What Is a State for? Rethinking the Distinction between Symbolic Power and Authority

Vasfiye Betul Toprak, University of Maryland-College Park

How does a modernizing state carry out reform when it lacks the administrative cohesion, military capacity, or chain of command typically associated with state transformation? This paper addresses that question through a comparison of two Ottoman reform moments between 1789 and 1826: Selim III’s New Order and Mahmud II’s reform sequence culminating in the Auspicious Incident. Both confronted the same institutional problem—transforming the military arm of the state—under conditions of imperial crisis, yet produced opposite outcomes. Selim’s reforms ended in rebellion and dethronement; Mahmud’s succeeded in abolishing the Janissaries and establishing a new military order. The paper distinguishes between symbolic power and authority, a conceptual conflation that has long shaped comparative-historical sociology. Symbolic power helps explain situations in which a state already exists, possesses a relatively coherent structure of authority, and seeks to extend its administrative reach by performing competence or incorporating already authoritative forms. But it does not adequately explain how authority itself is consolidated when the very meaning, purpose, and rightful scope of the state are in dispute. In such moments, authority cannot be treated as a stable background condition; it is itself politically contested and must be remade. Using Ottoman chronicles, reform proposals, imperial decrees, juridical texts, fetvas, and official historiography, I argue that the contrast between Selim and Mahmud cannot be explained by coercion, crisis severity, or administrative design alone. The key difference lies in sequence. Selimian reformers attempted institutional innovation before transforming the structure of authority through which reform was judged. Mahmudian reformers, by contrast, first reshaped that structure through citation, performance, scapegoating, and metanarrative. In doing so, they resignified reform from bid‘at (wrongful innovation) into farz (religious duty), linking institutional change to Islam, order, and imperial survival.

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 Presented in Session 1. Law, Authority, and Administrative Rationalization