Political Authority and Its Limitations

In a constitutionally limited state, political authority is generally related with legitimate political power. However, political authority, as in mixed economy or as Marxian writers suggest about the capitalist systems, may also wield economic power or seeks its power on ideological basis. Political authority may exercise its power by using its various dimensions—political, economic and ideological. Political power manifests in legal (e.g. laws, acts, rules, legislations), coercive (e.g. police, prison, military), negotiating and influencing, extracting (e.g. taxes, fines) and redistributing (welfare, social service, public goods) forms. Exercise of power in all these forms must be in a justified, reasonable and acceptable manner. Political power must carry legitimacy with it to be called political authority.

However, though theoretically distinguishable, in practice, power and authority go together. Generally, there cannot be authority without power, though there can be power without authority. This is because power can be exercised in a coercive and arbitrary manner without concern for legitimacy and willing acceptability on the part of the subjects. Nevertheless, there can be cases when authority is recognized but political power cannot be exercised. For example, in post-Saddam Hussain Iraq, political authority of the government is recognized but it is unable to exercise the same because various internal forces are not allowing it to translate the authority into political power. Notwithstanding this limitation on authority, it may happen that exercise of power may be arbitrary for a section or class of people without affecting the others. During revolutionary periods such a situation may arise, when a class perceived to be dominant or exploitative is subjected to power that is considered arbitrary and coercive only by that class and not by all subjects. Use of power may be termed as illegitimate or arbitrary by a class of people when it does not serve their purpose or go against their sectional or class interests. For example, insurgents, secessionists and regional autonomy groups in India charge the Indian state of using excessive power and violence against them. To protect the national integrity and internal peace, the state uses coercive power and physical violence. However, it may be termed as arbitrary and excessive by those who are affected. Thus, the dynamics between power and authority remains contextual. Political authority, many a times, is application of power only. One way of identifying political authority is to observe application of power, that is who applies power using political organs. Seen in this way, there could be problem in differentiating a democratic authority from an authoritarian one.

A more generic view of political authority could be to treat it as right to rule. Allan R. Ball succinctly spells this when he says that ‘political authority is the recognition of the right to rule irrespective of the sanctions the ruler may possess’.²⁵ Obedience and justification may come due to religious sanction as in divine rights, or due to charismatic personality of the ruler as in Hitler, or Lenin or Gandhi even before assuming formal state powers, or rational–legal ground as in bureaucracy. Thus, authority may emerge from a variety of sources. German sociologist, Max Weber discussed three sources of political authority. His threefold classification of political authority includes traditional, charismatic and legal–rational authority.