On Legitimacy and Authority: A Response to Krehoff (original) (raw)
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The paper examines the problem of the legitimacy of the political authority and provides an adequate response towards the arguments of the political and philosophical anarchism. The proposed definition of legitimacy encourages all people to take part in the political authority and treats all citizens with equality and justice. It is based on the protection of human rights and on the notion of mutual respect of any different view about every aspect of social life in the political community. The solution would be particularly attractive, as it provides a definition of legitimacy which helps to guide a particular authority towards its goal to be legitimate.
The Function of Political Institutions and the Concept of Legitimacy
Draft prepared for the ECPR General Conference 2013
In the first chapter of his Theory of Justice John Rawls distinguishes between two levels of abstraction in the analysis of practical concepts: The more general dimension of a concept on the one hand and the more specific level of various conceptions on the other (Rawls 1971: 5).
In this article, which focuses on different concepts of state-building and legitimacy as used in the mainstream International Relations (IR) literature, I suggest that recent debates may be categorized in a two-by-two matrix. The axes concern the choice between a normative or a sociological perspective on the one hand, and a focus on state institutions or on society on the other. The article identifies an empiricist-sociological approach. Still, the almost exclusive reliance on an ontology of entities and their attributes hampers foci on relations as constituting both “insides” and “outsides” in state-building, and on legitimacy as important in its own right as ongoing public contestations. In a concluding section, I explore the purchase of a relational sociology for future studies of legitimacy in state-building.
The turn to authority beyond states
The concept of authority has become increasingly palatable to scholars in law, political science and philosophy when describing, explaining and assessing global governance. While many now seem to agree that applying authority to transnational relations opens fruitful arenas for legal, empirical and normative research, they rely on partly incompatible notions of authority, how it emerges out of and affects the social relations between key actors, and how it relates to legitimacy. In this paper, we introduce this special issue on transnational authority. We discuss why international authority has become a central concern in international studies and compare key contemporary conceptions of international authority, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses. We also present the different contributions to this issue, which further seek to clarify the concept and its application in law, political science, and political theory, theoretically or empirically, assessing arenas where authority is or is not legitimately exercised and developing legal conceptions, which might be utilized to constrain the use of authority in international relations.
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Politics, Philosophy & Economics, 2011
Theories of political legitimacy normally stipulate certain conditions of legitimacy: the features a state must possess in order to be legitimate. Yet there is obviously a second question as to the value of legitimacy: the normative features a state has by virtue of it being legitimate (such as it being owed obedience, having a right to use coercion, or enjoying a general justification in the use of force). I argue that it is difficult to demonstrate that affording these to legitimate states is morally desirable, and that obvious alternative conceptions of the value of legitimacy (notably epistemic and instrumental) are not without problems of their own. The intuitive triviality of establishing the value of normative legitimacy may mask a serious problem.
Introduction: The Turn to Authority beyond States
Transnational Legal Theory, 2013
The concept of authority has become increasingly palatable to scholars in law, political science and philosophy when describing, explaining and assessing global governance. While many now seem to agree that applying authority to transnational relations opens fruitful arenas for legal, empirical and normative research, they rely on partly incompatible notions of authority, how it emerges out of and affects the social relations between key actors, and how it relates to legitimacy. In this paper, we introduce this special issue on transnational authority. We discuss why international authority has become a central concern in international studies and compare key contemporary conceptions of international authority, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses. We also present the different contributions to this issue, which further seek to clarify the concept and its application in law, political science, and political theory, theoretically or empirically, assessing arenas where authority is or is not legitimately exercised and developing legal conceptions, which might be utilized to constrain the use of authority in international relations.
Political Legitimacy without a Claim-Right to Rule (Res Publica)
In the contemporary philosophical literature, political legitimacy is often identified with a right to rule. However, this term is problematic. First, if we accept an interest theory of rights, it often remains unclear whose interests justify a right to rule (the ‘grounds of authority’ question): either the interest of the holders of this right to rule or the interests of those subject to the authority. And second, if we analyse the right to rule in terms of Wesley Hohfeld’s characterization of rights, we find disagreement among philosophers about what constitutes the conceptual core of political authority: a power-right or a claim-right to rule (the ‘nature of authority question’). In this paper I show that both of these are problematic for a number of reasons. First, if we think that it is only the interests of the holders of a right to rule that justify the possession of authority, the conceptual core of authority must consist in a claim-right. However, this understanding of authority biases our thinking about legitimacy in favor of democratic exercises of power. Second, if we hold such a decisively democratic view of legitimacy, we confront an impasse with respect to addressing global collective action problems. Although it is clear that political authority is necessary or useful for solving these issues, it is doubtful that we can establish global institutions that are democratically authorized anytime soon. The paper suggests an alternative ‘Power-Right to Command View’ of political legitimacy that avoids the democratic bias and allows for thinking about solutions to global problems via global service authorities.
The issue of defining Legitimacy
The legitimization of the political authority is a virtue of political decisions and a prerequisite for the justification of the demand from citizens for obedience and compliance. Legitimacy is a complex subject to examine as it is associated with many controversial issues of the contemporary political philosophy. Some of these issues involve questions such as, what is the context of the notion of legitimacy and how can it be distinguished from other notions of the political authority such as political obligation, political power, legalization and justification of the political power, justification of the state and others. One of the most central issues is the position of philosophical and political anarchism that is against political authority. Draft part of the forthcoming book The criterion for Legitimacy of the Political Authority