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.

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