among the military, though any highly structured profession or society is likely
to demonstrate it. The real opposition to authoritarianism isliberalism, or
evenpluralism. The term can also be used as an epithet not only to political
creeds, but of a particular politician’s assumed character or aims. Like all the
most useful terms of political analysis, it can be applied to micro politics as well
as macro—thus it can be useful to describe certain industrial managements as
more or less authoritarian in nature, or indeed methods of organizing class-
room behaviour in a primary school, though clearly it would make little sense
to see a voluntary organization in such terms.
Authoritarianism as a characteristic of actual modern political regimes is
frequently tied to religiousfundamentalism, and has been apparent in such
states asTalibanAfghanistan and, to a lesser extent, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia,
where Islamic theology has a major impact on political thought. Some of the
new East European democracies (seedemocratic transition), especially the
less well-developed economically, like Bulgaria and Romania, are sometimes
considered to be vulnerable to a resurgence of populist authoritarianism partly
because the older population seek comfort from the stresses of capitalist
development in the authoritarianism they were accustomed to during the
communist period.
Authority
Authority means the right to give an order, which will be obeyed with no
question as to that right, or, if not an order, the right to evoke legitimate power
in support of a decision. Thus someone may have the authority to instruct
soldiers to fire on a crowd, the authority to sign a binding legal document, or
the authority to pass a security perimeter or frontier.
In the sociology of politics authority is contrasted with merepower;
authority is being in a position to give an order that will be obeyed because
itslegitimacyis accepted by those to whom the order is addressed, rather than
simply being a command which is backed up by coercion, bribery, persuasion,
etc. Exactly what it is that gives authority, and what are the sources of
legitimacy in politics, is more complicated. The best thinker on the matter
is MaxWeber. He distinguished, broadly, three kinds of authority. The most
relevant to the modern day is ‘rational-legal’ authority, which stems from an
overall social view that a system of power is legitimate because it is justified by a
general view that it maximizes efficient running of society. A second vital
source of legitimate authority is the ‘traditional’ mode of ‘domination’ (to use
Weber’s own language). This is based on the assumption that citizens learn that
there are accepted ways of running a society and that any rule enshrined in the
tradition should be obeyed simply because it always has been so obeyed.
Authority