The discussion of legitimacy in social and political theory seems to confirm Hegel’s dictum that theoretical reflection begins only when a practice has completed its development and become problematic. Questions about the moral worth or rightness of different forms of rule were present at the very beginning of systematic thinking about human communities. In The Politics, for instance, Aristotle held that some constitutions were ‘right’ (those promoting the common interest of citizens), while others were ‘perverted’ (those serving only the particular interest of rulers), a distinction grounded in a ideological metaphysics. However, classical theory lacked an explicit language of legitimacy, relying instead on general conceptions of order and lawfulness. Notions of legitimacy and legitimation were to be an invention of modern thought, represented best in Rousseau’s promise in the Social Contract to demonstrate how political authority could be rendered ‘legitimate’. His speculative answer and argument resting on the volonté générale served as both an epitaph for the Aristotelian tradition and a warning about the contestability of legitimacy in the modern age. This shift from a metaphysical to a voluntaristic account prepared the way for the contribution of Max Weber, the greatest modern theorist of legitimacy.
All modern theory starts from the assumption that legitimacy has to do with the quality of authoritativeness, lawfulness, bindingness, or rightness attached to an order; a government or state is considered ‘legitimate’ if it possesses the ‘right to rule’. Unfortunately, the definition begs the most crucial question: in what does ‘right’ consist, and how can its existence and meaning be determined? Generally speaking, this question has been answered in two ways. One school of thought has argued with Weber (1968 [1922]) that, ‘It is only the probability of orientation to the subjective belief in the validity of an order which constitutes the valid order itself.’ According to this view, ‘right’ reduces to belief in the appropriateness of an existing order and the ‘right to rule’. The presence of objective, external or universal standards for judging rightness grounded in natural law, reason or some other transhistorical principle is typically rejected as philosophically impossible and sociologically naïve. In his sociology of legitimacy, Weber attempted to guard against the relativistic consequences of such a conception by identifying four reasons for ascribing legitimacy to any social order: tradition, affect, value-rationality and legality. This classification then served as the basis for his famous analysis of the ideal types of ‘legitimate domination’ (legitime Herrschaft): traditional, charismatic and legal-rational.
Since the appearance of Weber’s work scholars have continued to debate the logic, meaning and application of his views. Some have sharply criticized the sociological approach for subverting a rational distinction between legitimate and illegitimate forms of rule; for failing to distinguish legitimacy from legality; and for confusing a distinction among belief elicited through coercion, habit or rational choice. (In what sense Weber may be guilty of these charges is also a matter of dispute.) Underlying these criticisms from the second school of thought is the conviction, expressed particularly in the work of Jürgen Habermas, that a satisfactory theory of legitimacy must be philosophically grounded in such a way as to render possible a ‘rational judgement’ about the ‘right to rule’. For Habermas (1975 [1973]; 1984 [1981]), grounds have been sought in a complex ‘consensus theory of truth’, where ‘truth’ signifies ‘warranted assertability’ under conditions of ideal ‘communicative competence’.
Whether Habermas or others sharing his assumptions have provided a coherent grounding for the theory of legitimacy remains a disputed issue. One difficulty with their attempt is that it comes at an awkward time, philosophically considered, for under the influence of particular interpretations of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Dewey and Wittgenstein, several contemporary thinkers have mounted a serious challenge to the project of identifying foundations of knowledge that can be used to achieve definitive criteria of rationality. Prominent examples include Rorty’s ‘pragmatism’, Lyotard’s ‘post-modernism’ and Foucault’s ‘genealogical critique of knowledge’. If such challenges succeed, then it becomes difficult to imagine any viable alternative to the Weberian typological approach.
In light of such an impasse in philosophy, since the mid-1970s work on legitimacy in the social sciences has proceeded generally in three directions. First, social scientists attracted to empirical investigation have either worked towards testing hypotheses about legitimation in experimental settings, or they have dropped the term legitimacy altogether, hoping to avoid troubling normative issues while searching for measurable levels of ‘regime support’. Second, some have moved towards developing theories about illegitimacy or delegitimation, arguing that the real problems of the modern state lie with its essential lack of legitimacy, as illustrated most dramatically by the collapse of the former Soviet Union and events in Europe after 1989. Third, in a related move, others have focused attention on state structure and policy or the relationship between state and civil society in an effort to understand the factors conditioning legitimacy. While a state-centred view is sometimes labelled Weberian and a state/civil society framework neo-Marxist, there seems little reason to suppose that they cannot be combined in a unified approach. One can investigate strategies used by the state (particularly in the domains of science, technology, communication and education) to shore up sagging belief in its right to rule, as well as sources of legitimation emergent in the group processes composing civil society that condition a public’s degree and kind of support for existing political institutions.
Whatever the outcome of these contemporary debates and directions of inquiry, such diversification of viewpoints is a firm indication that the problem of legitimacy will remain centrally important in the social and political sciences, at least as long as the modern state-system remains intact.
Lawrence A.Scoff
Pennsylvania State University
References
Habermas, J. (1975 [1973]) Legitimation Crisis, Boston, MA. (Original edn, Legitimationsprobleme im Spätkapitalismus, Frankfurt.)
——(1984 [1981]) The Theory of Communicative Action, 2 vols, Boston, MA. (Original edn, Theorie des Kommunikativen Handelns, Frankfurt.)
Weber, M. (1968 [1922]) Economy and Society, New York. (Original edn, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Tübingen.)
Further reading
Barker, R. (1990) Political Legitimacy and the State, Oxford.
Denitch, B. (ed.) (1979) Legitimation of Regimes, Beverly Hills, CA.
Lehman, E. (1987) ‘The crisis of political legitimacy’, Research in Political Sociology 3.
Stryker, R. (1994) ‘Rules, resources, and legitimacy processes’, American Journal of Sociology 99.
Thomas, G., Walker, H. and Zelditch, M. (1986) ‘Legitimacy and collective action’, Social Forces 65.
