Legitimacy is the right to hold, use and allocate power, It is a form of support for a political system, it is based on social values and what the people feel “right”.
Political systems combine authority and power, both of which are required in the regulation of public affairs, Political systems are concerned with the maintenance of social order through the use of force, but force is a crude and expensive technique for the implementation of decisions. Something besides coercion is needed to make a political system to work, This additional ingredient is Legitimacy.
Source of legitimacy:
One of the special type of gaining legitimacy is that of the tale of origin, linked to Weber’s (1978) concept of traditional authority. A group claims the right to rule because its members in the past victoriously fought a common enemy or developed common resources or founded a kingdom or established a special relationship to a deity. The tales often becomes poetic-mythical, full of factual errors but nevertheless remains a powerful mechanism of maintaining legitimacy. Ex: in most primitive states people believe that king family is descendent of gods.
Legitimacy has a vast array of non-rational sources. Daloz (2007) for example argues that claims of legitimacy are often associated with aesthetic appearances. Elaborate and expensive dress, large palaces, breathtaking cathedrals all reinforce the feeling that the powerful deserves their power. Pierre Bourdieu (1996) with his concept ‘Misapprehension’ circles around the attempt to uncover and describe inauthentic versions of legitimacy in a bottom-up perspective. He argues with misapprehension members of a society are drawn into supporting present power holders against their interest, or at least to abstain from protest. This is primarily done by means of subtle mechanisms of persuasion. This is part of the so called concept of taken for grantedness as Lerner (1980) with his “just world” hypothesis notes humans have a tendency to experience present conditions as generally fair and based on good reasons
Characteristics of Legitimacy:
- Legitimacy is “Culture Bound”– The legitimacy of a political system is derived from the values of the members of a society who influence and are affected by the decisions made within the society. Legitimacy consists of all of the expectations by individual members of a society of the personal benefits that come to them when they cooperate in the making of public policy decisions.
- Legitimacy involves right decision making– Legitimacy is based on the expectation that those who make the decisions will meet certain obligations.- Thus it is not simply a matter of who makes the decisions but also a matter of the context of those decisions, A legitimate court , for example , is expected to arrive at a just verdict .
- Legitimacy involves compliance with the rightful decisions – Compliance with the decisions made in a legitimate system results mainly from the belief that those decisions support the shared values of the members of the society.
- Legitimacy involves coercion – The degree of compliance within the society will vary. For those persons who do not comply with the decisions made by the leaders of a society, coercion may become necessary. This is the link between power and legitimacy. Power is the way of gaining compliance with the decisions made by those who are in the positions of authority.
- The decisions made by those who are in the positions of authority. Right to hold power , the right to use power and the right to allocate power. Religion is thus a force to invest legitimacy in a person, in his office and in rules.
Objects of Legitimacy:
The objects of legitimacy are the persons, offices, rules and the general idea of legitimacy
Tribal Societies and legitimacy:
In tribal societies, individuals do invest their cooperation in a leader, in an office, and in specific rules and procedures to promote the public good. In the tribal pastoral societies the objects of legitimacy are leaders like ‘Spokesman ‘ and .priests of earth ‘. Eg. Nuer. In tribal agricultural societies leaders tend to have a set of rights that involve legitimate authority for the public good. One right proclaimed for most tribal agricultural society leaders is the right to coerce individuals in the name of a leader’s legitimate authority to be certain that legitimacy is maintained.
Chiefdoms and legitimacy:
- The societies which chiefdoms have objects of legitimacy, They include persons and offices
- The position of a chief is an office. It is a continuing social position occupied by those who can demonstrate from carefully remembering genealogies that they are directly related to the founding ancestors of chief. The Moon of New Zealand maintains genealogies reaching back as far as 40 to 50 generations.
- The position of a chief for example in Hawaiian society is believed to be one established by the super natural or creator. Hence, the Hawaiian chiefs are leaders who occupy for a time an office established by divine powers. Consequently, a chief’s authority is based on rights that flow from a divine source rather than consent by the chief’s subject.
State Societies and legitimacy:
The societies with state systems have their own objects of legitimacy there were large states or kingdoms in Eastern and Southern Africa in the 15th and 19th centuries. For example, there were the states of Ganda, Nyasa of Uganda and the Zulu and Swazi Southern Africa, in West Africa there were the “kingdoms” or states of Dahomy and Ashanti. In Mesoamerica there was the Aztec state. In South America, there was the Inca State in Peru.
- Every state possessed a king, a legitimate ruler. The king had his office. His position was hereditary founded by an ancestral king or by the supernatural. Therefore, the authority of the king was based on rights, which either flowed from the consent of the Chief’s subjects or flowed from divine powers. Therefore, legitimacy was thus created either by a founding ancestor king or by the supernatural or creator.
- Rebellion and revolution are features of state politics. Rebellion or fighting in an attempt to establish the legitimacy of political power in a society is common to state political systems and rarely is found in chiefdoms. Revolution or the denial by large numbers of a population of a further investment of legitimacy in a political system is also common to state political system and rarely is found in band, tribal or chiefdom political systems