The techniques of power

On authority and its relationship to

power

Barry Barnes

Abstract

This paper suggests an alternative to the received view of the

relationship between power and authority. It regards authorities as the
passive agents of powers. Thus to possess authority is to possess less
than to possess power in its own right. Contrast this with the received
view where to possess authority is to possess more than to possess
power: authority may be power plus legitimacy, or power plus consent.
The paper goes on to consider some of the implications of this
alternative view, and shows how it allows an analogy between
possessing authority in relation to actions and being an authority in
relation to knowledge and culture.

The received view of authority within the sociological tradition is

that it is power plus: power plus consent, or power plus legitimacy,
or power plus institutionalisation. There is debate and controversy
about what precisely must be added to power to transform it into
authority, but there is wide agreement that something must be.
And there is wide agreement too that the consequent transforma-
tion enhances the effectiveness of what initially is power, that it is
a transformation much to the advantage of possessors of power,
even essential to their continued enjoyment of their dominant
position. Power holders, it is said, do well to seek legitimacy and
consent as soon as they may, so that they can enjoy the enduring
benefits which flow to occupants of positions of authority. I Against
this, I shall argue here that authority should be thought of as
power minus, that to possess power is more expedient and
advantageous than to possess mere authority, and that consent and
legitimacy are immaterial to understanding the difference between
the two attributes.

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Let me hasten to add that I intend no direct frontal assault on

accepted wisdom. Someone who thinks of authority as power plus
and someone like myself who thinks of it as power minus will find
themselves referring at times to different phenomena as authority,
or manifestations of authority. There will be an insufficient
number of agreed external 'facts about authority' for use in
deciding between them. Hence the alternative conceptualisations
will have to be compared and chosen between in terms of their
pragmatic value. I do not hope to refute or decisively overthrow
the power plus account. I merely seek to stress what I regard as the
present value and the future promise of the power minus
alternative, and recommend its use as a tool of thought. Strictly
speaking, this paper is concerned only with the issues which arise
from the possibility of an alternative definition of 'authority': 2

Power

I shall say very little about power, only as much as is necessary to

carry forward the argument which follows. But it is actually
necessary to offer some simple image of the nature of power in
society, because there is no widely accepted account or image
already in the literature. Indeed it is tempting to say that there is
no account at all in the literature, accepted or not, of the basic
nature of power in society. 3 There is a great deal on how to define
power, how to detect its presence, how to measure it through
empirical indicators and visible correlates, how to identify its
material effects; but there is next to nothing upon what power is,
'in itself as it were. Sociologists have insistently proceeded as
positivists in their treatment of power, where they might with
benefit have been realists.
Power is often thought of as the capacity to enforce one's will, to
get things done, .~o press through a sequence of actions, even
against opposition. But what is the capacity? What does it consist
in? How does an agent (or a role perhaps) with power, differ from
one lacking it? It is at this point that most of the literature goes
silent. I shall try to fill the gap with a crude, prototypical image.
The very act of setting it down makes its fundamental deficiencies
glaringly apparent, but it will have to do for present purposes of
exposition.
Think first of society as nothing more than automated, routinised
collective activity, simply so many patterned collectively executed

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routines. This is clearly wrong. Routines are stopped and started;

they are pointed this way and that; they are set in combinations
and used in concert. In any particular society specific agents will be
charged with the task of doing the stopping and starting, the
pointing, the combining." Let us take a net, then, and capture all
these agents. I want to say that thereby we shall have captured all
the powers in the society.
We shall, however, have captured more than the powers. Some
of our captured agents, those involved in changing routines, may
themselves appear to be acting routinely and automatically.
Perhaps they always throw a switch when they see a certain light
come on. Perhaps they have a book of rules and go by the book.
For the moment, let us throw back all such agents, all those who
change routines routinely. Suppose we were to end up with an
empty net. I should then want to say that we had found a society
without powers. But in practice many agents will always remain in
the net. These are agents with discretion in directing routines, who
act not in response to predetermined external signs but on the
basis of their own judgement and decision. These, I want to say,
are the powers in the society.
A power directs a routine, and directs it with discretion.f This is
the basis of power, the nature ofthe capacity to enforce something
upon others. The routine can, as it were, be pointed at those
others or away from them; and because the pointing is at
discretion it can be made consequent upon what those others do:
the artillery may fire, or not; the certificate may be issued, or not;
the payment may be made, or not; depending. The routine
controlled may be made the basis for a threat against others. Thus,
as discretion over routines is extended, power is extended; as
discretion over routines is lost, power is lost."

