Authority and Democracy

April Carter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135027377
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book debates the nature and functions of authority: it examines how far our inherited images of authority derive from an aristocratic and traditional order and considers which models of authority are still relevant in a democratic and rationalist society. It discusses the characteristics of the authority relationship, whether political authority differs from other kinds of authority, how authority relates to power and whether authority should be distinguished from the concept of legitimate rule.

The latter part of the book explores the relevance or irrelevance of authority in contemporary society. In particular it examines recent libertarian arguments for the rejection of all forms of authority and the special problems of creating and maintaining authority after revolution.

Chapter 1

Authority in the Ancien Régime

One way of trying to understand authority is to look for models of authentic authority in a historical and social context. This approach has two advantages: it is illuminating about the social customs, attitudes and beliefs which have been historically associated with the phenomenon of authority; and it makes explicit the hazy images of the past which influence our commonsense understanding of authority. Several possible images of authority can be derived from previous societies, but the most central image that we inherit is of hierarchical authority in the aristocratic order of Europe before the French Revolution, in which authority was inherent in the relationships between superior and subordinate within an ordered gradation of rank. The concept of aristocratic society, coined by De Tocqueville to denote the social order of the ancien régime, is more precise than the broader and more abstract concept of community usually favoured by sociologists.

The Ideal Type of Aristocratic Society

The ideal type of aristocratic society is characterized by strict hierarchy of social status, age and sex. The social hierarchy is maintained by a willing acceptance of this order of society, a unifying set of values and a world view which enshrines and legitimizes hierarchy. Its morality is largely unreflecting, expressed through customary modes of action, through etiquette and through generally accepted prejudices.

Within aristocratic society one of the most central forms of authority is that of the patriarchal head of the household. De Tocqueville, when exploring the distinctions between the old aristocratic society of Europe and the democratic society of the new world of America, noted that one characteristic difference lay in the nature of the family. In America, he remarked, ‘the family in the Roman and aristocratic signification of the word does not exist’, and he went on to define the typical form of the family in Europe (Democracy in America, p. 230):

In aristocracies, then, the Father is not only the civil head of the family, but the organ of its traditions, the expounder of its customs, the arbiter of its manners. He is listened to with deference, is addressed with respect and the love which is felt for him is always tempered with fear.

In this type of aristocratic family not only is the father set apart, but the children are all graded by their age and sex into different ranks with distinct privileges and obligations.

One of the most vivid descriptions of the head of an aristocratic family is given by Giuseppe di Lampedusa, who portrays the traditional values of the House of Salina in Sicily at a time when the old order is under assault from Garibaldi’s rebel army and the more insidious influences of the modern age. The novel starts with the Prince conducting prayers for the household, but a more telling ritual is that of the dinner-table (The Leopard, p. 20):

Dinner at the Villa Salina was served with the slightly shabby grandeur then customary in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The number of those taking part (fourteen in all, with the master and mistress of the house, children, governesses and tutors) was itself enough to give the dining-table an imposing air… When he entered the dining-room, the whole party was already assembled, only the Princess was sitting, the rest standing behind their chairs. Opposite his own chair flanked by a pile of plates, swelled the silver flanks of the enormous soup tureen with its cover surmounted by a prancing Leopard. The Prince ladled out the minestra himself, a pleasant chore, a symbol of his proud duties as paterfamilias.

The hierarchy of the household was a microcosm of the order of society, a society in which pupils were subordinate to their teachers, apprentices to their masters, commoners to the nobility, laymen to the clergy, subjects to their sovereign, and everyone to their God. The social belief in the inevitability of hierarchy can be extended beyond the human sphere to embrace the heavenly and natural world as well. Medieval Christian philosophy elaborated a cosmology which specified the gradations of degree in God’s universe, stretching down through the several orders of angels and other heavenly beings to man and to the lower forms of animal and plant life. It is this world view which Burke evokes, in a more general and abstract form, in passages of the Reflections, in particular the famous passage which opens ‘Society is indeed a contract…’ and culminates in an appeal to ‘the great primaeval contract of eternal society … connecting the visible and invisible world’ (Reflections on the Revolution in France, pp. 194–5).

