Authority
Authority
The concept of authority, like the related concepts with which it is frequently associated—power, influence, and leadership—is used in a variety of ways in political philosophy and the social sciences. In part, the diversity stems from the ubiquity of the phenomenon. Whether it be defined as (1) a property of a person or office, especially the right to issue orders; (2) a relationship between two offices, one superior and the other subordinate, such that both incumbents perceive the relationship as legitimate; (3) a quality of a communication by virtue of which it is accepted; or (4) countless variations on one or more of these logical forms of definition, the phenomenon of authority is basic to human behavior. One philosopher, Bertrand de Jouvenel, has put it more strongly: “The phenomenon called ‘authority’ is at once more ancient and more fundamental than the phenomenon called ‘state’ the natural ascendancy of some men over others is the principle of all human organisations and all human advances” ([1955] 1957, p. xiii). In any event, the problem of political authority, as distinct from the quest for a precise definition of the concept, is at least as old as government itself. Since the emergence of the social sciences, authority has been a subject of research in a variety of empirical settings: the family (parental authority); small groups (informal authority or leadership); intermediate organizations, such as schools, churches, armies, industrial and governmental bureaucracies (organizational and bureaucratic authority); and society-wide or inclusive organizations ranging from the most primitive tribal society to the modern nation-state and international organization (political authority). To what extent these are different kinds of authority remains an open question. Definitive answers must await more research on their interrelationships: for example, how attitudes toward parental authority condition subsequent attitudes toward civic participation and how the dominant style of political rule affects the ways in which authority is exercised in primary and intermediate organizations.
Development of the concept
The implications of man’s involvement in the state, i.e., his obligations as a citizen, are given their classic statement in Plato’s famous dialogues, Apology and Crito. The trial and conviction of Socrates poses the basic problem of political authority. What is man’s relationship to the state? Is he obliged to obey an unjust law? For Socrates, the contractual relationship with his state, entered into by every citizen upon reaching adulthood, provides only limited alternatives to complete obedience, even to the point of death. On the one hand, the citizen may argue, persuade others, or attempt to change the law. On the other hand, he may abandon his citizenship and leave the country. (The existence of these two alternatives is still crucial in distinguishing between democratic and totalitarian states.) Unsuccessful in the first alternative and unwilling to adopt the second alternative, Socrates accepts the verdict of his trial as legitimate and drinks the fatal hemlock.
The justification of political authority, the location of sovereignty, the balancing of freedom and authority, the requirements of political obligation —these have been core questions for political philosophy from Plato and Aristotle to the present. Yet these great thinkers, their most important successors (Augustine, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau), and particularly twentieth-century social scientists have not been concerned solely with questions of what ought to be. They have also addressed themselves to questions of what is—how authority and power are in fact distributed in society. To the extent that these political philosophers and social scientists have arrived at different conclusions, they have often been led to use these concepts in different ways.
Perhaps the seminal treatment of the concept of authority in the twentieth century is that of Max Weber (1922). He distinguishes between three pure types of authority—(1) legal-rational, (2) traditional, and (3) charismatic—according to the kind of claim to legitimacy typically made by each. In the last two cases the obligation is to a person, the traditional chief or the heroic or messianic leader. Legal authority is more restricted in scope; obedience is owed to the legally established impersonal network of positions ([1922] 1957, pp. 325–328). Weber’s treatment of legal-rational authority, which distinguishes between, but does not elaborate on, authority inherent in office and authority based on technical knowledge, provides the basic framework for most contemporary analyses of bureaucracy (Peabody 1962). His treatment of charismatic authority, or more precisely, charismatic leadership (Bierstedt 1954, pp. 71–72), has been followed up in studies of national political leadership (Lipset 1963; Neumann 1942; Pye 1962).
