e - CIFAS

'0 GOVERNMENT IN ZAZZAU
transfonn it into authority. This summarizes the history of the
Briti5h monarchy. Similarly, to the extent that the scope and
nature of authority is incompletely or imprecisely defined, or is
extended beyond its defined limits, power is exercised, and the
structure or office concerned has political characteristics and
significance. This proposition in turn summarizes the development
of the British Parliament. Just as there can be no such thing as
uncons'tituted authority, 80 there can be no such thing as an exhaU8tive
constitution of power.
(fJ The Problem ofForce
Power has been defined as the ability to act effectively on persons
orthings, authority as a delegated and limited right to do so. Force
differs from powerand authority which are bothabstract conditions
and capacities in the concreteness of its reference. Force denotes
physical effort or strength, and in the 8Qciological context, human,
especially masculine, strength. The abstract use of this term, force,
is a reification of this physical capacity to inflict physical harm.
The concrete use of the terms authority and power is an instance
of the opposite sort of reification.
Authority and power may both be associated with the control or
application of force, but these relations win di:fferentiate authority
and power, and in any society, their associations with force will
differ by degrees and contexts and possibly also by organs or types
offorce. Thus force is in part legally constituted and administered,
but never entirely so. In its legally constituted form, force is applied
within the society through the agency of administration to
provide the population with certain essential conditions of physical
security, to prevent the use ofviolence in political competition, and
to protect the unit from external attack. Under regimes characterized
by overlapping political and administrative systems, force may
also be applied authoritatively by political leaders to eliminate their
rivals and disperse opposition. Normally, however, such use of
force is more or less political, and its authorization in terms ofthe
prevailing conceptions of legitimacy depends largely on the extent
to which identification of political and administrative functions
has been accepted as itself legitimate. In its external aspect and
application, as in war, the administration of force proceeds under
authority, while decisions to employ it are political in content and
form. In tenns of its source, therefore, the force used in war is
THE NATURE OF GOVERNMENT 31
normally constitutional, although in terms of its target it is
normally illegitimate.
To regard force as the source of power is to reverse the order of
their relation. Power, defined as the capacity to act effectively on
persons or things, has many components or forms of expression,
and force is one of these. In the abstract, force is the capacity to
in:llict harm, and for its exercise clearly presupposes the power to
ACCumulate, co-ordinate, and direct supportj less abstractly, force
is the manifest infliction of haem, and as such is a concrete demonstration
of the power which it presupposes. The crucial feature of
centralized administrative systems is never the simple concentration
of force within them, but their monopoly of constitutional
force; this is in essence a monopoly of the rights to authorize the
use of force and to restrain its use by others through the employment
ofa greater concentration of legitimate force. This monopoly
ofauthorized force in twn depends on public consensus about the
legitimacy of the governmental system. In other words, it is not the
means of exercising force as such which fonos the direct content
of the monopoly held by centralized systems of government, but
the right to control and employ force within the unit concerned.
The degree and character of the centralization ofan administrative
system corresponds therefore to the consensus prevailing about
its monopoly rights to control force within the area, and these
rights express its authority. Thus the term 'centralization' properly
Iefers to the administrative aspect of a governmental system or
structure. since governmental action defined in tenos of authority
is administrative in character and foem. Consequently in central~
ized systems rules define the conditions under which force may be
legitimately employed, and particular branches of administration,
suchasthejudiciary, police, army, intelligencesenrice, etc., are more
orless concerned with the applicati.on and administration of force.
Since force is the ultimate expression of power in conflict,
supremacy of power implies supremacy offorce, and is thus locally
uncontrollable. FOT this reason, no set of rules can perpetually
guarantee, control, or define the exercise of supreme power. The
incalculability of such power ultimately corresponds to its freedom
to exercise force outside ofthe strictly authorized framework. Such
possibilities are inherent in all political systems and therefore in all
governments, since the political components of government are
relations based on, expressed, and mediated intermsof power, and