There are two important points to note about the nature of authority within the ideal type of aristocratic society. The first is that the idea of authority, far from being sharply defined, is so diffuse that it is possible to dispense with it altogether in delineating the various social relationships. Consider Burke’s rhetorical enumeration of the blessings of English society compared with the anarchy and despotism experienced in France:

We fear God; we look up with awe to kings; with affection to parliament; with duty to magistrates; with reverence to priests; and with respect to nobility (p. 182).

The attitudes of veneration and deference and a sense of duty can be adduced to explain why people obey their superiors without recourse to the concept of authority as such. Robert Nisbet, in his characterization of authority in aristocratic society, suggests that ‘authority is hardly recognized as having separate or even distinguishable identity’. He comments (The Sociological Tradition, pp. 107–8):

Deeply embodied in social functions, an inalienable part of the inner order of the family, neighbourhood, parish, and guild, ritualized at every turn, authority is so closely woven into the fabric of tradition and morality as to be scarcely more noticeable than the air men breathe.

The second point about authority relationships in aristocratic society is that they are necessarily based on social and economic coercion and often entail the use of considerable force. In the patriarchal family, where the father enjoyed his unquestioned right to command, the wife was economically and legally subject to her husband, and the children were often punished harshly for disobedience; in the wider society pupils and apprentices were strictly disciplined by their masters, priests threatened their flocks with dire supernatural retribution for disobedience, and the resources of the law and the force of the state could be invoked to keep the lower orders in their place.

Whether aristocratic society is delineated primarily in terms of unreflecting obedience based on habit, deference and duty or in terms of social, economic and political repression depends largely on the political views of the interpreter. Conservatives naturally stress the element of voluntary respect and radicals the element of coercion. An image of authority derived from aristocratic society must clearly allow for both the subordinate’s sense of duty to obey and the superior’s ability to enforce obedience. This concept of authority also entails belief in the right of those in superior positions to give orders to those below them, a right which is inherent in the very fact of the social hierarchy, although it may be justified in addition by appeal to tradition, religion or the order of the universe. The adjective corresponding to this form of authority is ‘authoritarian’.

There is, however, quite a different model of authority which can be discovered in aristocratic society: that is the authority of wisdom, learning or skill. The authority of the old over the young can be justified by their experience and greater knowledge, while the authority of the teacher or master craftsman is explicitly based on specialized knowledge and skill. This kind of authority is intrinsically different from hierarchical authority: it does not depend on social status but on the respect accorded a tradition of knowledge and the expertise of the individual practitioner, and it confers not a right to command in the strict sense of the word but the right to convey information or to give counsel. The adjective corresponding to this form of authority is ‘authoritative’.

Within aristocratic society the distinction between hierarchical authority and the authority based on special skill or knowledge was blurred because the social order tended to assimilate the two kinds of authority in a single role. The teacher and the master craftsman were placed in authority over their pupils. Parents’ right to guide their children because of their greater age and experience could not be disentangled from their natural superiority in the social hierarchy. Moreover there is a sense in which the organization of aristocratic society tended to create special ability, and therefore a right to make authoritative decisions. So long as social arrangements ensure that men are better educated and more experienced in most spheres of life than women, and that the nobility do, in some sense, represent the best in society, then the authority accruing to men and the well-born tends to seem right and natural.

