Legitimacy
In its most general form, the question of political legitimacy is a question about why anyone is allowed to tell anyone else what to do. When is it right – or “legitimate” – for one person or social body to rule over another? This is a question that some have deemed the most fundamental in all of political philosophy. If I am an individual with rights over my life, liberty, and property, then why am I subject to the coercive authority of a powerful state? Why should I obey my government rather than rising up in revolt? Are there reasons for obeying the law other than those grounded in a self-interested desire to avoid punishment? The term “legitimacy” has many meanings and uses, political and nonpolitical. This entry canvasses some of this diversity among the political uses of the term, and asks: How did the discourse of legitimacy arise? What have been its stakes? How should we define it? And how does the use to which it is put affect this process of definition? The entry emphasizes that these questions cannot be answered in isolation from one another, and that there are no “right” answers to questions about the definition of terms. However, analysis of the diversity of definitions is both politically and philosophically productive.
