Introduction to Politics Essay

Professor Anthony King mentioned in the second lecture that legitimacy can be described as the ideas currently prevailing with society about political authority. My answer to him is that from his definition, legitimacy is slightly incomplete: yes, people can define legitimacy by being a majority in society or even better, the majority can head towards a consensus, but legitimacy is also to be defined by itself, having an intrinsic value, thus creating a framework, motivating people to set it as a purpose, creating inside it, rather than it being just a ruling statistic decided by circumstances, space and time. I believe that one can tell whether an existing regime is legitimate, not by the peoples willingness to recognize the power that the regime has, but by their capacity to understand whether their political power in decision-making actually has an important significance reflecting their own lives. This particular issue, which is an important part of my answer will be discussed later on. In this essay I am going to tackle issues consisting in pointing out where legitimacy does exist and where it doesnt and why, showing that legitimacy can sometimes be altered by social and economic circumstances; defining legitimacy and, nevertheless, idealize the concept of legitimacy where I believe it should be more than just a mere tool for the authoritys power to legally and fairly abide. Firstly, we must begin by stating that in almost all regimes there is a special relationship of submissiveness between people and authority. Authority can be represented by the ruling political party, monarch or group who establishes the decision-maker in the equation and by the constitution which mostly stands for the core of rights which must not be shattered, won by political movements throughout history. When ruling authority exercises its power, even by being elected by the majority of people, it loses its legitimacy when the rulers do not put themselves under the constitution: political power is legitimate only when it is exercised in accordance with a constitution (written or unwritten) the essentials of which all citizens, as reasonable and rational, can endorse in the light of their common human reason (Rawls 2001: 41). Whenever I will use the word authority in a negative connotation, I will be referring to the ruling authority and not the constitutional indirect written force imposition on people. Almost all countries have signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), adopting it to their Constitution or at least influencing it. Any act of authority has to be limited by the political evolution of society which has been materialized into the acquired rights for each person. When authority acts independently from constitutional rights, for mostly any purpose, it becomes coercive: Coercion threats provide secondary, reinforcing motivation when the political order fails in its primary normative technique of authoritative guidance (Green 1988: 75).When saying that some countries, such as Pakistan or China are receiving criticism for not even respecting basic human rights, it means that its legitimacy is being questioned externally, virtually objective by regimes, international organizations, NGOs and groups of people who are empathetic with the people living in these regimes cause. This is a step forward towards an improved legitimacy because external pressure now plays an important role in questioning legitimacy of an authority which is beginning to use coercive measures in order to stabilize its power. Another matter, regarding a historical fact which is to take into consideration is that when the federal elections were held in Germany on 5 March 1933, an astonishing 43.91% of the votes went to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, also referred to as the Nazi Party. Following the failure of