Pluralism and Freedom

A picture of aristocratic society which highlights the hierarchical and authoritarian nature of social relationships suggests at first glance a society which allows very little freedom. Yet aristocratic society is represented by a number of political theorists as a society guaranteeing political and social freedom, and both Robert Nisbet and Hannah Arendt suggest there is an intrinsic connexion between the kind of authority embodied in hierarchical society and the preservation of freedom. This connexion becomes clearer when it is observed that the ideal type of aristocratic society can yield a very different conception of authority – a conception which distinguishes between authority limited to a specific sphere and the claims of a potentially all-embracing sovereign power. This focus on social pluralism lays less stress on the relationships within institutions like the family than on the relations between various autonomous institutions – family, guild, university and church – and the state. The pluralist view of aristocratic society is contrasted with alternative types of unfree society – Hannah Arendt compares it with the equality of all subjects before their ruler and the total lack of liberty entailed in the Greek model of tyranny, and Nisbet compares it with modern democratic despotism.

Nisbet suggests that after the French Revolution conservative theorists saw two types of society to be in conflict with each other: the aristocratic type in which the power of the central government was limited by the independence of the aristocracy, by the autonomy of social, economic, educational and religious bodies and by the decentralization of power to local political bodies with customary and legal privileges; and the emerging society in which the destruction of custom and privilege in all its forms and the abolition of social rank left all citizens equally helpless before the inroads of despotic power exercised by a centralizing government. The first type of society can be encapsulated in the idea of ‘social authority’ – and what this means above all is a society in which there is a plurality of bodies with their own spheres of interest, values and jurisdictions and their own authorities – as opposed to the spectre of all-encompassing political power presented by the state which lays claim to jurisdiction in all spheres and tolerates no competing or independent authorities: the state as envisaged in Hobbes’s Leviathan.

Theorists who draw on the model of aristocratic society necessarily associate pluralism with the existence of social hierarchy and in particular with an aristocracy. In this context the aristocracy can be seen as playing several different roles. De Tocqueville stresses the aristocracy’s social role in upholding and promoting a set of cultural standards and their political role in acting as a check on central monarchial power, and hence as a guarantor of political pluralism, in an idealized aristocratic society; though they had failed to fulfil this political function in France prior to the Revolution. Because he was not primarily concerned with the social status of the aristocracy, De Tocqueville could explore the possibility of a pluralist and free society in an egalitarian and democratic context in America, and despite his misgivings about the spread of equality he did not claim social hierarchy was always and intrinsically necessary to political freedom. Burke on the other hand defended the aristocracy not only as a bulwark against despotic government but also because he attributed to them superior political skill and saw social deference to rank as a necessary element in political stability. It is Burke’s eloquent defence of English society against the terrors which sprang from social levelling in France that suggests an inextricable link between social hierarchy and the enjoyment of constitutional liberties. It is a Burkean view of the world that Nisbet consciously evokes in his book The Twilight of Authority and he quotes Burke to deplore the disrepute into which the word hierarchy has fallen and urges that the philosophy of pluralism is rooted ‘in frank recognition of the value inherent in hierarchy’ (p. 238).

Burke can be cited as an exponent of the connexion between authority and freedom because of the nature of English society and government which he was concerned to defend. The social hierarchy in late eighteenth-century England was not wholly rigid, so that the individual was not necessarily bound to the station in life defined by his birth, and Burke does not argue simply for an aristocracy of the blood but for an aristocracy of dignity and talent that implies a degree of openness at the top. Moreover Burke was upholding a constitutional and partially representative form of government in which the crown was circumscribed within agreed limits and in which the individual could claim inherited rights and liberties. Burke is the most persuasive of conservative political theorists not only because of the eloquence of his writing but because of the moderation of his general position and the liberal elements in his conservatism.

The Problem of Restoring Aristocratic Authority

It is instructive to compare Burke with the French political theorists of conservatism writing after the Revolution. Bonald and De Maistre. They are more truly theorists of a pure ideal type of aristocratic society, in which the political authority of the sovereign is an extension of the patriarchal authority of a father over his family and the monarchy crowns the social hierarchy. The French conservatives bring out clearly the coercive nature of authority relationships in a strictly hierarchical society and they also illustrate the peculiar problems facing theorists who seek to ‘restore authority’ in a society where many of the social and political bases for hierarchical forms of authority have been destroyed.

