What Authority Is

The meaning of authority, and its essential feature

The meaning of authority is compressed into one word in every definition of it, and the word is accepted.

The whole content of the concept is in this. Authority exists because those subject to it think it exists. It is not a physical fact like strength or a legal fact like a section number; it is a shared belief, and it evaporates when the belief does.

Two consequences follow and both are examinable.

Authority is conferred from below, even when it is exercised from above. A judge's authority is real because litigants, lawyers, officials and the police accept it. On the day they stop accepting it, the judgment is a piece of paper.

Authority is cheap, and power is expensive. A state that has authority governs a hundred crore people with a few lakh police, because almost everybody complies without being made to. This is why every regime, however brutal, tries to convert power into authority, and why legitimacy is a practical problem and not a philosophical ornament.

Where authority comes from

Weber's three types are the classical answer and get chapters of their own. Before them, it helps to see the general sources.

Office. A person has authority because they occupy a position that carries it, and they lose it when they leave the position. This is the dominant form in a modern state.

Rules. An office has authority because a rule, ultimately a constitution, confers it.

Tradition. The arrangement has always been so.

Personal qualities. A leader is followed because of who they are, which is Weber's charisma.

Expertise. A specialist is obeyed on their subject. This is often called authority "in" a field as against authority "over" persons, and it is the sense in which a surgeon or a scholar is called an authority.

The two senses of the word, which students confuse

Authority as a right to command, which is what this module is about, and which is a relation between persons: "the tribunal has authority to decide this".

Authority as expertise, which is a relation between a person and a subject: "she is an authority on Roman law".

They are connected, because expertise is one reason people accept a right to command, but they are not the same, and an answer that slides between them loses marks.

A worked example

A traffic constable raises a hand and a line of vehicles stops.

Nothing was compelled. No barrier came down. The constable could not physically stop a bus and both parties know it.

The order was obeyed because of who gave it. The same gesture from a passer-by would be ignored. The uniform is the visible sign of an office, and the office is what is being obeyed.

The order was within scope. If the constable had directed the driver to sell his bus, nobody would have complied, and the refusal would not have been disobedience at all, because the direction would be outside the authority.

The obedience is voluntary but not optional. The driver may believe the direction is mistaken and stops anyway. That is the signature of authority: compliance detached from agreement.

Force is in the background and is not doing the work. A prosecution is possible, and the fact that it is almost never necessary is what makes this authority and not coercion. If every driver had to be threatened individually, the arrangement would collapse in an hour.

Distinctions that carry marks

What authority is NOT

Authority is not the same as authoritarianism. The first is a normal and necessary feature of every organised society; the second is a form of rule that suppresses opposition. A word's ugly cousin is not its meaning.

Authority is not the same as legitimacy. Authority is the right to command; legitimacy is the belief in the rightness that makes that right recognised. They are so close that textbooks blur them, and the difference is that legitimacy is the ground and authority is the relation built on it. This is why 1.4 comes after 1.2 in MU's own numbering.

Authority does not mean the subject agrees. The obedience of authority is precisely obedience without agreement. A litigant who obeys a decree they think wrong is the paradigm case.

Authority is not unlimited. It always has a scope, and a command outside the scope is not an exercise of authority at all. In administrative law this is exactly the doctrine that an act beyond the power conferred is void, and the political concept and the legal doctrine are the same idea in two vocabularies.

Quick revision

1. Authority is power accepted as rightful: the right to command and the duty to obey.
2. Weber, in one passage: Macht is the chance of prevailing against resistance; Herrschaft, authority or domination, is the chance of finding obedience to a command of a given content among specifiable persons; Disziplin is prompt and automatic obedience by habit.
3. The essential feature is acceptance. Authority exists because those subject to it believe it does.
4. Therefore it is conferred from below and it is cheap, while power is expensive.
5. Sources: office, rules, tradition, personal qualities, expertise.
6. Two senses: authority over persons, and authority on a subject. Do not slide between them.
7. Scope is essential: a command outside the scope is not authority at all, which is the political twin of the legal doctrine that an act beyond power is void.

Test yourself

1. Define authority and explain what distinguishes it from power. Authority is the right to command and the corresponding duty to obey, resting on the acceptance by those subject to it that the commander is entitled to command. Power rests on the capacity to compel or induce, so the subject complies because of what will follow otherwise; authority rests on acceptance, so the subject complies because of who gave the order. The dacoit and the tax officer both take money; only one of them can expect to be thought entitled.

2. Give Weber's three definitions from the same passage and say how they relate. Power, Macht, is every chance within a social relationship of carrying through one's own will even against resistance, whatever it rests on. Authority, Herrschaft, is the chance of finding obedience for a command of a given content among specifiable persons. Discipline, Disziplin, is the chance of prompt, automatic and unthinking obedience among a specifiable number of people by force of habit. Power is the widest, authority narrower, discipline narrowest; each is a special case of the one before.

3. Why is authority said to be conferred from below? Because it exists only in the belief of those subject to it. A judge's orders bind because litigants, counsel, officials and the police accept that they do; if that acceptance were withdrawn, the judgment would be a piece of paper and no additional legal provision could restore it. The command is issued downward, but the fact that makes it a command rather than a request is supplied upward.

4. Why is authority cheaper than power? Because compliance is general and voluntary, so the sanction almost never has to be applied. A state with authority governs an enormous population with a small police force, since nearly everybody complies without being made to. Power has to be brought to bear case by case, at a cost in money, manpower and resentment, and a government that must compel routinely is displaying weakness rather than strength.

5. What is the scope of authority, and what is its legal counterpart? Weber's definition confines authority to commands of a given content addressed to specifiable persons, so every authority has a defined range of subjects and subject matter. A direction outside that range is not disobeyed but disregarded, and disregarding it is not disobedience at all. Its counterpart in law is the rule that an authority may do only what its conferring provision permits, and that an act beyond that power is void; the political concept and the legal doctrine are one idea in two vocabularies.