Chapter 4. Authority

Chapter 4. Authority

Plan

1.Definition, main features.

2. Structure and sources.

3. Main principles and functions of authority.

      4. Legitimacy of authority.

 In politics and law, authority is now commonly understood as the right to perform some action, including the right to make laws and all lesser rights involved in ruling; it should be distinguished from power understood as the ability to compel obedience. Authority is a particularly efficient kind of power. It may be backed up ultimately by the threat of coercion (the police will haul you off and punish you physically if you do not do what those in authority tell you to do), or it may be backed up ultimately by persuasion (if you keep your well clean, as the government tells you to do you will be sick less often). But if people simply do what the government tells them to do, without having to be coerced, or persuaded, everything goes more smoothly and – at least from the government’s point of view – more satisfactorily. People do obey the authority of the state. Because actions against authority are by definition “outlaw” behaviour and therefore extraordinary, we can think of many vivid examples of refusals to obey authority – burglary, speeding on the highways, tax evasion, and so on. But the startling thing, when you think about it, is that few people steal things even when it would be safe to do, most people drive at or near speed limit even though only a sprinkling of police are available to monitor what they are doing, and most people pay the taxes they owe.

It is authority that makes this system of commands and obedience work as smoothly as it does, and this makes the modern state appear to us to be the most natural form of political organization. But authority is not a simple thing that is either present or absent. Rather, it is a matter of degree. Remember that authority exists because it is “generally agreed on”; that is, most people believe it exists. There will probably never be a state in which every single person agrees on the existence and range of the state’s authority. Often, when a state issues certain commands, a portion of the people do not accept its authority to do so. If enough people deny the authority of the state, the state has a problem.

Authority is power based on a general agreement (1) that a person or group has the right to issue certain sorts of commands and (2) that those commands should be obeyed.

A government is unique in society in that all of its power involves authority, and at least potentially, there is no limit to the range of activities over which it may exercise authority. Most governments themselves impose some limits on their authority in the Constitution, rules out the exercise of authority over what religion people are to follow, what people are to say to each other, and so on. But these limitations are self-imposed and not necessarily "natural" to governments.

Sources of authority are all those resources which authority uses with the aim to influence on the population of this country. There are many classifications of authority. First one divides sources for three groups: utilitarian (material and other social weal), compulsory (measures of penal and administrative influence), and normative (these are means which influences on the inner world of a person and its behaviour). Second classification divides sources for such groups: economic, social, political and cultural. Main periods of existence of authority: supremacy, leadership, governing and control. Political authority is characterized by: legitimacy, supremacy, public character, and variety of sources.

Legitimacy and authority. The crux of the state then, and of its ability to function effectively, is the government’s wide-ranging authority to organize the lives of its people. But paradoxically, this authority exists only because the people in general believe it to exist and to be appropriate. If authority were to fail, it might still be possible for a government to organize its people by coercion and persuasion, but at such great cost that this approach could probably not be sustained over the long haul. A pure tyranny, existing without the benefit of at least some degree of authority, could probably not last long.

Thus it is crucial to a government that large numbers of its people should believe that it has authority and it properly should have that authority. We call the existence of this sort of feeling, to the extent that it does exist, the legitimacy of the government. Legitimacy, like authority itself, is a matter of degree. Not everyone in a state will necessarily always agree that its government is legitimate or that its government is legitimate or that a given kind of governmental act is legitimate. Much of the violence of politics in Iran in the early 1980s, for instance, resulted from a failure to agree on what sort of government could be legitimate.

 Sources of legitimacy. How does a government achieve a reasonable degree of legitimacy? There are many ways by which the people’s allegiance may be bound to a government so that is generally considered legitimate.

 Legitimacy by Results. First and foremost, a government may gain and retain legitimacy from its people by providing for them the things they most want: security against physical assault, security of their country's borders against invasion, pride in their nation, economic security, and so on. If the government can provide these things, its legitimacy will be greatly strengthened. If it cannot, its legitimacy is likely to be called into question.

