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Week 2 · Chapter

Chapter 2 — Power, Authority, Legitimacy & the State

Introduction to Political Science Free sample edition

The module's primary reading · ~40–50 minutes · Objective 2 (building on Objective 1) · Read it first this week; the lecture, the slides, the tutorial, the quiz, and the workshop all build on it.

In plain language

This week asks why anyone obeys a government at all. Power (the ability to make someone do what you want) is not the same as authority (power that people accept as rightful), and neither is the same as legitimacy (the shared belief that a whole system deserves obedience). You will learn what makes something a state (the lasting institution that rules a territory) and how it differs from a nation and from a government. Then you will read three famous answers to the question "why obey?" from Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, and test all three on a made-up country whose dictator has fallen and left no government behind.

Why you already care about this

Picture a pickup basketball game at a city park. A volunteer referee blows a whistle, and ten players stop running. A minute later a stranger on the sidewalk yells "stop!" and nobody even looks up. Both people used their voices. Only one was obeyed. What was the difference?

Now picture something darker. A person with a weapon steps out of an alley and demands your wallet. You hand it over. You obeyed again, but you would never say that person had a right to your wallet. You complied because you were afraid.

Those three moments hold the whole week. The referee had something the stranger lacked. The robber had something else entirely. Political scientists give these differences names, and once you can name them, you can ask the hardest question in the field: what turns raw force into a right to rule?

By the end of this chapter you will be able to:

tell power, authority, and legitimacy apart in a new case;
sort a leader's authority into Weber's three types and explain why real cases blend them;
check a place against the four criteria of a state and keep the state, the nation, and the government apart;
separate internal from external sovereignty and explain why 1648 is a marker, not a light switch;
match each pinned fragment to Hobbes, Locke, or Rousseau without swapping the first two;
run all three social contract answers on a new case and state each one at full strength.

Carry this line with you: power makes you comply; legitimacy makes you agree that you should.

Where we are

Already covered: Week 1 built the toolkit and the distinction that runs the course: an empirical claim says what is and can be checked, and a normative claim says what ought to be and is argued from values.
This week: power, authority, and legitimacy; Weber's three types of authority; the state, the nation, and the government; internal and external sovereignty; the Peace of Westphalia; and the social contract answers of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau.
How they connect: you will sort every fragment this week as empirical or normative, as you sorted the Declaration in Week 1. The "consent of the governed" you met there becomes a full theory of legitimacy here.
Where we're going next: Week 3, Political Ideologies, asks what the major ideologies value, fear, and argue, and many of them grow from the answers you meet in this chapter.

Week 1 ended on a preview. The Declaration of Independence (1776) says governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed". That phrase was a standard of legitimacy, and you met it before you had the word. This week gives you the word, two neighbors it is often confused with, and three thinkers who argued about where it comes from. Keep your Week 1 habit close: before you judge a sentence, say what kind of claim it is.

1. Tell power, authority, and legitimacy apart

Go back to the robber in the alley. The robber got exactly what the robber wanted. That is power in its rawest form. But the robber had no right to command you, and no one, including you, believes the arrangement deserves your obedience.

The referee at the park is different. Players stop when the whistle blows because they accept that the referee's call settles the play. The stranger on the sidewalk has the same lungs and the same volume, and gets nothing.

Here are the course's three definitions. Keep them word for word.

Power is the capacity to make another actor comply, to do what it otherwise would not, with force included among the means.
Authority is power that the people subject to it recognize as rightful, a right to command that is usually attached to an office or a rule.
Legitimacy is the broad, widely shared belief that a ruler or a whole system has a right to rule and deserves obedience.

Notice how the three nest. Power is the widest idea: anyone who can make you comply has it. Authority narrows it to power people accept as rightful. Legitimacy widens the lens again, from one command to a whole system: do people believe the system itself deserves their obedience?

Worked example — the armed-robber sort. Check the robber against each idea in turn.

Power? Yes. You handed over the wallet, so the robber made you comply.
Authority? No. No one recognizes a right to command here, not even the robber's victim.
Legitimacy? No. No one believes this arrangement deserves obedience.

