A crisis of authority?

It is often said that the French “have a problem with authority”. Only recently, the head of State declared that our country was going through “a crisis of authority”. And when this theme resurfaces, in the public arena or in companies, the temptation of a providential man – and sometimes of a general – often returns… So I took two books on obedience down from my shelves. Two publications from the military world.

In « Désobéissance » (Disobedience, published in 2019 by the École de Guerre), Alexandre Tachon, a naval officer, opens a courageous and fascinating exploration of those who chose “Free France” and those who chose “French Algeria” (a few having chosen both)… inviting everyone to look within – “and what would I have done?” – and raising the question of the dilemmas that people of action often face at the moment of a crucial decision.

The second is issue no. 24 of the journal Inflexions, published in 2013 by the French Army and titled « L’autorité en question : obéir-désobéir » (Authority in question: obey–disobey). Its authors, as is the journal’s purpose, are diverse, civilian and military. And they examine the question through varied, complementary and fascinating lenses – and not only for military enthusiasts. The topics include acts of war, of course, but also testosterone, education, law, management, religion…

Legality and legitimacy

The question of obedience that often arises in the public sphere of our democratic societies – founded on the “rule of law” – is that of the relationship between “legality” and “legitimacy”. A reflection formalised notably by Carl Schmitt in Germany in 1932. Should I obey established rules, or my conscience? It is of course found in both books, particularly regarding the growing judicialisation of our societies, our organisations and our actions. Including when life and death are at stake.

In military operations, the question arises acutely, as in the events discussed by Alexandre Tachon. And also in the urgency of combat. In these extreme situations, military leaders, even if prepared for them, must call on their capacity for decision without delay. Reconciling law and violence with, sometimes, death given or received.

In another field, closer to our civilian lives, these situations of course remind us that many government decisions, such as those taken in response to the health crisis – and not only in our country – are always influenced by the (proven) risks of legal complaints. And that when a public decision-maker has to weigh his own personal freedom against others’ freedom of movement or of enterprise (with other parameters, of course), the choice of “precaution” may naturally prevail over that of risk.

Leaders and followers

But the question of authority – and of the obedience or disobedience that follows from it – is not only legal. It is also psychological, even to pathological extremes, as described so well by the psychotherapist (and fencing master) Pascal Aubrit in the article « Le conformiste et le complotiste » (The conformist and the conspiracy theorist, in French), published on his blog.

For a long time, I believed that the “followers” of authoritarian regimes, or of “vertical” managers in the business world, were motivated by the hope of benefiting from that same one-way power – members of a court, a caste, a nomenklatura… But this article describes another profile, that of the conformist: “lacking the capacity to exercise critical judgement, experiencing himself or herself as too fragile to challenge or discuss what others say, the conformist therefore submits, for better or for worse”.

In a situation of absolute uncertainty, some therefore prefer to rely blindly on whoever will give them certainties, even false ones. Perhaps, in case of failure, they will thus be able to find someone other than themselves to blame – and here one could open up the question of responsibility, which Mathieu Laine approaches from the angle of “infantilisation”[1].

But in fairness to these “conformists”, neurobiologists say that we are not all equal in the face of uncertainty. Faced with this perceived suffering, the choice to “follow” would therefore, for some, be “rational”.

The (heavy) legacy of the 19th century

Public decision-makers, at least in France, and some of their counterparts in companies, are steeped in the Weberian model of authority, even though it dates from the 19th century and Taylorist society: organisations rationally designed by bureaucrats, and “man-machines” carrying out precise orders, to fit into a “scientific” organisation of work. A parallel of the times recalled by François Cochet in Inflexions: “the ‘drilling of the troops’ (…) belongs to a period when people also spoke of ‘drilling the worker’. (…) One can then speak of a coercive approach aimed at ‘breaking in’ workers to the rhythms of industrial production”. Any parallel between this “drilling” and scientific management, and lists drawn up to prescribe when and in what circumstances “citizens” may go out, which items are “essential” or which sectors are “affected by the crisis” (and which are not), would of course be purely coincidental…

In this mental framework, power comes from three sources: tradition (in our case monarchical, vertical…), legality (the force of law, and the bureaucracy that applies it), and charisma (the providential man, the “leader”, the showman or the child prodigy…). A “trilogy” which, André Thiéblemont recalls, “according to Raymond Aron’s interpretation, did not cover types of authority but types of ‘legitimate domination’ of a political regime”.

