Authorization Regime and Freedom Regime

The management of the Covid-19 crisis revealed a fundamental confusion in our societies: we have overwhelmingly accepted to call “freedom” what was its exact opposite. This misunderstanding is not anecdotal but symptomatic of a deep cultural confusion that permeates all our social relations.

The legal foundations: two opposing regimes

The freedom regime and the authorization regime constitute two radically opposed legal modalities for managing public freedoms. This distinction, though fundamental in law, remains largely unknown to the general public, which has major political consequences.

In a freedom regime, also called a repressive regime, everything that is not prohibited is permitted. Citizens exercise their rights and freedoms without requesting prior authorization. The State intervenes only a posteriori, in cases of abuse or infringement, through sanctions. This is the most liberal regime, guaranteeing broad individual and collective autonomy. Freedom is the principle, prohibition the exception.

Conversely, the authorization regime, called preventive, imposes a prior procedure with an authority to obtain a formal act before being able to exercise an activity or freedom. This regime establishes a prohibition in principle, which can only be derogated from with the express agreement of the administration. It normally applies to activities considered sensitive or potentially dangerous.

This distinction is not merely academic. It structures our relationship to power and citizenship. In democracy, the freedom regime should be the rule, the authorization regime the carefully justified and delimited exception.

The historical shift: the health emergency state

The management of the Covid-19 crisis in France illustrated a massive and largely unthought shift from the freedom regime to a generalized authorization regime. From March 2020, lockdown prohibited movement except for exceptions justified by a derogatory certificate. For the first time in recent history, one had to self-issue an authorization to exercise fundamental rights: to move, work, gather.

But the most troubling remains the arrival of the health pass in August 2021. Political leaders had solemnly promised that such a device would never be implemented, since we are in a democracy. Yet they instituted it without ever explaining this reversal or apologizing for it. Even more astonishing: part of the population welcomed this pass as a return to freedom. “Finally, thanks to this pass, we will be free,” we heard.

How could we collectively call “freedom” what was exactly its opposite? This confusion reveals something profound about our political culture. We seem to have internalized authorization logics to such an extent that we no longer even recognize freedom when it disappears.

A deeply rooted cultural confusion

This misunderstanding during the health crisis is not an isolated accident. It is rooted in a deep cultural confusion between freedom and authorization that structures all our social relations.

In our culture, from childhood, we are immersed in authorization systems. Children must ask permission for the most mundane acts. This education forges a deep internalization: asking for authorization becomes “normal,” exercising one’s freedom becomes suspect. Parents themselves are convinced that their children have no rights of their own, while legally, children have rights that are very poorly respected.

This culture of authorization perpetuates itself in the school system, then in the professional world. Even in companies that claim to be “liberated,” how many employees really dare to exercise their autonomy without constantly seeking hierarchical approval? The fear of freedom is deeply rooted.

In prison systems, supposedly depriving of freedom of movement but respecting human dignity, the authorization regime extends far beyond what the law provides. Detained persons undergo a total authorization regime that denies their very humanity.

Love as a laboratory of confusion

It is perhaps in romantic relationships that this confusion reaches its peak. Romantic love, as culturally constructed, mixes loving feeling with the establishment of a system of mutual authorizations.

“Do you give me the right to go out with my friends?” This question, commonplace in many couples, reveals the extent of the problem. We confuse respect for the other with submission to their authorization. Jealousy, presented as proof of love, is only the manifestation of this authorization system: I suffer that you use your freedom because I have internalized that you should ask my permission.

Legal history illuminates this confusion. For a long time in France, the married woman legally became a minor again, under her husband’s authority. This legal subordination has disappeared, but its cultural traces persist. How many women still ask, consciously or not, for authorization for everyday acts?

“Crimes of passion,” still partially excused socially, reveal the extreme outcome of this logic. One can kill “out of love,” that is, because the other exercised their freedom without authorization. This is the exact opposite of true love which should celebrate the freedom of the loved one.

The mechanisms of voluntary servitude

How to explain that we accept, even demand, these authorization regimes? Several psychosocial mechanisms are at work:

• First, authorization reassures. In a complex world, asking permission relieves responsibility. If I have authorization, I cannot be blamed. This deresponsibilization is comfortable but deadly for citizenship.
• Next, the authorization regime creates the illusion of order and security. If everyone must ask permission, there will be less chaos, we think. This forgets that the most creative and dynamic societies are those that maximize spaces of freedom.
• Finally, we have internalized a deep mistrust of our own freedom and that of others. “If we let people be free, they will do anything.” This belief, never empirically verified, structures our social relations. We prefer to constrain and be constrained rather than trust.

