Distinguishing authority from power through legitimacy. A step forward for economic analysis of employment relationship.

The “Economics of Contracts” has altered the economic analysis of the employment relationship by tackling it through sets of problems centred on “hierarchy” and “power”. However, such a presentation eludes the content of non-economic works such as Max Weber’s classical ones on the need to distinguish “authority” and “power”. So, the dimension of legitimacy is brushed aside or rationalized which greatly weakens these “contractualist” approaches. Within a framework inspired by the French Theory of Conventions, this paper aims at emphasizing the interest of taking such a distinction into account.