Authority is accumulated probability from past success rather than initial justification

Evidence

Authority is created on the basis of a differentiation of probabilities as a result of previous action. If influential communications have, for whatever reasons, always been successful, there emerge expectations which strengthen this probability, facilitate new attempts, and make rejection more difficult. After a period of untroubled acceptance, rejection causes surprise, disappointment, unforeseeable consequences and thus requires special reasons. And, vice versa, authority does not need to be justified initially. One could say that it is based on tradition, but does not need to invoke tradition. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 735

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to Stevens’s authority as head butler in Ishiguro’s novel — his authority rests on accumulated past success, not on any moral justification; links to the reader’s Luhmann-Ishiguro thesis about institution-grounded deference.