Authority (sociology)

Authority is the legitimate or socially approved use of power. It is the legitimate power which one person or a group holds over another. The element of legitimacy is vital to the notion of authority and is the main means by which authority is distinguished from the more general concept of power. Power can be exerted by the use of force or violence. Authority, by contrast, depends on the acceptance by subordinates of the right of those above them to give them orders or .

The types of political authority were first defined by Max Weber in his essay "Politics as a Vocation" and his other writings in 1919-1920. In this essay he emphasized that the political authority that controlled the state can be composed of the following types of authority, or what is called in German as Herrschaft.

Traditional Authority: Power legitimized by respect for long-established cultural patterns.

Charismatic Authority: Power legitimized by extraordinary personal abilities that inspire devotion and obedience.

Rational-Legal Authority: Also known as bureaucratic authority, is when power is legitimized by legally enacted rules and regulations such as governments.

The three attributes of authority are status, specialist skills or knowledge, and social position. These are particularly relevant to children when they regard their parents and teachers. Research has shown that children have a complex notion of what authority is. Children consider the type of command, the characteristics of the authority figure, and the social context when making authority conclusions (Laupa, 1991).

Although children regard these three types of authority attributes, they firstly assess the legitimacy of the authority figure in question using the nature of the commands they give. For example, a teacher that does not appear to have legitimate power from the child’s perspective (perhaps because she or he cannot control the class well) will not be obeyed. Regarding parenting, authoritative parents who are warm and high in behavioural control but low in psychological control are more likely to be seen as having legitimate authority by the child, and will believe themselves that they have a duty to obey them and internalise their values (Darling, Cumsille,& Martínez,2008).

Max Weber, in his sociological and philosophical work, identified and distinguished three types of legitimate domination (Herrschaft in German, which generally means 'domination' or 'rule'), that have sometimes been rendered in English translation as types of authority, because domination is not seen as a political concept in the first place. Weber defined domination (authority) as the chance of commands being obeyed by a specifiable group of people. Legitimate authority is that which is recognized as legitimate and justified by both the ruler and the ruled. Legitimated rule results in what Weber called the monopoly over the use of coercive violence in a given territory. In the modern world, such authority is typically delegated to a police and court system.

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