Weber: Power and Authority

Its weakness: it cannot adapt, since innovation requires justification against tradition, and it produces no reliable machinery, since offices are held by favour.

2. Charismatic authority

The ground of legitimacy: devotion to the exceptional sanctity, heroism or exemplary character of an individual person, and to the order revealed or ordained by them. Charisma is a quality attributed to a person by their followers, which sets them apart as endowed with exceptional powers.

Its characteristics. It is personal, attaching to the individual and not to an office. It is revolutionary, since it repudiates both tradition and rules: the charismatic leader's characteristic formula is that it has been written, but I say unto you. It rests on recognition by followers, which must be continually renewed. Its staff are disciples chosen for personal devotion, not officials with qualifications. It has no rules, no career, no salary and no settled procedure.

Its instability, which is its defining feature. It cannot survive the leader. Weber's term for what happens next is the routinisation of charisma: on the founder's death or decline, the movement must solve the problem of succession and of its own maintenance, and it does so by turning charisma into something transmissible. Charisma of office, attaching to the position rather than to the person, converts it towards legal-rational authority; hereditary charisma, passing to descendants, converts it towards traditional authority. The other two types therefore grow out of the charismatic one.

Examples: religious founders, prophets, revolutionary and national leaders, the founder of a sect as in [Church, Denomination, Sect and Cult].

3. Legal-rational authority

The ground of legitimacy: belief in the legality of enacted rules and in the right of those elevated to authority under such rules to issue commands.

Its characteristics, and each matters for a law student.

1. Obedience is owed to the rule, not to the person. One obeys the office, and the officer only within the competence the rules confer.
2. The rules are deliberately established, and may be deliberately changed by a stated procedure.
3. Authority is bounded. The officer has power only within a defined jurisdiction, and outside it is an ordinary person.
4. The officer is subject to the same rules, so the ruler obeys the law as well as the ruled.
5. Offices are held on impersonal grounds: appointment by qualification, defined duties, fixed remuneration, and a career.
6. Its administrative apparatus is bureaucracy, treated in [Weber: Bureaucracy].

Legal-rational authority is the sociological description of the rule of law, and stating the correspondence is what makes this chapter valuable here: government under general rules, made and changed by procedure, applied by officials of limited competence who are themselves bound, with the personal and the official separated. Everything a constitutional lawyer means by the rule of law is contained in Weber's third type, arrived at as a description of how modern domination actually works rather than as a prescription.

Examples: the modern state, a constitutional order, a company, a university, a court.

The three compared

In Indian life

Give examples of all three and, better, of their combination.

Traditional authority survives in the household, in caste and community panchayats, in hereditary religious offices and in the deference attaching to seniority.

Charismatic authority appears in religious founders and gurus, in national and political leadership, and in movements built around a person.

Legal-rational authority is the form of the Constitution, the courts, the administration and the modern corporation.

The most useful observation for an answer is that the three are combined rather than separate. A political leader may hold office under legal-rational rules, exercise charismatic appeal, and draw on traditional deference simultaneously, and the mixture is what makes real authority effective. Weber's types are ideal types, as [Weber: Social Action and Its Types] explains, and no actual authority is pure.

Criticisms

1. The types are not exhaustive. Authority resting on expertise, on democratic mandate, or on results does not fit neatly, though Weber would treat expert authority as an aspect of the third type.
2. Legitimacy is hard to measure. Compliance is observable; whether it is given from belief, from habit, from calculation or from fear is not, and Weber's distinction depends on the difference.
3. It underrates coercion. Critics argue that much apparent legitimacy is acquiescence by those with no alternative, which is the point made about hegemony in [Super-ordination and Subordination].
4. Charisma is defined circularly, since it is recognised by the devotion it produces and explains that devotion.
5. Real authority is always mixed, so the classification describes components rather than cases.

A worked example

A village is told that a piece of common land must be vacated.

If the order comes from the traditional head of the dominant lineage, obedience follows from custom, is owed to him personally, and would not transfer to his successor if the community ceased to regard the position as sanctified.

If it comes from a leader whom the villagers follow personally, obedience rests on devotion, is owed to nobody else, and will evaporate when he does, unless it is routinised into an office or a lineage.

