thumb|185px|[[John Locke, who argued that consent of the governed confers political legitimacy]]

In political science, legitimacy is a concept concerning the right of an authority, usually a governing law or a regime, to rule the actions of a society. In political systems where this is not the case, unpopular regimes survive because they are considered legitimate by a small, influential elite. In Chinese political philosophy, since the historical period of the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BC), 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 English 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. In political science, legitimacy has traditionally been understood as the popular acceptance and recognition by the public of the authority of a political actor, whereby authority of such a regime has political power through consent and mutual understandings, not coercion. The three types of political legitimacy described by German sociologist Max Weber, in "Politics as Vocation", 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.

More recent scholarship distinguishes between multiple other types of legitimacy in an effort to draw distinctions between various approaches to the construct. These include empirical legitimacy versus normative legitimacy, instrumental versus substantive legitimacy, popular legitimacy, regulative legitimacy, and procedural legitimacy. Types of legitimacy draw distinctions that account for different sources of legitimacy, different frameworks for evaluating legitimacy, or different objects of legitimacy. The aspect of an authority that most concerns people in the absence of other accountability mechanisms are its actions, particularly with regard to how authorities interact with them on a day-to-day basis. The value-based expectation people have with regard to such interactions is one of human dignity. 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.

Civil legitimacy can be granted through different measures for accountability than voting, such as financial transparency and stake-holder accountability.

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 and cities including Bristol, Lebanon and Canada.

Dynastic legitimacy

Dynastic legitimacy refers to the acceptance of a monarch’s right to rule, typically derived from dynastic succession, this can be particularly potent when a reigning monarch has a weaker dynastic claim to the throne which they have obtained through conquest or support of domestic factions than a pretender as was the case with the British Jacobites. It can also be an argument in Republics where there are questions between royal lines as with the French legitimists who not only stand against the French Republic but also rival royalists such as the Orleanists and Bonapartists.

"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).

Negative and positive legitimacy

Derived from the concepts of positive freedom and negative freedom distinguished by Isaiah Berlin, 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, Weigand distinguishes substantive sources of legitimacy from more instrumental ones. State legitimacy rests on citizens' perceptions and expectations of the state, What legitimizes a state is also contextually specific. McCullough et al. (2020) show that in different countries, provision of different services build state legitimacy. In Nepal public water provision was most associated with state legitimacy, while in Pakistan it was health services. According to Mittiga, foundational legitimacy (FL) "pertains to a government's ability to ensure the safety and security of its citizens," while contingent legitimacy (CL) obtains in situations in which governments "exercise[] power in acceptable ways."

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 ("I don't know what is true, and I even doubt my own opinion"), 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).

See also

Further reading

  • Schoon, Eric W. (2022). "Operationalizing Legitimacy." American Sociological Review.
  • Weigand, Florian (2015). "Investigating the Role of Legitimacy in the Political Order of Conflict-torn Spaces." Security in Transition.
  • Weigand, Florian (2022). Waiting for Dignity: Legitimacy and Authority in Afghanistan. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-55364-3.

References