Social Reality: Violence, Power, and Change
The Dynamics of Power - Part 1 - The Legitimacy of Authority
I'm Starting with a joke quote on personal power legitimacy: "We don't need legitimacy. We exist. Therefore we are legitimate." - Menachem Begin
1- Characterizing Legitimacy
Legitimacy is based on a juridical concept in the rule of Law and in the individual belief of fairness and justice.“The power of belief gives legitimacy to whatever may be necessary.” ― Steven Redhead, Life Is Simply A GameMax Weber in 1947 showed that Power Legitimacy is rational rules as a fundamental value accepted by agreement or forced unilaterally.
So Power Legitimacy is the capacity to use Authority inside hierarchical structures based on norms or in inner values accepted by the individuals.
Legitimate power is based on three pillars:
The first is based on cultural values where one person has the required profile on a determined culture has the Legitime Power to dominate or impose their will on others.
The second is based on people's acceptance of the position of one individual in Social Structure of a hierarchic system as just and fair.
The third pillar of Power legitimacy is delegation, a concept of a central person recognizing and designating another person to use the authority inherent to that hierarchical position.
"Culture is a normalizer of the values of Civilization" - charlie777ptFrench and Raven studied the effects of legitimacy by joining the concepts of Legitimate and Coercive Powers to show that there is no difference between public and private obedience.
They found out that private obedience (induced behavior and not verified) is less dependent on coercive power than public obedience (induced behavior and verified).
Their results pointed out that Coercion is as good or a little better then legitimacy to achieve a group goal, and legitime authority is stronger than the illegitimate one in favoring private conformism.
Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class. - Al CaponeMulder in 1971 investigated the attraction for power and discovered that people are not in the aspect of legitime or illegitimate power but in its "importance" so that they show positive attitudes.
Obedience is a function of the means of sanctioning that increase the authority and influence the dominator has because people feel more trust and sympathy with the person that have a lot of means of sanctions at his/her disposal.
People have more positive attitudes when they see power as legitime and overall "important".
Legitimacy is also linked to the right of exercising authority, that we know from studies in adolescent groups the younger members fighting for power, had less impact influencing the others and were connotated as less competent or sympathetic.
Legitimacy is as well connected to the way the central person is nominated, for example when a board member of an organization is appointed by a political external power, affects positively the acceptance of the subordinates.
The exercise of authority is dependent on the people's representations have of the person invested by the formal authority, and legitimacy is not enough without the interaction of the person in command with the subordinates, on which the Legitimacy is built and consolidated.
Nietzsche's perspective is very interesting on how Power is exercised and how the personalities reveal themselves in that process.
"The thirst for equality can manifest itself in two ways: in the desire to subdue all others (by lowering them, suffocating them in silence, passing them a pothole); or in the desire to rise with all others (by rendering them justice, by helping them, rejoicing in the successes of others)" - Two Species of Equality by Nietzsche in the book Human, All Too Human
2 - The effects of Legitimacy
We will approach now legitimacy and the effects produced by elected power and the resulting expectancies on the group.Some studies have shown that the best-performing groups in a task were based on the leader appointed by his/her competence, and Groups with no leader or based in aleatory nomination had worst performances.
"We are in a time whose civilization is in danger of perishing by the means of civilization" - Danger of our civilization by Nietzsche in the book the Human, All Too Human
Other studies observed that groups with elected leaders for negotiation processes had more impact and tenacity that the ones that were not chosen.
Complementing this study Boyd in 1972 verified the hypothesis that the behavior of elected negotiators was more free and efficient, and the election is the strongest way to consolidate the legitimacy of power.
In any social exchange of this kind, the group always reward their elected choice for rulers, but they expect also good results, and this is not what's happening today in the oligarchic "politiconomics".
Today all elected leaders act contrary to the evidence of this experiences.
Democracy today is a participatory bureaucracy, llegitimating politicians to fight for their lobbies and personal interests, but gives the illusion to the people that they are still in control.
Elections are only a fabricated consensus to eliminate social conflict and create institutional stabilization with the aim of strengthening power.
"If the State acts one way, that turns an alternative to Human Nature, then its less evil to destroy the State"- Benedictus de SpinozaIn two other studies, one showed that an elected leader or a nominated by a recognized competent authority is felt by the group as more legitimate than the nominated by a non-specialist of a self-appointed one , and the other investigation revealed that the tolerance by the members in relation to an elected leader, there was the possibility of losing their influence and popularity if after a crisis or failure a leader didn't show success(es) he/she would be rejected.
So we can conclude that Authority is the legitimate use of Power over people if there is a perception of rightfulness, effectiveness, non-domination by coercive means, and influence without persuasion.
“Only willing acceptance gives legitimacy for anything to exist permanently.” - Steven Redhead, Life Is A Cocktail.In the last posts on the Series about the Power, we have analyzed the Nature of Power, its Notions, Dimensions and we finished with the Foundations of Power.
In this post, Part 1 - The Legitimacy of Authority we started with the Dynamics of Power, and the next five ones are about one of my favorite topics -Leadership- analyzing its Models, Characteristics, Relation and Decision-making processes.
After this series on the cycle of Power with the last post about The Effects and Consequences of Power.
Last posts in this series on Social Reality: Violence, Power and Change Introduction:
Social Reality: Violence, Power and Change
A - Violence:
An Introduction to ViolenceThe Concepts of Violence, Aggression, and Aggressiveness
The Theories on Violence
The influencers of Violence -Part One - Culture and Social Context
The influencers of Violence -Part Two - Social , Cognitive and Environmental Factors
The ascend of Today's Violence
B -Power:
What is Power? - IntroductionThe Nature of Power
Articles from the next series of posts about Social Reality, Violence, Power and Change:
The Dynamics of Power:- Part 1 - The Legitimacy of Authority - this post
- Part 2 - The Models of Leadership
- Part 3 - Characteristics of Leadership
- Part 4 - The Relation in Leadership
- Part 5 - Decision-making and Leadership
C - Change:
Change and CultureThe Theories and conceptualization of Change
Factors determining Change
The ways of Change
Social Change