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Legitimacy (political)
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Main page Not to be confused with Legitimacy (law).

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In political science, legitimacy is the right and acceptance of an
Interaction authority, usually a governing law or a rgime. Whereas
Help "authority" denotes a specific position in an established
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government, the term "legitimacy" denotes a system of
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government wherein "government" denotes "sphere of
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Contact page influence". An authority viewed as legitimate often has the right
and justification to exercise power. Political legitimacy is
Tools considered a basic condition for governing, without which a
What links here government will suffer legislative deadlock(s) and collapse. In
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political systems where this is not the case, unpopular rgimes
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survive because they are considered legitimate by a small,
Special pages John Locke: consent of the
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 Special pages John Locke: consent of the
influential lite.[1] In Chinese political philosophy, since the
Permanent link governed confers political
Page information historical period of the Zhou Dynasty (1046256 BC), the legitimacy.
Wikidata item political legitimacy of a ruler and government was derived from
Cite this page the Mandate of Heaven, and unjust rulers who lost said mandate
therefore lost the right to rule the people.
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Create a book In moral philosophy, the term "legitimacy" is often positively interpreted as the normative status
Download as PDF conferred by a governed people upon their governors' institutions, offices, and actions, based
Printable version upon the belief that their government's actions are appropriate uses of power by a legally
constituted government.[2]
Languages

The Enlightenment-era British social philosopher John Locke (16321704) said that political
Azrbaycanca 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."[3] The German political philosopher Dolf Sternberger said that "[l]egitimacy is the
Catal
foundation of such governmental power as is exercised, both with a consciousness on the
etina
government's part that it has a right to govern, and with some recognition by the governed of that
Dansk
Deutsch right."[4] The American political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset said that legitimacy also "involves
Eesti the capacity of a political system to engender and maintain the belief that existing political
Espaol institutions are the most appropriate and proper ones for the society."[5] The American political
scientist Robert A. Dahl explained legitimacy as a reservoir: so long as the water is at a given level,
Franais
political stability is maintained, if it falls below the required level, political legitimacy is
Galego
endangered.[1]
Hrvatski
Ido
Contents

1 Types of legitimacy
Lietuvi
Nederlands 2 Forms of legitimacy
2.1 Numinous legitimacy
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 2.1 Numinous legitimacy
Norsk bokml 2.2 Civil legitimacy
Norsk nynorsk 2.3 Input, output and throughput legitimacy
Polski 2.4 Negative and Positive legitimacy
Portugus 2.5 Instrumental and substantive legitimacy
Romn 3 Sources of legitimacy

4 Forms of legitimate government
Simple English
5 See also

6 References
/ srpski
Suomi
Svenska
Tagalog Types of legitimacy [edit]

Legitimacy is "a value whereby something or someone is recognized and accepted as right and

proper".[citation needed] In political science, legitimacy usually is understood as the popular

Edit links acceptance and recognition by the public of the authority of a governing rgime, 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:

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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 rgime and rule. A charismatic government usually features
weak political and administrative institutions, because they derive authority from the persona of
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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.[6]
Forms of legitimacy [edit]
Numinous legitimacy [edit]
In a theocracy, government legitimacy derives from the spiritual
authority of a god or a goddess.
In Ancient Egypt (ca. 3150 BC), the legitimacy of the dominion of a
Pharaoh (godking) was theologically established by doctrine that
posited the pharaoh as the Egyptian patron god Horus, son of Osiris.
In the Roman Catholic Church, the
Theocracy: Egyptian
priesthood derives its legitimacy from a
divine authority, Horus as
a falcon.
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.
Theocracy: The coat of
Civil legitimacy [edit] arms of the Holy See, the
seat of Papal government.
The political legitimacy of a civil government derives from agreement
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 among the autonomous constituent institutionslegislative, judicial,
executivecombined for the national common good. One way civil society grants legitimacy to
governments is through public elections.

