Authority or power ?

A "Political System" is complex set of relations that should be broken down into small clusters in order to carry out a detailed study and a manner that would extract the essence out of each link and bridge. In a political system there's no rights and wrongs, the only thing that really matters is where to use each element and each policy. That's what makes the study of political systems of one the major divisions of the social sciences.

A simple definition of power could be the ability both to demand that people do something, and to say how a thing should be done or organized. Authority, however, is where power is granted by consent; and when an individual or committee is said to have authority, the reason that justifies this authority is known as legitimacy. In general, the government has authority because it has legitimacy through: tradition, as Parliament has existed for hundreds of years; charisma, as many people may follow a President or Prime Minister or any other Political or sometimes social leader through the strength and attraction of his personality; and democratically through the people, as they vote in elections for the party they wish to form the government.

Detail of The School of Athens by Raffaello Sanzio...

English: The School of Athens (detail). Fresco, St...

English: Sketch of the 1901 maxi trial of suspecte...

An example of an organization that has power but not necessarily authority would be the Mafia, which exercise their power by sometimes using violence and force, or money, status, education or sex. In Liberal Democracies such as the UK, power is split into three types: legislative power, which is the power to make laws; executive power, which is the power to implement laws; and judicial power, which is the power to interpret laws. The political authority is the driver that perfectly runs all the political policies and interventions. The authority in the political field is granted by...