So the robber has 1 of the 3 ideas: full power, with no authority and no legitimacy. In words, force can get compliance without ever earning a right.

Worked example — a workplace. A new shift supervisor at a hardware store (an illustrative case) is appointed by the regional office. On her first day she tells two clerks to restock the paint aisle, and they do it. She has power (they comply) and authority (they accept the supervisor's office as the place such orders come from). Whether the store's whole system of command is legitimate is a broader question about whether staff believe the system deserves their obedience at all.

Misconception check. Students often use power, authority, and legitimacy as three words for one thing, because in everyday talk "the people in power" and "the authorities" sound the same. The cure is the robber. If the three words meant the same thing, the robber would have all three. The robber has only the first, so they must be different ideas.

Memory hook: power gets compliance; authority adds a right; legitimacy adds belief.

2. Sort authority with Weber's three types

Think about why people follow three different leaders. A village council of elders is obeyed because the council has always settled disputes that way. A movement's founder draws thousands of followers who believe the founder is extraordinary. A city clerk issues a building permit, and people accept it because the law gives that office the job. All three have authority. They got it in three different ways.

Max Weber sorted those ways in a 1919 lecture, "Politics as a Vocation" ("Politik als Beruf"). The lecture is still under copyright in English, so this course teaches it in words and never quotes it. Weber named three types of legitimate authority:

Traditional authority is Weber's type of legitimate authority that rests on custom and long practice, so people obey because things have always been done this way.
Charismatic authority is Weber's type of legitimate authority that rests on followers' devotion to a leader they see as extraordinary, so it is attached to the person rather than an office.
Legal-rational authority is Weber's type of legitimate authority that rests on rules and offices, so people obey the position and the procedure rather than the person who holds it.

Weber's types are an ideal type set. An ideal type is a simplified model that sharpens the features of a pattern for comparison; real systems blend several ideal types rather than matching one exactly. That matters for how you use them. You never ask "which box is this leader in?" You ask "which type carries the most weight here, and which others are mixed in?"

Worked example — three types in three settings. Sort each case by the source of its authority.

A neighborhood association (illustrative) where members accept the oldest founding family's choice of who chairs the meeting, because it has been done that way for decades. The authority rests on custom, so it is mainly traditional.
A student robotics club that formed around one speaker whose speeches drew huge crowds, and whose members follow that speaker's lead. The authority rests on devotion to the person, so it is mainly charismatic.
A campus senate whose bylaws say the elected treasurer signs every payment. Members obey the office and the written rule, not the person, so it is mainly legal-rational.

Now add the blend. Suppose the treasurer in case 3 is also hugely admired, and members follow her lead on matters the bylaws never mention. The case is still mainly legal-rational, with a charismatic strand mixed in. That mix is normal, not a sorting error. Limitation: an ideal type is a tool for comparing cases, so it cannot tell you on its own which type a group ought to have.

Misconception check. Students often think "legitimate means elected." It is tempting, because elections are the most familiar way you have seen authority handed over. But Weber's traditional and charismatic types can be fully legitimate in the eyes of the people who follow them, with no election at all. Whether one type is better than another is a normative question, argued from values. Which type a case shows is an empirical question, checked against why people actually obey.

Memory hook: custom, devotion, or the rulebook: ask which one people are really obeying.

3. Define the state: four criteria, and state versus nation versus government

Picture a map with a border drawn around a country. Inside the line live millions of people. Somewhere a capital city houses ministries, courts, and a police force. And other countries send ambassadors there, treating it as a country like their own. Each of those pictures is one piece of what political scientists call a state.

Weber's definition, again in words, is that the state is a community that successfully claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of force within a territory. Notice the word legitimate. Plenty of people use force. The state is the one that claims the sole right to.

For checking a real or invented case, the course uses four conventional criteria. The four together are a classroom model, and real cases can be messy at the edges.

State — the lasting political institution that claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of force within a territory, identified in this course by four criteria: territory, population, government, and sovereignty.

The four criteria, in plain words: a territory (a defined piece of land), a population (people who live there permanently), a government (people running things), and sovereignty (final authority, which section 4 splits in two).

Three words get tangled here more than anywhere else in the course, so pull them apart now.