And Alexandre Tachon borrows a phrase from Cardinal Richelieu to distinguish the two types of power, linking authority to them: “legal power, that of authority, and legitimate power, that of reason. (…) On the individual and military level, the leader must have the stripes (legal power) and the charisma (legitimate power).” Add the tradition of the military institution, and you have the usual triptych.

But for Armel Huet and Jean-Claude Quentel (in their Inflexions article), authority is rather a matter of legitimacy – and of ethics too. So, is authority legal or legitimate?

These differing views offer a new illustration of the complexity of this tension between legality and legitimacy, depending on whether it is experienced by practitioners (the soldier) or by researchers (a psychologist and a sociologist). In any case, we always find this dual pole, to which the power of tradition clings in one way or another…

And the fact that, for all of them, authority belongs to an individual, whereas power belongs to a system, an organisation.

To this very mechanistic view of power that imposes, one may prefer that offered by Hannah Arendt in the second half of the 20th century.

For her, “leaders” exist only because they have “followers”. Power is not only domination, exercised or endured. It is above all a relationship. It is therefore not individual but collective. And its modalities make everyone responsible; they commit all the actors. So there are no “victims” of power, only those who accept a place in a relational arrangement, whatever it may be. And those who refuse to “play”, who reject the relationship – by acting against the other, or by acting “without” them, elsewhere, as the sociodynamic definition of antagonism puts it. An avenue that “decision-makers” who regret the lack of commitment of stakeholders (and therefore the relationship those stakeholders grant them) should take into account.

This is, in fact, the dilemma described in « Désobéissance ». The one faced by those who do not find themselves in the Weberian model – reassuring, certainly, but inapplicable to complex situations. And who, strong in their “leadership”, their legitimacy, and no doubt the share of tradition they carry, choose to stop “following”.

Because “authority, in companies as elsewhere, implies an asymmetrical relationship of obedience accepted as legitimate” (Jean-Pierre Le Goff).

An authority that would therefore exist only within a hierarchical system, like that of the military world. But which does not rest solely on “blind obedience” cascading down the hierarchy.

Once legitimacy is no longer perceived, they may then decide to “disobey”.

Military authority

At a time when “generals” embodying authority, the return to order, to the law, to salvation are once again fashionable, I could not help thinking of my own experience of the military world.

In France and abroad, I have rubbed shoulders with soldiers, with warriors. With bureaucrats too, and sometimes opportunists. Because military personnel are both soldiers and civil servants. They are also sensitive individuals, with their emotions, strengths and weaknesses… which make up their identity, their humanity. For better and for worse.

And in the military context, which ultimately raises the question of life and death – one’s own, that of one’s comrades, that of others – this question of authority is key.

For whom, and why, does one die? For whom, and why, will one kill? Out of submission or obedience? Out of conviction?

My feeling is that it is never for an enlistment contract, for a text one sometimes does not know – at least not in detail.

It is above all for the idea one has of a nation, a country, an ideal. For the trust one places in a leader, in comrades in arms. For a mission that spells out the how, of course, the points of application. For esprit de corps, human solidarity with one’s comrades, often given by chance but revealed by shared ordeals. It is this sense of the depth of commitment that I found again in reading « Désobéissance ».

Finally, the question of authority in the military world does not concern only those who “obey”. Because while, for Arendt, authority exists only because there is hierarchical obedience (without recourse to persuasion, which belongs to equality)… authority is also “the responsibility to give orders”.

A responsibility that weighs on every leader and which, because of this very specific profession, they cannot escape – with terrible stakes. Great differences, then, conducive to fruitful exchanges with decision-makers from the civilian world.

Finally, as Armel Huet and Jean-Claude Quentel put it, if the leader enjoys no esteem, “he will have no authority in their eyes, even though he is in a position of power”. They speak of esteem; they also speak of trust. Here, a point in common between military and civilian leaders…

The authority of experts?

As we can see, authority is very different from structures and organisations, because it belongs to “human factors”. Those of the bearers of authority, and those of the people who recognise them.