Authority

Whereas a power directs a routine with discretion, an authority

directs it without discretion. All those who direct routines
routinely and automatically are thus to be thought of as authorities.
Like powers they switch routines on and off, point them this way
and that, combine them together or separate them off. But they do
so in response to external indications; the basic pattern of their
actions is entirely the product of external constraint. Authority,
then, is power minus discretion.

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 On authority and its relationship to power

Note how this conception of authority as power minus fits

perfectly well with many aspects of common usage. In Britain, for
example, the monarch signs Acts of Parliament into law. The
monarch possesses the authority to switch on the provisions of an
Act, or to hold them back. But it is open to question whether this
authority represents power. And as the point is argued in common
sense discourse, it is precisely the matter of discretion which is
central. Never mind which side is right or wrong. If it is thought
that the monarch derives power from the need for the Royal
assent, then it will be said that there is discretion in the giving or
withholding of the assent. If the monarch is seen as powerless in
this regard, then it will be said that the assent just must be given to
any properly constituted Act, and that there is no discretion. An
intuitive understanding of power as authority plus discretion is
clearly evident in this example.

Authority in relation to power

Authorities direct routines routinely, in response to external signs

and signals. What produces these signs and signals? They may be
produced automatically, by the operation of other routines. If all
of them were to be produced in this way, we should have, in a
certain sense, an automated society, reminiscent of a programmed
device running on the basis of a determinate, isolated and
unchangeable programme. But no such society exists. In all actual
societies some of the relevant signs and signals are activated at
discretion, by powers. And in practice powers and authoriti-s are
coupled together by chains of such signs and signals, so that
discretionary acts by powers produce determinate further acts by
authorities, indeed whole chains of such further acts, with the
consequence that whole systems of established routines are
controlled. Or so we tend to think.
This implies that authorities serve as the passive agents of
powers, that they are relays, as it were, in systems of control.
Again this way of thinking is close to aspects of common usage, as
when an agent is authorised to implement a decision, to close a
company, say, or sequester funds, or buy or sell so many shares."
Why should an authority reliably direct routines in conformity
with the indications of a power? There may of course be any
number of revelant contributory factors, but in general the

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authority will itself be vulnerable to the power of which it is the

agent. Only this will force the authority to conform even against its
own inclination, and thus to operate with complete reliability. But
this, of course, implies that any power must have discretion over
not one but many routines, so that those authorities operating one
routine may be threatened with the application of another, and
every part of the system is at once sustained by threat and a source
of threat. Here is a part of what sustains the typically pyramidal
patterns of power and authority.

Maximising power

Maximising power is a matter of retaining as much discretion as

possible over as many routines as possible. Naturally, some
routines are more strategic than others, but that can be set aside
for the moment: it remains the case that to accumulate discretion
over additional routines is to increase in power, and vice versa. To
retain discretion in a large number of routines requires delegation;
to add to the range of such routines requires additional delegation.
But for the maximum retained discretion over any particular
routine the requirement is that authority be delegated but not
power. In the sense of the terms used here, delegates should as far
as is possible be authorised, but not empowered. There is no way
in which the delegation of discretion, and thus power, can be
guaranteed not to amount to the loss of discretion, and thus
power. The problem of the power holder in this context is to create
passive agents and prevent their metamorphosis into active agents,
as far as their relationship to the relevant routine or routines is
concerned." And it is likely enough in most actual situations of this
kind that authorities will take any opportunity to move the other
way, to build up a sphere of discretion and to transform authority
into power.
No doubt competition for power of this kind is very widespread
and commonplace, although it may not be explicitly acknowledged
by the parties involved. It is almost always expedient, in so far as
explicit discourse is concerned, for powers to represent themselves
as authorities and to deny their possession of discretion. This
serves to avert suspicion and hostility from powers 'above' who
might look askance at discretion accumulating 'below' them. And
it is also an expedient image to proffer to those 'below', since it
represents the power holder as the mere agent of something yet

