Legitimacy

Among the resources for exercising power, legitimacy is of prime importance. Legitimacy provides an inner reason for a rule, an authority, or an order. The topic is centuries old. In feudal societies, for example, dynasties claimed legitimacy by God's will or by historic merits based mainly in wars. Today, legitimacy forms an important field of empirical research and political thought. Debates flourish between the poles of legitimation by procedures and legitimation by performance. Although the following principally deals with politics, law, and courts, legitimacy is also important for business, professions, and any kind of organization.

Max Weber (1864–1920) pointed out the function of legitimacy clearly in his sociology of dominance. Weber wrote that every power was concerned about its stability, which could not be guaranteed only by fears nor simply by hopes for rewards. Instead, each power wanted to nourish a belief in its legitimacy. On one hand, there was the quest for obedience, but on the other hand, the authority in its decisions was restricted by its ideological background. In Arab countries, for example, the ruling elites still count on a traditional [Page 951]religious legitimacy, while the public is upset about the elites' “un-Islamic” policies and lifestyle. Weber noted, some sixty years before Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's triumph in 1979, that the Persian shah exercised an illegitimate rule measured by traditional religious values.

David Easton formulated the distinction of specific support and diffuse support of authorities. Specific support related to consent with particular decisions. Each authority would be fragile if there were only such agreements. Decision making involves favoring some and disfavoring others. Therefore, authorities survived by a cushion of general support. It was not related to particular outcomes but diffuse and allowed authorities to exercise discretion. Easton and Jack Dennis showed that people were socialized, beginning in early childhood, into trusting authorities such as the president, the police, or the courts (see Figure 1).

Often, people find themselves in a clash between different legitimate expectations. In this way, state laws sometimes are in conflict with local, religious, or ethnic rules that may be more powerful. Eugen Ehrlich's (1862–1922) concept of living law and his examples from Bukovina (today a region in Romania and Ukraine) easily illustrated these findings, as well as violent conflicts in numerous provinces of contemporary states. Conflicting laws are a factor in shaping personal and group identities.

Figure 1 Children and the Authority of the Police

Drawing by Kevin Reinke, used by permission.

The single most influential work on legitimacy is that of Max Weber. He formulated three ideal types (Idealtypen) of legitimate rule geared to individuals in power positions and four types of legitimate order. Charismatic authority rested on the belief of followers in their leader's extraordinary qualities, which could save them in desperate situations. Traditional authority bound rulers and ruled together in communities that were considered unbreakable. Legal-rational authority derived from rules that the ruler could alter when opportune. Modern legal positivism lurked in this latter concept. When it came to the legitimacy of social orders, there was a legal-rational and a traditional ideal type. They formed the institutional backgrounds of traditional and legal-rational rule. Weber added a legitimation based on affect and a value-rational type. Almost all institutional and authority-related aspects of modern societies revealed a legal-rational foundation to some degree. In reality, the types mix; which is why Weber called them Idealtypen. Weber trusted in charismatic leaders in business and politics to revitalize the perceived iron-like structures of modern society.

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