PYQ 

•  Examine the conditions that are required for the maintenance of legitimacy in modern societies. (14/15)

•  Tools of legitimation of the State. (2021)

•  Discuss the ‘crisis of legitimacy’ in capitalist societies. (Habermas) (15/20)

•  Distinguish between the concepts of legitimacy and hegemony. (12/20)

•  Comment: “Laws are any necessary relations arising from the nature of a thing.” (Montesquieu) (97/20)

Introduction:

•  Legitimacy is the right and acceptance of an authority, usually a governing law or a regime. Whereas authority denotes a specific position in an established government, the term legitimacy denotes a system of government—wherein government denotes "sphere of influence". 

•  Political legitimacy is considered a basic condition for governing, without which a government will suffer legislative deadlock(s) and collapse. In political systems where this is not the case, unpopular régimes survive because they are considered legitimate by a small, influential élite. 

•  Etymologically, ‘legit­imacy’ is from Latin ‘legitimus’ which means ‘lawful’. During medieval ages, it meant constitutional role or order, conforming to ancient customs, tradi­tions, and procedure.

Different perspectives on legitimacy:

•  In Chinese political philosophy, since the historical period of the Zhou Dynasty (1046–256 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.

•  In moral philosophy, the term legitimacy is often positively interpreted as the normative 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.

•  Legitimacy, according to Dolf Sternberger, is the foundation of govern­mental power. It is exercised both as consciousness on the part of the government that it has a right to govern and with some acknowledgement by the governed that the government has a right to do so. 

•  Etzioni finds it as a source of satisfaction derived from participation in the organization: the ability to justify. 

o  It is a belief that the structure, proce­dures, acts, decisions, officials and leaders of government possess the quality of ‘rightness’ property or moral goodness. 

o  They should be accepted as such irrespective of the specific contents of the particular acts, orders or communication.

•  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".

•  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.

•  Montesquieu (1689-1775), in his work The Spirit of the Laws (1748), counterpoised alternative forms of legitimacy. This alternative form intended to curtail the arbitrariness of an individualist free will placing the exercise of authority within the social context. 

•  In Rousseau’s scheme, the legitimacy of government, and of the exercise of power, hinged on the active participation of citizens. 

o  The importance of this alternative thinking to legitimacy lies in the connection between the self, public commitment and collective goals, all of which were seen necessary for the survival of a republican polity 

Legitimacy in modern societies:

Legitimacy is commonly defined in political science and sociology as the belief that a rule, institution, or leader has the right to govern. 

•  It is a judgment by an individual about the rightfulness of a hierarchy between rule or ruler and its subject and about the subordinate’s obligations toward the rule or ruler.

•  In the words of Tom Tyler if authorities “are not viewed as legitimate, social regulation is more difficult and costly”.

The conditions and concern about legitimacy have been centered on how the delegation of authority and power from citizens to (national) governments can be justified. State legitimacy can derive from a range of sources, including:

•  Effectiveness of public institutions: the effectiveness of public institutions in their performance of various functions, such as service delivery, taxation, distribution of Justice and social protection systems provides positive attributes to the notion of maintenance of legitimacy.

•  Degree of representation and accountability: it reflects the will and confidence of citizens, the more representation and accountable the people’s government will be the more will be its legitimacy.

•  Consent of the governed: the most important condition required for maintenance of legitimacy is consent of the governed, as it is the ultimate way that makes Political authorities legitimate in the eyes of citizens.

•  Sociological equations: the society and its consensus is the only source that decides the source and center of legitimacy and its Dynamics as in the modern democratic era the people decide.

•  Input and output factors: Input legitimacy in his connotation is about legitimacy gained from the process of government, government by the people, while output legitimacy is gained from the result, government for the people, so balance between both input and output variables of input and output legitimacy is essential.

Conclusion:

When shared by many individuals, legitimacy produces distinctive collective effects in society, including making collective social order more efficient, more consensual, and perhaps more just.

Advanced Reading: Tools of legitimation of State:

Weber considered legitimacy as fundamental to a systematic study of power relations. Weber pointed out, ‘custom, personal advantage, purely effectual or ideal motives of solidarity’, were not the sufficient basis for its sustenance. In order to sustain a given system of domination, there was normally a further element i.e., ‘the belief in legitimacy’. 

•  In the first model i.e., traditional authority, long-standing customs and traditions formed the source of political legitimacy. 

○ The sanctity of this legitimacy derived from the fact that such systems of authority had been acknowledged and obeyed by earlier generations. 

○ Examples of traditional systems of authority are patriarchy (the rule of father over the family) or gerontocracy (the rule of the ‘elders’).

•  The second form, i.e., charismatic authority, derived legitimacy from an individual's charismatic or appealing personality. 

○ The basis of this appeal did not rest in a person’s caste, class or other ascriptive attributes. 

○ Examples of charismatic authority are Mussolini, Hitler, and Napoleon, whose leadership and popularity. 

•    Weber’s third kind of legitimacy, legal-rational, links authority to a precise and legally defined set of rules. 

o    Legal-rational form of authority, for Weber, is the typical form of authority found in most modern states. 

○    Political power is derived from, dependent upon, and limited by, formal, legal, constitutional rules. 

○    It is these rules, which determine the nature and scope of the office holder’s power. 

