Concept
Rational-legal authority
Overview
Rational-legal authority, also known as rational authority, legal authority, rational domination, legal domination, or bureaucratic authority, is a form of leadership in which the authority of an organization or a ruling regime is largely tied to legal rationality, legal legitimacy and bureaucracy. The majority of the modern states of the 20th and 21st centuries are rational-legal authorities, according to those who use this form of classification. Scholars such as Max Weber and Charles Perrow characterized the rational-legal bureaucracy as the most efficient form of administration. Critics challenge whether rational-legal authority is as rational and unbiased as presented, as well as challenge that it is effective.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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In this way a world of rational beings (mundus intelligibilis) is possible as a kingdom of ends, and this by virtue of the legislation proper to all persons as members. Therefore every rational being must so act as if he were by his maxims in every case a legislating member in the universal kingdom of ends. The formal principle of these maxims is: "So act as if thy maxim were to serve likewise as the universal law…
Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals
States what Rational-legal authority is.
Now the power and resolved purpose to resist a strong but unjust opponent is called fortitude (fortitudo), and when concerned with the opponent of the moral character within us, it is virtue (virtus, fortitudo moralis). Accordingly, general deontology, in that part which brings not external, but internal, freedom under laws is the doctrine of virtue. {INTRODUCTION ^paragraph 10} Jurisprudence had to do only with the…
Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysical Elements of Ethics
States what Rational-legal authority is.
He can do anything, except make laws. The first method was used by the Roman senate when, in a consecrated formula, it charged the consuls to provide for the safety of the Republic. The second was employed when one of the two consuls nominated a dictator:[1] a custom Rome borrowed from Alba.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The social contract & discourses
Close in meaning to Rational-legal authority; the term itself is not named.
Related ideas
- Authority
- Sociology
- Max Weber
- Western world
- Western culture
- Natural law
- Charismatic authority
- State (polity)
- Legal positivism
- Politician
- History of China
- Rationality
- Ideal type
- Election
- Traditional authority
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Political philosophy.