Rebuilding a culture of freedom

Faced with this observation, how to rebuild a true culture of freedom? This is not about advocating unbridled individualism but about rethinking our modes of social organization.

Distinguishing freedom and license
Freedom is not the absence of rules but the possibility of acting without prior authorization while respecting the rights of others. In a freedom regime, I do not have to justify my actions as long as they do not harm others. This is a fundamental nuance: freedom is exercised within a framework, but this framework is not made of preventive authorizations but of assumed responsibilities.

Reinventing our organizations
In a couple that respects freedoms, organization replaces authorization. Instead of negotiating permissions, we share schedules, communicate our needs, organize logistics. Each person decides for themselves while taking into account common constraints. It’s more complex than an authorization system, but infinitely more respectful.

With children, it’s about moving from “you must obey me” to “here is the framework within which you can exercise your choices.” We advise, we accompany, we set clear limits, but we do not systematically submit to authorization. It’s recognizing the child as a subject of rights, progressively capable of autonomy.

Cultivating trust
The transition from an authorization regime to a freedom regime requires cultivating trust: self-confidence, trust in others, trust in collective processes. This trust cannot be decreed, it is built through experience. Each successful space of freedom reinforces trust and allows for further expansion of freedoms.

In the professional world, companies that have truly succeeded in their “liberation” are those that have accepted to trust radically. Not in a generalized laissez-faire, but in the patient construction of frameworks allowing the exercise of individual freedoms in service of a collective project.

Resisting regressions
The Covid experience shows how fragile our freedoms are. In a few weeks, we accepted unprecedented restrictions, disproportionate to the real health stakes. The ease with which we switched to a generalized authorization regime should alert us.

This is not about denying the necessity of exceptional measures in times of crisis. But these measures must remain exceptional, proportionate, temporary and constantly questioned. Yet we witnessed a normalization of the exception, a trivialization of restrictions, an habituation to authorization.

Democratic vigilance requires always questioning authorization regimes: are they necessary? Proportionate? Limited in time? Subject to control? Too often, authorizations instituted for circumstantial reasons become permanent through simple administrative inertia and bourgeois comfort.

A necessary cultural transformation

The confusion between authorization and freedom is not just a legal or political problem. It is a major cultural issue that touches our very conception of humanity and life in society.

We must collectively relearn what freedom is: not chaos or selfishness, but the responsible exercise of our autonomy. We must unlearn the fear of freedom, ours and that of others. We must build institutions, relationships, ways of life that promote the flourishing of freedoms rather than their preventive restriction.

This transformation is demanding. The authorization regime is comfortable in its simplicity: someone decides, I obey or disobey. The freedom regime requires everyone to assume their choices, to take others into account without submitting to them, to participate in the permanent construction of the common.

But this requirement is also a promise. A society of freedoms is more creative, more dynamic, more just than a society of authorizations. It allows everyone to deploy their potential while building the collective. It bets on collective intelligence rather than hierarchical submission.

Rediscovering the taste for freedom

I believe a form of evidence is obvious: we have collectively lost the taste for freedom. We fear it more than we desire it. We prefer the illusory security of authorization to the invigorating requirement of freedom.

This loss is not irreversible. Everywhere, individuals, collectives, organizations are experimenting with new forms of freedom. They show that we can organize without authoritarianism, love without possessing, educate without subjugating, work without alienating.

The distinction between authorization regime and freedom regime is not just a legal subtlety. It is a political and ethical compass. Every time we must organize collectively, the question should be: how to maximize freedoms while ensuring harmonious coexistence? And not: who must authorize what?

Freedom is not an achievement but a permanent conquest. It is a risk to take, which is the price for a democratic society. It is won against our fears, our habits, our comforts. It is built through dialogue, experimentation, sometimes error. It requires courage: the courage to assume one’s choices, to trust, to let go of control.

Rediscovering the taste for freedom is rediscovering the very meaning of democracy. For a democracy where citizens have internalized that they must constantly ask for authorization is only a democratic facade. True democracy presupposes free citizens, aware of their rights, capable of exercising them without fear or submission.

The issue goes far beyond politics. It is our very humanity that is at stake in this question. Will we be free beings, creators of their existences, or subjected subjects, constantly begging for authorization to be? The answer to this question will determine the face of our future societies.