Authority and Its Basis: Legitimacy

Authority may be defined as “the right to exercise the power and influence of a particular position that comes from having been placed in that position according to regular, known, and widely accepted procedures” (Lawson 1985: 33).

When a community accepts someone’s influence as being legitimate, we can say that individual has authority.

Max Weber offers a a typology to classify the means for legitimating influence: traditional, legal-rational, and charismatic modes of authority.

• A traditional basis of authority legitimizes influence by claiming that “the simple fact that things have been done a certain way in the past is reason enough that they should be continued in the same manner in the future” (Landes 32).
• A legal-rational basis of authority justifies the distribution of of influence according to the procedures that were adhered to in its acquisition. Authority resides with offices, not individuals.
• A charismatic authority is based on a community’s faith in the extraordinary qualities of an individual. Hitler’s rise to power comes to mind.

These bases are present, to varying degrees, in all of today’s political systems.

To the question of why political systems endeavor to legitimate their distribution of influence through these means, Robert Dahl offers a reasonable answer.

“Authority is a highly efficient form of influence. It is not only more reliable and durable than naked coercion, but it also enables a ruler to govern with a minimum of political resources” (Dahl, 1984: 54).

The Difference Between Legitimacy and Authority

Dahl’s comment gives us a clue about how legitimacy and authority differ. It is much easier to illustrate this difference through example, rather than definition.

Occasionally, political leaders, for whatever reason (e.g. ineptitude) may lack legitimacy while still possessing authority. I think we can all come up with pertinent examples. For me, I think of how, repeatedly, illegitimate and genocidal governments have assumed power and wielded authority in African countries over the past few decades.