The phrase "an external authority" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when referring to a source of power, control, or influence that comes from outside a particular system or organization.
Example: "The decision was made based on recommendations from an external authority, ensuring that we followed best practices."
Alternatives: "an outside authority" or "a third-party authority".
It is an internal, not an external authority.
Best practices rely on an external authority, not on the community itself, to identify and introduce a superior template.
You're a heretic because you've accepted that belief only because it's been handed to you by an external authority, an external authority like a pastor or a bishop or a member of the state assembly or a lecturer in the English department for that matter.
It would put the focus on ending the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza not through bilateral negotiations, but through an external authority, namely, the United Nations Security Council.
As Schelling notes, there are a variety of potential ways to get out of an inefficient equilibrium, but one obvious (and effective) way is to have an external authority change the rules.
France does not let universities limit student admissions; criteria for admission are set by an external authority.
Both those on the Left and those on the Right, both the foes and friends of capitalism, take it to be axiomatic that only an external authority--God or "Society --can ground morality.
The very concept of sovereignty has thus changed, from denoting the state's supreme legal authority to uphold the law within a certain territory and being independent from any external authority [25: 321], to one that subjects state power to higher-order principles.
Rousseau's struggle toward a morality based on transparent honesty and on values authenticated not by any external authority but by his own conscience and feelings, is continued in the Confessions (written 1764 70; Eng. trans. Confessions).
The liberator tells us that we are not to depend on any external authority -- not the government, not the nation, not the free-market economy, not even our own minds with their chronic and conditioned fears and whipped up hatreds, their advertiser-created cravings and media-induced delusions.
Perhaps he instinctively recognized that history and memory are often at odds and that an artist's business is to bring history alive by rejecting all external authority and pursuing the unknown.