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more formidable and more threatening; and by presenting him as

lacking all discretion it discourages all attempts to persuade,
pressure or otherwise influence his judgment. For these reasons
even supreme powers like to represent themselves as mere
authorities, whether by appeal to supernatural power, or to the
constraint of rule and commandment, or to some hypostatised
entity like 'the people' or 'the general will'. Although one
American President did apparently work behind the legend, 'the
buck stops here', the inclination not to be a terminus of this kind
must surely be very strong.
Let me return however to the actual situation wherein a power
holder is surrounded with agents or delegates. Imagine that the
holder of power actually does succeed in sustaining a maximum
level of power, that he keeps all discretion in his own hands and
enforces the position of his agents as mere authorities. How will he
have done this? Part of the answer must describe how he has
maintained threats against all his agents, so that their conformity is
enforced even against their own inclination. But the other part of
the answer must describe how that conformity is specified and
defined. If an authority is to act in a determinate way according to
external circumstances or signals, then that determinate way must
be specified and the nature of the relevant circumstances and
signals made clear. The authority must know what is to be done,
and in response to what, and the power must know what the
authority knows. The system of power and authorities must also
necessarily represent a distribution of knowledge. In many cases
the knowledge may be thought of, in the first instance, as a set of
instructions or rules according to which the authority is required to
act. Such rules or instructions are crucial to the business of limiting
the discretion of the authority.

Authorities-on

At this point I shall make a small digression, and call attention to

another aspect of the common usage of the term 'authority'. It is a
form of usage to which we resort when we concern ourselves
directly with the distribution of knowledge in society. It helps us to
allocate and maintain credibility. It is a part of the discourse
through which we announce and confirm, not who may rightly
require or perform an action, but who may rightly expect belief.
We often, although not invariably, use a systematically distinct

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idiom when we use the term 'authority' for this kind of work.
Whereas one possesses the authority to do or to act, one typically
is an authority on something or somebody. One may be an
authority on the geology of the North Sea, or Hungarian folk-
songs; or on Aristotle or Thomas Aquinas.
What is implied by being an authority in this way? On a power
plus view of authority, an authority on, say, Aristotle would be
anyone generally empowered and accepted as an expositor and
interpreter of Aristotle. The authority would derive his standing
wholly and entirely from his society, which would empower him to
expound Aristotle, and treat his expositions as legitimate versions.
Any actual connection between the authority and Aristotle, or
Aristotle's texts, would be contingent, essentially accidental. A
community might have a fancy for authorities familiar with the
texts upon which they pronounced - or it might not: either way it
would appoint what 'authorities' it wished. This, of course, is
counter-intuitive. We habitually regard the connection between an
authority and that upon which he is an authority as a necessary
one. We expect an authority on Aristotle to know Aristotle, and to
expound him, so far as is possible, correctly.
This habitual way of thinking is perfectly compatible with a
power minus notion of authority. An authority on a text must
know that text, and the very fact that the text is known is
presumed to restrict discretion in expounding it. Ideally, knowledge
of the text eliminates all discretion in its exposition, so that the
authority becomes transparent to the text: the text shines through
the authority, as it were, and makes itself visible to us directly.
This, at any rate, is the theory which gives the authority its
credibility, its very standing as an authority. To the extent that it is
thought to lack discretion an authority is credited. To the extent
that it is thought to be exercising discretion an authority is
distrusted. It is no longer transparent to the text. It is no longer
Aristotle who is heard, but the personal voice of his expositor. As
discretion enters in, Aristotle becomes more and more distant, so
that at the point of full discretion there is no longer any reason to
prefer the authority to any other expositor of Aristotle. An
authority on Aristotle is the passive agent of Aristotle, rather as
the possessor of authority is the passive agent of a power. Note
that we have authorities on Aristotle in a way that we could not
contemplate having powers over Aristotle.
In discussing authorities-on, in what follows, I shall confine
myself to authorities on texts; but it is worth mentioning that the

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same analysis applies to authorities on physical phenomena. The

authority on the geology of the North Sea should ideally lack
discretion as much as the authority on Aristotle. The authority
must know the geological phenomena, be constrained by what is
known, and thus become transparent to the phenomena. The set
of relevant phenomena, a part of natural reality itself, must shine
through the authority, as it were, and make itself directly visible to
us. This, at any rate, is the theory which most readily lends
credibility to scientific authority. Why should we credit our
scientists if they speak of reality with discretion? Note again that
we may have authorities on the geology of the North Sea in a way
that we could not contemplate having powers over that geology.

