Traditional Authority

Estate type patrimonialism, or feudalism in the wide sense. The staff have appropriated their positions and the powers attached to them: an office is now a property held by right, and the ruler must bargain with those who hold it. This is where a traditional system starts to develop enforceable limits on the ruler.

What holds it together, and what it cannot do

Its strengths. Enormous stability. Nothing has to be justified. Succession is settled in advance by custom. Legitimacy is not periodically tested and therefore does not periodically fail.

Its weaknesses, and each one is examinable.

It cannot innovate. Any deliberate change is an attack on the ground of its own authority.

Administration is unspecialised. Officials are chosen for loyalty and personal relationship rather than for competence, so a traditional system cannot run a modern economy.

Public and private are not separated. The ruler's household and the public treasury are the same thing, which is the structural reason that patrimonial systems appear corrupt when judged by legal rational standards. It is worth stating carefully: it is not that patrimonial rulers are dishonest, but that the very distinction between public funds and private funds does not exist in the system.

Its arbitrariness lies in the gaps. Custom governs the customary; beyond it the ruler is unconstrained.

It is unequal by design. Custom encodes an existing hierarchy of birth, and traditional authority reproduces it.

Traditional authority in India

A good answer moves from Weber's Europe to India, because the Indian material is unusually rich.

Before 1947, the princely states, the zamindari system and hereditary village office were traditional authority in Weber's sense, and several fit patrimonialism exactly.

Caste authority is the largest Indian instance. The authority of a caste council over its members rests on nothing but the belief that this is how it has always been. It is worth noticing that this authority is often exercised today in flat defiance of legal rational authority, and that where it purports to punish, the courts have treated its orders as having no legal existence at all.

Family and community elders exercise real authority over marriage, property arrangements and disputes, often more effectively than any court.

Religious offices, whether hereditary or successional, carry authority of the same kind.

The important Indian observation is that the Constitution of 1950 was a deliberate attempt to replace traditional authority with legal rational authority in one step: it abolished titles, ended untouchability, made every office answerable to law, and put the source of all authority in a document that begins "We, the people". Seventy-five years later, traditional authority has not disappeared; it has retreated into the private and the local, where it remains strong. That tension is much of Indian politics.

A worked example

A Deputy Collector visits a village to hear objections to a land record entry.

The traditional claim in the room. The head of the dominant family says the boundary has been where it is since his grandfather's time, that his family has settled such disputes for as long as anyone can remember, and that the neighbours accept it. Several of them do accept it, and would accept it if the officer were not there.

Why it is traditional authority and not something else. Nobody appointed him. No rule confers anything. What is being obeyed is the person, as the holder of a place that custom created, and only within the range of matters custom covers. If he told a neighbour whom to vote for, the same men who defer to him on the boundary would not comply, and would not feel they had disobeyed anything.

Where it collides with legal rational authority. The record of rights is maintained under a statute, and the officer is bound by it. The village's custom is not irrelevant, because the statute may itself direct that possession and long usage be considered. But the custom now operates as evidence within a legal framework, not as a source of authority in its own right, and that shift is precisely the difference between the two types.

Distinctions that carry marks

What traditional authority is NOT

It is not merely old power. A dictatorship that has lasted thirty years is not traditional authority, because it is not obeyed on the ground that it has always been so.

It is not unlimited. Custom binds the ruler as much as the subject, and this is the feature most often missed.

It is not extinct. In India it operates every day, in families, castes, temples, and village life.

It is not necessarily hostile to law. Legal systems have absorbed a great deal of custom, and Indian personal law is the largest instance.

Quick revision

1. Ground: the everyday belief in the sanctity of immemorial tradition and in the legitimacy of those tradition calls to authority.
2. What is obeyed: the person of the master, out of reverence, and only within the circle of the customary.
3. The master is bound by custom too; violating it destroys the claim to be obeyed.
4. Weber's forms: gerontocracy, patriarchalism, patrimonialism, and the estate type.
5. Patrimonialism is the crucial one: a personal staff of retainers, and no separation of the ruler's purse from the public purse.
6. Strengths: stability, settled succession, no need for justification. Weaknesses: cannot innovate, unspecialised administration, no public and private divide, arbitrary in the gaps, unequal by design.
7. In India: princely states, zamindari, caste councils, family elders, hereditary religious office; and a Constitution designed to displace all of it.

Test yourself

1. Define traditional authority and state its ground. It is the type of legitimate domination resting on the everyday belief in the sanctity of traditions valid from time immemorial and in the legitimacy of those called to authority by them. Obedience is owed to the person of the master, who is both called by tradition and bound by it, is given out of reverence, and extends only to the circle of matters that custom covers.

2. "Traditional authority binds the ruler as much as the subject." Explain. Because the ruler's title comes from custom, custom is also the measure of what the ruler may do. A traditional ruler who orders something custom forbids is not exercising authority at all, and subjects who refuse are not disobeying but denying that any command was made. This is why breach of custom is one of the classical grounds of resistance in traditional systems, and it is the feature most often omitted from answers.

3. Set out Weber's forms of traditional domination. Gerontocracy, rule by the elders of a group with no separate staff. Patriarchalism, rule by the head of a household or clan under a fixed rule of succession, again with no separate staff. Patrimonialism, in which the master acquires a personal administrative and military staff of kin, favourites and clients holding office at his pleasure, and treats the realm as an extension of his household. And the estate type, in which the staff have appropriated their offices as rights, so that the ruler must bargain with them.

4. Why do patrimonial systems appear corrupt from a legal rational standpoint? Because they do not separate the ruler's household from the public treasury. Revenue is the master's, offices are granted as personal favours, and retainers are maintained out of the same purse. Judged by the legal rational standard, in which public office is a trust and public money is not the officer's, all of this is misappropriation. Judged internally it is not, because the distinction that makes it wrong does not exist in the system. It is a structural difference, not a difference in the honesty of individuals.

5. Give three Indian examples of traditional authority and say what the Constitution did about it. The princely states and the zamindari system before 1947; the authority of caste councils over their members; and the authority of family, community and hereditary religious office. The Constitution attempted to displace all of it at once by abolishing titles, ending untouchability, subjecting every office to law and locating the source of all authority in a document adopted by the people. Traditional authority did not disappear but retreated into the private and the local, where it remains strong, and the friction between the two is much of Indian politics.