But social scientists are by no means agreed on how the concept of authority should be used. For example, Michels, in the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (1930, p. 319) defines authority as “the capacity, innate or acquired, for exercising ascendancy over a group.” However, Bierstedt (1954, pp. 67–81) takes issue with each of these points. Authority is not a capacity; it is a relationship. Furthermore, it is neither innate, nor a matter of exercising ascendancy. Bierstedt argues that Michels has confused authority with competence. Yet both agree as to the close relationship between authority and power. For Michels, authority “is a manifestation of power” (1930, p. 319); for Bierstedt, “authority becomes a power phenomenon….it is sanctioned power, institutionalized power” (1954, pp. 79–80).
Contemporary uses
The use of authority by contemporary political scientists is no more free from dispute. Thus, Lasswell and Kaplan, in a widely quoted definition paralleling Bierstedt’s, define authority as “formal power” (1950, p. 133). However, Friedrich (1963, chapters 9–13; p. 207, n. 15; p. 226, n. 20) explicitly rejects this definition by Lasswell and Kaplan, and defines authority as “the quality of a communication,” which is “capable of reasoned elaboration” (1958, pp. 35–36; 1963, pp. 218, 224). They are also in disagreement as to whether power or influence is the more inclusive term: Lasswell and Kaplan arguing that “power is a form of influence” (1950, p. 85); Friedrich maintaining that “influence is a kind of power, indirect and unstructured” (1963, p. 199, p. 207, n. 15). It seems of limited value to pursue a definition of authority as a special case of power or influence (the genus-anddifferentia form). Social scientists have not as yet been able to formulate a precise and widely accepted operational definition of power. These concepts, even if given operational definition, would appear to open up more difficulties than they resolve.
Several conclusions emerge from a review of these various attempts at definition and explication. First, what clearly distinguishes authority from coercion, force, and power on the one hand, and leadership, persuasion, and influence on the other hand, is legitimacy. Superiors feel that they have a right to issue commands; subordinates perceive an obligation to obey. If the character of the communication is questioned, then authority is diminished and the bond that holds the participants together is in danger of being severed. Authority is strongest when subordinates anticipate the commands of superiors even before they are voiced. Second, authority is exercised most characteristically within a network of clearly defined hierarchical roles: parent–child, teacher–pupil, employer–employee, ruler–ruled. These authority relations are institutionalized: duties and obligations are specified, behavior is reasonably predictable, and the relations continue over time. In a system of well-established authority, men of great ability are less in demand. Charisma is transformed through routinization; the entrepreneur is replaced by the bureaucrat. Finally, most social scientists agree that authority is but one of several resources available to incumbents of formal positions. The policeman may initially depend upon authority symbolized by his uniform and badge to lend legitimacy to his orders. But if his authority fails and persuasion is not successful, then he must resort to the threat or use of physical force, or even firearms, in order to bring about compliance. In cases in which one criminal is joined by others, the policeman can call upon other policemen, the governor, the national guard, and, if need be, the supreme commander and the army. In the final analysis, it is this nesting of authority, and the possibility of tapping greater and greater resources, that explains why criminals get arrested despite their failure to consent to a policeman’s authority. A head of state is dependent upon a similar nesting of authority. His legitimacy must be acknowledged not just by citizens but, more importantly, also by those who control other valued resources: his immediate staff, his cabinet, military leaders, and, in the long run, the political and administrative apparatus of the entire society.
Research and problem areas
The usefulness of authority as a general analytical concept in the social sciences would seem to be dependent on further research directed at answering the following questions:
(1) What is the impact of the dominant style of political authority in a given country on the ways in which authority is exercised in the many different primary groups and intermediate organizations making up the society? Societies may be characterized by the congruency or diffused and fragmented nature of their multiple layers of authority patterns. Little is known about the way in which the dominant style of political authority—totalitarian, autocratic, constitutional elitism, mass democratic, or some combination of these—structures the attitudes and practices in the primary and intermediate groups and organizations in society. Bendix’s pioneering study of the impact of four different cultures—Russia under the czars, Engand in the process of industrialization, America during the first four decades of the twentieth century, and East Germany after World War II—on management-worker ideologies is suggestive of the kind of research that is needed (1956). From a related orientation, Eckstein (1961, pp. 6–12) hypothesizes that the stability of a government is related to the congruency of its style of authority with the other authority patterns of society. The leadership practices of British political parties and the British cabinet structure are put forward as an example of high congruence. The experiences of the Weimar Republic, where democracy was largely confined to the level of parliamentary government, illustrate the opposite case (pp. 17–21).
