Differentiating Authority, Power, and Legitimacy

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   literature on the topic is the entanglement of the concepts of
   authority, power, and legitimacy. This is a concern not only in the
   abstract (by which I mean that scholars discuss and disagree on how
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Power and Legitimacy

   Power is the ability, whether personal or social, to get things done
   -- either to enforce one's own will or to enforce the collective will
   of some group over others. Legitimacy is a socially constructed and
   psychologically accepted right to exercise power. A person can have
   legitimacy but no actual power (the legitimate king might reside in
   exile, destitute and forgotten). A person can have actual power but
   not legitimacy (the usurper who exiled the king and appropriates the
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   because in all social situations a person is treated as an authority
   only when they have both power and legitimacy. We might consider, for
   example, the phrase uttered so often when someone intrudes into our
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   claim to be heard or heeded. It might mean that the person has no
   social power -- he has not the ability to enforce his will over the
   objections of others. Or, it might be both. In any event, both must be
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   This is still not quite enough, however, because it defines authority
   a bit too closely to the concepts of legitimacy and power. When a
   person has authority over others, it means something a bit more than
   simply that they have a right to exercise existing power. The missing
   ingredient is psychological -- the previously mentioned but not
   explicated issue of acknowledgment. Both power and legitimacy are
   social in that they exist in the interplay between two or more humans.
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   It isn't simply that he accepts the factual existence of power or
   legitimacy; rather, it's also that he accepts that an authority figure
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   over you, nor will it have anything to do with the legitimacy of my
   power. Instead, it will simply be you exercising your will for your
   own reasons.
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   Consider the appropriate example of a priest as a religious authority
   over a congregation. This priest has the legitimate social power to
   see that his will and that of and his superiors is enforced over the
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   but doesn't -- authority means not having to explain everything but
   being able to wield legitimate power anyway.

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   rely upon authority figures to make decisions for us. As a part of
   this, we invest them with the power and legitimacy necessary to cause
   those decisions to be meaningful and relevant.
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    5. Religious Authority
    6. What is Authority? Differentiating Authority, Power, and
       Legitimacy