Legitimacy: The Concept

1. It conforms to established rules. The power was acquired and is exercised in accordance with the rules of the society, whether those rules are legal, customary or conventional. This is legal validity, and it is necessary but not sufficient.

2. The rules are justifiable by reference to beliefs shared by both the dominant and the subordinate. It is not enough that a rule exists; the rule must be defensible in terms the ruled themselves accept. A rule of succession justified by a divine right that nobody now believes in fails at this level even if it is perfectly valid.

3. There is evidence of consent by the subordinate. Some positive act of recognition: voting, taking an oath, participating, publicly acknowledging.

Beetham's real contribution is what he says about failure. Each condition has its own kind of breakdown, and they are not the same thing. Breach of the rules is illegitimacy. A loss of shared belief is a legitimacy deficit. Withdrawal of consent is delegitimation. A regime may be in one of these and not the others, and the remedy for each differs.

Where legitimacy comes from

Legality, that is, acquisition and exercise according to rule.

Tradition, that is, the belief that the arrangement has always been so.

Charisma, that is, belief in an extraordinary person.

Those three are Weber's, and they are the classic answer. Modern states add three more, and an answer that names them is fuller.

Consent, expressed through elections. The dominant source in the modern world. The rulers are entitled because the ruled chose them.

Performance. The claim that a regime is entitled because it delivers: security, growth, order, welfare. This is sometimes called output legitimacy, in contrast with input legitimacy which rests on how decisions were made. It is powerful and it is fragile, because a regime that rests on performance falls when performance falls.

Ideology. A shared account of the world in which the regime's rule is the right one, whether religious, nationalist or revolutionary.

The connections a good answer draws

Legitimacy and authority. Legitimacy is the ground; authority is the relation it supports. Where legitimacy is present, power is exercised as authority; where it is absent, only coercion remains.

Legitimacy and legality. Legality is one source of legitimacy, and only one. A statute passed by a competent legislature is legal; whether it is legitimate depends on whether the people subject to it accept the legislature's title to make it and the rule's claim on them.

Legitimacy and obligation. If a regime is legitimate in the normative sense, an obligation to obey follows. If it is legitimate only in the descriptive sense, people behave as though an obligation followed, which is a different fact. Module II is entirely about the gap between the two.

Legitimacy and consent. Consent is evidence of legitimacy and is not identical with it. People consent to things for many reasons, including fear and ignorance, and a regime can be legitimate in the eyes of a population that has never been asked.

A worked example

Three governments take office in three neighbouring states in the same year.

The first wins a general election conducted by an independent commission, and takes office under the constitution. Its legitimacy is at its strongest: it satisfies Beetham's first condition by rule, the second because the population accepts elections as the right way to choose a government, and the third because millions voted.

The second takes power when the army removes the elected government. It has power. Beetham's first condition fails outright, so it is illegitimate in the strict sense, and everything it does afterwards is an attempt to repair the failure: a promise of elections, a referendum, a new constitution, a court ruling.

The third was elected fairly, but four years later has stopped holding local elections, has taken control of the broadcast media, and has arranged that the electoral commission's members are its own nominees. Notice that this is the hardest case and the most common. Condition one is arguably satisfied, because each step was done by a law validly passed. Condition two is failing, because the population's shared belief is in elections that are real. And condition three is being hollowed out. This is Beetham's legitimacy deficit rather than illegitimacy, and it is why "ethical decay of democracy" is a topic in Module IV.

Distinctions that carry marks

What legitimacy is NOT

It is not legality. The words share a root and not a meaning.

It is not popularity. A government can be unpopular and legitimate, and that combination is normal: most governments are disliked for most of their terms and are still accepted as entitled to govern.

It is not the same as consent. Consent is evidence of it.

It is not permanent. It is continuously earned and can be lost quickly.

It is not all or nothing. A regime may be legitimate to some groups and not others, and in some functions and not others, which is the ordinary condition of a large state.

Quick revision

1. Legitimacy is accepted rightfulness: the ground on which authority rests, and what converts power into authority.
2. Two senses: descriptive (Weber), a belief, tested by asking whether people accept it; normative, a justification, tested by asking whether they ought to.
3. Beetham's three conditions: conformity to established rules; justifiability by shared beliefs; evidence of consent.
4. Three failures, and they differ: breach of rules is illegitimacy, loss of shared belief is a legitimacy deficit, withdrawal of consent is delegitimation.
5. Sources: legality, tradition, charisma, consent through elections, performance, ideology.
6. Input legitimacy rests on how a decision was made; output legitimacy rests on what it delivers. The second is powerful and fragile.
7. Not legality, not popularity, not consent, not permanent, not all or nothing.

Test yourself

1. Define legitimacy and distinguish it from legality. Legitimacy is the quality of rightfulness attributed to a political order by those subject to it, in virtue of which they accept a duty to comply independent of the consequences of refusal. Legality asks only whether something was done according to the rules and is settled by a court; legitimacy asks whether the arrangement is accepted as rightful and is settled by those subject to it. A validly enacted law that nobody accepts is legal and illegitimate; a leader obeyed without any office is legitimate and has no legality at all.

2. Explain the descriptive and normative senses of legitimacy. In the descriptive or sociological sense, associated with Weber, legitimacy is a belief: a regime is legitimate if those subject to it believe it is entitled to rule, and the question is empirical. In the normative sense, associated with political philosophy, legitimacy is a justification: a regime is legitimate if it in fact satisfies the standards that entitle a government to obedience, whether or not anybody believes it does, and the question is moral. Both are needed, because the first explains stability and the second tells you whether stability is deserved.

3. State Beetham's three conditions and the three ways they fail. Power is legitimate when it conforms to established rules, when those rules are justifiable by reference to beliefs shared by both rulers and ruled, and when there is evidence of consent by the subordinate. Breach of the rules is illegitimacy; loss of the shared beliefs that justify the rules is a legitimacy deficit; and withdrawal of the expressed consent is delegitimation. The distinction matters because the remedy for each is different.

4. What are input and output legitimacy? Input legitimacy rests on how decisions are made, so a government is entitled because it was chosen by proper procedures and decides by them. Output legitimacy rests on what is delivered, so a government is entitled because it produces security, order, growth or welfare. Output legitimacy is powerful, since people forgive a great deal to a government that works, and fragile, since a regime resting on performance has nothing left when performance fails.

5. "An unjust regime can be legitimate." Is this a defect in the concept? On the descriptive sense it is not a defect but the point: Weber is recording what societies actually believe, and a sociology that defined legitimacy by justice could not study the many regimes that were plainly obeyed and plainly unjust. On the normative sense the statement is false, since a regime that fails the standards entitling it to obedience is not legitimate however widely it is believed in. The two senses answer different questions, and the error is to use one sense to refute the other.