Authority

« Authority The notion of authority has two main senses: expertise and the right to rule.

To have authority in matters of belief (to be 'an authority' ) is to have theoretical authority ; to have authority over action (to be 'in authority' ) is to have practical authority .

Both senses involve the subordination of an individual's judgment or will to that of another person in a way that is binding, independent of the particular content of what that person says or requires.

If a person's authority is recognized then it is effective or de facto authority; if it is justified then it is de jure authority. The latter is the primary notion, for de jure authority is what de facto authorities claim and what they are believed to have.

Authority thus differs from effective power, but also from justified power, which may involve no subordination of judgment.

In many cases, however, practical authority is justified only if it is also effective. Political authority involves a claim to the obedience of its subjects.

Attempts to justify it have always been at the core of political philosophy.

These include both instrumental arguments appealing to the expertise of rulers or to their capacity to promote social cooperation, and non-instrumental arguments resting on ideas such as consent or communal feeling.

Whether any of these succeed in justifying the comprehensive authority that modern states claim is greatly disputed.. 1 The nature and forms of authority What do theoretical and practical authority have in common? George Cornewall Lewis aptly defined the acceptance of theoretical authority as: 'the principle of adopting the belief of others, on a matter of opinion, without reference to the particular grounds on which that belief may rest' (1849 ).

Authority over action shares this feature.

Hobbes (§7) put it this way: 'command is where a man saith, Doe this or Doe not this , without expecting any other reason than the Will of him that sayes it' (1651 ).

Authority thus offers what H.L.A.

Hart ( 1982 ) calls 'content -independent' reasons for belief or action: the opinion of an expert or the directive of a ruler, parent, manager and so on is itself meant to be taken as a reason, irrespective of the grounds on which that opinion or directive is based. A second feature of authority is that its requirements bind its alleged subjects: authority has an exigency that advice or requests lack.

Some political realists offer a reductionist account of this, claiming that the exigency ultimately amounts to the credible threat of force.

Others suggest it is the justification for force.

Neither, however, is plausible, for force is necessary only as a backup when authority fails in its primary aim of directing behaviour. A better view is suggested in John Locke's remark: 'All private judgment of every particular member being excluded, the community comes to be umpire, by settled standing rules; indifferent and the same to all parties' (1690 ).

The key here is neither force nor its justifications but rather the exclusion of private judgment (see Locke, J.

§10 ).

Joseph Raz ( 1986 ) has influentially argued that authoritative reasons pre-empt or exclude other reasons the subject might have.

Authoritative reasons are thus 'exclusionary' : they do not outweigh competing considerations. »