Meaning and Features of Authority - De jure and De facto Authority"
Pages 65 to 68 of 506
In one line
Authority is always attached to a position rather than a person, limited in what it may reach, exercised by commands, accepted rather than imposed, capable of being delegated, and dependent on a belief that can be withdrawn.
In the wording a student can write in an exam: the essential features of authority are that it is relational, legitimate, impersonal in the sense of attaching to an office, limited in scope, hierarchical, exercised through commands, voluntarily obeyed, delegable, backed by sanctions that it seldom needs, and revocable.
The features
1. It is relational
Authority exists between people. There is one who commands and one who obeys, and the question is always "authority over whom".
2. It is legitimate
This is the feature that makes it authority and not power. Those subject to it accept that the holder is entitled to command. If that acceptance is absent, what remains is coercion wearing the same uniform.
3. It attaches to the office, not to the person
The most important feature for a law student, and the one students state least clearly.
A District Magistrate has authority; the individual who is District Magistrate today has authority only while they hold the post. On transfer, the authority stays with the office and the person leaves without it. This is why an order signed by a Magistrate remains valid after that Magistrate retires, and why the successor may vary it.
Weber called this the impersonal character of legal authority and treated it as the mark of a modern state. Where authority attaches to a person rather than an office, as it does under charismatic and to some extent traditional authority, succession becomes a crisis every time.
4. It is limited in scope
Every authority has boundaries of three kinds: over whom it runs, over what subject matter, and for how long. A command outside those boundaries is not an authoritative command at all. In administrative law this is the rule that an authority may act only within the power conferred and that an act beyond it is void, and a student should notice that the political concept and the legal doctrine are the same thing.
5. It is hierarchical
Authority is normally arranged in a ladder, so that each holder is subject to a higher one and there is a route by which a decision can be questioned. This is what makes appeal, revision and review possible, and it is why an authority that answers to nobody is regarded as a defect in a system rather than as its strongest point.
6. It is exercised through commands
Authority operates by directions addressed to somebody, telling them what to do or not to do. This distinguishes it from influence, which changes behaviour without commanding.
The Features of Authority
7. Obedience to it is voluntary
The subject complies without being compelled, and, importantly, often without agreeing. A litigant who obeys a decree they think mistaken is exercising exactly the attitude that authority requires.
8. It can be delegated
An authority may authorise another to exercise a part of its power, and the delegate's acts then bind as the delegator's would. Two limits follow, and both are law as well as politics: the delegate cannot receive more than the delegator has, and, in the absence of permission, a delegate cannot delegate further.
9. It carries sanctions but rarely uses them
Behind an authority there is always the possibility of a consequence for disobedience. What makes it authority is that the possibility is in the background. When the sanction has to be applied to everybody, the authority has failed and only power is left.
10. It is revocable
Authority depends on a belief and beliefs change. It can be lost when the office is abolished, when the holder is removed, when a court declares the exercise unlawful, or, most fundamentally, when the people subject to it stop accepting it. That last possibility is what makes Modules II and IV possible.
A worked example
A Registrar of a university issues a circular that examinations will be held offline.
Relational: it binds the students and staff of that university and nobody else.
Legitimate: it is obeyed because the Registrar's office is accepted as entitled to issue it.
Impersonal: if the Registrar retires tomorrow, the circular stands, and the successor may amend it.
Limited: the same Registrar cannot direct where students must live or how they must vote. A circular attempting it would not be disobeyed; it would be disregarded, and rightly.
Hierarchical: the Registrar acts under the Vice Chancellor and the statutes, and a student may take the matter to the university's own authorities and then to a court.
Commanded: it is a direction, not a suggestion.
Voluntarily obeyed: students who think online examinations better still attend the hall.
Delegable: the Registrar may authorise a Deputy Registrar to issue the hall tickets, and cannot authorise them to do what the Registrar could not do.
Sanctioned: absence has consequences, and almost nobody has to be told so.
Revocable: the statutes may be amended, the office reorganised, or the circular quashed by a court as beyond power.
Distinctions that carry marks
| Authority | Influence | Coercion | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Operates by | A command | Argument, reputation, example | A threat |
| Attaches to | An office | A person | Whoever holds the means of harm |
| Obeyed because | The holder is entitled | The subject is persuaded | The subject is afraid |
| Has a defined scope? | Yes, always | No | Only the reach of the threat |
| Survives the holder? | Yes | No | No |
| Can be delegated? | Yes | No | Only with the means of harm |
The Features of Authority
What these features are NOT
"Impersonal" does not mean cold or indifferent. It means that the authority belongs to the office. A very popular officer and an unpopular one hold identical authority.
"Hierarchical" does not mean authoritarian. The ladder exists so that decisions can be questioned, which is a protection and not a threat.
"Voluntary" does not mean optional. The subject is not free to disobey without consequence; they are complying without being compelled.
"Limited" is not a weakness of authority. It is part of the definition. An unlimited authority is a contradiction, because there would be nothing to distinguish its commands from anybody's demands.
Quick revision
- Relational: always over somebody, in something.
- Legitimate: accepted as rightful. This is the feature that makes it authority.
- Impersonal: attaches to the office, not the person; survives the holder.
- Limited in scope: over whom, over what, for how long. Outside the scope it is not authority at all.
- Hierarchical: subject to a higher authority, which is what makes appeal and review possible.
- Exercised by command, unlike influence.
- Voluntarily obeyed, often without agreement.
- Delegable, but a delegate takes no more than the delegator had and cannot sub-delegate without permission.
- Backed by sanctions it rarely needs. When it must always use them, it has failed.
- Revocable, ultimately by the withdrawal of acceptance.
Test yourself
1. State the features of authority. It is relational, existing between a commander and a subject; legitimate, in that those subject accept the holder is entitled; impersonal, attaching to an office rather than a person and surviving its holder; limited in scope as to persons, subject matter and time; hierarchical, so that each holder answers to a higher one; exercised through commands; voluntarily obeyed, often without agreement; delegable within limits; backed by sanctions it seldom needs to use; and revocable, ultimately by the withdrawal of acceptance.
2. Why is it important that authority attaches to the office rather than the person? Because it makes the exercise of power continuous and reviewable. An order signed by a Magistrate remains valid after that Magistrate retires, and a successor may vary it, because the authority never belonged to the individual. Weber treated this impersonal character as the mark of the modern state, and its absence is why systems built on charisma or on personal traditional rule face a crisis at every succession.
3. What follows from the fact that authority is limited in scope? That a command outside its boundaries is not an authoritative command at all, and disregarding it is not disobedience. A Registrar who directs how students must vote has not issued an order that is wrong; they have issued something that is not an order. Its legal counterpart is the rule that an authority may act only within the power conferred and that an act beyond that power is void.
The Features of Authority
4. Explain delegation and its two limits. An authority may authorise another to exercise part of its power, and the delegate's acts then bind as the delegator's would, which is how any large organisation functions. The first limit is that a delegate cannot receive more than the delegator possesses. The second is that, without express permission, a delegate cannot delegate further, since the confidence was reposed in the delegate personally.
5. "An authority that must always use its sanctions has failed." Explain. Authority is compliance given because the commander is accepted as entitled, with the sanction remaining in the background as a possibility. If the sanction must be applied to everyone, then nobody is complying on the ground of entitlement and the relationship has become coercion, which has to be applied case by case at a cost in money, manpower and resentment. The rarity with which sanctions are used is therefore the measure of how much authority a system actually has.
The rest of this subject
These notes are cut from the University's printed syllabus. Open the syllabus itself, or the past papers, for the same subject.