Authorization

Authorization is the right to commit in a domain — organisational mandate, legal standing, role entitlement, delegated write access, regulatory license, or democratic mandate. It is one component of legitimacy at the commitment boundary and one component of authority weight (with track record, qualification, and certification).

Introduction: When Social Stability Matters More Than Quality — Authorization and entitlement.

Authorization vs competence

Authorization without competence produces legitimate-looking binds that may be epistemically weak. Competence without authorization produces correct opinions that cannot bind the organisation. Both must be recorded; they answer different questions.

Examples

• RBAC role granting write access to a domain
• Board resolution authorising a policy commit
• Regulatory license (MLRO, prescribing authority)
• Democratic mandate — equal-weight vote with pre-committed threshold
• Recorded delegation — L0 policy authorising automated bind within scope

None of these make the underlying judgment better; they make the commit stick for those who must live with it.

Downstream loss

Authorization granted by an illegitimate upstream authority does not gain legitimacy through delegation — parallel to legitimacy lost downstream and the data processing inequality. Grants should be L0 events with scope, issuer, and expiry.

Corpus stance

A2 — working context: British corpus prose sometimes uses authorisation; this term page uses authorization as primary title with alias authorisation.