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The word legitimacy can be interpreted in either a normative or a positive way. For the former, which gets greater attention in moral philosophy, something is "legitimate" if one approves of it. For the latter, which gets greater attention in political science, an institution is legitimate if such approval is general among those subject to its authority. Issues of legitimacy are linked to those of consent, both explicit and tacit.
Legitimacy is considered a basic condition for rule: without at least a minimal amount of legitimacy, a government will deadlock or collapse. Robert A. Dahl explains legitimacy using the metaphor of a resevoir: as long as it stays at a certain level stability is maintained, if it falls below this level it is endangered. Regimes are sometimes seen as requiring the assent of a large proportion of the population to retain power, but this need not necessarily be the case: many unpopular regimes have been known to survive provided they are seen as legitimate within a small but influential elite.
In the case of laws, legitimacy should be distinguished from legality. Action can be legal without being legitimate (as in the case of an immoral law). Action can also be legitimate without being legal (as in the case of Rosa Parks' non-compliance). When sources of legitimacy conflict with each other, a constitutional crisis can often erupt.
The most common source of legitimacy today is the perception that a government is operating under democratic principles and is subject to the will of the people. Governments often claim a popular mandateIn politics, a mandate is the authority granted by an electorate to act as its representative. Elections are often said to give the newly elected government or elected official a mandate to implement certain policies. Also, the period a government serves to exercise power, however, how this mandate is derived can vary sharply from regime to regime. Liberal democraticLiberal democracy is a form of representative democracy where elected representatives that hold the decision power are moderated by a constitution that emphasizes protecting individual liberties and the rights of minorities in society, such as freedom of states claim democratic legitimacy on the grounds that they have regular free and fair contested elections.
A liberal democratic states may also gain legitimacy if the population believes that the following factors hold:
Democracy legitimacy is also claimed by states which reject liberal democracy, and the fact that states whose values are antithetical to liberal democracy claim democratic legitmacy causes much controversy over the meaning of the term democracy. Communist states often claim democratic legitimacy on the grounds that they won a popular revolution and are acting on behalf of the people in accordance with the scientific rules of Marxism. Nazism and Fascism has also claimed to represent the will of the people in a major they proponents claimed was more authentic than liberal democracy.
It has been claimed that liberal democratic states can be remarkably stable because the legitimacy of the state is not tied to an individual ruler or ruling party. According to this argument, in a dictatorial state, deposing the ruler can lead to total collapse in the system of government. However, in most well-functioning liberal democracies the ruling party is regularly replaced peacefully without any constitutional change. Critics of this argument claim that it is tautological stating essentially that stable liberal democratic states are stable, and ignoring historical cases in which a liberal democratic state has failed.
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