Download or read book Legitimacy written by Arthur Isak Applbaum and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-19 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At an unsettled time for liberal democracy, with global eruptions of authoritarian and arbitrary rule, here is one of the first full-fledged philosophical accounts of what makes governments legitimate. What makes a government legitimate? The dominant view is that public officials have the right to rule us, even if they are unfair or unfit, as long as they gain power through procedures traceable to the consent of the governed. In this rigorous and timely study, Arthur Isak Applbaum argues that adherence to procedure is not enough: even a properly chosen government does not rule legitimately if it fails to protect basic rights, to treat its citizens as political equals, or to act coherently. How are we to reconcile every person’s entitlement to freedom with the necessity of coercive law? Applbaum’s answer is that a government legitimately governs its citizens only if the government is a free group agent constituted by free citizens. To be a such a group agent, a government must uphold three principles. The liberty principle, requiring that the basic rights of citizens be secured, is necessary to protect against inhumanity, a tyranny in practice. The equality principle, requiring that citizens have equal say in selecting who governs, is necessary to protect against despotism, a tyranny in title. The agency principle, requiring that a government’s actions reflect its decisions and its decisions reflect its reasons, is necessary to protect against wantonism, a tyranny of unreason. Today, Applbaum writes, the greatest threat to the established democracies is neither inhumanity nor despotism but wantonism, the domination of citizens by incoherent, inconstant, and incontinent rulers. A government that cannot govern itself cannot legitimately govern others.

Download or read book Political Legitimacy and the State written by Rodney Barker and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Governments and their supporters attempt to justify their power by arguing for their moral, rightful, or predestined claim to authority. Political Legitimacy and the State examines the accounts that have been given of legitimacy, proposing that legitimation should be studied as a form of political activity in its own right. Drawing on recent historical examples, Barker argues for a more diversified understanding of the function and character of political legitimacy, suggesting that rulers are often far more concerned about legitimating their power than are those whom they govern.

Download or read book State Formation and Political Legitimacy written by Ronald Cohen and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The evolution of the state from earlier forms of political organization is associated with revolutionary changes in the structure of inequality. These magnify distinctions in rank and power that outweigh anything previously known in so-called primitive societies. This volume explains how and why people came to accept and even identify themselves with this new form of authority. The introduction provides a new theory of legitimacy by synthesizing and uniting earlier theories from psychological, cultural-materialist, rational choice, and Marxist approaches. The case studies which follow present a wide range of materials on cultures in both Western and non-Western settings, and across a number of different historical periods. Included are examples from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the New World. Older states such as Ur, Inca, and medieval France are examined along with more contemporary states including Indonesia, Tanzania, and the revolutionary beginnings of the United States. Using a variety of approaches the contributors show in each instance how the state obtained and used its power, then attempted to have its power accepted as the natural order under the protection of supra-naturally ordained authority. No matter how tyrannical or benign, the cases show that state power must be justified by faith and experience that demonstrates its value to the participants. Through such analysis, the book demonstrates that states must be capable of enforcing their rule, but that they cannot deceive populations into accepting state domination. Indeed, the book suggests that social evolution moves toward less coercive rule and increased democratization. Ronald Cohen is a political anthropologist who has taught at the Universities of Toronto, McGill, Northwestern, and Ahmadu Bello, and is on the faculty of the University of Florida. He has carried out field research in Africa, the Arctic and Washington. His major works include The Kanuri of Borno, Dominance and Defiance, Origins of the State, and a book in preparation on food policy and agricultural transformation in Africa. Judith D. Toland is a lecturer at University College, Northwestern University, and the College of Arts and Sciences, Loyola University of Chicago. She is the director of her own corporate and non-profit consulting firm. She has done fieldwork in Ayacucho, Peru and has written widely on the Inca State.

Download or read book East Asian Perspectives on Political Legitimacy written by Joseph Chan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-17 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What makes a government legitimate? Why do people voluntarily comply with laws, even when no one is watching? The idea of political legitimacy captures the fact that people obey when they think governments' actions accord with valid principles. For some, what matters most is the government's performance on security and the economy. For others, only a government that follows democratic principles can be legitimate. Political legitimacy is therefore a two-sided reality that scholars studying the acceptance of governments need to take into account. The diversity and backgrounds of East Asian nations provides a particular challenge when trying to determine the level of political legitimacy of individual governments. This book brings together both political philosophers and political scientists to examine the distinctive forms of political legitimacy that exist in contemporary East Asia. It is essential reading for all academic researchers of East Asian government, politics and comparative politics.