a democratic regime due to lack of practical solutions for change by the liberal democrats who were elected in 1918, the Great Depression which led to a massive unemployment of 232% (Blum, Cameron, Barnes 1970:885) and other harsh economic factors, the way was paved for what has been called the Democratic Crises. People, by losing faith in any moderate alternative for solutions, have chosen radical reform. The legitimacy of the regime is believed to be fair on a statistical presumption that the majority rules and that the elections were held democratically. The concept behind this theory is defined by the pure proceduralist conception of legitimacy: Democratic discussion, deliberation and decisionmaking under certain conditions are what make the outcomes legitimate for each person. *W+hatever the results of discussions, deliberation, and decisionmaking , they are legitimate. The results are made legitimate by being the results of the procedure (Christiano 1996: 35). But shouldnt legitimacy be characterized by the quality of the outcome and not by the input and quantity? Under pressure, humans can lose their humanity, going back to basic instincts of fear, hate and violence as it happened with the election of the Nazi party. People are looking to blame the first thing that is more accessible and instead of blaming ideologies, concepts and systems which are the primary causes that led populations in these situation, people use their frustration against other people, because its easier to make a scapegoat out of preconceptions and stereotypes. The decision-making process becomes irrational, building up a chimeric flaw and a paradox inside democratic legitimacy. A regime loses its legitimacy not by only looking on what circumstances have stimulated the decisions people made but also, by external pressure as I have previously mentioned before and internal, for example movements of dissidence such as the Kreisau Circle. While having many desperate attempts from the internal pressure attacking the regime, faced by repression through political detainment, the stability of the regime is beginning to show signs of how legitimate it was right from the start. A defendant of a rational proceduralist conception of legitimacy would put the problem in a different spectrum by saying that deliberative politics acquires its legitimating force from the discursive structure of an opinion- and will-formation that can fulfill its socially integrative function only because citizens expect its results to have a reasonable quality (Habermas 1996: 304). Even though it is not to be seemed purely practical because it is very hard or maybe impossible to objectively define what is rational, it is still an important characteristic of the legitimization of power. In trying to compare which one is the key player as a moral determinant, the consequences of what outcomes a regime can have are valuably more important than standing by a deontological view that no matter what the results are, a regime is legitimate because the democratic procedures were correct. The paradox mentioned earlier is that in one of some cases, the pure proceduralist conceptions of legitimacy, in trying to be democratic have led to one of the most undemocratic regimes. Thus, democracy, without rational support cannot exist or it is just living an irrational nightmare. Secondly, In order to identify legitimacy we must pull certain criterions out of a broader definition, avoiding to offer just a glimpse into its raw aspect in the sense of an unpolished first impression. It must lead towards the gateway to the rational proceduralist conception, which stands for the other facet. As Max Weber put it, the basis of every system of authority, and correspondingly of every kind of willingness to obey, is a belief, a belief by virtue of which persons exercising authority are lent prestige (Weber 1964: 382) .From this passage, he helps in underlining that 3 main points are consistent when describing legitimacy: understanding authority, her acceptance and obeying by its rules. These points are the steps for perfect legitimacy if we take each of them occurring in the order mentioned, and also if they have an absolute value. For authority to be justified power relationship is

not legitimate because people believe in its legitimacy, but because it can be justified in terms of their beliefs. (Beetham 1991: 11). Legitimacy is thus requiring a constancy after the procedures have taken place to avoid demagogy. Many parties who were elected became illegitimate because they failed to tackle the problems they promised to solve or because they went beyond common measures promised to solve. An example of an elected regime which led to a significant drop in public support is the Bush administration. Massive protests involving hundreds of thousands of people havent made an important impact on influencing the regime to wage external war. But they have certainly created steps forward on the fact that an elected legitimate regime loses its legitimacy when it does not conform with the peoples beliefs about how authority should be exercised. After he finished his second mandate, one of the most valuable promise that his successor, Barrack Obama made was to retrieve the military forces from Afghanistan, making indirectly a claim that going beyond campaign promises and population support is undemocratic and it definitely attacks the core foundation of legitimacy. Anthony H. Birch, raised in his book two important questions about the understanding and acceptance of authority and its legitimacy: Why should citizens feel obliged to obey the orders of the government? and Why should the actions of the government be regarded as the legitimate exercise of political authority?( Birch 2001:58).In order to answer these questions we must state that people give up particular liberties and integrate in a certain pattern, unconditionally from the moment they are born to be able to get in exchange a society which includes security by protection as well as freedom to thrive. Jean-Jacques Rousseau is one of the most influential figures who wrote about the idea of a Social Contract. In the beginning of his thesis he states I want to inquire whether there can be some legitimate and sure rule of administration in the civil order, taking men as they are and laws as they might be. Humans, bound with a current, more actualized Social Contract will always have a point to start from and to construct on, acquiring more liberties as societys intellectual capacity is beginning to evolve. While social animals, as Aristotel labeled us, because of our empathetic nature, the benefits in entering the social contract must be universal among society and each act of coercion by the state, in its milder sense of law enforcing, must apply to all. What ultimately legitimizes a state's imposition upon your liberty is not merely the services it provides you, but the benefits it provides others (Wellman 1996: 213). The state imposition upon your liberty must be of consent and essentially, it must protect liberty as a whole for society. This feature helps in the fight of supremacy for peoples political will. The state is becoming to lose its power gradually when people prove to themselves they have for example no need for certain bans and laws that are based on normative, traditional values (gay marriage, abortions, etc.). The emphasis on the individual has become increasingly more powerful and authority is beginning to recieve a social stigma due to its savage nature which leads it to the instinct of dominance. The individual is more protected and this truly helps in the legitimization of power, because as long as there is less negative external pressure, individuals can form better opinions about the world surrounding them, how they want to be ruled, and what should be attacked and gained back. Tracing back the need of protection for an individual from coercive forces, John Locke said that no one can be put out of this estate and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent (Locke 1980: 52) .

