Between Facts and Norms - Contributions to a ... - Blogs Unpad

142Chapter 4(b) A leader who at first enjoys just a superior reputation and defacto social power can concentrate in his hands the hithertodispersed functions of conflict resolution as he takes on theadministration of sacred goods and makes himself the exclusiveinterpreter of the norms the community recognizes as holy andmorally obligatory. Because sacred law represents a source ofjustice from which power can legitimate itself, normative authorityaccrues to the status of this judge-king: the authority of sacred law,still interwoven with custom and morality, devolves on the positionof its appointed interpreter. The de facto power that initiallyqualified a prestigious person to assume such a position is therebytransformed into legitimate power. This reshaping of social powerinto political power cannot take place, though, without a simultaneoustransformation of sacred law into binding law. That is, in thehands of a power holder who is thus authorized, the practice ofconflict resolution is readjusted to norms that, exceeding meremoral obligation, enjoy the affirmative validity of actually enforcedlaw. The quasi-natural social power of the judge-king was backed byphysical resources from which the administration ofjustice couldnow borrow threats of sanction: prepolitical power provided a newkind of backing to the inherited law living from sacred authorityalone, thereby transforming it into binding law sanctioned by theruler. These two simultaneous processes go hand in hand: theauthorization of power by sacred law and the sanctioning oflaw bysocial power are effected uno actu. In this way political power andbinding law emerge as the two components that make up a legallyorganized political order (see figure 1).In the second stage of our model, the co-original components ofbinding law and political power join up in the institutionalizationof offices that provides the exercise of political authority with anadministrative staff-in a word, that makes state-organized authority(Herrschaft) possible. Not only does law now legitimate politicalpower, power can make use oflaw as a means of organizing politicalrule. By virtue of this instrumental function of binding law, thepolitical authority of the ruler acquires the capacity to make legallybinding decisions. At this stage, we can begin to speak of the formof government organized as a state with administrative power at itsdisposal. This is characterized by the function of realizing collectivegoals through legally binding decisions. At the same time, a state-