Authority & the State (Chapter 15 "You May Ask Yourself")

PROJECT

DATE CLIENTFALL 2011 SOCIOLOGY 100

AUTHORITY & THE STATECHAPTER 15

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

TYPES OF LEGITIMATE AUTHORITYPolitics - power relations among people or other social actors.

Authority - the justifiable right to exercise power.

Charismatic authority - authority that rests in the superhuman appeal of an individual leader.

Traditional authority - authority based on appeals to past tradition.

Legal-rational authority - a system of authority based on impersonal rules; the rules rule.


TYPES OF LEGITIMATE AUTHORITYCharacteristics of legal-rational authority

Routinization - the clear, rule-governed procedures used repeatedly for decision-making.

Rationalization - an ever-expanding process of ordering or organizing.

Role dependent - authority is attached to roles, not individuals.


Bureaucracy - a legal-rational organization or mode of administration that governs with reference to rules and roles and which emphasizes meritocracy.

Hierarchical organization

Specialized roles

Specialization - process of making work consist of specific, delimited tasks.

Impersonal interactions

Meritocracy

Highly efficient

TYPES OF LEGITIMATE AUTHORITY


OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITYThe Miligram Experiment

An experiment devised in 1961 by Stanley Miligram, a psychologist at Yale University, to see how far ordinary people would go to obey a scientific authority figure

65% of the research subjects went on shocking the “learner” to the highest voltage level, labeled “lethal”

Before the experiment, a group of psychologists estimated that only 10% of the subjects would administer a “lethal” dose of electricity.


OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITYTHE MILIGRAM EXPERIMENT


AUTHORITY, LEGITIMACY, & THE STATEPower - the ability to carry out one’s own will despite resistance.

Domination - the probability that a command with a specific content will be obeyed by a given group of people.

State - “a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory” (Max Weber)

Coercion - the use of force to get others to do what you want


the paradox of authorityalthough the state’s authority derives from the implicit threat of physical force, resorting to coercion strips the state of all legitimate authority.


INTERNATIONAL STATE SYSTEMEACH STATE IS RECOGNIZED AS TERRITORIALLY SOVEREIGN BY FELLOW STATES


AUTHORITY, LEGITIMACY, & THE STATEWelfare State - a system in which the state is responsible for the well-being of its citizens.

Theories on the development of welfare states

Logic of industrialization

Neo-Marxist theories

State-centered approaches


AUTHORITY, LEGITIMACY, & THE STATECitizenship rights - the rights guaranteed to each law-abiding citizen in a nation-state.

Civil rights - the rights guaranteeing a citizen’s person freedom from interference, including of speech and the right to travel freely.

Political rights - the rights guaranteeing a citizen’s ability to participate in politics, including the right to vote and the right to hold an elected office.

Social rights - the rights guaranteeing a citizens protection by the state.

Rights to contributory programs and rights to means-tests programs


RADICAL POWER & PERSUASIONPower as three-dimensional (Lukes)

Different agendas clash, conflict results, and one side prevails.

Different agendas exist, but one side is so formidable that resisting it seems pointless.

Conflict is averted through “influencing, shaping, or determining” desires, wants, and preferences.

Shape the choice set. (Two-party political system)

Control the flow of information and construct interdependency. (Coal mining towns)


RADICAL POWER & PERSUASIONHard vs. soft power (Nye)

Hard power - physical control, violence, etc.

Soft power - power attained through the use of cultural attractiveness rather than the threat of coercive action.

“If a state can make its power seem legitimate in the eyes of others, it will encounter less resistance to its wishes.”


RADICAL POWER & PERSUASIONDictatorship or democracy?

Leviathan (1651) - Thomas Hobbes

No agreed-up authority leads to chaos and violence; the “war of all against all.”

Social contract and submission to sovereign authority that ensures peace by punishing deviance

Second Treatise of Government (1690) - John Locke

Without sovereign authority, people lived in a conflict-free state as equals

The state as means of adjudicating discord over personal property.


RADICAL POWER & PERSUASIONDemocracy - system of government wherein power theoretically lies with the people

Dictatorship - form of government that restricts the right to political participation to a small group or even to a single individual

Game theory - the study of strategic decisions under conditions of uncertainty and interdependence.

Collective action problem - the difficulty in organizing large groups of people because of the tendency of some individuals to freeload or slack off.


RADICAL POWER & PERSUASIONPolitical rule in the United States

Three branches of government (checks and balances)

Two-party system (Democrats and Republicans)

Political party - an organization that seeks to gain power in a government, generally by backing candidates for office who subscribe (to the extent possible) to the organization’s political ideals.

Interest group - an organization that seeks to gain power in government and influence policy without direct election or appointment to office.


Political Participationactivity that has the intent or effect of influencing government action.

• Voter registration• Actual voting• Volunteering• Financial contributions


POLITICAL PARTICIPATIONCivic volunteerism model (Verba, et al.)

Political orientation

Resources

Mobilization efforts

American party system (Piven and Cloward, 1988)

“Apathy and lack of political skill”

“Party strategies and political culture... sustained by legal and procedural barriers to electoral participation”


POLITICAL PARTICIPATIONMaybe voter participation hasn’t declined at all.

McDonald and Popkin (2001)

People don’t vote like the used to not because they are too busy or too lazy to get to the polls on election day, but because they are prohibited from voting.

1972 2000

Prisoners

Probationers

Parolees

196,429 1,381,892

455,093 1,924,548

616,189 4,019,140

Total 616,1890.39%

4,019,1401.43%


TRUE VOTING RATESVOTING AMONG ALL CITIZENS ELIGIBLE TO VOTE


POLICY: NVRANational Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA)

“Motor voter” law; allowed voters to register at:DMV data

Public assistance applicants

More accessible mail-in registration and voter registration drives

EffectsIncreased voter registration at DMV offices resulted in 1% increase in total voter registration

Other interventions had no effect.

ImplicationsIf easier registration doesn’t always increase voter registration, what does?


Authority & the State (Chapter 15 "You May Ask Yourself")

Education

Transcript of Authority & the State (Chapter 15 "You May Ask Yourself")