Bonald and De Maistre hoped to restore order by reasserting the sanctity of rank, the monarch’s absolute right to rule and the overarching religious domination of the Catholic church. Bonald’s conception of the family stressed the unconditional obedience due to the husband by his wife and to their parents by the children; his ideal society was based on the relationship between a hereditary nobility and a loyal peasantry – industrialism was to be shunned as one of the factors disturbing traditional patterns of life and belief and undermining social stability. Bonald argued for absolute monarchy, attacking the very conception of a division of powers as one of the causes of division in the body politic and a prelude to revolution. The social and political bounds of this restored aristocratic society were to be cemented by the religious unity imposed by the Catholic church: Bonald regarded diversity of religion as a source of civil discord, so both freedom of religion and freedom of thought should be suppressed in favour of true religion. Catholicism had the added merit of promoting unconditional political obedience, whereas in Bonald’s eyes the doctrines of protestantism encouraged free-thinking individualism and so were inherently subversive of social order and loyalty to superiors.

Bonald therefore was a theorist of absolutism and an opponent of individual freedom. But absolutism did not imply that total or arbitrary power could be wielded by the sovereign, who was constrained by obedience to the will of God, by awareness of the importance of respecting the natural ordering of society and by a sense of duty towards his people. Monarchical absolutism was bound by tradition to respect the autonomy of spheres of social authority – of the family, guild and church. Authority in Bonald’s theory implied an absolute right to command obedience, but within a clearly defined sphere,

De Maistre also desired a restoration of the ancien régime under an absolute monarch acknowledging the spiritual authority of the pope, though he was prepared to concede that the appropriateness of a form of government depended on the social conditions in a country. De Maistre is distinguished from other conservative theorists by his much greater readiness to emphasize the necessity of physical and spiritual violence and by the cynicism with which he prescribes the benefits of religion. In a celebrated passage of the ‘St. Petersburg Dialogues’ he invokes the executioner and torturer as a pillar of the social order (p. 192). and he suggests too that the most important reason for a religious restoration is that it will help to keep the masses obedient through fear of supernatural tortures to come. De Maistre’s God appears to be primarily a God of violence, who promotes war in order to exact divine vengeance for human iniquity (pp. 251–4). Despite his detestation of the rationalism of the philosophes, De Maistre’s political reflections draw heavily on Rousseau and in particular on Rousseau’s concept of sovereignty. De Maistre accepts that there may be a division of governmental powers, as in England, but formal sovereignty is achieved when these powers are in agreement and there are then no limits to their power. It is logically inevitable that sovereignty should be absolute and should be unlimited (pp. 112–13). In his treatment of sovereignty De Maistre is closer to Hobbes and Rousseau than to the conservative theorists of limited authority and social pluralism.

A comparison of Burke, Bonald and De Maistre suggests two major conclusions. The first is that authority is not compatible with absolutism. If authority can only exist when its sphere is delimited and if authority is associated with a degree of political freedom, then political authority can only be found in constitutional régimes, where there are explicit and enforceable limits to governmental power. De Maistre’s concern is not with political authority but with sovereignty maintained by force, and although there is an element of pluralism in Bonald’s picture of society it is extremely questionable how far political absolutism can allow real freedom or how the political sphere can be confined in practice – indeed De Tocqueville analysed in some detail how the ancien régime in France prior to the Revolution had undermined social pluralism and had strengthened centralized political power. The second conclusion that can be drawn is that it is unrealistic to try to re-create a hierarchical form of authority when social change has undermined the bases for this kind of social order, and that attempts to do so necessarily involve resort to violence and suppression of freedom. Bonald’s proposals for restoring not only the monarchy but an aristocratic form of society were wholly impractical after the political and social rupture with the past brought about by the Revolution and in the light of general economic and social trends, as subsequent French history shows. De ...