Nation — a people who see themselves as sharing an identity, such as a culture, history, or language, whether or not they have a state of their own.
Government — the office-holders of the moment who run a state; a government can fall or be voted out while the state itself persists.

Worked example — the illustrative country of Velmora. In Velmora, a dictatorship has fallen and no functioning government has replaced it yet. Check it against the four criteria.

Territory? Yes. Velmora's borders have not moved.
Population? Yes. Velmorans still live there.
Government? No. No functioning government exists yet.
Sovereignty? Split. Other states still treat Velmora as independent, but no one holds supreme authority at home.

Criteria fully met: 2 of 4. Then sort the triad. The government fell. The state persists as the institution the next government will run. The nation, the people who see themselves as Velmorans, persists too. In words, a fallen government is not a vanished state.

Misconception check. Students often treat state, nation, and government as one word, because news reports say "the state," "the nation," and "the government" for the same country in one breath. The cure is to ask what changes. A government changes at an election or a collapse. The state persists through the change. A nation can exist with no state of its own, as a people who share an identity across borders.

Memory hook: the government is who is driving; the state is the car; the nation is the people who call it theirs.

4. Split sovereignty: inside and outside, and the 1648 marker

Imagine a city council that passes a parking rule, only for a county board to cancel it. The council turns out not to have the final word. Sovereignty is about who has the final word, and it faces two directions at once.

Sovereignty — a claim to final authority over a territory and its people, which is a claim about the right to decide, not a measure of strength.
Internal sovereignty — supreme authority at home: no person or group inside the territory can overrule the state's final decisions.
External sovereignty — independence from outside control: other states treat this state as an equal that no outside power commands.

Velmora shows the two coming apart. Its external sovereignty holds, because other states still deal with it as independent. Its internal sovereignty is in doubt, because no one inside can make a final decision stick.

International texts write external sovereignty into their rules. The U.N. Charter (1945), Article 2(1), reads: "The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members." A very small member and a very large one are equal in that legal sense. That is a claim about rights, not about strength.

Where did the system of sovereign states come from? Political science uses the Peace of Westphalia (1648) as its conventional marker. In the course's words, it is the settlement of 1648 that marks the start of the modern system of sovereign states, a marker historians treat as a simplification. Here is the honesty note. Historians caution that the change was gradual. States did not switch on all at once in one year. The course uses 1648 as a handy date for a long process, and you should, too.

Misconception check. Students often read sovereignty as "being powerful." It is tempting, because large, strong countries seem the most sovereign. But sovereignty is a claim to final authority, not a ranking of strength. A small state can be fully sovereign. A second trap is reading 1648 as a light switch, as if every modern state appeared that year. It is a conventional marker for a long change.

Memory hook: inside, no one above; outside, no one in charge.

5. Read Hobbes: obey, because chaos is worse

Imagine the power goes out across a whole city for a week. No police answer calls, no courts open, and no one is in charge. What do people do? Some help their neighbors. Some lock their doors. Some take what they can. Thinkers in the social contract tradition start from a question like that one.

Social contract — a tradition of political thought that explains and judges government by asking what agreement free people would make with one another, and why they should obey at all.
State of nature — the thought experiment of human life without any common power or government, used by social contract thinkers to show what government is for.

The first great answer came from Thomas Hobbes (1651), Leviathan. A leviathan is a giant sea creature, and the book's title uses it as an image of a great common power. In Chapter XIII he describes the state of nature as a war "where every man is Enemy to every man". In that condition, he writes, life is "solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short".

A note on spelling: the Project Gutenberg edition this course pins keeps the spelling of 1651, so "poore" is not a typo. Inside a quotation the old spelling stays; outside it, you write "poor".

Hobbes's remedy follows from his fear. People should hand power to a near-absolute sovereign, because any government is better than the war of all against all. The memory hook the whole course uses: Hobbes fears chaos.

Worked example — sort Hobbes's two fragments by kind. Apply your Week 1 sort.

"where every man is Enemy to every man" — this describes what Hobbes predicts people do with no common power. It is empirical-leaning: a claim about what is, or would be.
"solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short" — this describes what life would be like. It is also empirical-leaning.
His conclusion, set up a strong sovereign — this says what people ought to do. It is normative.

