Extract
[...] The Yellow Vests movement in France in 2018-2019 illustrates the consequences of challenging the authority of the State in a democracy. This movement, justified by the feeling that the State could no longer govern in the name of the people, led to weeks of confrontation, blockages, and degradation. In the United States, the contestation of the election results by D. Trump in 2020, which led to the assault on the Capitol, shows how far the challenge to the authority of the State can go. [...]
[...] This is why the authority of the state in democracy does not undermine its principles, but constitutes the most perfected form of them. II. However, the authority of the democratic state is today the subject of a deep crisis of legitimacy that requires rethinking the foundations on which it rests A. The authority of the state in democracy is today the subject of multiple criticisms that weaken its effectiveness and recognition by citizens The reconciliation between authority and democracy is never definitively acquired. [...]
[...] The term authority comes from the Latin auctoritas who means 'this increases the value'. Thus, when one recognizes the legitimacy of the one who commands, it is authority. On the other hand, when one obeys someone out of fear, it is power. As H. Arendt pointed out, authority is based on consent and not on coercion. However, in a democracy, defined as a regime in which power belongs to the people, this authority may appear paradoxical. From then on, how can the authority of the state be ensured in a democratic regime without contradicting its foundations? [...]
[...] And above all, as noted by of Tocqueville in De la démocratie en Amérique, a society without a directing power risks leading not to more freedom but to another form of domination: the tyranny of the majority. In fact, a majority may want to oppress a minority by taking decisions contrary to fundamental rights. History confirms this. The Weimar Republic saw the authority of its institutions collapse gradually, paving the way for Hitler in 1933. Authority is therefore not the enemy of democracy: it is its absence that is. The social contract theories allow us to understand why. [...]
[...] The signs of this desacralization are everywhere. R. Debray, in Youth of the Sacred notes that heads of state speak standing, behind a lectern, and no longer seated. Authority seeks to get closer, to make itself accessible but progressively erases this symbolic distance that justifies authority. Indeed, for Debray, « Authority is seated. Tutankhamon is seated, the Christ is seated, Louis XIV is seated, Napoleon and De Gaulle are seated. At the same time, contemporary societies are marked by an increasingly strong demand for transparency. [...]
