The Legitimation of Power (Political Analysis) by David Beetham

Author:David Beetham [Beetham, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2013-10-29T18:30:00+00:00

Conclusion

It is worth at this point summarising what has been a long chapter, so that the wood does not get lost for the trees. With regard to forms of power, I have argued, legitimacy is at once most urgent and most problematic in respect of the contemporary state, in view of its enormous concentration of power on the one side, and the vulnerability of its rules of power on the other, lacking as they do any superior legal authority to validate and enforce them. In considering the different elements necessary to that legitimacy – legality, the justifiability of rules, expressed consent – we need to be able to demonstrate the relationship between underlying principles and the institutions that embody or give effect to them. It is the ability to give a convincing account of this relationship that is lacking in most discussions of political legitimacy, and that this chapter has sought to provide.

At the level of legality it is a relatively commonplace observation that respect for the rule of law on the part of government requires an institutional separation of powers and the effective subordination of the military to civilian control. However, legality itself is ultimately dependent on the acceptability of the constitutional order, and the justifiability of the rules governing appointment to office and the spatial distribution of power. Rules of appointment (access to office, degree of competition, mode of removal, etc.) must conform to a source of authority recognised within the society on the one hand, and facilitate rather than hinder the realisation of a general interest and the acknowledged ends of government, on the other. In the attainment of both, the spatial distribution of power must correspond to people’s self-definition of themselves as a distinctive people. Finally, the realisation of popular consent requires a particular kind of party and form of popular participation, according to the system’s particular mode of legitimation.

At each point, in other words, it is possible to trace a relationship between a different aspect or principle of legitimacy, and the manner in which it is realised, or fails to be realised, within specific institutions. For legality we look in the first instance (but only in the first instance) to the relationship between the different branches of the state: legislative, executive and judicial. For rule-justifiability we need to examine the extent to which the basic rules of appointment to high office embody an accepted source of authority, and facilitate the attainment of the acknowledged ends of government (the ‘right’ and the ‘good’). For legitimation, or expressed consent, we must consider the form and extent of political participation, and the way in which the party system is arranged to give effect to it. Finally, and most crucially, we need to assess how far these different institutional arrangements are mutually compatible, in the sense that, in realising one aspect or dimension of legitimacy, they are at least consistent with, and do not undermine, another.

Constitutional rules, we could conclude, comprise institutional arrangements designed not only to ensure a

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