Two empirical-leaning premises lead to one normative conclusion. In words, Hobbes argues from a picture of what life without government is like to a claim about what we should accept.

Misconception check. Students often think Hobbes was praising tyranny for its own sake. It is tempting, because his sovereign is near-absolute. But his argument is a comparison: he claims that even a harsh sovereign beats a war of everyone against everyone. You can reject the comparison. You should reject it for a reason, not because you misread what it says.

6. Read Locke: obey by consent, and only within limits

Think about a lease on an apartment. You sign it, so you agree to the rules and the rent. If the landlord stops making repairs, breaks into your unit, or doubles the rent mid-lease, you would say the deal itself has been broken. That everyday idea of a deal with limits is close to John Locke's answer.

Locke (1689), Second Treatise of Government, cites his ideas by numbered section, written with the sign §. In §95 he says people are "by nature, all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent". (The page prints the opening word in capitals; the pinned fragment starts after it.) In §6 he states a natural law: "no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions".

Consent — agreement given by the people who will be ruled; in Locke's account it is the only way a free person can rightfully be placed under political power.

For Locke, government is a limited trust. People consent to it so it will protect their lives, liberty, and possessions. If it turns tyrannical, the trust can be revoked. You may hear an echo of Week 1 here: the Declaration's "consent of the governed" and its right "to alter or to abolish" a destructive government follow the same shape. The memory hook: Locke fears tyranny.

Worked example — sort Locke's two fragments by kind. Apply the same sort to Locke.

§95, no one can be "subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent" — this is a claim about when rule is rightful. It is normative.
§6, "no one ought to harm another" — the word ought gives it away. It is normative.

Both of Locke's pinned fragments are normative. In words, Locke argues from what people are owed to what a government may rightfully do.

Misconception check. The signature trap of the week is swapping Hobbes and Locke. Chatbots and hurried readers do it often: they hand you "solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short" as Locke's, or credit Hobbes with government by consent that can be revoked. It is tempting, because both men wrote social contract theories in the same century. The cure is the memory hook. Hobbes fears chaos, so his fragments describe the war of all against all. Locke fears tyranny, so his fragments are about consent and limits. A second trap carries over from Week 1: Locke's own trio is "life, liberty, and property," and the Declaration's trio is "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

7. Read Rousseau: the people as sovereign

Think about a group project in which one member quietly makes every decision while the others go along. Everyone is technically free to speak up. Yet the group's work is not really the group's. Jean-Jacques Rousseau worried about that gap between being free and living free.

Rousseau (1762), The Social Contract, opens Book I, Chapter 1 with one of the most famous lines in political thought: "Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains." This course pins the Cole translation on Project Gutenberg. One edition note, said once: that edition's introduction prints the line with a comma where Book I prints a semicolon, and the course follows Book I.

Rousseau's answer to "why obey?" is that legitimate authority belongs to the people themselves. The people, acting together, are the sovereign. He called their shared will the general will.

General will — Rousseau's name for the will of the people acting together as their own sovereign, which he treats as the source of legitimate authority.

This course names the general will here and leaves its full development for later weeks.

Worked example — one sentence, two kinds. Sort Rousseau's line.

"Man is born free" — a claim about the standing people have by nature. It is normative.
"and everywhere he is in chains" — a description of how people actually live. It is empirical-leaning.

So the fragment is mixed. Now tally the week's pinned fragments: 2 empirical-leaning (Hobbes) + 2 normative (Locke) + 1 mixed (Rousseau), so 2 + 2 + 1 = 5 pinned fragments. In words, one famous sentence can carry two kinds of claim, and your job is to label each half.

Misconception check. Students often read "everywhere he is in chains" as a call to tear down all government. It is tempting, because the image is so dramatic. But Rousseau's answer, as this course teaches it, is not "no government." It is authority that belongs to the people themselves. The line opens a question; it does not close it.

The three texts also sit on a timeline you can compute. From Leviathan to the Second Treatise is 1689 − 1651 = 38 years. From the Second Treatise to The Social Contract is 1762 − 1689 = 73 years. Across all three is 1762 − 1651 = 111 years. And Leviathan came 1651 − 1648 = 3 years after the Westphalia marker. In words, the three answers were argued over more than a century, by writers who read and answered one another's ideas.