Input, output and throughput legitimacy [edit]

Assessing the political legitimacy of a government can be done by looking at three different
aspects of which a government can derive legitimacy from. 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 [edit]

Does legitimacy draw on actors or their actions? 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.[7]

Instrumental and substantive legitimacy [edit]

Weber's understanding of legitimacy rests on shared values, such as tradition and rational-legality.
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 But policies that aim at (re-)constructing legitimacy by improving the service delivery or 'output' of
a state often only respond to shared needs.[8] Therefore, substantive sources of legitimacy need
to be distinguished from more instrumental ones.[8] 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."[8]

Sources of legitimacy [edit]

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
rationallegal authority to the charismatic government of a leader;
e.g., the Nazi Germany of Adolf Hitler, Fascist Italy under Benito
Mussolini, and fascist Spain under General Francisco Franco.

The French political scientist

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The French political scientist
Mattei Dogan's contemporary
Max Weber: societies are interpretation of Weber's types of
politically cyclical.
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 twenty-first century.[9] 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 Khomeini). That traditional
authority has disappeared in the Middle East; that the rule-proving
exceptions are Islamic Iran and Saudi
Mattei Dogan
Arabia. [clarification needed][citation needed] 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. [clarification needed]
Forms of legitimate government [edit]
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.[10] 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
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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.[11] (see: Walter Bryce Gallie)
Forms of legitimate government are posited to include:[citation needed]
Communism: 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 twentieth century, Communist parties based the arguments supporting the
legitimacy of their rule and government upon the scientific nature of Marxism. (See dialectical
materialism.)
Constitutionalism: 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 (190184) said that, in dividing
political power among the organs of government, constitutional law effectively restrains the
actions of the government.[12] (See checks and balances.)
Democracy: In a democracy, 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.[12]
Fascism: In the 1920s and the 1930s, fascism 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
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denying the (popular) political legitimacy of elected liberal democratic governments. During the
Weimar Republic (191833), the political philosopher Carl Schmitt (18881985)whose legal
work as the "Crown Jurist of the Third Reich" promoted fascism and deconstructed liberal
democracyaddressed the matter in Legalitt und Legitimitt (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?[13]
Monarchy: In a monarchy, 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 legalrational authority, by which means the
monarch maintains nationalist unity (one people) and democratic administration (a political
constitution).
See also [edit]
Delegitimization
Legitimacy of Israel
Mandate (politics)
Right to exist
Rule According to Higher Law
Rule of law
Self-determination
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 Territorial integrity

References [edit]
1. ^ a b
Dahl, Robert A. Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (pp. 124188). New Haven
(Connecticut) and London: Yale University Press, 1971
2. ^ Phelps, Martha Lizabeth (December 2014). "Doppelgangers of the State: Private Security and
Transferable Legitimacy" . Politics & Policy. 42 (6): 824849. doi:10.1111/polp.12100 .
3. ^ Ashcraft, Richard (ed.): John Locke: Critical Assessments (p. 524). London: Routledge, 1991
4. ^ Sternberger, Dolf: "Legitimacy" in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (ed. D.L.
Sills) Vol. 9 (p. 244). New York: Macmillan, 1968
5. ^ Lipset, Seymour Martin: Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (2nd ed.) (p. 64). London:
Heinemann, 1983
6. ^ O'Neil, Patrick H. (2010). Essentials of Comparative Politics. New York: W.W. Norton &
Company. pp. 3538. ISBN 978-0-393-93376-5.
7. ^ Abulof, Uriel (2015). "Cant Buy Me Legitimacy": The Elusive and Illusive Stability of Mideast
Rentier Regimes . Journal of International Relations and Development.
8. ^ a bc
Weigand, Florian (April 2015). "Investigating the Role of Legitimacy in the Political Order of
Conflict-torn Spaces" (PDF) . SiT/WP. 04/15.
9. ^ Dogan, Mattei: Conceptions of Legitimacy, Encyclopedia of Government and Politics 2nd edition,
Mary Hawkesworth and Maurice Kogan editors, Vol. 2, pp. 116-219. London: Routledge 2003
10. ^ Initially published as Gallie (1956a), then as Gallie (1964).
11. ^ Garver (1978), p. 168.
12. ^ a b
Charlton, Roger: Political Realities: Comparative Government (p. 23). London: Longman, 1986
13. ^ Schmitt, Carl: Legality and Legitimacy (Jeffrey Seitzer translator). Durham (North Carolina): Duke
University Press, 2004

Categories: Authority Political concepts Political culture Social concepts Sovereignty

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