If it comes from the competent revenue officer under a statute, obedience is owed to the office, is limited by the officer's jurisdiction, may be tested by appeal, and continues when the officer is transferred. The officer is also bound: they cannot exceed the statute, and if they do, the very authority they exercise supplies the remedy.

The third is what a modern legal order supplies and the other two do not: authority that is limited, transferable, reviewable and binding on its holder. That, and not efficiency, is the sociological case for legal-rational authority, and it is worth stating in exactly those terms.

Quick revision

1. Power: the probability of carrying out one's will despite resistance, on any basis. Authority: power regarded as rightful and obeyed as a duty. Coercion: force, the residue when legitimacy fails.
2. Authority is cheap and stable; power without legitimacy is expensive and precarious. Rulers therefore try to convert one into the other.
3. Traditional: legitimacy from immemorial tradition; obedience to the person; staff are personal retainers; forms include patriarchalism, patrimonialism, feudalism, gerontocracy; cannot adapt.
4. Charismatic: devotion to an exceptional person; personal, revolutionary, resting on recognition; staff are disciples; it cannot survive the leader, and the routinisation of charisma converts it into office charisma (legal-rational) or hereditary charisma (traditional).
5. Legal-rational: legitimacy from the legality of enacted rules; obedience to the office within a defined competence; rules deliberately made and changed; the ruler is bound too; its apparatus is bureaucracy.
6. Legal-rational authority is the sociological account of the rule of law: general rules, made by procedure, applied by officials of limited jurisdiction who are themselves subject to them.
7. In India all three combine in the same person and institution; the types are ideal types.
8. Criticisms: not exhaustive; legitimacy is unmeasurable; coercion underrated; charisma defined circularly; real cases are mixed.

Test yourself

1. Distinguish power from authority, and say why the difference matters. Power is the probability that an actor will be able to carry out their own will within a social relationship despite resistance, on whatever basis. Authority is power which those subject to it regard as rightful and therefore obey as a duty. The difference matters because power without legitimacy must be continuously applied, supervised and enforced, and is unstable, whereas authority is obeyed when nobody is watching, costs almost nothing to maintain and survives changes of personnel. Every ruler therefore attempts to convert power into authority.

2. Describe traditional authority. Authority whose legitimacy rests on the sanctity of immemorial tradition and on the standing of those who exercise power under it, obedience being owed to the person occupying the traditionally sanctioned position because it has always been owed. The ruler is bound by custom and otherwise enjoys arbitrary personal discretion; there are no formal rules or qualifications for office; and the administrative staff are personal retainers recruited by kinship, loyalty or favour. Its forms include patriarchalism, patrimonialism, feudalism and gerontocracy, and its weakness is that it cannot adapt.

3. What is charismatic authority, and what is the routinisation of charisma? Authority resting on devotion to the exceptional sanctity, heroism or exemplary character of an individual and to the order they ordain, charisma being a quality attributed to the leader by followers whose recognition must be continually renewed. It is personal, revolutionary in repudiating both tradition and rules, and administered by disciples rather than officials. Because it attaches to a person it cannot survive them, so on the leader's death the movement converts it into transmissible form: charisma of office, which moves towards legal-rational authority, or hereditary charisma, which moves towards traditional authority.

4. Set out the characteristics of legal-rational authority. Legitimacy rests on belief in the legality of enacted rules and in the right of those elevated under them to issue commands. Obedience is owed to the rule and to the office rather than to the person; the rules are deliberately established and may be changed by procedure; the officer's authority is bounded by a defined competence, outside which they are an ordinary person; the officer is subject to the same rules, so the ruler is bound as well as the ruled; offices are held on impersonal grounds with appointment by qualification, defined duties and a career; and its administrative apparatus is bureaucracy.

5. Why is legal-rational authority described as the sociological account of the rule of law? Because its features are precisely what constitutional lawyers mean by that phrase: government conducted under general rules rather than by personal will; rules made and altered by a stated procedure; officials whose powers are limited to a defined jurisdiction and whose acts outside it are without authority; the separation of the office from the person holding it; and the subjection of the ruler to the same rules as the ruled, so that the authority exercised supplies the remedy against its own excess. Weber arrived at this as a description of how modern domination works rather than as a prescription.