Inpolitical science,legitimacy is theright and acceptance of anauthority, usually a governing law or aregime. Whereasauthority denotes a specific position in an established government, the termlegitimacy denotes a system of government—whereingovernment denotes "sphere of influence". An authority viewed as legitimate often has the right and justification to exercisepower. Political legitimacy is considered a basic condition forgoverning, without which a government will suffer legislative deadlock(s) and collapse. In political systems where this is not the case, unpopular regimes survive because they are considered legitimate by a small, influentialelite.[1] In Chinesepolitical philosophy, since the historical period of theZhou dynasty (1046–256 BC), the political legitimacy of a ruler and government was derived from theMandate of Heaven, and unjust rulers who lost said mandate therefore lost the right to rule the people.
Inmoral philosophy, the termlegitimacy is often positively interpreted as thenormative 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.[2]
TheEnlightenment-era British socialJohn Locke (1632–1704) said that political legitimacy derives from popular explicit and implicitconsent 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 Germanpolitical philosopherDolf 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".[4] The Americanpolitical sociologistSeymour 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".[5] The American political scientistRobert 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.[1]
Legitimacy is "a value whereby something or someone is recognized and accepted as right and proper".[6] In political science, legitimacy has traditionally been 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 GermansociologistMax Weber, in "Politics as Vocation", are traditional, charismatic, and rational-legal:
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.[8][9][10] Types of legitimacy draw distinctions that account for different sources of legitimacy, different frameworks for evaluating legitimacy, or different objects of legitimacy.[11][12]
Legitimacy in conflict zones, where multiple authorities compete over authority and legitimacy, can rest on other sources. The theory of interactivedignity by Weigand shows that interactions are key for the construction of substantive legitimacy in such contexts.[13] The aspect of an authority that most concerns people in the absence of otheraccountability 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.[14] People expect procedures to be fair and practices to be respectful, reflecting a serving rather than an extractive attitude.[15] As long as authorities do not satisfy people's more immediate expectation of interactive dignity, people support and consider alternative authorities to be more legitimate.[16]
In atheocracy, government legitimacy derives from the spiritual authority of a god or a goddess.
The political legitimacy of a civil government derives from agreement among the autonomous constituent institutions—legislative, judicial, executive—combined for the national common good. In the United States, this issue has surfaced around how voting is impacted bygerrymandering,[17] theUnited States Electoral College's ability to produce winners by minority rule and discouragement of voter turnout outside ofswing states,[18] and therepeal of part of the Voting Rights Act in 2013.[19] 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.[citation needed]
Civil legitimacy can be granted through different measures for accountability[20] than voting, such as financial transparency[21] and stake-holder accountability. In the international system another method for measuring civil legitimacy is through accountability to international human rights norms.[citation needed]
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.[22] 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.[23]
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).[24]
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 byVivien Schmidt, who analyzes legitimacy also in terms of what she calls throughput, i.e. the governance processes that happen in between input and output.
Abulof distinguishes between negative political legitimacy (NPL), which is about the object of legitimation (answeringwhat is legitimate), and positive political legitimacy (PPL), which is about the source of legitimation (answeringwho is the 'legitimator').[citation needed] 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.[25]
Weber's understanding of legitimacy rests on sharedvalues, 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 sharedneeds.[26] Therefore, Weigand distinguishes substantive sources of legitimacy from more instrumental ones.[26][27]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."[26]
Establishing legitimacy is not simply transactional; service provision, elections and rule of law do not automatically grant legitimacy.[28] State legitimacy rests on citizens' perceptions and expectations of the state,[29] and these may be co-constructed between state actors and citizens.[30] 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.[30] But it is not only states that can build legitimacy. Other authorities, such as armed groups in a conflict zones, may construct legitimacy more successfully than the state in certain strata of the population.[31]
Political theorist Ross Mittiga has proposed an alternative typology, consisting of two parts: foundational and contingent legitimacy.[32] 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."[32]
Mittiga specifies further that FL:
...is bound up with a range of political capacities and actions including, among other things, being able to ensure continuous access to essential goods (particularly food, water, and shelter), prevent avoidable catastrophes, provide immediate and effective disaster relief, and combat invading forces or quell unjustified uprisings or rebellions. If a government cannot fulfill these basic security functions, it is not legitimate, if it is even a government at all. [p.3]
On the other hand, Mittiga acknowledges that there is "extensive debate" about which factors are relevant to CL, but argues that, "[a]mong the most commonly defended factors" are "the presence of democratic rights and processes, consent, guarantees of equal representation, provision of core public benefits, protection of basic individual rights and freedoms, social justice, and observance of fairness principles." [pp. 4–5] Mittiga specifies further that "[m]ost contemporary theorists maintain that legitimacy [in the contingent sense] requires multiple of these factors—some of which are procedural and others substantive."[32]
According to Mittiga, what makes certain aspects of legitimacy "contingent" (as opposed to "foundational") is that they are affected by (1) "the problem of pluralism"—i.e., the idea that "any firm agreement on" which factor(s) matters (or matter most of all) "will remain elusive or at least always open to contestation and renegotiation"; (2) "the problem of partial displacement," which holds that "when new legitimation factors emerge," as they often have historically, "earlier ones may not entirely disappear but only become less salient, at least for sizable portions of the citizenry"; and (3) "the problem of exceptional circumstances," which is "the fact that even widely shared and seemingly stable CL factors are routinely relaxed or abandoned during emergencies, often without calling into question the basic legitimacy of the government."[32]
Mittiga summarizes the difference between these two types or levels or types of legitimacy as follows:
The factors associated with CL condition the use of political power by specifying, for instance, what can or cannot be done or sacrificed, how decisions should be made, and who counts (and for how much). The answers to these questions often appear to us as moral universals; yet, in practice, they are the products of long and contentious historical processes. FL, on the other hand, does not vary between societies, generations, or circumstances. Ensuring safety and security is always theprimary—though, in good states, under reasonably favorable conditions, not theexclusive—end of political power.Aristotle expresses something like this in insisting that the point of political society is to furnish the resources needed not just to live but to livewell. Crudely put, FL is about living, CL about living well. And it is of course impossible to live well without living: after all, there can be no democracy of desolation, no fair social cooperation in conditions of extreme scarcity, no real rights when political stability is maintainable only through raw assertions of coercive power (if it can be maintained at all). In this sense, FL isnecessarily prior to CL, and must be regarded as such in moments when trade-offs become a necessary part of the political calculus. [p.7]
Max Weber proposed that societies behave cyclically in governing themselves with different types of governmental legitimacy. Thatdemocracy was unnecessary for establishing legitimacy, a condition that can be established with codified laws, customs, and cultural principles, not by means ofpopular 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., theNazi Germany ofAdolf Hitler,Fascist Italy underBenito Mussolini, andFrancoist Spain under GeneralFrancisco Franco.
The French political scientistMattei 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.[33] 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 theAyatollahRuhollah Khomeini. That traditional authority has disappeared in theMiddle East; that the rule-proving exceptions areIslamic Iran andSaudi 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]
In determining the political legitimacy of a system of rule and government, the term proper—political legitimacy—is philosophically anessentially contested concept that facilitates understanding the different applications and interpretations of abstract,qualitative, andevaluative concepts such as "art", "social justice", et cetera, as applied inaesthetics,political philosophy, thephilosophy of history, and thephilosophy of religion.[34] 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 ofdogmatism ("My answer is right, and all others are wrong"),scepticism ("I don't know what is true, and I even doubt my own opinion"), andeclecticism ("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[35] (seeWalter 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:[citation needed]
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