Weber: Power and Authority

In one line

Power is the ability to get your way despite resistance; authority is power that those subject to it accept as rightful, and there are three grounds on which they accept it.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: Weber defined power as the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out their own will despite resistance, regardless of the basis on which that probability rests. Authority, or legitimate domination, is power which those subject to it regard as rightful and therefore obey as a matter of duty rather than of calculation or fear. He distinguished three pure types of legitimate domination according to the ground of the claim to legitimacy: traditional, charismatic and legal rational.

Power and authority distinguished

Power rests on any basis whatever: force, wealth, knowledge, numbers, personal influence. It says nothing about whether obedience is willing.

Authority rests on legitimacy, the belief of those subject to it that the exercise is proper. The obedience is given as a duty.

Why the difference is decisive, and it is the practical point of the chapter. Power without legitimacy must be continuously applied and continuously resisted; it requires supervision, force and expense, and it is unstable. Authority is obeyed when nobody is watching, requires almost no enforcement, and survives changes of personnel. Every ruler therefore seeks to convert power into authority, and the study of how that conversion is attempted is much of political sociology. It is the same proposition as in [Super-ordination and Subordination], arriving from Weber's side.

A third term, coercion, is worth naming: the application of force or its threat, which is the residue that remains when legitimacy fails.

The three types

1. Traditional authority

The ground of legitimacy: the sanctity of immemorial tradition and the legitimacy of those who exercise authority under it. Obedience is owed to the person who occupies the traditionally sanctioned position, and it is owed because it has always been owed.

Its characteristics. The ruler is bound by tradition and is otherwise free, so there is a sphere of arbitrary personal discretion alongside the sphere fixed by custom. There are no formal rules and no formal qualifications for office. The administrative staff are personal retainers, recruited by kinship, loyalty or favour rather than by competence.

Its forms: patriarchalism, in a household or clan; patrimonialism, where the ruler's administration is an extension of the household; feudalism, where a landed staff hold their positions by grant; and gerontocracy, rule by elders.

Examples: hereditary monarchy, the authority of the head of a joint family, the authority of a caste panchayat, the position of a hereditary priest.