Studies of totalitarian dictatorships—Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, and Russia under Stalin —stress the creation of a vacuum between the elite and mass and a resulting disintegration of communication affecting all traditional authority patterns. “…the bonds of confidence in social relationships are corroded by the terror and propaganda… . The confidence which ordinarily binds the manager of a plant to his subordinates, members of a university faculty to each other and to their students, lawyer to client, doctor to patient, and even parents to children as well as brothers to sisters is disrupted” (Friedrich & Brzezinski 1956, p. 166). Although the basic pattern of authority may be quite different, the totalitarian government also seeks congruency, a stability imposed from above. The objective is a system of authority in which parents are totally responsible for their children’s behavior, as is the party secretary for the cell, the chairman for the collective, and the central leadership for the whole of the Soviet Union (Mead 1951).
(2) How are attitudes and behavior shaped in infancy, childhood, and adolescence so as to affect the degree and kind of subsequent political participation and attitudes toward political authority? The second problem area, political socialization, is shaped by but also affects the first. The training of the young—character building, education, instruction in citizenship—has obvious consequences for adult political behavior. At least in the United States, the single best predictor of a child’s choice of a political party is his parents’ party preference. Much of the literature on the development of personality, authoritarianism, and voting preferences testifies to the importance of attitudes formed in the early years of life as a conditioner of later, mature civic activity (Hyman 1959). While the survey literature of the United States abounds with evidence of an adult cynicism toward politics and the low or ambivalent status of politicians, these attitudes are not apparent among young school children (Greenstein 1960). Family tradition, the extent to which a family is politicized, does, however, have a substantial impact upon an individual’s orientation toward politics and political authority, influencing the degree, kind, and direction of his political participation. Cross-national studies of political socialization are still relatively rare (Hess 1963).
(3) What are the strengths and bases of support of differing forms of political authority at the local and national level and between governmental institutions as diverse as the chief executive, the bureaucracy, the legislature, and the courts? Easton (1953) has equated the study of politics with the analysis of “the authoritative allocation of values.” Much of the community power literature has focused on how choices are made between competing values, who makes them, and once made, why citizens accept them as “authoritative.” While many of the early sociological analyses of community power stress the importance of a business elite, more recent studies by political scientists emphasize the integrative role played by public officials. Banfield (1961) found that the mayor of Chicago was able to provide a degree of informal centralization through party organization of what would otherwise be a fragmented formal authority resulting from multiple and overlapping governmental jurisdictions. Dahl (1961) and his associates traced a historical shift in political influence in New Haven, Connecticut, from oligarchy to pluralism, through the intensive analysis of three key decision areas: political nominations, public education, and urban redevelopment. What coordination and continuity exist in a system characterized by dispersed inequality of resources is largely brought about by elected officials, particularly the mayor of New Haven.
Numerous studies of the multiple centers of authority and power in modern industrial states have been undertaken—the executive, the legislature, the courts, the bureaucracy, political parties, and interest groups. However, social scientists are only beginning to understand what takes place when conflict erupts between competing centers of authority, such as that which characterized the promulgation of the United States Supreme Court decisions in the school integration cases. Neustadt’s analysis of how a president makes his extensive formal and legal powers work for him should facilitate comparisons with other national heads of state. The problem of implementing authority is common to all: “how to be on top in fact as well as name” (Neustadt 1960, p. vii).
