Sovereignty

Legitimacy

2.2.1 How do we know whether a regime is legitimate or not?

It is not enough to cite compliance with a regime's rules and its intermediaries as evidence for legitimacy. Empirically we learn from both distant and recent history that people for the most part comply with the orders of an occupying army, but they hate it. They think its rule wrong and improper. Hence the successful exercise of power does not make it legitimate. Research that set out to discover whether a regime was legitimate or not would proceed through observation and interrogation. A regime that had persisted for a long period would suggest an assumption of legitimacy, but it could not be taken for granted. In 1987 the Soviet Union might have seemed a legitimate regime. Yet by 1990 it had disintegrated, largely from internal pressures. This leads to a second question for political scientists.

2.2.2 How do regimes lose their legitimacy?

We have numerous examples from history of regimes collapsing. Empires are especially prone to collapse. The Roman, Spanish, Austro-Hungarian, Turkish, British, French, Dutch, Portuguese and Soviet empires all disintegrated. Both outside and inside pressures seem to have contributed to their downfalls. It is doubtful whether empires are ever accepted as legitimate by their subject peoples. Sooner or later they cease to respect the rules and orders of their rulers who find policing them increasingly exhausting, both physically and financially.

Frequently political regimes begin to lose legitimacy when their rulers start to doubt the beliefs and values justifying their rule. New generations of power-holders begin to lose faith in what has been called the 'legitimating myth'perhaps, in the case of empires, the conviction that they are bringing peace, progress, enlightenment and civilisation. The loss of confidence leads to instability. Legitimacy is then threatened. Where the imperial masters have liberal values they will find it difficult, in the end impossible, to deny the same democratic rights and procedures to their subject peoples that they accord to their own people.

Dahl explains legitimacy with the metaphor of a reservoir. As long as it stays at a certain level stability is maintained, but if it falls below that level it is endangered. ¹⁵ In the 1970s some political scientists began to question the sustainability of 'Western democracy'. Dunleavy and O'Leary have summarised the main arguments.¹⁶ One was that the success of capitalism had created a consumer society in which affluence had produced values contrary to the Protestant work ethic which had been fundamental to capitalism. Another was that democratic governments had become too ambitious in their policies and had 'overloaded' themselves with too many functions. They should divest themselves of many of them. A third was that democracy had never been properly extended to people. Both decentralisation and greater political participation were needed.

2.2.3 Can a regime bolster up, or even increase, its legitimacy?

Although the legitimacy of regimes is ultimately determined by the attitudes of its citizens, subjects or non-elite (to use various terms to describe them), the rulers, governments or elites are likely to ensure that their legitimacy is not declining. They will try to secure compliance by introducing policies that increase rewards and decrease penalties. Democracies with procedures and institutions, such as elections and a free press, enabling them to monitor the reactions of their citizens will be in a much better position to do this than authoritarian regimes (see Chapter 4).

Whether a regime is legitimate or not is a matter for investigation. Researchers need to discover whether its members believe compliance with its rules right and proper. Basically it is not a moral question: some quite brutal and corrupt regimes, like Tsarist Russia, appear to have been legitimate.

Authority

It is usual to say authority confers legitimacy on power. It may not be correct to say, however, that 'authority is legitimised power' because there are some forms of authority which are not concerned with the exercise of power: for example, the authority of the priest over his flock, or the authority of parents over children. Others would argue that these two instances are illustrations of the exercise of power. If this is the case it may be necessary in political science discourse to separate the concept of power into political power and non-political power.

Here we are concerned with political power, as was the German social and political theorist, Max Weber, when he concluded that legitimacy was conferred upon power-holders in three different ways. These types of authority were distinguished by different characteristics. Each is an 'identikit'what he called an 'ideal-type'a set of features helping in identification. In reality every form of government is a mixture of these ideal-types. Thus an ideal-type is a characterisation of features which helps expounding, explaining, investigating and learning.

2.3.1 Traditional authority

This is based upon a belief in the sanctity of age-old rules and practice of power. Weber divided it into three sub-types:

1. A belief that the oldest in the community should exercise authority. One might call this gerontocracy.

2. Patriarchalism, which is a form of simple dynastic rule, under which authority is passed down in succeeding generations to the male head of one particular family.

3. Patrimonialism, which occurs where patriarchal rule begins to develop an administrative apparatus as was typical of medieval Europe emerging from feudalism, and of Oriental despotisms.

In all forms of traditional authority government is exercised personally and often arbitrarily. There is no clear definition of the rules. Values underlying judgements by the rulers possess, or are given, the quality of 'revealed truth'.

2.3.2 Legal/rational authority

In contrast with traditional authority this refers to a situation where power is held to be legitimate because authority is conferred by rules which have been drawn up in a rational framework. Thus a society in which legal/rational authority prevails is one in which laws are obeyed. This applies to the rulers and their apparatus for ruling. They are also subject to the laws. Hence the society is characterised by norms of impersonality and lack of arbitrariness. The exercise of power is clearly defined and loyalty is accorded by subordinates because they perceive it to be based on rationality.

Weber implies, though he does not assert, that legal/rational authority is the best. It was the most rational and it is a feature of the way the world was developing. More and more the world was becoming subject to organisational forms and the salient feature of this organisation was bureaucracy, the administrative apparatus by which the laws are implemented (See Chapter 17 for an examination of this concept).

2.3.3 Charismatic authority

This is quite different from the other two types. Weber defines charisma as 'a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is... treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least exceptional powers or qualities'. Legitimacy is thus based upon the claim of such a leader to have the qualities essential for leadership, and the acceptance of this claim by his followers. The ruler reinforces his authority by the performance of actions, seen to be heroic and, perhaps, near-miraculous.

The emergence of charismatic authority is associated with the breakdown of an established order and a change in systems of values. It may destroy the customs of traditional authority and the laws of legal/ rational authority. Essentially it is a revolutionary force and is bound to be temporary and transitional. Charismatic rule will either revert to traditional rule through a charismatic ruler establishing a dynasty, or it will be 'routinised' and regularised and become legal/rational authority.

The nebulous nature of the notions of power and legitimacy, their resistance to empirical investigation and yet their obvious importance is, as noted above, fertile soil for the growth of conspiracy theories about the location and thrust of political power-wielders in society. Elitists see power as impossible to wrest from consolidated oligarchies. Marxists see power as almost invisibly exerted by the capitalist class. They prevent the working class from realising its true revolutionary role and knowing its own interests by bribing them with consumer goods and/or manipulating their minds with propaganda. Thus the capitalists hold on to power.

Sovereignty

Sovereignty is the claim to be the ultimate political authority, subject to no higher power as regards the making and enforcing of political decisions. In the international system, sovereignty is the claim by the state to full self-government, and the mutual recognition of claims to sovereignty is the basis of international society. Sovereignty is the other side of the coin of international anarchy, for if states claim sovereignty, then the structure of the international system is by definition anarchic. Sovereignty should not be confused with freedom of action: sovereign actors may find themselves exercising freedom of decision within circumstances that are highly constrained by relations of unequal power.

External sovereignty which is independent or free from foreign rule while the internal sovereignty which means complete authority to rule over the people inside the state.
For example, the first republic of the Philippines, (1898-1901) had internal sovereignty (it had a government, a flag, a national anthem, currency and law), but it did not have external sovereignty (the United States had annexed the Philippines) and no foreign state recognized its authority.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-29