A central problem

In the mainstream of sociological theory, a central problem is to

account for the form and stability of systems of power and
authority; this is an aspect of the most fundamental problem of all,
that of the nature and basis of social order. 9 In the sociology of
knowledge and culture, a central problem is to account for the
form and stability of systems of cognitive authority and patterns of
credibility; this is an aspect"of the fundamental problem of the
nature and basis of cognitive order. Both problems concern the
extent to which verbal rules or instructions may be used to restrict
discretion, and hence the extent to which their significance and
implications can be made definite, clear and unambiguous. In an
important sense, therefore, there is just one central problem here,
not two. Here is the point where the study of action and the study
of belief meet. Here knowledge and power, culture and social
structure reveal themselves not as distinct phenomena, as is
generally held, but as the very same phenomena looked at from
different points of view. Here too we see that the key to a general
understanding of all these phenomena lies in a proper appreciation
of the characteristics of verbal communications. Any account of
the possibilities of such communication is also a prototypical
theory of cognitive order and of social order; and vice versa.

Possible solutions

How definite and unambiguous can the significance of a text be

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made? How firm and clear the implications of a rule or

instruction? Opinions differ markedly. sometimes violently, on
these questions within the social sciences. and the differences of
opinion indicate basic differences concerning the nature of social
hierarchy and social and cognitive order.
It is still widely assumed that rules or instructions can readily be
made clear and definite. that they may carry fixed logical
implications or fixed semantic implications. which can serve to
constrain the conforming action or conforming speech of those
receiving them. This is the assumption which sustains the
traditional perspectives of macro-sociology. and allows social
order and cognitive order to be referred to routinely as objective
structures. On this view powers can use rules to bind tiers of
passive agents. and hierarchies of authority are straightforwardly
intelligible. On this view texts can fix their own proper exposition,
and cognitive authority is straightforwardly intelligible.
It is important not to overlook the merits of this traditional point
of view. or the large amounts of empirical material for which it
promises a satisfactory treatment. People do report experiencing
constraint when conforming to rules or instructions. People do tell
of constraint in their exposition of texts. It is plausible to account
for the existence of such constraint or perceived constraint. by
reference to the logical or semantic implications of rules or texts.
At least this acknowledges the important empirical fact that rules
and texts make a difference to people. Nonetheless. it has to be
recognised that this is not a point of view which has emerged from
the detailed study of rule use or linguistic communication. or
which has been justified ex post facto by such study. It is accepted
as a general account of rules and verbal formulations which fits
conveniently with traditional sociological theory. but it lacks
independent justification. As such the current basis of its credibilityis
suspect.
Where rule use and linguistic communication has been made the
subject of detailed sociological study. the conclusions arrived at
have tended to be very much the opposite of those assumed above.
A consensus seems to have developed. in the relevant special
fields. that verbal formulations have neither fixed logical implica-
tions nor fixed semantic implications. Studies of texts and written
records. whether literary. philosophical. religious. historical or
even scientific. have again and again tended to support this point
of view. Ethnomethodological studies of rule use and the following
of instructions in everyday situations have sought to vindicate it by

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showing how actions are successfully made out after the fact as in
accordance with rules. In both fields it is agreed that there is
nothing inherent in a verbal formulation to determine its implica-
tions or define its true significance. No particular implication can
be assigned unproblematically to a rule or instruction, by
inspection as it were, as 'the' implication of the rule; and no
particular significance can be assigned to a text as 'the' significance
of the text. Therefore, it is said, implications must be derived and
significances imputed entirely at the discretion of the agents
involved. 10
The consequences of such a position for an understanding of
power and authority are as easy to elucidate as they are hard to
accept. Having turned our assumptions about linguistic communi-
cations upside down we must expect to find our understanding of
social and cognitive authority turned upside-down too. Start by
thinking of a potential authority as an initially free agent
confronted by verbal formulations, whether to be expounded or
obeyed. Verbal formulations have neither fixed logical implications
or fixed semantic implications. Therefore, it would seem, their use
puts no restrictions upon the freedom of the agent: he retains his
complete discretion. Even though he must act [or speak] properly
and correctly, he is nonetheless free to act [or speak] as he will,
since he may make what he will of the formulations to which he
'conforms. Where the agent is expected to expound a text there will
be no 'objective' exposition available to him; he will necessarily
have to practise interpretation, exegesis, hermeneutic art. His
'exposition' will be an artful creation which, rather than finding
meaning in the text, will construct a meaning for the text. The
exposition will, to use the now all too familiar phrase, be amenable
to deconstruction. Similarly, where the agent is expected to obey
an instruction, there will be no 'objective' indication of what it is
so to obey; he will simply have to act and then make out the act as
an obedient act. His 'obedience' will be the artful creation of ex
post facto accounting, a contingent accomplishment as ethno-
methodologists are apt to say.
On this view agents retain their discretion and hence remain
powers: there can be no authorites as I have defined them. All
attempts to create and constrain authorities fail, and putative
authorities remain powers in their own right. The supposed
passive agents of a power actually remain unconstrained and
exercise discretion as they will; the supposed authorities on a text
actually expound it as they will. Here is another admirably

