Legitimacy (political)

Not to be confused with Legitimacy (law).

The Enlightenment-era British social philosopher John
In political science, legitimacy is the right and accep- Locke (16321704) 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.[3] 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 governments part
that it has a right to govern, and with some recognition
by the governed of that right.[4] 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.[5] 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.[1]

1 Types of legitimacy
Legitimacy is a value whereby something or someone
is recognized and accepted as right and proper. In political science, legitimacy usually is understood as the
popular 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:

John Locke: consent of the governed confers political legitimacy.

tance of an authority, usually a governing law or a rgime.

Whereas authority denotes a specic position in an established government, the term legitimacy denotes a
system of government wherein government denotes
"sphere of inuence". An authority viewed as legitimate
often has the right and justication to exercise power. Political legitimacy is considered a basic condition for governing, without which a government will suer legislative
deadlock(s) and collapse. In political systems where this
is not the case, unpopular rgimes survive because they
are considered legitimate by a small, inuential lite.[1]
In Chinese political philosophy, since the historical period of the Zhou Dynasty (1046256 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.

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 governments rgime and rule. A charismatic government usually features weak political
and administrative institutions, because they derive

In moral philosophy, the term legitimacy is often positively interpreted as the normative status conferred by
a governed people upon their governors institutions, ofces, and actions, based upon the belief that their governments actions are appropriate uses of power by a legally
constituted government.[2]
1

FORMS OF LEGITIMACY

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.[6]

Forms of legitimacy

Theocracy: The coat of arms of the Holy See, the seat of Papal
government.

2.2 Civil legitimacy

The political legitimacy of a civil government derives from agreement among the autonomous constituent
institutionslegislative, judicial, executivecombined
for the national common good. One way civil society
grants legitimacy to governments is through public elections.

Theocracy: Egyptian divine authority, Horus as a falcon.

2.1

Numinous legitimacy

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 priesthood derives its legitimacy from a 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 sanctied, legitimate, and possesses
these charisms as well.

2.3 Input, output and throughput legitimacy

Assessing the political legitimacy of a government can be
done by looking at three dierent aspects of which a government can derive legitimacy from. Scharpf introduced
two normative criteria, which are output legitimacy, i.e.
the eectiveness 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 Schmidt, who analyzes legitimacy
also in terms of what she calls throughput, i.e. the governance processes that happen in between input and output.

2.4 Negative and Positive legitimacy

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,

3
PPL with who should be drawing it in the rst 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]

Sources of legitimacy

Mattei Dogan

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 Arabia. Furthermore, the
Max Weber: societies are politically cyclical.
third Weber type of political legitimacy, rational-legal authority, exists in so many permutations no longer allow it
Max Weber proposed that societies behave cyclically in
to be limited as a type of legitimate authority.
governing themselves with dierent types of governmental legitimacy. That democracy was unnecessary for
establishing legitimacy, a condition that can be established with codied laws, customs, and cultural princi- 4 Forms of legitimate government
ples, not by means of popular surage. That a society
might decide to revert from the legitimate government In determining the political legitimacy of a system of rule
of a rationallegal authority to the charismatic govern- and government, the term proper political legitimacy
ment of a leader; e.g., the Nazi Germany of Adolf Hitler, is philosophically an essentially contested concept that
Fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini, and fascist Spain un- facilitates understanding the dierent applications and inder General Francisco Franco.
terpretations of abstract, qualitative, and evaluative conThe French political scientist Mattei Dogan's contemporary interpretation of Webers types of political legitimacy (traditional, charismatic, legal-rational) proposes
that they are conceptually insucient to comprehend the
complex relationships that constitute a legitimate political system in the twenty-rst century.[8] Moreover, Dogan proposed that traditional authority and charismatic

cepts such as "art", "social justice", et cetera, as applied in aesthetics, political philosophy, the philosophy
of history, and the philosophy of religion.[9] Therefore,
in dening 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 dierent 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.[10] (see: Walter Bryce Gallie)
Forms of legitimate government are posited to include:
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 (197073) 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 scientic 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 codied in the political constitution. The political scientist Carl Joachim Friedrich (190184) said
that, in dividing political power among the organs of
government, constitutional law eectively restrains
the actions of the government.[11] (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.[11]
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 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 antidemocratic polemic treatise that asked: How can
parliamentary government make for law and legality, when a 49 per cent minority accepts as polit-

REFERENCES

ically legitimate the political will of a 51 per cent

majority?[12]
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 divineright 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).

5 See also
Delegitimization
Legitimacy of Israel
Mandate (politics)
Rejectionism
Right to exist
Rule According to Higher Law
Rule of law
Self-determination
Territorial integrity

6 References
[1] 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] 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
[9] Initially published as Gallie (1956a), then as Gallie
(1964).
[10] Garver (1978), p. 168.
[11] Charlton, Roger: Political Realities: Comparative Government (p. 23). London: Longman, 1986
[12] Schmitt, Carl: Legality and Legitimacy (Jerey Seitzer
translator). Durham (North Carolina): Duke University
Press, 2004

7 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

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