Power, Charismatic And Charismatic Authority

Authority is the idea of power that is seen as legitimate. Power is the ability to effect the behaviour of others whilst authority then warrants that person to impact their actions without consequence. There are believed to be two different senses in which authority can be interpreted. First of all as normative terminology, political thinkers use it to refers to the ‘right to rule’ and that there is legitimacy in what we should obey moreover what we do obey.

Political scientists like to treat authority as a more descriptive concept. Max Weber, a German Sociologist, defined authority as the belief people have on righteousness regardless of moral justification or origin. From this he concluded that in this sense authority is a legitimate power. He then developed the different grounds from which leaders can gain obedience form subjects; Traditional authority, we obey because we always have like with monarchies, Charismatic authority, we obey and we don’t know why, which would look at those leaders like Hitler and Mussolini and lastly Legal-rational authority, we obey because we voted for you which is leaders like Obama. These types of authority can also overlap where for example Obama who was voted for has also been known to be quite a charismatic personality which may have influenced many a decision to vote for him.

Democracy is a government which reflects what the masses want, which literally means 'Rule by the People '. This therefore means that all people of the state are involved making decisions that affect them. In democracy there are two main types; direct or pure democracy and representative or indirect democracy.

Direct democracy allows for the whole of a population to have their say in the decisions made, proposing ne...

... middle of paper ...

...rity should be left.

With authority, Mill was very much against state getting too involved in the individual’s life. He believed that the individual should be able to follow and chose their own life plan without being obstructed or hindered by the state. However he was truly worried that this form of government would ultimately result in an intrusion upon people’s lives, and understood it would be hard for people to grasp these life plans being achieved without interception by the state. In his book ‘On Liberty’ he stated that the individual was self-sustaining and that the individual should be independent over themselves and their thoughts, feelings and movements. The state should only intervene when harm is forced upon to the individual but no sooner should they impinge. This is known as Mill’s harm theory, which has become prominent in modern day liberal theories.