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In political science, legitimacy is the right
and acceptance of an authority, usually a governing law or a regime. Whereas
authority denotes a specific position in an established government, the term
legitimacy denotes a system of government—wherein government denotes
"sphere of influence". An authority viewed as legitimate often has
the right and justification to exercise power. Political legitimacy is
considered a basic condition for governing, without which a government will
suffer legislative deadlock(s) and collapse. In political systems where this is
not the case, unpopular régimes survive because they are considered
legitimate by a small, influential élite.
In Chinese political philosophy, since the historical period of the Zhou
Dynasty (1046–256 ), the political legitimacy of a ruler and government
was derived from the Mandate of Heaven, and unjust rulers who lost said mandate
therefore lost the right to rule the people. In moral philosophy, the term
legitimacy is often positively interpreted as the normative status conferred by
a governed people upon their governors' institutions, offices, and actions,
based upon the belief that their government's actions are appropriate uses of
power by a legally constituted government.
The Enlightenment-era British social philosopher John Locke (1632–1704)
said that political legitimacy derives from popular explicit and implicit
consent of the governed: "The argument of the [Second] Treatise is that
the government is not legitimate unless it is carried on with the consent of
the governed." The German political philosopher Dolf Sternberger said that
"[l]egitimacy is the foundation of such governmental power as is
exercised, both with a consciousness on the government's part that it has a
right to govern, and with some recognition by the governed of that right".
The American political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset said that legitimacy
also "involves the capacity of a political system to engender and maintain
the belief that existing political institutions are the most appropriate and
proper ones for the society". The American political scientist Robert A.
Dahl explained legitimacy as a reservoir: so long as the water is at a given
level, political stability is maintained, if it falls below the required level,
political legitimacy is endangered.
Types:
Legitimacy is "a value whereby something or someone is recognized and
accepted as right and proper". In political science, legitimacy usually is
understood as the popular acceptance and recognition by the public of the
authority of a governing régime, whereby authority has political power
through consent and mutual understandings, not coercion. The three types of
political legitimacy described by German sociologist Max Weber are traditional,
charismatic, and rational-legal: Traditional legitimacy derives from societal
custom and habit that emphasize the history of the authority of tradition.
Traditionalists understand this form of rule as historically accepted, hence
its continuity, because it is the way society has always been. Therefore, the
institutions of traditional government usually are historically continuous, as
in monarchy and tribalism.
Charismatic legitimacy derives from the ideas and personal charisma of the
leader, a person whose authoritative persona charms and psychologically
dominates the people of the society to agreement with the government's
régime and rule. A charismatic government usually features weak
political and administrative institutions, because they derive authority from
the persona of the leader, and usually disappear without the leader in power.
However, if the charismatic leader has a successor, a government derived from
charismatic legitimacy might continue. Rational-legal legitimacy derives from a
system of institutional procedure, wherein government institutions establish
and enforce law and order in the public interest. Therefore, it is through
public trust that the government will abide the law that confers rational-legal
legitimacy.
Forms:
Egyptian divine authority:
Numinous legitimacy:
In a theocracy, government legitimacy derives from the spiritual authority of a
god or a goddess. In ancient Egypt (c. 3150), the legitimacy of the dominion of
a Pharaoh (god–king) was theologically established by doctrine that
posited the pharaoh as the Egyptian patron god Horus, son of Osiris. The coat
of arms of the Holy See, the seat of Papal government In the Roman Catholic
Church, the priesthood derives its legitimacy from a divine source; the Roman
Magisterium dogmatically teaches that Jesus Christ designated St. Peter the
supreme and infallible head of the entire Christian Church, and thus each
bishop of Rome is sanctified, legitimate, and possesses these charisms as well.