8. Run the three lenses on a new country

Return to Velmora (illustrative). The dictator has fled. The army is unsure whom to obey. Shops are closed, and people are asking the oldest question in political science: why should we obey anyone at all? Here is how each thinker would answer, stated as fairly as a defender would state it.

Worked example — the three lenses on Velmora. Take each thinker in turn.

Hobbes's lens. Velmora is sliding toward the state of nature, a war "where every man is Enemy to every man". Proponents of this answer argue that no right is safe without order, so Velmorans should set up a strong sovereign quickly. Critics respond that a near-absolute sovereign is the very thing Velmora escaped.
Locke's lens. No one can be "subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent". Proponents argue that only consent makes rule rightful, so Velmorans should build a limited government by agreement, a trust they may revoke if it turns tyrannical. Critics respond that organizing consent takes time that a power vacuum may not give.
Rousseau's lens. People are "born free", so the people themselves must be the sovereign. Proponents argue that any other ruler would be a new set of chains. Critics respond that the people disagree, so someone must still decide who speaks for them.

Now label the layers. That each thinker said these things is empirical: you can check it against the pinned texts. Which lens should guide Velmora is normative: it depends on whether you fear chaos, tyranny, or rule by others more. Political science does not hand you that verdict. It hands you the tools to argue it well. Think back to the referee's whistle at the park: Velmora needs someone whose call people accept, and each thinker gives a different reason they should.

Misconception check. Students often think one of the three thinkers must be "the right answer," and that the course is hiding it. It is tempting, because textbooks of other subjects usually end on a correct answer. Here the disagreement is the lesson. Each answer rests on a different fear, and which fear matters most is a value question you have to argue.

Pause and think. Choose one of these two options, and write three or four sentences.

(a) Pick the lens you find least convincing for Velmora and state its strongest case as fairly as its best defender would.
(b) Name a group you belong to (a team, a job, a club) and say which of Weber's three types of authority carries the most weight there, and why people obey it.

Memory hook: Hobbes fears chaos, Locke fears tyranny, Rousseau puts sovereignty in the people.

Key terms

power — The capacity to make another actor comply, to do what it otherwise would not, with force included among the means. (first used: 1. Tell power, authority, and legitimacy apart)
authority — Power that the people subject to it recognize as rightful, a right to command that is usually attached to an office or a rule. (first used: 1. Tell power, authority, and legitimacy apart)
legitimacy — The broad, widely shared belief that a ruler or a whole system has a right to rule and deserves obedience. (first used: 1. Tell power, authority, and legitimacy apart)
traditional authority — Weber's type of legitimate authority that rests on custom and long practice, so people obey because things have always been done this way. (first used: 2. Sort authority with Weber's three types)
charismatic authority — Weber's type of legitimate authority that rests on followers' devotion to a leader they see as extraordinary, so it is attached to the person rather than an office. (first used: 2. Sort authority with Weber's three types)
legal-rational authority — Weber's type of legitimate authority that rests on rules and offices, so people obey the position and the procedure rather than the person who holds it. (first used: 2. Sort authority with Weber's three types)
ideal type — A simplified model that sharpens the features of a pattern for comparison; real systems blend several ideal types rather than matching one exactly. (first used: 2. Sort authority with Weber's three types)
state — The lasting political institution that claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of force within a territory, identified in this course by four criteria: territory, population, government, and sovereignty. (first used: 3. Define the state: four criteria, and state versus nation versus government)
nation — A people who see themselves as sharing an identity, such as a culture, history, or language, whether or not they have a state of their own. (first used: 3. Define the state: four criteria, and state versus nation versus government)
government — The office-holders of the moment who run a state; a government can fall or be voted out while the state itself persists. (first used: 3. Define the state: four criteria, and state versus nation versus government)
sovereignty — A claim to final authority over a territory and its people, which is a claim about the right to decide, not a measure of strength. (first used: 4. Split sovereignty: inside and outside, and the 1648 marker)
internal sovereignty — Supreme authority at home: no person or group inside the territory can overrule the state's final decisions. (first used: 4. Split sovereignty: inside and outside, and the 1648 marker)
external sovereignty — Independence from outside control: other states treat this state as an equal that no outside power commands. (first used: 4. Split sovereignty: inside and outside, and the 1648 marker)
Peace of Westphalia — The settlement of 1648 that political science uses as its conventional marker for the start of the modern system of sovereign states, a marker historians treat as a simplification. (first used: 4. Split sovereignty: inside and outside, and the 1648 marker)
social contract — A tradition of political thought that explains and judges government by asking what agreement free people would make with one another, and why they should obey at all. (first used: 5. Read Hobbes: obey, because chaos is worse)
state of nature — The thought experiment of human life without any common power or government, used by social contract thinkers to show what government is for. (first used: 5. Read Hobbes: obey, because chaos is worse)
consent — Agreement given by the people who will be ruled; in Locke's account it is the only way a free person can rightfully be placed under political power. (first used: 6. Read Locke: obey by consent, and only within limits)
general will — Rousseau's name for the will of the people acting together as their own sovereign, which he treats as the source of legitimate authority. (first used: 7. Read Rousseau: the people as sovereign)

