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dc.contributor.authorBESSELINK, Thieu
dc.date.accessioned2009-07-13T08:17:23Z
dc.date.available2009-07-13T08:17:23Z
dc.date.issued2009
dc.identifier.citationFlorence : European University Institute, 2009en
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1814/12044
dc.descriptionDefence date: 27/06/2009en
dc.descriptionExamining Board: Prof. Neil Walker, (supervisor), University of Edinburgh Prof. Richard Sennett, (external supervisor), New York University Prof. Rodney Barker, London School of Economics and Political Science Prof. Peter Mair, European University Instituteen
dc.description.abstractThis thesis observes how modern leaders of Western society publicly engage in an unrewarding quest for a durably authoritative identity and it asks why rulers are so troubled in cultivating a credible role of authority. The author argues that modern authority itself has disintegrated with the change of its understanding and the diffusion of fixed authoritative roles and that this is accompanied by an identity crisis. He asks how modern rulers respond to the disintegration of a fixed, shared social reality in late modernity, and to the fact that our main legitimating mythologies - such as that of (political) representation, which once ordered the allocation of authority - no longer provide the reassurance and belief in ruler’s authority. To understand the nature of authority and its disintegration, the author explores rulers’ consciousness by categorising their responses in two archetypical models of authority, inspired by Machiavelli’s Prince and Shakespeare’s tragic hero. They represent the authority-effects of fear and reassurance and the two modern modes of authority cultivation: increasing social distance and decreasing social distance The thesis argues that modern authority is tragic because the logic by which the dominant archetypical roles try to authorise themselves is self defeating. It illustrates this with a history of authority which describes the characteristically modern drive for the exposure, immanence, and transparency of authority, informed by a desire for emancipation and mastery, and how it is paralleled by a degradation of authority and these typically modern archetypes that continue to determine Western culture. Reintegration of authority would require a more dimensional understanding of the concept. The author trances the four major roots of authority (authorship, authorisation, authenticity, and augmentation), and suggest they represent the subjective, objective, individual, and collective dimensions of authority which together form a whole system of meaning and creation.en
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherEuropean University Instituteen
dc.relation.ispartofseriesEUIen
dc.relation.ispartofseriesLAWen
dc.relation.ispartofseriesPhD Thesisen
dc.rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
dc.subject.lcshLeadership
dc.subject.lcshPower (Social sciences)
dc.subject.lcshSocial influence
dc.subject.lcshPolitical leadership
dc.titleTwo Faces of Authority: The leader's tragic questen
dc.typeThesisen
dc.identifier.doi10.2870/44263
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