We're going to continue now to talk about political legitimacy, what it is, and what produces it.

What are the dynamics of it? What's the structure of causation of a legitimate political system and that enables us to see At the end of this lecture, though in a rather complicated way that we ll return to from time to time, the overall structure of causation of democratic stability in a country. First of all, let s go back to the great German sociologist, Max Weber, the intellectual father of much of the political sociology, of, the state and the political system. And think about the different, types or sources of, legitimacy, in a country. Weber argued that there were basically 3 types political legitimacy that could give citizens an incentive to offer their obedience or their compliance to a political ruler. The first is traditional, that people comply, they obey. They honor authority because it's the type of authority that's always been in place. And so it's intrinsically, morally worthy of their support, because it's the same system that's always been there. And so if you have a monarchy it may be steeped in this traditional legitimacy and this may also be true with traditional rulers, at at the lower level, or other smaller scale authority structures that are steeped in traditional patterns of authority. Second is what we call charismatic authority. That an individual is able to establish legitimacy for his or her rule and the political system that derives from it because of her exceptional personal qualities. and so a political system gets endowed. For example, by a revolutionary leader. Like Mao, or Fidel Castro in Cuba. Or by a democratic leader like George Washington. Or Nelson Mandela in South Africa, or today Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma. with political legitimacy because of the extraordinary personal qualities of leadership, of vision, of courage, of sacrifice that are identified with that individual. And a charismatic individual is followed and is able to command a following and to

command obedience. And ultimately if they prevail, as Washington did in the Revolutionary War. As Mandela did in the struggle to end Apartheid, and create a multiracial democracy in South Africa, as Vaclav Havel did, in the struggle for democracy in Czechoslovakia. Or Lech Walesa, as leader of the Solidarity Movement in Poland. If they prevail, the system that that results the new democracy can be initially legitimated in part as a result of their charismatic authority. The third source of authority is what we call rational legal And by that, Max Weber meant that citizens comply because it's part of a system of rational compliance which the law, the constitution, and impersonal authority that is properly const-, constituted. In a fair and neutral way that citizens see to benefit all of the society in a fair and equal way. And if the system that has been crafted constitutionally is seen as fair. And appropriate, then citizens follow the law. And, of course, this suggests, that over time, a democratic system, must make a transition, from charismatic authority, if that played a role at the beginning. or founding of democracy to a rational legal system of authority based on the law or the Constitution. Seymor Lipset and Martin Lipset argued that there needs to be a separation between the source of authority and the agent of authority. In a democracy the source of authority is the Constitution. It's the, it's the sacred legal document defining the rules of the game. The agent of authority is the President or Prime Minister, who swears an oath, for a limited term of office, and then is expected to give up power when he or she is defeated or in a presidential system any decent democracy now really requires, as I ll explain later in this course. Term limits. So, already we are beginning to see some of the mechanisms by which the source of authority, the constitution, can be clearly separated from the temporary agent of authority and the critical need for new democracies. Is, as I said, to separate the personal from the systemic. The charismatic from the rational legal.

The individual from the constitutional framework. charismatic leaders fuse the source and agent of authority. Mao Tse Tung was the system in China. So after a revolution as in Russia that brought Vldamir Lenin to power, he becomes both the source and agent of authority and Stalin succeeds him in that way. In the same way after the Cuban revolution We get a fusion between the source and agent of authority as we see Fidel Castro becoming both and the Cuban Communist Party occupying that fused role. And as Robert Mugabe has done ever since the transition from colonial or white settler rule. in Zimbabwe. This cannot be consistent with democracy and, if you understand this, then we can begin to appreciate one of the distinctive features of democracy, which is that there Are constraints on the power, the authority, the progratatives of individual leaders. There's something above the president, above the prime minister, well in a prime ministerial system it's usally a monarch or a symbolic president. But in terms of genuine power and authority, in a presidential system even, what lies above the elected the ruler is the Constitution as the source of authority.