Summary

Power gets compliance; authority is power accepted as rightful; legitimacy is the shared belief that a system deserves obedience.
The armed robber has power and nothing else.
Weber (1919) named traditional, charismatic, and legal-rational authority; they are ideal types that real cases blend.
Legitimate does not mean elected; which type is best is a normative question.
A state has territory, population, government, and sovereignty; a government can fall while the state persists.
Internal sovereignty is the final word at home; external sovereignty is independence abroad.
1648 marks the modern state system by convention, as a simplification.
Hobbes (1651) fears chaos; Locke (1689) fears tyranny; Rousseau (1762) puts sovereignty in the people.
Which answer should guide a new country is your normative call; state each side fairly first.

Check your understanding

Work these before looking at the answers — they are ungraded, and the answers (with reasoning) are at the bottom of the page.

A hiking club (an illustrative case) is stuck on a mountain trail in a storm. A stranger with a loud voice orders everyone back down, and they obey out of fear. The club's elected trip leader then tells them to wait in a shelter, and they obey because the club's rules give the leader that call. For each person, say which of power, authority, and legitimacy is present.
An island territory (invented) has fixed borders, about 9,000 permanent residents, and an elected council, but a larger neighbor's governor can overrule any council decision. Check it against the four criteria and name which kind of sovereignty is missing.
A chatbot writes: "Locke warned that without government, life would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short, which is why he argued for an all-powerful ruler." Find the two errors and correct them.
A fan club (illustrative) follows its founder because members admire her, but its handbook also says the treasurer must sign every payment. Which of Weber's types are present, and why is that mix not a mistake?

Answers (worked reasoning — read after attempting)

The stranger has power only: the hikers comply, but no one recognizes a right to command, so there is no authority and no legitimacy. The trip leader has power and authority: the hikers comply and accept the leader's office as the rightful place that order comes from. If the members also believe the club's whole system of choosing leaders deserves obedience, the system has legitimacy as well. Same mountain, same order, different sources of obedience.
Territory: yes. Population: yes. Government: yes, the elected council. Sovereignty: no, because an outside governor can overrule the council, so the island lacks external sovereignty (independence from outside control). That gives 3 of 4 criteria, so by the course's model it is not a sovereign state, whatever its council is called.
First, the fragment is Hobbes's, not Locke's: Hobbes (1651), Leviathan, Chapter XIII. Second, the pinned edition reads "solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short", with the 1651 spelling "poore". The chatbot also swaps the argument: the near-absolute ruler is Hobbes's remedy, while Locke argued for limited government by consent that the people may revoke. Hobbes fears chaos; Locke fears tyranny.
Charismatic authority (devotion to the founder) and legal-rational authority (the handbook's rule for the treasurer's office) are both present. Weber's types are ideal types, simplified models, so real groups blend them. The useful question is which type carries the most weight on a given decision, not which single box the club fits.

Next up: the Readings & Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, the quiz, and the discussion; next week brings a values-fears-arguments model for each ideology.

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