One of the advantages that democratic forms of government have over more autocratic or totalitarian forms is that conflict and tensions are decentralized and dispersed. Successions from one administration to another or one regime to the next provide a critical test. As Friedrich and Brzezinski note in their study of totalitarian dictatorships, succession “exposes a regime’s authority to its greatest strain, since the passing away of the ruler calls not only his, but the system’s, authority into question” (1956, p. 54). This strain, while not without its frictions, is considerably reduced in a democracy.
(4) How does political authority vary from culture to culture and from traditional to modern societies in terms of each of these three problem areas? Ultimately, clarification of concepts and the development of generalizations about authority patterns must come from cross-cultural comparative analysis. Single-nation studies, for example, Benedict’s study of Japan (1946) and Mead’s analysis of Soviet attitudes toward authority (1951), have set the stage. A basic norm of Japanese culture is “taking one’s proper station,” a norm that is learned and meticulously observed in the family and later extended to the wider fields of economic life and government. Benedict outlines at some length the extensive system of hierarchical obligations and their reciprocals in Japan (1946, p. 116). Ward (1963) traces the development of democratic and pluralistic tendencies leading to the dilution and modification of the oligarchic pattern of rule in Japan.
Mead portrays a contrasting, if not always internally consistent, theory of Soviet leadership. Each party member is enjoined to be a model for those beneath him, but those below are urged not to take their cues from their immediate superiors but instead to model their behavior after the top leader, Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, and their successors (Mead 1951, pp. 68–69). The Soviet industrial worker “is expected to respond, not with a careful delimited measured response to the particular demands of his job, but with total devotion and spontaneity” (p. 35). After experimenting with the belief that the socialist society would assume full responsibility for the upbringing of children, the Soviet government shifted to encouragement of the growth of the close-knit family and strong parental authority.
By utilizing comparative case studies of policy making in the United States and the Soviet Union, Brzezinski and Huntington have substantially advanced our understanding of political authority and politics in the two systems (1964).
Research stimulated by the Social Science Research Council’s Committee on Comparative Politics has begun to break through the limitations of single-nation studies and to reap the benefits of systematic theory, cross-national analysis, and the use of survey research techniques applied simultaneously to a number of countries. Almond and Verba (1963) compare the political cultures of five nations, the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, and Mexico, basing their analysis upon stratified, multistage probability samples of about one thousand respondents in each country. They distinguish three pure types of political cultures—parochial, subject, and participant—as well as various combinations of these types. Several implications of each main type in shaping attitudes toward political authority are immediately apparent. The political cultures of African tribal societies and autonomous local communities described by Coleman (Almond & Coleman 1960, pp. 254–256) are clearly parochial in orientation. Political roles are not specialized. Diffuse political, social, economic, and religious roles are combined in headmanship or chieftainship. Members of the society expect little in the way of change or progress. In the subject political culture, the citizen “is aware of specialized governmental authority; he is affectively oriented to it, perhaps taking pride in it, perhaps disliking it; and he evaluates it either as legitimate or as not” (Almond & Verba 1963, p. 19). But the relationship is essentially passive. In the third type of political culture, the participative culture, individual members are oriented to both the input and output aspects of the political system. They endorse the norm of active participation in governmental decision making, although they may vary greatly in the degree to which they themselves are involved. As Pye (1962) points out in his study of national character and political attitudes in Burma, perhaps the top priority problems in emerging nations are the quest for new collective as well as individual identities, the inculcation of a sense of national loyalty, and the development of a propensity to obey the regulations of central governmental authority.
The diverse uses of authority as a political concept have been illustrated. The ambiguity of everyday language, the mixture of fact and value implicit in the term, the omnipresence of the phenomenon in all cultures, and the multiple approaches to the study of authority by social scientists from a great range of disciplines—all these factors have contributed to the confusion often accompanying the use of the concept. Yet, precisely because relative superordination and subordination are so fundamental at the family, group, organizational, and national levels, authority remains an almost indispensable general analytical concept.
