Socioeconomic aspects of the family

Authority as a normative question

To the political philosopher, the central question concerning political authority is: Under what conditions can state action be considered legitimate? It can be agreed that authority requires some clear appeal to a higher sense of legitimate state function, but agreement on that point does not imply agreement either on the principles that define what is legitimate or on the limits of this legitimacy. When, for example, are citizens obliged to obey laws that either imperil their own lives or conflict with other important moral considerations? Such questions have occupied political philosophers for centuries and have inspired important contributions by philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, and John Rawls.
Commentators such as Robert Paul Wolff have placed such questions in starker terms, considering authority to present a paradox: If legitimate authority requires people to act in ways contrary to their own judgment and if moral autonomy (i.e., the right to exercise reason on moral questions and act according to one’s reason) is a fundamental human right, then the exercise of authority is always a violation of the other person’s moral autonomy and is immoral. This has given new life to the discussion of normative justifications for legitimacy.

Authority as a sociological question

To the sociologist, the legitimacy that distinguishes between coercive power and authority rests not on some theoretical normative foundation but rather on de facto social convention (actual social convention, meaning here that legitimacy is not whether an actor’s behaviour satisfies some ideal ethical norm but whether it fits with social norms held in common by real people in society). Society confers on certain actors the right to influence others and to expect their obedience. A community member who stops others on the street and searches their possessions against their will is a vigilante, exercising coercive power. A police officer who engages in the same behaviour in accord with legal procedures, validated by social convention, is exercising authority.
Max Weber identified three inner justifications, or sources of legitimacy, for the exercise of authority: (1) traditional norms sanctified by long-standing convention, (2) charisma, which attracts the personal confidence and devotion of followers, and (3) rational-legal considerations supported by belief in the validity of legal statutes and functional competence. Much of the authority cited in organizations rests on a rational-legal source of authority. In business, for example, it is the combination of a manager’s position relative to statutory and rational structures that constitutes the right to expect obedience from subordinates. Stockholders share a similar type of authority in their dealings with the corporation via governance mechanisms.