The term authority identifies the political legitimacy, which grants and justifies rulers' right to exercise the power of government; and the term identifies the ability to accomplish an authorized goal, either by compliance or by ; hence, is the to make decisions and the legitimacy to make such legal decisions and order their execution.
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Ancient western understandings of authority trace back to Rome and draw later from Catholic (Thomistic) thought and other traditional understandings. In more modern terms, forms of authority include transitional authority (exhibited in, for example, Cambodia),6 public authority in the form of popular power, and, in more administrative terms, bureaucratic or managerial techniques. In terms of bureaucratic governance, one limitation of the governmental agents of the executive branch, as outlined by George A. Krause, is that they are not as close to the popular will as elected representatives are.7 The claims of authority can extend to national or individual sovereignty, which is broadly or provisionally understood as a claim to political authority that is legitimated.8
Historical applications of authority in political terms include the formation of the city-state of Geneva, and experimental treatises involving the topic of authority in relation to education include Emile, or On Education by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. As David Laitin defines, authority is a key concept to be defined in determining the range and role of political theory, science and inquiry.9
In European political philosophy, the jurisdiction of political authority, the location of sovereignty, the balancing of notions of freedom and authority,10 and the requirements of political obligations have been core questions from the time of Plato and Aristotle to the present. Most democratic societies are engaged in an ongoing discussion regarding the legitimate extent of the exercise of governmental authority. In the United States, for instance, there is a prevailing belief that the political system as instituted by the Founding Fathers should accord the populace as much freedom as reasonable; that government should limit its authority accordingly, known as limited government.
is a philosophy which rejects the legitimacy of political authority and adherence to any form of sovereign rule or autonomy of a nation-state. An argument for political anarchy is made by in his book . On the other side, one of the main arguments for the legitimacy of the state is some form of the developed by Thomas Hobbes in his 1668 book, , or by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his political writings on .
Sociology
An inhabited initial from a 13th-century French text representing the tripartite social order of the Middle Ages: the ōrātōrēs (those who pray – clerics), bellātōrēs (those who fight – knights, that is, the nobility), and labōrātōrēs (those who work – peasants and members of the lower middle class).
In sociology, authority is the legitimate or socially approved power which one person or a group possesses and practices over another. The element of legitimacy is vital to the notion of authority and is the main means by which authority is distinguished from the more general concept of power and dominant group, including dominant minority and dominant majority.
Power can be exerted by the use of force or violence. Authority, by contrast, depends on the acceptance by subordinates of the right of those above them to give them orders or directives.1112 It only exists to the extent that it is . As put it: "Authority may in fact go unquestioned, even for a long period of time, but it is never beyond questioning because whosoever grants can also withhold."
Religious studies
Religious authority refers to the organizational control and decision-making power within a social system.21 It operates through three forms: authoritative objects (e.g. sacred texts), religious figures or social positions (e.g. clergy, institutional leaders), and absent authority figures (e.g. gods). The authority can be understood as a kind of projection, reflecting individuals' own ideas through processes such as selective privileging,22 and it is maintained through social recognition, particularly the acceptance of decisions made by clergy or religious leaders.23
Operation of religious authority
Religious authority operates through social processes, including creation, maintenance, and transformation. It is established to improve social coordination through shared rituals and organizational social expectation.24 Then, it is maintained by religious institutions' structures, recognized roles, sacred texts, and relevant ideas, which strengthens authority by communication (online/offline).25 At the same time, religious authority can be changed. Especially, in modern society, the increase in the use of new media has an impact on the decentralization of authority, challenging traditional sources of religious authority.26
2Miller, David (26 June 2003). "Political authority". Political Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction. Very Short Introductions. Oxford University Press. p. 20. ISBN 9780191577864. Retrieved 28 September 2024. “Political authority has two sides to it. On the one side, people generally recognize it as authority, in other words as having the right to command ... On the other side, people who refuse to obey are compelled to do so by the threat of sanctions ... And these two aspects are complementary.”
3The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought Third Edition, Allan Bullock and Stephen Trombley, Eds. p. 115.
4Covell, Charles (9 July 2009). "Rousseau, Kant and Hegel". The Law of Nations in Political Thought: A Critical Survey from Vitoria to Hegel. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9780230244450. Retrieved 28 September 2024. “[According to Kant, the] juridicial order of civil society found its concrete institutional embodiment in the civil state, as through the legislative, executive and judicial authorities that comprised the basis of the state constitution and the system of state government. Of the three state authorities, the legislative authority was understood by Kant to be foundational in that it stood as the sovereign authority in the state ...”