Robert L. Peabody
[See alsoLegitimacy; Political theory; Power. Other relevant material may be found underLeadership.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Almond, Gabriel A.; and Coleman, James S. (editors) 1960 The Politics of the Developing Areas. Princeton Univ. Press.
Almond, Gabriel A.; and Verba, Sidney 1963 The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations. Princeton Univ. Press.
Banfield, Edward C. 1961 Political Influence. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press.
Bendix, Reinhard 1956 Work and Authority in Industry: Ideologies of Management in the Course of Industrialization. New York: Wiley. ? A paperback edition was published in 1963 by Harper.
Benedict, Ruth 1946 The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Bierstedt, Robert (1954) 1964 The Problem of Authority. Pages 67–81 in Morroe Berger et al. (editors), Freedom and Control in Modern Society. New York: Octagon Books.
Brzezinski, Zbigniew; and Huntington, Samuel P. 1964 Political Power: USA/USSR. New York: Viking.
Dahl, Robert A. (1961) 1963 Who Governs?: Democracy and Power in an American City. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.
de Grazia, Sebastian 1959 What Authority Is Not. American Political Science Review 53:321–331.
Easton, David 1953 The Political System: An Inquiry into the State of Political Science. New York: Knopf.
Eckstein, Harry 1961 A Theory of Stable Democracy. Center of International Studies Research Monograph No. 10. Princeton Univ., Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
Friedrich, Carl J. (editor) 1958 Authority. American Society of Political and Legal Philosophy, Nomos, Vol. 1. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press.
Friedrich, Carl J. 1963 Man and His Government: An Empirical Theory of Politics. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Friedrich, Carl J.; and Brzezinski, Zbigniew K. (1956) 1966 Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy. 2d ed. rev. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. > A paperback edition was published by Praeger in 1961.
Greenstein, Fred I. 1960 The Benevolent Leader: Children’s Images of Political Authority. American Political Science Review 54:934–943.
Hess, Robert D. 1963 The Socialization of Attitudes Toward Political Authority: Some Cross-national Comparisons. International Social Science Journal 15:542–559.
Hyman, Herbert H. 1959 Political Socialization: A Study in the Psychology of Political Behavior. Glencoe, III.: Free Press.
Jouvenel, Bertrand de (1955) 1957 Sovereignty: An Inquiry Into the Political Good. Univ. of Chicago Press. ? First published in French as De la souveraineté: À la recherche du bien politique.
Lasswell, Harold D.; and kaplan, abraham 1950 Power and Society: A Framework for Political Inquiry. Yale Law School Studies, Vol. 2. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. ? A paperback edition was published in 1963 by the Yale University Press.
Lipset, Seymour M. 1963 The First New Nation: The United States in Historical and Comparative Perspective. New York: Basic Books.
Mead, Margaret 1951 Soviet Attitudes Toward Authority: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Problems of Soviet Character. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Michels, Roberto 1930 Authority. Volume 2, pages 319–321 in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan.
Miller, Walter B. 1955 Two Concepts of Authority. American Anthropologist New Series 57:271–289.
Neumann, Franz L. (1942) 1963 Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism, 1933–1944. 2d ed. New York: Octagon Books.
Neustadt, Richard E. 1960 Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership. New York: Wiley.
Peabody, Robert L. 1964 Organizational Authority: Superior-Subordinate Relationships in Three Public Service Organizations. New York: Atherton.
Peabody, Robert L. 1962 Perceptions of Organizational Authority: A Comparative Analysis. Administrative Science Quarterly 6:463–482.
Pye, Lucian W. 1962 Politics, Personality, and Nation Building: Burma’s Search for Identity. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.
Ward, Robert E. 1963 Political Modernization and Political Culture in Japan. World Politics 15:569–596.
Weber, Max (1922) 1957 The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Edited by Talcott Parsons. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. ? First published in German as Part 1 of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft.