Power and Authority Compared

7. Stability and duration

Power lasts as long as the resource does. Authority attaches to an office and survives its holder, so long as the belief holds.

8. Personal or impersonal

Power is usually personal to whoever holds the resources. Authority, in its legal rational form, is impersonal: it belongs to the office.

9. What happens when it is challenged

Power must escalate or lose. Authority faces a legitimacy crisis, and its usual response is to reassert its title rather than its strength: to hold an election, to obtain a court's ruling, to point to the rule.

10. Whether it can be transferred

Power can be transferred only by transferring the resource. Authority can be delegated, within limits, and passes automatically to a successor in the office.

The table

A worked example

Two men take ten thousand rupees from the same shopkeeper on the same day.

The first shows a weapon. The shopkeeper hands over the money because he is afraid. Ask him afterwards whether the man was entitled to the money and he says no. Ask him whether he would pay again if the man were unarmed and he says no. That is power.

The second hands over a notice under a taxing statute. The shopkeeper pays, and complains bitterly about the rate all the way home. Ask him whether the officer was entitled to the money and he says yes, unfortunately. Ask him whether he would pay if the officer had no power to prosecute him and he says, probably, yes, most people do. That is authority.

Notice three things about the comparison.

The outcome is identical. Ten thousand rupees left the shop in both cases. If you measured only outcomes you could not tell the two apart, which is why the concept of authority is needed at all.

The shopkeeper's disagreement is irrelevant to the second case. He thinks the rate is too high and pays anyway. Authority produces compliance without agreement, which is exactly what makes government possible.

The costs differ enormously. The first man must be present, armed, and prepared to use the weapon, once per shop. The second sends a piece of paper to a lakh of shops and most of them pay. A state can be run the second way and cannot be run the first.

What this comparison is NOT

It is not a contrast between bad and good. Power is not wicked, and authority is not automatically benign. An authority accepted as rightful can command atrocities, and it commands them more efficiently than any coercion could, precisely because it is accepted. This is the uncomfortable observation that Module II's chapters on unjust laws are built on.

Authority is not power plus law. A legally conferred power that nobody accepts is not authority: it is power with a certificate. And an authority may exist with no legal basis at all, as traditional and charismatic authority do.

The distinction is not always sharp in practice. Most real relationships contain both, and the interesting question is usually the proportion. A tax system rests mostly on authority with a fringe of coercion; an occupation rests mostly on coercion with a fringe of authority.

The distinction is not merely academic. Whether an order is authority or power decides whether disobeying it is a crime, a wrong, or an act of resistance, and that is the whole of Module II.

Quick revision

1. Authority is a species of power, distinguished by the ground of compliance.
2. The master difference: power is obeyed for what will follow, authority for who commanded.
3. Source: resources against belief. Direction: downward against downward but conferred upward.
4. Scope: as far as the resource reaches, against defined limits.
5. Cost: high and case by case, against low and general.
6. On challenge: escalate or lose, against a legitimacy crisis met by reasserting title.
7. Weber's terms: Macht and Herrschaft.
8. The example: the dacoit and the tax officer. Identical outcome, different relationship, hugely different cost.
9. Not a contrast between bad and good. Accepted authority can command worse things than coercion can, because it is accepted.

Test yourself

1. Distinguish power from authority. Power is the capacity to affect the behaviour of others in a way they would not have chosen, resting on any basis whatever, and the subject complies because of what will happen otherwise. Authority is the species of power that those subject to it accept as rightful, and the subject complies because of who gave the order. Power comes from resources and lasts while they last; authority comes from belief, has defined limits, attaches to an office and survives its holder.

2. "Authority is a species of power." Explain. Because in every exercise of authority a subject's behaviour is being affected in a way they would not otherwise have chosen, which satisfies the definition of power. Authority is marked off within that genus by the ground of compliance: the subject obeys because the commander is accepted as entitled, and not because of the consequences of refusal. It follows that power and authority are not opposites, and that describing something as power says nothing about whether it is also authority.

3. Why is authority cheaper than power, and why does that matter to a state? Because compliance is general and voluntary, so the sanction is rarely applied, while power has to be brought to bear on each subject separately at a cost in money, manpower and resentment that rises with each use. It matters because no state can compel a population the size of India's. A tax notice sent to a lakh of shops is paid by most of them; a demand backed by nothing but force would require a collector standing in every shop, which is why every regime, however coercive, tries to convert its power into authority.

4. Give the standard example and explain what it shows. A dacoit and a tax officer each take ten thousand rupees from the same shopkeeper. The outcome is identical, which is why outcomes alone cannot distinguish the two. The shopkeeper regards only the second as entitled, which locates the difference in the relationship rather than in the transfer. And the second could be repeated across a lakh of shops by post, while the first requires the man to be present and armed each time, which shows why states are built on authority.

5. Is authority always preferable to power? Give reasons. Not in any moral sense. Weber's category is value neutral, and an authority accepted as rightful can command grave wrongs and will command them more efficiently than coercion could, precisely because those who obey believe they ought to. What authority is preferable in is cost, stability and predictability. Whether it should be obeyed in a given case is a different question altogether, and it is the question Module II asks under the heading of obedience to unjust laws.