Blackwell Reference Online

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Authority is often defined as legitimate power, and contrasted to pure power. In the case of legitimate authority, compliance is voluntary and based on a belief in the right of the authority to demand compliance. In the case of pure power, compliance to the demands of the powerful is based on fear of consequences or self-interest. But beyond this, there is considerable disagreement and variation of usage. Because legitimacy is a concept from monarchic rule, deriving from the right of the legitimately born heir to rule as monarch, authors as diverse as Hannah Arendt and Carl Schmitt have argued that it is not applicable to modern politics. But it is nevertheless commonly applied, even in ordinary political discussion, to many situations, such as voluntary compliance to taxation, that go far beyond the original meaning. Both “legitimate” and “authority” are terms which appear in sociology as a neutralized or value-free form of a concept that is normative or valuative in ordinary usage and in political theory. In its normative form, it distinguishes mere power from authority that is genuinely justified. One approach to sociologizing the term builds on these theories. Normally these are theories of representation, in which a person holding authority merely does so as a representative or delegate of the originating power. The relations of representation that figure in governing ideologies ... log in or subscribe to read full text