Course: Introduction to Political Science (POLS 1) · Silver Oak University (fictional sample) · Prof. Halloran
Module: Week 2 of 16 · Fall 2026 · in-person, two 75-minute sessions
Objectives covered: Objective 2 — explain power, authority, legitimacy, and the state — including sovereignty and the social contract tradition (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau) — and apply these concepts to real political cases.

This file holds two pieces: (A) the Module 2 Overview page ("Start Here") and (B) the Welcome Announcement that drips out when the module opens. Heads-up on the calendar: Week 2 opens on Monday, Sep 7 — Labor Day, campus closed, no class. Our two sessions this week are Tue Sep 8 and Thu Sep 10, with end-of-week work due Sunday, Sep 13, 11:59 p.m. Adjust the day-of-week and times to match your section.

(A) Module 2 Overview — Start Here

Welcome to Week 2: Power, Authority, Legitimacy & the State

This is your home base for the week. Read it first, then work the checklist below top to bottom. Everything you need is linked inside the module.

(A quick campus note: Monday, Sep 7 is Labor Day — no class. We pick back up Tuesday.)

Last week you got the map of the discipline and the toolkit. This week you get the course's first big concepts — the ones every later week leans on. You already met legitimacy in passing (the Declaration's "consent of the governed"); now it gets the full treatment, alongside its two close cousins, power and authority, and the basic unit of the whole discipline: the state. Then you'll meet three thinkers who each stared down the same terrifying question — why should anyone obey anyone at all? — and gave three rival answers that still organize politics today: Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau.

The week's big question

"What makes it right for one person or institution to exercise power over another — and how far does that right extend?"

By Friday you'll be able to tell power, authority, and legitimacy apart on sight; name Weber's three types of legitimate authority; define the state by its four conventional criteria; and explain, in your own words, why Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau — asking the very same question — landed in three different places.

By the end of this week, you can…

Use this as a checklist. If you can do all four out loud, you're ready for the quiz.

• [ ] Distinguish power, authority, and legitimacy — and explain why a ruler can have the first without the other two.
• [ ] Name and apply Weber's three types of legitimate authority — traditional, charismatic, and legal-rational.
• [ ] Define the state by its four conventional criteria (territory, population, government, sovereignty) and distinguish state, nation, and government.
• [ ] Compare Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau's social-contract answers to "why obey?" — and explain what problem each was actually trying to solve.

What's due this week, and when

Work these in order — each one gets you ready for the next.

Heads-up on the AI tools: chatbots handle this week's material worse than you'd expect — they routinely swap which thinker said what (Hobbes and Locke get mixed up constantly) and invent "quotations" that sound plausible but appear nowhere in the actual texts. Catching the model is the point — in the tutorial, the assignment, and the workshop.

Late policy reminder: 10% off per day late. If life happens, reach out before the deadline — I'd much rather hear from you early.

How to succeed this week

• Keep the three concepts in a line. Power = the raw capacity to make someone do something (even against their will). Authority = a recognized right to be obeyed. Legitimacy = the broader judgment that the whole arrangement is rightful. A robber has power over you at gunpoint; he has neither authority nor legitimacy.
• Learn Weber's three types as a set, not separately. Traditional ("we've always obeyed this family/office"), charismatic ("we follow this person"), legal-rational ("we obey the office, defined by rules, whoever holds it"). Most modern governments run mostly on the third.
• Don't let Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau blur together. Each was solving a different version of the problem: Hobbes feared chaos (so: one strong sovereign, no right to rebel); Locke feared tyranny (so: limited government, consent, a right to resist); Rousseau feared both losing freedom and losing community (so: the people rule themselves via the "general will"). If you remember what each man was most afraid of, you'll never mix them up again.
• Treat the chatbot as a confident intern, not an oracle. This week especially: ask it about Hobbes and Locke and watch closely — it will very often hand you a "quotation" that never existed, or attribute one thinker's idea to the other. Your job all term is to check it against the source.
• Expect fairness, practice fairness. This course never tells you which thinker (or ideology, or party) is right. This week's discussion — what makes authority legitimate — gets the strongest case for consent, tradition, results, and more, and you'll be asked to state the position you disagree with fairly before you argue.

You don't need anything beyond Week 1's toolkit for this week — just apply it to bigger questions. Come to class Tuesday ready to argue about whether you'd rather live under Hobbes's sovereign or take your chances in Locke's state of nature. See you then.

(B) Welcome Announcement — Module 2

Release setting: post on the module's start day (offset = 0 days), i.e., Mon Sep 7, 2026 — not before. Note that Sep 7 is Labor Day (campus closed); this announcement can still post on schedule since it's an online drip, not a class meeting. If your platform won't preserve the scheduled date on import, post this as a draft labeled "Release: Mon Sep 7."

Subject: Why obey anyone at all? Week 2 — power, authority, legitimacy & the state 👑

Hi everyone, and happy Labor Day (no class today — we meet Tuesday and Thursday this week).

Last week you got the discipline's map and its toolkit. This week we use both on the question every political system has to answer, one way or another: why should anyone obey anyone else? You'll learn to tell power (the raw capacity to make someone comply), authority (a recognized right to be obeyed), and legitimacy (the broader judgment that an arrangement is rightful) apart — three words people use interchangeably that political scientists never do. You'll meet Max Weber's three types of legitimate authority (traditional, charismatic, legal-rational), define the state by its four conventional criteria, and untangle sovereignty.

Then the main event: three thinkers — Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau — each imagined life without government (a "state of nature") and asked what people would rationally agree to escape it. They gave three different answers, and those answers still organize political arguments today. You'll read Hobbes's own words from Leviathan (1651) — his famous description of life without government as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" — and set them beside Locke's rival answer in his Second Treatise (1689).

Three things not to miss:
1. Lecture Tutorial 2 — work through the week's ideas with one approved chatbot (Gemini, Claude, or ChatGPT) and submit the share link. Watch for the chatbot swapping Hobbes and Locke's positions — it happens constantly. Due Sun Sep 13.
2. Political Analysis Workshop 2 (Hobbes's Leviathan Ch. XIII, corroborated with Locke §95), Quiz 2, Discussion 2, and Assignment 2 also close Sun Sep 13 — the workshop is the heart of the course, so start early.
3. Open the Start Here page first — it lays out everything in order with due dates.

One promise, right up front, same as always: this course studies the most argued-about subjects there are, and it will never tell you what to conclude. This week's discussion — what makes authority legitimate: consent, tradition, results, or something else? — gets the strongest case for every position, and your grade never depends on which one you pick.

Bring your curiosity (and a guess about whether you're more of a Hobbes person or a Locke person) to class Tuesday.

See you soon,
Prof. Halloran