Civil legitimacy:
One measurement of civil legitimacy is who has access to the vote, including
women are able to vote The political legitimacy of a civil government derives
from agreement among the autonomous constituent institutions—legislative,
judicial, executive—combined for the national common good. One way civil
society grants legitimacy to governments is through public elections. There are
also those who refute the legitimacy offered by public elections, pointing out
that the amount of legitimacy public elections can grant depends significantly
on the electoral system conducting the elections. In the United States, this
issue has surfaced around how voting is impacted by gerrymandering, the United
States Electoral College's ability to produce winners by minority rule and
discouragement of voter turnout outside of Swing states, and the repeal of part
of the Voting Rights Act in 2013. Another challenge to the political legitimacy
offered by elections is whether or not marginalized groups such as women or
those who are incarcerated are allowed to vote.
Civil legitimacy can be granted through different measures for accountability
than voting, such as financial transparency and stake-holder accountability. In
the international system another method for measuring civil legitimacy is
through accountability to international human rights norms. In an effort to
determine what makes a government legitimate, the Center for Public Impact
launched a project to hold a global conversation about legitimacy stating,
inviting citizens, academics and governments to participate. The organization
also publishes case studies that consider the theme of legitimacy as it applies
to projects in a number of different countries including Bristol, Lebanon and
Canada.
"Good" governance vs "bad" governance:
The United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commission (OHCHR)
established standards of what is considered "good governance" that
include the key attributes transparency, responsibility, accountability,
participation and responsiveness (to the needs of the people). Input, output
and throughput legitimacy Assessing the political legitimacy of a government
can be done by looking at three different aspects of which a government can
derive legitimacy. Fritz Scharpf introduced two normative criteria, which are
output legitimacy, i.e. the effectiveness of policy outcomes for people and
input legitimacy, the responsiveness to citizen concerns as a result of
participation by the people. A third normative criterion was added by Vivien
Schmidt, who analyzes legitimacy also in terms of what she calls throughput,
i.e. the governance processes that happen in between input and output. Negative
and positive legitimacy Abulof distinguishes between negative political
legitimacy (NPL), which is about the object of legitimation (answering what is
legitimate), and positive political legitimacy (PPL), which is about the source
of legitimation (answering who is the 'legitimator'). NPL is concerned with
establishing where to draw the line between good and bad; PPL with who should
be drawing it in the first place. From the NPL perspective, political
legitimacy emanates from appropriate actions; from a PPL perspective, it
emanates from appropriate actors. In the social contract tradition, Hobbes and
Locke focused on NPL (stressing security and liberty, respectively), while
Rousseau focused more on PPL ("the people" as the legitimator).
Arguably, political stability depends on both forms of legitimacy.[
Instrumental and substantive legitimacy:
Weber's understanding of legitimacy rests on shared values, such as tradition
and rational-legality. But policies that aim at (re-)constructing legitimacy by
improving the service delivery or 'output' of a state often only respond to
shared needs. Therefore, substantive sources of legitimacy need to be
distinguished from more instrumental ones.[17] Instrumental legitimacy rests on
"the rational assessment of the usefulness of an authority ..., describing
to what extent an authority responds to shared needs. Instrumental legitimacy
is very much based on the perceived effectiveness of service delivery.
Conversely, substantive legitimacy is a more abstract normative judgment, which
is underpinned by shared values. If a person believes that an entity has the
right to exercise social control, he or she may also accept personal
disadvantages."
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Max Weber proposed that societies behave
cyclically in governing themselves with different types of governmental
legitimacy. That democracy was unnecessary for establishing legitimacy, a
condition that can be established with codified laws, customs, and cultural
principles, not by means of popular suffrage. That a society might decide to
revert from the legitimate government of a rational–legal authority to the
charismatic government of a leader; e.g., the Nazi Germany of Adolf Hitler,
Fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini, and Francoist Spain under General
Francisco Franco. Mattei Dogan The French political scientist Mattei Dogan's
contemporary interpretation of Weber's types of political legitimacy
(traditional, charismatic, legal-rational) proposes that they are conceptually
insufficient to comprehend the complex relationships that constitute a
legitimate political system in the 21st century.