As people historically carried out the burden of being subjected to authority, the burden in our modern times must switch to authority. Authority should be metaphorically a container where we should throw why questions in, diminishing it while at the same time acquiring for ourselves the power to take control of our lives. The authority left in a democracy is just the proof that people are not ready, intelligent and strong enough to make consistent changes about their political life. An ideal practice of legitimacy can be drawn from this conclusion: a legitimate regime views authority as an illegitimate practice, as long as people can govern themselves through, for example direct action and direct representation. Thirdly, in the idealization of the legitimacy, certain sources must be attacked in order to make way for its evolution: previously I have used the rational proceduralist conception of legitimacy to assert that what happens before the procedures, during the procedures and the aftermath is of a significant importance for the quality of the outcome. This concept has to be summoned again so that an entire regime which is believed to be democratic can be brought up to a serious question, for example, the case of The United States of America, referring to its two-party system. How can a democratic regime can be considered legitimate when it uses the same background ideology and it limits the people they rule by labeling them into republicans and democrats voters? Could this be compared with what happened under the communist regime, when elections took place formally deciding the new leader, but the communist system was still perfectly inelastic? Even if democracy is believed to be a regime of consent and communism was leaning towards a regime of coercion most of the time, the coercion of the democratic regime is hidden and it comes from the infringing on peoples freedom by lying about the capacious liberties they have. When people are offered minimal freedoms such as freedom to buy, freedom to travel and other direct, palpable freedoms, they lose their interest in seeing the broader image of how their political power is truly diminished. Individuals with different beliefs have to make a sacrifice by choosing the party which relates the most with their own conceptions. A huge quantity of political substance is being lost by having to do so and people are not rightfully represented, thus the legitimacy of the regime is below of its standardized conception. The ideas currently prevailing with society about political authority are dissected, and because people have to choose the lesser bad between two evils, they found themselves trapped, the potentially expressed feelings about authority being cut down, stagnating the process of legitimizing democracy. Authority has always been a common enemy to fight with, acquiring the essential liberty of self-governance. The state, representing the central figure of authority has suffered many critical hits from the people throughout history and in order to suffer more, people need to be prepared intellectually and emotionally in the sense that they need to be powerful to fight it constantly in solidarity. The ideas currently prevailing in society, expressed through what people are offered in making the decisions regarding the ideas is just a mask of an invisible coercive force to maintain its power. But, nevertheless authority has played an important role because people had to attach the need to have certain freedoms and rights, from the struggles, proving that they, as a society will make good use of them, avoiding abuse, heading towards efficiency. As Rawls put it (2007: 129), we need a state of equal right, all being kings). Every regime can be considered illegitimate in the sense of people, not using the potential power they have efficiently, due to the external pressure and the hidden and reformed, more intelligent and powerful than ever before ruling authority. Getting over this stage will make a huge difference in how authority should be exercised, transferring it from an external merely represented side, to a collective well-prepared

consciousness capable to make decisions for itself. Concludingly, one can tell whether a regime is legitimate or not, when legitimacy itself is essentially legitimate, not interpreted using forms of coercive disturbance of the term.

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