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straightforward solution to the problem of the relationship

between power and authority. There is no authority, only power.
A more rigorous examination of the situation, however,
indicates that it is scarcely worthwhile even to refer to power in
these circumstances. Consider a chain of command along which
instructions pass at the instigation of a power, the power at the top
as it were. If the first link of the chain must fail, if constraint
cannot be established across that link, then the second link must
fail for the same reasons, and the third, and so on. Each individual
in the chain retains power, full discretion, but only over his own
individual acts - power of a sort perhaps, but certainly not social
power. If verbal utterances may be given any interpretation, then
social order falls apart and only isolated, atomic individual actors
remain. Consider similarly an authority expounding a text. If the
authority is unconstrained then for the same reasons the authority
is unable to constrain. If the text can never fix its own significance
than neither can any interpretation or exposition of the text fix its
own significance. It is not, then, that significance comes ex post
facto, but that it never comes at all. What else is an exposition of a
text but a text? What else is a deconstruction of a text but a text? If
the first link in a chain of interpretation must fail, then all links
must fail for the same reason. Nowhere in the chain is discretion
pressed upon. If verbal utterances may be given any interpretation
then cognitive order falls apart, and only isolated, atomic
individual believers remain.

Conclusion

I have discussed two strongly contrasting accounts of verbal

communication and the use of verbally formulated rules, and have
shown how they inspire contrasting views of social and cognitive
authority. My purpose has been to emphasise the intimate
connection between the two forms of authority, and to indicate
how an understanding of power and authority in society implies an
understanding of the nature of linguistically mediated communica-
tion. What I have not felt able to do in this context is actually
support and commend any specific theory of such communication.
The alternatives I have considered above have served for purposes
of illustration only: both of them have major inadequacies. Indeed
it may be that a more satisfactory account will eventually emerge
from reflection upon these inadequacies.

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The traditional sociological account of rules and their use

reflects a deep interest in the ordered character of the social
activity which people produce, and indeed in the empirical
characteristics of the people producing it, but a contrasting lack of
interest in rules themselves as verbal formulations. The alternative
account reflects a deep interest in the nature of rules as verbal
formulations, but a lack of interest in the empirical characteristics
of the people employing the formulations. Indeed, some proponents
of the alternative account may well consider it incorrect to impute
empirical characteristics to people.
The alternative account is surely correct in its characterisation of
rules and verbal formulations: they do indeed lack fixed logical or
semantic implications. But this is turned into a statement about
human behaviour only by making a cipher out of the individual
human being. He is represented as a 'free' agent who retains
discretion in the face of rules or instructions without determinate
implications. Now it may well be that an abstractly conceived 'free'
agent, any man with just his reason and a dictionary, may indeed
be pressed nowhere in particular by rules or instructions. Such an
agent may only be constrained in his understanding by fixed and
clear implications of rules, implications which do not and cannot
exist. But what entitles us to characterise any actual human being
as such an agent? The answer must surely be: nothing at all.
What is overwhelmingly clear is that actual people in actual
situations find many verbal formulations clear and unproblematic,
to the extent that they are able to respond to them at once,
without hesitation. However much one attends to the linguistic
aspects of such formulations as 'switch on the light' , exposing their
formal quirks and genuine ambiguities, it is nonetheless the case
that they serve as a clear and definite basis for action by particular
people. Nor does the fact that linguistic formulations can always
be interpreted in many ways count against the more important fact
that large numbers of people will all alike take them in just one
way - as, for example, on the army parade ground.
Linguistic formulations must not, for sociological purposes, be
considered formally in terms of their meaning for any man with a
dictionary; they must be considered empirically, behaviorally,
impinging on particular groups of people. 11 If they produce a fixed
and definite sense for all of a group of people, a sense sufficient for
action, a sense which emerges unreflectively, automatically, as a
matter of course, then they may serve as the basis for systems of
authority. No matter that by taking thought alternative, equally