 A good case in point of "legitimacy by results" is the rule of Adolf Hitler in Germany in the 1930s. In 1933, Hitler took power legally, but through dubious maneuvers and with at most a bare majority of support. The most votes the Nazi party had received in a fully free election was 37 percent—enough to make it the largest party in the country but hardly a mandate for dictatorship. Once in power, Hitler could initially count on the free support of only about one-third of the Germans, and powerful forces were arrayed against him—the labor unions, the Catholic church, much of the army's general staff. What solidified Hitler's hold on Germany and gave him a degree of legitimacy by the end of the 1930s was the results of his early policies. He reduced unemployment by large-scale deficit spending; by some audacious bluffs, he outmaneuvered France and England and reestablished Germany as a great power; he built the autobahn system of superhighways; he even pioneered the Volkswagen "bug" automobile. In spite of his suppression of free speech, his oppression of Jews, and the vulgar behavior of his party comrades, these accomplishments brought him widespread and deep support from the German people. By the late 1930s it would probably have been impossible for anyone to seek to overthrow his rule. It was not until 1944, when he had obviously lost World War II that a group of generals were able to muster sufficient strength to try to depose him; and even then, the attempt failed.

Legitimacy by Habit. Once a government has been around for a while, people become accustomed generally to obeying its laws. People expect to operate under some government or other, and so whatever government is in place and has been obeyed in the past is likely to be regarded as legitimate—unless a particular crisis arises or some force (another state, perhaps) in­tervenes from outside. In other words, once a particular government has been in place for a while, so that the people have developed the habit of obeying it, it no longer has to perpetually justify its existence. Rather, the burden of proof lies with whoever would propose an alternative government. The existing government remains legitimate unless and until a compelling alternative comes along. We should not underestimate the im­portance of simple habit in maintaining governments in power.

Legitimacy by historical, religious, or ethnic identity.  Many governments enhance their legitimacy by the ties that exist between themselves and the people because of the government leaders' past accomplishments (their historic role) or because of the religious and/or ethnic similarity between the government lead­ers and the people.

 This may be especially important in a new state, in which the government has not yet been in place long enough for the people to have developed the habit of treating it as le­gitimate and in which the many economic and social problems that plague most new states make it difficult for the government to achieve legitimacy by results.

Legitimacy by Procedures. Finally, a state may strengthen the legitimacy of its government by following certain procedures in setting itself up—procedures in which many people have confidence, so that they will start off with a fund of trust for any government that has been established along these lines.

The best example of this is democracy—a state in which all the citizens participate in selecting their leaders and perhaps also in determining the state's policies. Typically, democratic governments are chosen by competitive elections in which all citizens vote to decide which of various alternative leadership teams are to govern. Because the re­sulting government has won broader support than any alternative, it gains a strong base of legitimacy. It is the government "of the people."

The procedures of democratic election are what give such a government a good part of its legitimacy. One may dislike particular leaders or think their policies unwise, but it is hard to argue with their right to govern as long as they have been selected by the proper procedures.

 Democratic government is the preeminent example today of legitimacy by proce­dures—so preeminent, in fact, that democratic procedures are often imitated through staged elections in dictatorships. But at other times, other procedures have served as the basis for legitimacy; all that is important is that the procedure be generally accepted as appropriate. Until a few centuries ago, for instance, it was generally accepted that polit­ical leadership was most properly passed on by inheritance. One king ruled; when he died, his heir became the new king. This procedure was so important as a basis of legit­imacy that great care was taken to lay out precise rules of inheritance; if no clear heir was available, the result was sometimes civil war.

 Authority, then, through the legitimacy on which it is based, depends on the relation between the state and its citizens. A particularly interesting problem in authority and le­gitimacy is posed by modern democracy. A "democracy" is a state in which all fully qualified citizens vote at regular intervals to choose, among alternative candidates, the people who will be in charge of developing the state's policies. It is in one sense an odd sort of state, since the government has power over the citizens (it makes the laws), but the citizens also have power over the government (they can vote it out of office).