Max Weber defined domination (authority) as the chance of commands being obeyed by a specifiable group of people. Legitimate authority is that which is recognized as legitimate and justified by both the ruler and the ruled. Legitimated rule results in what Weber called the monopoly over the use of coercive violence in a given territory.16 The concept of authority has also been discussed as a guiding principle in human-machine interaction design.17
Genetic research indicates that obedience to authority may be a heritable factor.18
Children and authority attributes
Authority and its attributes have been identified as particularly relevant to children as they regard their parents and teachers. The three attributes of authority have been described as status, specialist skills or knowledge, and social position. Children consider the type of command, the characteristics of the authority figure, and the social context when making authority conclusions.19
Although children regard these three types of authority attributes, they first assess the legitimacy of the authority figure in question using the nature of the commands they give. For example, a teacher who does not appear to have legitimate power from the child's perspective (perhaps because she or he cannot control the class well) will not be obeyed. Regarding parenting, authoritative parents who are warm and high in behavioral control but low in psychological control are more likely to be seen as having legitimate authority over the child, and children will believe that they have a duty to obey them and internalize their values. While the study of children in modern capitalist societies does look at the psychological aspects of children's understanding of legitimate authority at the level of symbolic interaction, it is also true that this is an extrapolated assumption based on one interpretation of a broad Comparative Historical Sociological (CHS) analysis of legitimate authority in multiple societies over a long duration, rather than a micro-social psychological study of children per se. There is nothing in Weber's published work in the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe that directly deals with children's perceptions in "formations" with traditional legitimate authority, prior to the emergence of modern capitalism.20
5The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought, Third edition, Allan Bullock and Stephen Trombley, eds., pp. 677–678.
7Krause, George A. (2010). Durant, Robert F. (ed.). "Legislative Delegation of Authority to Bureaucratic Agencies". The Oxford Handbook of American Bureaucracy. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 524.
8Glanville, Luke (2016). Bellamy, Alex J. (ed.). "Sovereignty". The Oxford Handbook of the Responsibility to Protect. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 153.
9Laitin, David (1998). "Toward a Political Science Discipline: Authority Patterns Revisited". Comparative Political Studies. 31 (4): 423–443. doi:10.1177/0010414098031004002. S2CID146736449.
10Cristi, Renato (2005). Hegel on Freedom and Authority. Cardiff, Wales: University of Wales Press.
11Anthony Giddens, Sociology. London: Polity Press, 1997, p. 581.
12Max Weber in "Weber's Rationalism and Modern Society: New Translations for the 21st Century", translated and edited by Tony Waters and Dagmar Waters. pp. 137-138.
13C. Naomi Osorio-Kupferblum: "Conceptualising ‘Authority’". In: International Journal of Philosophical Studies. Vol. 23, No. 2, 13 March 2015, pp. 223–236, doi:10.1080/09672559.2015.1020828
14Andreas Dorschel, Die Welt verändern. Zur Poetik des Manifests. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2026, p. 61: "Unbefragt kann Autorität bleiben, selbst lange Zeit hindurch; fraglos aber besteht sie nie, weil, wer etwas zuspricht, es auch absprechen kann." See the entire argument, ibid., pp. 60–64.
15Bloom, Howard (2010). The Genius of the Beast: a radical re-vision of capitalism. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books. p. 186. ISBN 978-1-59102-754-6. “To validate an argument, we refer back to our ancestors – or to someone who, while still alive, has already garnered the sort of authority only ancestors normally have.”
16Max Weber in Weber's Rationalism and Modern Society, translated and edited by Tony Waters and Dagmar Waters, Palgrave Books 2015, pp. 136
An argument from authority (Latin: argumentum ab auctoritate, also called an appeal to authority, or argumentum ad verecundiam) is a form of argument in which the opinion of an authority figure (or figures) is used as evidence to support an argument.
Authority bias is the tendency to attribute greater accuracy to the opinion of an authority figure (unrelated to its content) and be more influenced by that opinion.
Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in democracy, separation of powers, civil liberties, and the rule of law.
Soft power in politics, particularly in international politics, is the ability to influence or persuade others through the use of persuasive means, as opposed to the use of force or coercion, which is an aspect of hard power.
In political science, legitimacy is a concept concerning the right of an authority, usually a governing law or a regime, to rule the actions of a society.
The Milgram experiment was a series of social psychology experiments that were conducted in the early 1960s by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, who intended to measure the willingness of…
System of courts that interprets and applies the law
The judiciary (also known as the judicial system, judicial power, judicature, judicial branch, judiciative branch, and court or judiciary system) is the system of courts that adjudicates legal disputes/disagreements and interprets, defends, and applies the law in legal cases.
Anti-authoritarianism is opposition to authoritarianism. Anti-authoritarians usually believe in full equality before the law and strong civil liberties.