In a whole, the major tools that could be classified in the legitimation of state are: 

•  One is the internal process of legitimation whereby the state attains popular allegiance by securing its subjects’ welfare through enabling checks to be placed on its own power. This is the process of constitutionalism. 

○  Constitutionalism refers to the process by which states are endowed with, and restricted in their exercise of, legal power. 

•  The second process of legitimation is external and concerns the recognition states afford one another, which allows them to self-identify as distinct political entities. 

Crisis of Legitimacy:

•  The term “crisis” refers to the situation whereby the strains within society have reached such a point that the whole social system cannot cope and is in imminent danger of collapse.

•  Jurgen Habermas has developed an alternative to the Weberian approach to legitimacy in the year 1973. In order to do this, Habermas did not adopt an orthodox Marxist position which saw legitimacy as nothing more than a bourgeois myth, something which could not be achieved in conditions of inequality and exploitation which existed in modern capitalist societies. 

The aim of Habermas’ Legitimation Crisis (1973) was to try and identify the crisis points within advanced capitalist societies and how the modern state continues both to manage such crises, and maintain the legitimacy of the capitalist system. 

•  He sought to explain that although advanced capitalism seems stronger than ever, it is in fact undergoing constant crises that ultimately will threaten the legitimacy of the system, and so cause its collapse. 

o  Habermas, by emphasizing cultural and ideological factors as well, sought to update and reconstruct modern critical theory.

•  Habermas analyzes late capitalist societies in terms of three key sub-systems: the economic, political and socio-cultural. 

•  For society to be stable all three subsystems must be in balance and closely interrelated. 

•  According to Habermas, capitalist democracies cannot permanently satisfy both popular demands for social equality and welfare rights and requirements of a market economy based on private profit. The implication of such ‘crises’ involves a disturbance of integration or cohesion of society and the regulatory structures of the capitalist system.

•  Habermas identified four possible crisis tendencies within the modern capitalist system, each of which might trigger off a chain of crises elsewhere: economic crises and crisis of rationality, legitimation and motivation.  

Solution suggested by Habermas to overcome crisis:

•  Advanced capitalism, for example, requires the state to manage the economy as a way of overcoming-

o  the instabilities

o  conflicts of market forces and 

o  to alleviate the inequalities created mainly by the pursuit of profit. 

Hence the growth of state planning and regulation of the economy and the expansion of the welfare state is necessary to combat poverty, healthcare, and industrial pollution.

•  Habermas takes recourse simultaneously to ‘system steering’ and ideological measures to legitimize and stabilize the existing structures. 

o  This involves an ‘uncoupling’ or dissociation of the economy (wage labor and capital relations) and the political spheres (institutions of governance). 

o  This means that the exploitative relationship between wage labor and capital is no longer part of the political sphere. 

o  The political sphere in turn becomes less participatory and more impersonal, bureaucratized, and distanced from the ruled. 

o  Such a system would, however, be held together ideologically by legitimizing ‘universalist’ discourses of rights, justice and citizenship which give the rulers the moral claim to rule. 

Conclusion:

•  The whole capitalist system is riddled with inherent contradictions created by the very nature of it being a system designed to promote inequality rather than a just distribution of wealth and power. It is in a permanent state of crisis management and is only kept in balance by one subsystem compensating for the deficiencies of another.    

•  Habermas sees the essence of modern legitimacies as rationality, the logic of reason and debate. It is through reason that modern civilization with all its benefits of mass education, mass democracy and mass prosperity has emerged.

Difference between Legitimacy and hegemony:

•  Antonio Gramsci, who was an Italian Marxist, gave the concept of 'hegemony' to explain the phenomenon of ideological domination, particularly of the capitalist class, in contemporary society. Hegemony, in this sense, denotes a form of rule where power is apparently exercised with the consent of the ruled. According to Gramsci, the spiritual and cultural supremacy of the ruling class in the capitalist state was accomplished through the manipulation of 'civil society', particularly through the mechanism of socialization, such as the church, the school and the peer groups.

•  Gramsci's concept of 'hegemony' also explains why the working-class parties have only achieved a relatively moderate degree of success in the open competition for political power in the capitalist countries.

•  Legitimacy is the perception that power is exercised in a rightful, justified and acceptable manner. Although a person may have authority a whole system of government would be regarded as legitimate.

•  Legitimacy is the basis of stable government. All governments seek legitimacy and how they achieve it and keep it is essential to the study of political regimes.

•  The major difference that could be traced between them as legitimacy is defined in terms of the political sphere whereas hegemony could be maintained in the political, economic and social sphere. The proponent of legitimacy is MAX WEBBER whereas hegemony is explained by ATONIO GRAMSCI. Both terms are overlapping with each other but still maintains some differences in them

•  Authority involves 'legitimacy' or 'power' or both, chief contribution to the theory of sovereignty consists in adding an element of legitimacy to authority of the sovereign, the organs of state which exercise supreme power of law-making, law-enforcement and adjudication, draw their legitimacy from the will of the people.

Conclusion:

The state enhances its legitimacy by invoking authority of ‘the people'. Legitimacy can be seen as the way that a system of power can achieve authority by being seen as rightful. Legitimacy is a key concept of any effort to theorize how governance works, contributing both to the effectiveness and to the normative evaluation of the interactive processes through which society and the economy are steered towards collectively negotiated objectives. While on the other hand the Concept of Hegemony is limited to domination and hierarchical methods of pressure groups or elites.