Download or read book Political Legitimacy in Postcolonial Mali written by Dorothea E. Schulz and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2021 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An innovative examination of our understanding of political legitimacy in Mali, and its wider implications for democratization and political modernity in the Global South.

Download or read book Legitimacy in an Age of Global Politics written by A. Hurrelmann and published by Springer. This book was released on 2007-10-11 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In spite of the lack of plausible alternatives to liberal democracy, the age of globalization has ushered in serious challenges to the democratic legitimacy of the nation state. The contributors in this collection explore the frontiers of normative and empirical legitimacy research, drawing upon a range of key conceptual and methodological issues.

Download or read book Legitimation as Political Practice written by Kathy Dodworth and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-19 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A radical, interdisciplinary reworking of legitimation, using ethnographic insights to explore everyday non-state authority in Tanzania.

Download or read book Encyclopedia of Global Justice written by Deen K. Chatterjee and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Encyclopedia is an international, interdisciplinary, and collaborative project, spanning all the relevant areas of scholarship related to issues of global justice, and edited and advised by leading scholars from around the world. The wide-ranging entries present the latest ideas on this complex subject by authors who are at the cutting edge of inquiry.

Download or read book Will and Political Legitimacy written by Patrick Riley and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 1999 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the heart of representative government is the question: "What makes government and its agents legitimate authorities?" The notion of consent, of a social contract between the citizen and his government, is central to this problem. That contract allows the government to rule over the citizen and to exact obedience from him in return for certain protections and goods he needs.

Download or read book Political Legitimacy in Middle Africa written by Michael G. Schatzberg and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2001-11-13 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "... refreshing and provocative... a significant addition to existing literature on African politics." -- Stephen Ellis "It opens up a whole new field of investigation, and brings into focus the pertinence of an interdisciplinary approach to African politics." -- René Lemarchand In this innovative work, Michael G. Schatzberg reads metaphors found in the popular press as indicators of the way Africans come to understand their political universe. Examining daily newspapers, popular literature, and political and church documents from across middle Africa, Schatzberg finds that widespread and deeply ingrained views of government and its relationship to its citizenry may be understood as a projection of the metaphor of an idealized extended family onto the formal political sphere. Schatzberg's careful observations and sensitive interpretations uncover the moral and social factors that shape the African political universe while showing how some African understandings of politics and political power may hamper or promote the development of Western-style democracy. Political Legitimacy in Middle Africa looks closely at elements of African moral and political thought and offers a nuanced assessment of whether democracy might flourish were it to be established on middle African terms.

Download or read book The Early Haitian State and the Question of Political Legitimacy written by James Forde and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-10-24 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the different ways in which the early Haitian state was represented in print culture in America and Britain in the early nineteenth century. This study demonstrates that American and British arguments about the most effective forms of governance and political leadership impacted how Haiti’s early leaders were presented to transatlantic audiences. From the end of the Haitian Revolution and the moment that Haitian independence was declared in 1804, conservatives and radical thinkers on both sides of the Atlantic used Haiti and its early leaders as central frames of references in discussions of political legitimacy. Against the backdrop of a vibrant and volatile age of revolutions, the different forms of governance adopted by Jean Jacques Dessalines, Henry Christophe and Jean Pierre Boyer were used by writers, playwrights and caricaturists to either support or call into question the legitimacy of America’s and Britain’s own forms of government.

Download or read book Legitimacy in the Modern State written by John H. Schaar and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 1981-01-01 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This analysis of the concept of authority in Western society constitutes a central work in political sociology and a fundamental critique of the process of modernization. Schaar proposes that legitimate authority is declining in the modern state. Law and order, in a very real sense, is the basic political issue of our time -- one that conservatives have understood with greater clarity than their liberal adversaries. Schaar sees what were once authoritative institutions and ideas yielding to technological and bureaucratic orders. The later brings physical comfort and a sense of collective power, but does not provide political liberty or moral autonomy. As a result, he argues, all modern states exhibiting this transformation of authority into technology are well advanced along the path of a crisis of legitimacy.

