International Relations and International Organization Political Science
Summaries - Readings Week 6
1. Beetham: The Legitimation of Power - Towards a social-scientific concept of legitimacy Reader: 101-112 2
2. Wimmel: Theorizing the Democratic Legitimacy of European Governance (p. 181-199) Online article 5
3. Rothstein: Creating Political Legitimacy (p. 311-330) Online article 8
, International Relations and International Organization Political Science
1. Beetham: The Legitimation of Power - Towards a social-scientific concept of legitimacy
(Reader: 101-112)
The exercise of power is both a basic, recurrent feature of all societies and problematical. Because it
is so problematical, societies will seek to subject the exercise of power to justifiable rules. Where
power is acquired and exercised according to these rules, we call it rightful or legitimate. How far
power is legitimate, what makes it so, and why it matters: these are all inherently difficult and
contentious questions. In addition to this inherent difficulty, there is the extra complication of
divergent definitions offered by different groups of professionals. It is this double layer of complexity
that makes the subject of legitimacy so difficult.
In unravelling this complexity, Beetham begins with the different academic specialisms offering
definitions of and perspectives on the concept of legitimacy:
1. Legal experts, especially constitutional lawyers, are concerned with the resolution of legal disputes
about power. For them, power is legitimate where its acquisition and exercise conform the
established law. For them legitimacy is equivalent to legal validity.
- To say that the power a person has was legally acquired and is exercised within the law, is a first
condition of its legitimacy. However, if legal validity is a recognisable element in legitimacy, it cannot
by any means exhaust it. Disputes about the legitimacy of power are not just disputes about what
someone is legally entitled to have or to do; they also involve disagreements about whether the law
itself is justifiable, and whether it conforms to rationally defensible moral/political principles.
- These moral questions and practical dilemmas about power go deeper than the question of its legal
validity; they concern the justification for the law itself. It is not what the law actually prescribes, but
what it is ought to prescribe, that is here the central issue of legitimacy:
2. The question of how power relations within a society ought to be arranged, and what would count
as a sufficient justification to require the support of the subordinate of them, has been the special
concern of moral and political philosophy. What is ‘legitimate’ to the philosopher, is what is morally
justifiable or rightful; legitimacy entails the moral justifiability of power relations.
3. Turning, finally, to the social scientists, we see a different focus of interest from those of the legal
expert or moral philosopher. The social scientist’s concern is not with solving legal disputes or moral
dilemmas about power, or helping other to do so. Social scientists’ purpose is an explanatory one.
- Social scientists, unlike moral or political philosophers, are concerned with legitimacy in particular
historial societies rather than universally; with legitimacy in given social contexts rather than
independent of any particular context; with actual social relations rather than ideal ones.
- Moreover, they are trained to stand back from their own values and beliefs so as better to
understand those of others. What matters for an adequate understanding is not what they
personally believe, but what is believed in the society they are studying. For this reason, most social
scientists have followed Max Weber in defining legitimacy as the belief in legitimacy on the part of
the relevant social agents; and power relations as legitimate where those involved in them - both
subordinate and dominant - believe them to be so.
Beetham focuses on the social scientists’ perspective on legitimacy in her book. She states that social
scientists, and herself as well, have been thoroughly confused about legitimacy.:
- The confusion starts with the work of Weber. Before Weber, there have been many other
influential political philosophers like Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and Hegel. Weber is rightly regarded
as one of the ‘founding fathers’ of twentieth-century social science. On the subject of legitimacy,
however, Weber’s influence has been an unqualified disaster.
- His definition is the starting point of confusion: power is legitimate where those involved in it
believe it to be so; legitimacy is equivalent to Legitimitätsglaube. What is wrong with it, can be seen
most clearly from what other social scientists have made from it. Because social scientists are trained
to be dismissive of universal truths and values, the beliefs of people are thus explained as the
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