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justifiable senses might be brought to mind. No matter that

another group of people confronted by the same verbal formulation
might unreflectively, as a matter of course, impute one of these
alternative senses as 'the' sense. No matter that a 'free' agent may
be pressed to no particular sense at all by them.
The concept of a free agent has an established role in speaking
of choices between alternative actions, but it needs to be used with
great care when imported into discussions of problems of
intelligibility and understanding. Here, there is a certain important
sense in which we are not free. We are not always free to decide
our initial, immediate understanding of or response to a verbal
formulation. We often find ourselves making, without reflection,
unthinkingly, as a matter-of-course, one particular response. If
this is the case, and if there is uniformity of such response
throughout a group, that is enough. That actual response can
then be talked up, ex post facto, as the implied response, the
correct response, the only sensible response, and ordered com-
munication can be established. There is no further barrier to the
erection of systems of authority as far as problems of intelligibility
and clear communication are concerned.
There is not a great deal to be said about why we make these
initial, matter-of-course responses, or why different people should
be able to agree upon them. We do not know enough about our-
selves, our congenital tendencies and competences, the malleability
of these tendencies and competences, to pretend to an explanation
here. But we do know how to encourage the phenomena which we
cannot explain: we do know how to create unhesitating responses,
uniform throughout a collectivity. What is required is the
procedure involved in intensive and comprehensive socialisation:
repetitive practices, drill, rote, on the one hand; shared environ-
ment, shared experiences, shared overall culture on the other.
What is not attainable by reason and a dictionary may be put
within reach by thorough and prolonged induction into an entire
form of life.
If something along these lines were to prove correct, what would
it suggest about the relationship of power and authority? It would
suggest that powers may indeed entertain hopes of creating
authorities, passive agents without discretion in the way they
interpret instructions. 12 It would suggest that rules and instructions
can indeed be successfully employed in this way, but only in
delimited contexts, with particular people with a particular
history. The struggle to create authorities, and to prevent their

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metamorphosis into powers, can be no less than a global

enterprise. It involves not the mere drawing-up of rules, and some
system of enforcement, but the fashioning of a whole world of
social experience, and its continual maintenance and reinforcement.
It involves the manipulation of education, the shaping of culture,
even the refashioning of the physical environment itself. And,
needless to say, such a project is always and invariably to some
extent a failure. The standardisation of people and of context,
essential if responses to symbols are likewise to be standardised, is
always too large a task to be satisfactorily accomplished even for
immediate practical purposes. We may think of powers continually
at work with the objective of further restricting the discretion of
their agents whilst these agents continually and ubiquitously
develop the scope of their sphere of discretion within the very
system of rules or instructions which is conceived of as a restriction
upon them.
The problems surrounding authorities-on, and the texts they
expound, are of course even more complex and difficult of
solution. When a verbal communication passes from a power to an
authority all that matters is uniformity of initial response. If the
context is such that uniform responses exist, if all in the context
take the communication to imply the same act, then successful
communication occurs. But a text persists whilst contexts change.
At the very least it must be considered in relation to the context in
which it was written and the context in which it is read. One
plausible conception of an authority on a text is of someone who
seeks to regenerate the context of writing in order to rediscover
the original sense of the text. But it has been much commoner in
practice for such authorities to expound their texts in relation to
the context in which they themselves have lived and written.
Indeed, perhaps the commonest task performed by such 'authorities'
has been the reinterpretation of texts to suit contemporary taste
and preference: all the refinements of the hermeneutic art have
been used over and over again, by generation after generation of
commentators, to make texts, and notably the revered ancient
texts of philosophy and religion, usable and acceptable in the
current circumstances, with the usable and acceptable versions
served up to eager recipients as what the texts have always meant.
In exegetical enterprises of this kind ignorance of the initial
context of a text is a positive advantage, since it allows that context
itself to become an interpretative resource: a context may be laid
on for the text wherein the text clearly means what it has to mean.