Download or read book Policy Legitimacy Science and Political Authority written by Michael Heazle and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-05 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Voters expect their elected representatives to pursue good policy and presume this will be securely founded on the best available knowledge. Yet when representatives emphasize their reliance on expert knowledge, they seem to defer to people whose authority derives, not politically from the sovereign people, but from the presumed objective status of their disciplinary bases. This book examines the tensions between political authority and expert authority in the formation of public policy in liberal democracies. It aims to illustrate and better understand the nature of these tensions rather than to argue specific ways of resolving them. The various chapters explore the complexity of interaction between the two forms of authority in different policy domains in order to identify both common elements and differences. The policy domains covered include: climate geoengineering discourses; environmental health; biotechnology; nuclear power; whaling; economic management; and the use of force. This volume will appeal to researchers and to convenors of post-graduate courses in the fields of policy studies, foreign policy decision-making, political science, environmental studies, democratic system studies, and science policy studies.

Download or read book The Legitimation of Power written by David Beetham and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Beetham's book explores the legitimation of power both as an issue in political and social science theory and in relation to the legitimacy of contemporary political systems including its breakdown in revolution. 'An admirable text which is far reaching in its scope and extraordinary in the clarity with which it covers a wide range of material... One xan have nothing but the highest regard for this volume.' - David Held, Times Higher Education Supplement;'Beetham has produced a study bound to revolutionize sociological thinking and teaching... Seminal and profoundly original... Beetham's book should become the obligitory reading for every teacher and practitioner of social science.' - Zygmunt Bauman, Sociology

Download or read book Legitimacy in Global Governance written by Jonas Tallberg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-19 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Legitimacy is central for the capacity of global governance institutions to address problems such as climate change, trade protectionism, and human rights abuses. However, despite legitimacy's importance for global governance, its workings remain poorly understood. That is the core concern of this volume: to develop an agenda for systematic and comparative research on legitimacy in global governance. In complementary fashion, the chapters address different aspects of the overarching question: whether, why, how, and with what consequences global governance institutions gain, sustain, and lose legitimacy? The volume makes four specific contributions. First, it argues for a sociological approach to legitimacy, centered on perceptions of legitimate global governance among affected audiences. Second, it moves beyond the traditional focus on states as the principal audience for legitimacy in global governance and considers a full spectrum of actors from governments to citizens. Third, it advocates a comparative approach to the study of legitimacy in global governance, and suggests strategies for comparison across institutions, issue areas, countries, societal groups, and time. Fourth, the volume offers the most comprehensive treatment so far of the sociological legitimacy of global governance, covering three broad analytical themes: (1) sources of legitimacy, (2) processes of legitimation and delegitimation, and (3) consequences of legitimacy.

Download or read book The Right to Rule written by Bruce Gilley and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2009-03-03 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Popular perceptions of a state's legitimacy are inextricably bound to its ability to rule. Vast military and material reserves cannot counter the power of a citizen's belief, and the more widespread the crisis of a state's legitimacy, the greater the threat to its stability. Even such established democracies as France and India are losing their moral claims over society, while such highly illiberal states as China and Iran enjoy strong showings of public support. Through a remarkable fusion of empirical research and theory, Bruce Gilley makes clear the link between political consent and political rule. Fixing a definition of legitimacy that is both general and particular, he is able to study the role of legitimacy as it has been maintained and lost in a diverse selection of societies. He begins by detailing the origins of state legitimacy and the methods governments have used to wield it best. He then considers the habits of less successful states, exploring how the process works across different styles of government. Gilley's unique approach merges a broad study of legitimacy and performance in seventy-two states with a detailed empirical analysis of the mechanisms of legitimation. The results are tested on a case study of Uganda, a country that, after 1986, began to recover from decades of civil war. Considering a range of explanations of other domestic and international phenomena as well, Gilley ultimately argues that, because of its evident real-world importance, legitimacy should occupy a central place in political analysis.

Download or read book Ideology Legitimacy and the New State written by Sinisa Malesevic and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comparative analysis of the dominant ideologies and modes of legitimization in communist Yugoslavia and post-Communist Serbia and Croatia. The aim of the book is to identify and explain dominant normative and operative ideologies and principal modes of legitimization in these three case studies.