Authority and the Struggle for Recognition

Abstract

In this essay I examine authority from the viewpoint of the paradigm of recognition: this theoretical framework, as I wish to demonstrate, is particularly suitable for both a clear definition and a consistent practical-normative analysis of authority. In section (I) I propose a definition of authority which, resting on the normative meaning intrinsic to the concept of recognition, allows to systematically differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate forms of authority. After delineating the characteristics of a legitimate political authority, I focus on authority as a means of domination, on the one hand, and of emancipation, on the other. Firstly (II) I consider the long-standing question of why social groups sometimes support an authority oppressing them, and I determine what, instead, can cause a struggle for recognition to occur. Then (III) I discuss hegemony, understood as an intra-group leadership aimed at fostering struggles against domination: can it constitute a legitimate, emancipatory authority, and in what conditions?