Moreover, Dogan proposed that traditional authority and charismatic authority
are obsolete as forms of contemporary government; e.g., the Islamic Republic of
Iran (est. 1979) rule by means of the priestly Koranic interpretations by the
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. That traditional authority has disappeared in the
Middle East; that the rule-proving exceptions are Islamic Iran and Saudi
Arabia. Furthermore, the third Weber type of political legitimacy,
rational-legal authority, exists in so many permutations no longer allow it to
be limited as a type of legitimate authority.
Forms of legitimate government:
In determining the political legitimacy of a system of rule and government, the
term proper—political legitimacy—is philosophically an essentially
contested concept that facilitates understanding the different applications and
interpretations of abstract, qualitative, and evaluative concepts such as
"art", "social justice", et cetera, as applied in
aesthetics, political philosophy, the philosophy of history, and the philosophy
of religion. Therefore, in defining the political legitimacy of a system of
government and rule, the term "essentially contested concept"
indicates that a key term (communism, democracy, constitutionalism, etc.) has
different meanings within a given political argument. Hence, the intellectually
restrictive politics of dogmatism ("My answer is right, and all others are
wrong"), scepticism ("All answers are equally true or [false];
everyone has a right to his own truth"), and eclecticism ("Each
meaning gives a partial view, so the more meanings the better") are
inappropriate philosophic stances for managing a political term that has more
than one meaning (see Walter Bryce Gallie).
Establishing what qualifies as a legitimate form of government continues to be
a topic of great philosophical controversy. Forms of legitimate government are
posited to include: Communism, where the legitimacy of a Communist state
derives from having won a civil war, a revolution, or from having won an
election such as the Presidency of Salvador Allende (1970–73) in Chile;
thus, the actions of the Communist government are legitimate, authorised by the
people. In the early 20th century, Communist parties based the arguments
supporting the legitimacy of their rule and government upon the scientific
nature of Marxism (see dialectical materialism). Constitutionalism. where the
modern political concept of constitutionalism establishes the law as supreme
over the private will, by integrating nationalism, democracy, and limited
government. The political legitimacy of constitutionalism derives from popular
belief and acceptance that the actions of the government are legitimate because
they abide by the law codified in the political constitution. The political
scientist Carl Joachim Friedrich (1901–1984) said that, in dividing
political power among the organs of government, constitutional law effectively
restrains the actions of the government (see checks and balances). Democracy,
where government legitimacy derives from the popular perception that the
elected government abides by democratic principles in governing, and thus is
legally accountable to its people.
Fascism, where in the 1920s and the 1930s it based its political legitimacy
upon the arguments of traditional authority; respectively, the German National
Socialists and the Italian Fascists claimed that the political legitimacy of
their right to rule derived from philosophically denying the (popular)
political legitimacy of elected liberal democratic governments. During the
Weimar Republic (1918–1933), the political philosopher Carl Schmitt
(1888–1985)—whose legal work as the "Crown Jurist of the Third
Reich" promoted fascism and deconstructed liberal democracy—addressed
the matter in Legalität und Legitimität (Legality and Legitimacy,
1932), an anti-democratic polemic treatise that asked: "How can
parliamentary government make for law and legality, when a 49 per cent minority
accepts as politically legitimate the political will of a 51 per cent
majority?"
Monarchy, where the divine right of kings establishes the political legitimacy
of the rule of the monarch (king or queen); legitimacy also derives from the
popular perception (tradition and custom) and acceptance of the monarch as the
rightful ruler of nation and country. Contemporarily, such divine-right
legitimacy is manifest in the absolute monarchy of the House of Saud (est.
1744), a royal family who have ruled and governed Saudi Arabia since the 18th
century. Moreover, constitutional monarchy is a variant form of monarchic
political legitimacy which combines traditional authority and
legal–rational authority, by which means the monarch maintains nationalist
unity (one people) and democratic administration (a political constitution).
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