Key texts on authority


  • Adorno, T. (1950) The Authoritarian Personality. Joanna Cotler.
  • Agamben, G. (2005) 'Auctoritas and Potestas', Chapter 6 of State of exception. University of Chicago Press.
  • Arendt, H. [1961] (1977) ‘What Is Authority?’ in Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought, pp. 91-142. Penguin.
  • Bakunin, M. [1871] (2008) 'What is Authority?' in God and the State. Cosimo Classics.
  • Benjamin, W. [1936] (2002) ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility’. In H. Eiland and M. Jennings (eds), Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings Vol 3, pp. 101-133.  Harvard University Press.
  • Dean, M. (1996) 'Foucault, Government and the Enfolding of Authority', in A. Barry, T. Osborne & N. Rose (eds) Foucault and Political Reason. University of Chicago Press.
  • Derrida, J. (1990) 'Force of Law: The "Mystical Foundation of Authority"'. Cardozo Law Review 11, pp. 920-1045.
  • Dewey, J. (1991) 'Authority and Social Change', in J.A. Boydston (ed.) John Dewey: The Later Works, vol. 13. Southern Illinois University Press.
  • Durkheim, E. [1912] (2008) The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Oxford University Press.
  • Engels, F. [1872] (1978) 'On Authority', in The Marx-Engels Reader. W.W. Norton & Co, pp. 730-733.
  • Estlund, D. (2008) Democractic Authority: A Philosophical Framework. Princeton University Press
  • Foucault, M. (1988) Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. Random House.
  • Green, L. (1989) The Authority of the State. Clarendon Press.
  • Hobbes, T. [1668] (1992) Leviathon. Hackett. 
  • Hopfl, H. (ed) (1991) Luther and Calvin on Secular Authority. Cambridge University Press.
  • Keat, R., Whiteley, N. & Abercrombie, N. (eds) (1994) The Authority of the Consumer. Routledge.
  • Lovell, T. (2003) 'Resisting With Authority: Historical Specificity, Agency and the Performative Self', Theory, Culture & Society, 20(1), pp. 1-17.
  • Marcuse, H. [1936] (2007) A Study on Authority. Verso.
  • Osborne, T. (1998) ‘Constructionism, Authority and the Ethical Life’ in I. Velody & R. Williams (eds) The Politics of Constructionism. Sage.
  • Raz, J. (ed.) (1990) Authority.  New York University Press.
  • Rose, N. (1993) 'Government, Authority and Expertise in Advanced Liberalism'. Economy and Society, 22(3), pp. 283-299.
  • Russell, B. [1949] (1995) Authority and the Individual. Routledge.
  • Sassen, S. (2006) Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages. Princeton University Press.
  • Sennett, R. (1980) Authority. Alfred A. Knopf.
  • Weber, M. [1922] (1964) The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Collier-Macmillan.
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