Legitimacy Review

Other institutions can give authority to state / remove state authority: media, non-political

  1. What is meant by legitimacy?
  2. Where does legitimacy come from?
  3. Who decides when an action or an organization is legitimate or illegitimate?
  4. What is the rule of law?
  5. How much power does the media / other actor have over deciding whether a political action is legitimate or not

important vocab: due process, rule of law

What legitimacy means in general:

  • Trustworthy
    • mostly subjective, whether you feel safe and trust in the political system in place.
    • can be objective: measurement tools to hold state's claims accountable
      • will see in development, like HDI to measure development. Whether it is institutionalized, a fragile / weak state
  • Authority
    • someone in power must be respected in some degree
    • objective: how much power they have – to manage institutions and social infrastructure with power given to that positions, have citizens voted them in or did they coerce people
    • subjective: feeling of respect – example: elders can have implicit authority
    • Oftentimes authoritarianism states they have more subjective authority
  • Authenticity
    • if there is a lot of corruption / nepotism
    • Nepal for example: lots of nepotism erodes feeling that the government has genuine decision making, that the decisions they do make are manufactured
  • Coercion vs non-coercion:
    • whether state obtained power through coercion - it transforms the relation with citizens

Rule of law: 

fundamental part of legitimacy

everyone is subject to law

Canada example: PM is subject to charter or rights and freedoms

Understand theories that work well with legitimacy (Realism and Liberalism)

Liberalism: fundamentally having democracy is important, need a bottom up approach. intercontact between levels of governments and citizens. External legitimacy in this case would be cooperating for free / fair trade

Realism: do what you can – military use to stop dissent - a top down perspective. Internal is that the gov. uses force to stop dissent and does not collaborate with citizens to help the few. External: don't build relationships unless it is rooted in self-interest. Low participation in diplomatic choices 

Max Weber:

economist looking at relationship of gov. and citizens. Economies in states with high levels of citizen participation generally have better economies

Basic Theory: 

Citizens – unless they choose action, they concede power to those in power

we are the one who gives them that power. 

argues that the legitimacy of those in power is in a precarious situation. Legitimacy is derived by those who give it power

3 main sources of how we give people political authority

  • Traditional:
    • go into how people see themselves in that state
    • often emotional connection, as they associate themselves with that empire
    • Being a part of an empire make you feel superior to other ones around you – derive superiority from divine rule, or how its always been. To remove them from power could threaten power / prestige / legitimacy of state.
    • Can be difficult to overthrow as its entrenched in centuries of history, culture, prestige, and ideas.
    • Example: UK holds onto prestige with royalists, Saudi Arabia also holds on to idea of power divinely given. Any opposition to that idea leads to suppression
    • Hold on through idea of superiority, bloodlines, emblems, and coercive methods
    • Counter-example: French revolution, they don't feel aligned with idea of traditional monarchy
      • usually in times of dire frustration – lack of food in this case
    • Usually why they use benevolent form of rule: keep citizens so content that stifles urge to resist (Saudi Arabia for example keeps those born as citizens wealthy)
  • Charismatic
    • Examples: Trump, Mark Carney, Zohran Mamdani, Pierre Poilievre, JFK, Obama, Pierre Trudeau, Hitler, Mao Zedong, Karl Marx, Fidel Castro
    • Doesn't necessarily mean good or bad. Often authoritarian leaders had charisma, the ability to use words and what people were going through the maintain power
    • ability to share vision for world / nation, ability to disseminate info that hits people (positive or negative emotions in them)
    • not tangible / measurable.
    • The way they present themselves makes people give them authority. Best leaders were both competent and charismatic
    • Can get almost cult like followers – MAGA makes Trump almost immune of criticism
    • more moderate forms like with Mamdani allows the person to still be seen as human / fallible
    • often revolutions lead by charismatic leaders
    • helps get external legitimacy, to empower relationships just by that leader's charisma
    • can be the most dangerous
      • Can mobilize people to commit harms against other citizens, destabilize state, powerful arbitrators of propaganda (how they see the world, how they label enemies of the state) that people will believe and act on it.
      • Such loyal compliance that people may do unethical tings that otherwise they wouldn't have. Can lead people to their demise – unwinnable wars, economic harm (great depressions), grifters
      • if everything is dependent on one person, it puts the whole system at risk
  • Rational (rational-legal)
    • Most stable form of legitimacy – the form most contemporary institutions should aspire to
    • means institutional are so highly functioning that civil servants are so competent and reliable, that you have system of business, policing, relation with other states are so stable and secure that any type of transition of leadership wouldn't destabilize the state all too fast.
    • A highly institutionalized state is often secure to external and internal legitimacy
    • Canada Example: Rational-legal legitimate state
      • Should there be an incompetent leader, then it wouldn't still turn into a fragile / fallen state where all institutions have fallen, chaos in streets. Since we are a highly institutionalized state, administrative law is so secure that it is much more stable from internal / external threats
    • These countries are so stable that any threats do not destabilize the state, unlike with traditional or charismatic. This is because their institutions were never that strong
    • High levels of trust and stability can sustain these threats
    • US is another example: 2016 first Trump administration. Fear that the country could decline quickly with an impulsive leader with nuclear codes, though it didn't happen. The US has (had) strong institutions that 1-2 administrations may not result in the state's fall → low levels of citizen participation, erosion of political institutions. Other states in this case may have seen chaos and economic collapse

 

Top-down and Bottom-up legitimacy:

Page 58 case study Review question page 60

 

IB GP legitimacy definition:

1.2.5 Unpacking legitimacy.pptx - Google Drive

“Legitimacy refers to an actor or an action being commonly considered
acceptable and provides the fundamental basis or rationale for all forms
of governance and other ways of exercising power over others."

Power and legitimacy work together, how we establish trust in a government. The most accepted form is by democracy or constitutionalism where a governed area have defined and periodical opportunity to choose who they wish to exercise power over them

Canada has Charter of Rights of Freedoms - section 4 - right to vote 

signaling that you are a democracy can be superficial – but doesn't change the fact they are trying to paint themselves in that way

Full democracy are impartial, and if a neutral party analyzed they would see that these are fair

 

Some states may not display legitimacy in an institutionalized way – in transition to power, a developing state.

 

Other actors and their actions can be evaluated through legitimacy

 

Why might a state not want to associate with a state with low external legitimacy? Stability – often their ecnomocies, politics, and foreign policy will be instable. Foreign investors will be more likely to put their money in if it doesn't seem stable

 

Page 58:

development is about objectivity

Democracy Index:

1electoral process and pluralism

2civil liberties

media, free speech

3the functioning of government

how function of government works

4political participation

if only handful of people vote, then there is a threat to democracy

5political culture.

Can people debate, have different opinions, can people run for office, is it more liberal/conservative, 

Countries are then classified into one of four types: full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes, and authoritarian regimes.

Denmark and Norway considered full democracy, high voting turnout, bottom up approach - will have more of community working in like education decisions