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It is tempting to suggest, given this, that whereas context is

essential to the social use of current rules and instructions, since
they fail to generate constraint when abstracted from it, loss of
context is essential to the social use of inherited texts, for the same
reason.

Notes

Although he does not himself accept it, Wrong (1979) rightly refers to 'the
familiar dichotomy of "naked" versus "legitimate" or "institutionalised" power,
usually called "authority", which has become such a commonplace in the
sociological literature' (pp. 39-40).
2 Matters of precise verbal definition are not of great significance in the social
sciences; an exaggerated importance is often attributed to them. Martin (1977)
is a writer who lays great emphasis on the importance of precise definition (p.
H). He goes on to criticise a whole series of definitions of 'power'. Dahrendorf
'defines out of existence non-legitimate structural or recurrent power relations'
(p. 36). Weber 'defines ... out of existence' power as a generalised means of
achieving collective goals (p. 37). 'Parsons defines out of existence the problems
which have usually preoccupied sociologists of power' (p. 3H). It rather sounds
as though verbal acts of definition can annihilate sociological phenomena and
sociological problems. But surely all they can actually do is inhibit specific ways
of using particular words, and require the use of other words instead. This, at
any rate, is why I regard problems of verbal definition, including that central to
the present paper, as small problems, and why I see only very limited
possibilities of gain from the criticism of definitions.
3 Amongst the possible exceptions here, Talcott Parsons (1967) is pre-eminent.
4 I talk of agents as the possessors of power not out of conviction, but simply as a
means of dodging for the moment some important further questions about
power. It remains to be considered whether power is better associated with
actors or with roles, and if with actors, whether collective actors may be
involved or only individual actors.
5 There is a presumption here that a routine can be treated as a stable, continuing
entity available at discretion. See also note 9.
6 Needless to say, the acquisition and loss of discretion are complex social
processes, not well thought of in atomistic terms. Loss of discretion often feeds
on itself and multiplies, as does the accumulation of discretion. The
phenomenon should perhaps be called 'the Enobarbus effect' after
Shakespeare's vivid dramatisation in Anthony and Cleopatra.
7 I do not wish to make too much of common usage or to claim that my own
favoured notions accord particularly closely with it. In common usage
'authority' is often used as a synonym for 'power', and to 'authorise' may be to
delegate discretion and hence power, as when someone is authorised to
negotiate, or to draw up and sign a treaty.
H I do not wish to imply that the best policy for a power holder is that of
maximising immediate discretion. On the contrary it will generally be wiser to
settle for less discretion and to empower agents to act on the basis of their own

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 On authority and its relationship to power

judgement. Policies designed to maximise power may be much more risky than
less ambitious ones.
9 The discussion in this paper dodges the most basic issues involved in the
problem of social order by taking the existence of routines for granted, and
speaking merely of the direction of routines. Any developed account of the
nature of power must provide a convincing account of routines and their
stability: see Barnes (1983) for an attempt to provide the beginnings of such an
account.
10 The extensive literature on rule use, following Garfinkel, and textual
deconstruction, following Derrida, is widely cited, although not all those who
have contributed to it take the view that verbal formulations can be interpreted
with complete discretion. For an alternative line of argument which arrives at
closely related conclusions, see Barnes (1982,1984).
11 The model and exemplar for this kind of approach is L. Wittgenstein (1968); see
also Bloor (1983).
12 As before (note 8), I do not wish to imply that it is natural or inevitable for
powers to seek to create passive agents; I only seek to explore the possible
consequences of attempts to do so.

References
Barnes, B. (1982), 'On the Extensions of Concepts and the Growth of Knowledge',
Sociological Review, vol. 3D,no. 1, pp. 23-44.
Barnes, B. (1983), 'Social Life as Bootstrapped Induction', Sociology, vol. 17, no.
4, pp. 524-45.
Barnes, B. (1984), 'The Conventional Component in Knowledge and Cognition', in
N. Stehr and V. Meja (eds), Society and Knowledge, Transaction Books, New
York.
Bloor, D. (1983), Wittgenstein: A Social Theory of Knowledge, Macmillan,
London. .
Martin, R. (1977), The Sociology or Power, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.
Parsons, T. (1967), Sociological Theory and Modern Society, Free Press, New
York.
Wittgenstein, L. (1968), Philosophical Investigations, Blackwell, Oxford.
Wrong, D. (1979), Power, Its Forms, Bases and Uses, Blackwell, Oxford.

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