Authority is power perceived as legitimate; domination is power exercised over others. Weber identified three types of authority (traditional, charismatic, rational-legal). Understanding how power is legitimized is crucial to explaining social order and the relative stability of hierarchies.
From your study of conflict theory, you already know that society is permeated by power — unequal distributions of resources, competing interests, and coercion. But conflict theory leaves a puzzle: if power is so unequal and its exercise often harmful to subordinates, why do most people obey most of the time without constant coercion? The answer is that raw power is unstable. Sustained domination requires legitimation — subordinates must come to believe, at least partially, that the power exercised over them is rightful and appropriate. When that belief holds, rulers don't need to threaten force constantly; the dominated obey as a matter of course. Authority is Weber's term for this: power plus legitimacy.
Weber's three ideal types of legitimate authority are analytical categories, not historical stages. Traditional authority rests on the sanctity of long-standing customs and the personal status of the ruler within that tradition: the king rules because kings have always ruled, because the divine order ordained it, because it is unimaginable that things could be otherwise. The source of legitimacy is precedent itself. Charismatic authority rests on the extraordinary personal qualities of a leader — prophetic power, heroism, revolutionary inspiration. Followers obey because they believe in *this person*, not in tradition or rules. Charisma is inherently unstable: it lasts only as long as the leader's extraordinary qualities seem real, and it faces a succession crisis because charisma cannot easily be inherited. Rational-legal authority rests on a belief in the validity of formal rules and the right of those elevated by those rules to issue commands. The bureaucrat is obeyed not because of personal greatness or ancient custom but because the office has been lawfully constituted. Modern states, corporations, and universities are paradigmatic rational-legal organizations.
These types are rarely pure in practice. Modern states combine rational-legal structures (constitutions, administrative procedures) with traditional legitimating symbols (national myths, monarchic ceremonies) and occasional charismatic leadership that temporarily suspends normal rules. The significance of the typology is analytical: it lets you diagnose *why* a particular power arrangement is considered legitimate, which in turn tells you something about where its vulnerabilities lie. Traditional authority is fragile when tradition is disrupted or questioned. Charismatic authority collapses when the leader fails or dies. Rational-legal authority weakens when the rules are perceived as corrupt or systematically unjust — when the system appears rigged rather than impartial.
Domination (Herrschaft) is the broader concept: any situation where a command issued by one agent will find compliance among another, regardless of the compliance's motive. What varies is the basis of that compliance. Domination can rest on naked force, on interest (obeying because it benefits you), or on genuine legitimacy. Weber's interest in legitimacy is not naïve — he is not claiming that power is always justified. He is making a sociological point: understanding why power endures requires understanding the beliefs that sustain it from below. A regime that rules primarily through fear is brittle; one that has generated genuine belief in its rightfulness can weather crises that would topple a purely coercive order. This insight connects forward to your later work on structuration and the reproduction of social order: social structures persist because they are continuously reproduced by actors who treat them as legitimate, natural, or simply the way things are.
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