In Inflexions, Monique Castillo argues that with the destruction of the moral force of authority, “one simply ends up with a tragic paradox, which consists in preferring power, because it is technical, to authority, because it is moral”. Having failed to achieve authority, it is therefore natural for the bureaucrat to take refuge behind power – and, where appropriate, expertise. The power of the organisation, or that of “knowledge”.

On this point, Didier Sicard’s article is particularly inspiring – and of course in the context we are living through.

“‘I followed the experts’ advice’, says the politician worried about his responsibilities. Science unsettles; the expert reassures. That is what gives him his authority”… “A scientific authority is anything but legitimate power. It is self-questioning, recognition of its own fragility. It only really exists when it agrees to discuss opposing views”.

There are scientists who, practising doubt, explore knowledge and formulate hypotheses (until they are possibly refuted, according to Karl Popper’s fruitful thinking). And then there are “experts”. A scientific committee is therefore not, if we follow this distinction, a committee of experts. It does not have the “technical legitimacy”. It must therefore refrain from formulating certainties, and from trying to acquire power for its members, since they cannot have authority. And indeed, as Didier Sicard puts it, “rather than regretting authority, we must learn to dream of a collective intelligence that would perceive the contradictions, accentuated by the dizzying segmentation of technology”. Humility and collective work… fine avenues. Because in the face of the complexity of certain issues, is it possible to be an “expert” alone?

The hell of rules

When it comes to authority, the question of expertise is linked to that of procedures. Because, lacking authority – which implies a real relationship with the other, and therefore taking their points of view into account – the expert resorts to normative power: that of rules and procedures applied with the force of law.

More recent than Michel Crozier’s essential work on bureaucracy and its practices, « L’enfer des règles » (The hell of rules) is the subtitle of the third volume of Christian Morel’s « Les décisions absurdes » (Absurd decisions), published in 2018, which offers an enjoyable popularisation of the approaches of “High Reliability Organisations” and “Resilience Engineering”. In English, there are a multitude of books and articles on the harmful consequences of the inflation of rules and procedures. And everyone, from their own experience – including that of “Absurdistan” – will find examples.

The question of obedience or disobedience in the military world is of course studied by Alexandre Tachon, in extreme situations.

More lightly, one might mention Wojtek the bear, given the rank of corporal so that he could cross the lines during the Second World War and continue to serve in support of the troops, despite bureaucracy (thanks to the hosts of the podcast « Damoclès » for this delightful anecdote). And everyone, including in the military world, has experienced the phone calls that unblock a situation on the basis of trust alone (or the expression of a form of recognition of the other, of relationship, and therefore of “authority”) when the procedure is stuck because it is too long, ineffective or unworkable.

For whom, and with whom, do we work?

So, for those of us who are not military, what can we take away about authority, as seen from this very particular world (and its surroundings, since the articles cited are mostly written by civilians)?

Each reader will make their own choice; here are a few suggestions.

First of all, we suggest that the fervent admirers of “generals” read this issue of Inflexions carefully, because in this space for military reflection they will find many avenues that break with the caricature they sometimes sincerely hold. And let them also remember that while non-commissioned officers and officers progress through experience and skills, generals are appointed by the political authorities (on the recommendation of the armed forces, of course, but without automatic validation, as General Bentégeat’s book « Les ors de la République », just published, shows).

Moreover, while one can speak of political power, media power or economic power, for example, to designate a vague set of actors and organisations, one cannot rightly speak of “the authorities”. Because this term, in the plural, designates individuals who often have no name other than their function, and often only the power of that function, for lack of authority of their own. “The authorities” therefore do not exist. And whoever denounces a crisis of authority is thus revealing their own weakness/incompetence – since while power is organisational or relational, authority is individual.

Next, while we civilians do not ask ourselves every day “for whom does one die?”, we may legitimately ask – especially in these times of upheaval – “for whom and/or for what do we work?”. And with whom. Because the question is not to whom one “submits” – or whom one “subjugates”. It is to know – and where necessary decide – with whom one remains in a relationship, on what terms, and with what objectives.

Finally, and because this point is indispensable, there can be no authority without benevolence, if not love. A relationship cannot be imposed by violence or by force. Nor can authority.

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[1] Mathieu Laine, « Infantilisation », La Cité, 2021