Will and Political Legitimacy

Will and Political Legitimacy PDF Author: Patrick Riley
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 9781583484241
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Get Book

Book Description
At the heart of representative government is the question: "What makes government and its agents legitimate authorities?" The notion of consent, of a social contract between the citizen and his government, is central to this problem. That contract allows the government to rule over the citizen and to exact obedience from him in return for certain protections and goods he needs.

Will and Political Legitimacy

Will and Political Legitimacy PDF Author: Patrick Riley
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 9781583484241
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Get Book

Book Description
At the heart of representative government is the question: "What makes government and its agents legitimate authorities?" The notion of consent, of a social contract between the citizen and his government, is central to this problem. That contract allows the government to rule over the citizen and to exact obedience from him in return for certain protections and goods he needs.

Legitimacy

Legitimacy PDF Author: Arthur Isak Applbaum
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674241932
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Get Book

Book Description
At an unsettled time for liberal democracy, with global eruptions of authoritarian and arbitrary rule, here is one of the first full-fledged philosophical accounts of what makes governments legitimate. What makes a government legitimate? The dominant view is that public officials have the right to rule us, even if they are unfair or unfit, as long as they gain power through procedures traceable to the consent of the governed. In this rigorous and timely study, Arthur Isak Applbaum argues that adherence to procedure is not enough: even a properly chosen government does not rule legitimately if it fails to protect basic rights, to treat its citizens as political equals, or to act coherently. How are we to reconcile every person’s entitlement to freedom with the necessity of coercive law? Applbaum’s answer is that a government legitimately governs its citizens only if the government is a free group agent constituted by free citizens. To be a such a group agent, a government must uphold three principles. The liberty principle, requiring that the basic rights of citizens be secured, is necessary to protect against inhumanity, a tyranny in practice. The equality principle, requiring that citizens have equal say in selecting who governs, is necessary to protect against despotism, a tyranny in title. The agency principle, requiring that a government’s actions reflect its decisions and its decisions reflect its reasons, is necessary to protect against wantonism, a tyranny of unreason. Today, Applbaum writes, the greatest threat to the established democracies is neither inhumanity nor despotism but wantonism, the domination of citizens by incoherent, inconstant, and incontinent rulers. A government that cannot govern itself cannot legitimately govern others.

Political Legitimacy

Political Legitimacy PDF Author: Jack Knight
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479888699
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 411

Get Book

Book Description
Essays on the political, legal, and philosophical dimensions of political legitimacy Scholars, journalists, and politicians today worry that the world’s democracies are facing a crisis of legitimacy. Although there are key challenges facing democracy—including concerns about electoral interference, adherence to the rule of law, and the freedom of the press—it is not clear that these difficulties threaten political legitimacy. Such ambiguity derives in part from the contested nature of the concept of legitimacy, and from disagreements over how to measure it. This volume reflects the cutting edge of responses to these perennial questions, drawing, in the distinctive NOMOS fashion, from political science, philosophy, and law. Contributors address fundamental philosophical questions such as the nature of public reasons of authority, as well as urgent concerns about contemporary democracy, including whether “animus” matters for the legitimacy of President Trump’s travel ban, barring entry for nationals from six Muslim-majority nations, and the effect of fundamental transitions within the moral economy, such as the decline of labor unions. Featuring twelve essays from leading scholars, Political Legitimacy is an important and timely addition to the NOMOS series.

Will and Political Legitimacy

Will and Political Legitimacy PDF Author: Patrick Riley
Publisher: Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book

Book Description
At the heart of representative government is the question: "What makes government and its agents legitimate authorities?" The notion of consent to a social contract between the citizen and his government is central to this problem. What are the functions of public authority? What are the people's rights in a self-governing and representative state? Patrick Riley presents a comprehensive historical analysis of the meaning of contract theory and a testing of the inherent validity of the ideas of consent and obligation. He uncovers the critical relationship between the act of willing and that of consenting in self-government and shows how "will" relates to political legitimacy. His is the first large-scale study of social contract theory from Hobbes to Rawls that gives "will" the central place it occupies in contractarian thinking.

Political Legitimacy and the State

Political Legitimacy and the State PDF Author: Rodney Barker
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Get Book

Book Description
Governments and their supporters attempt to justify their power by arguing for their moral, rightful, or predestined claim to authority. Political Legitimacy and the State examines the accounts that have been given of legitimacy, proposing that legitimation should be studied as a form of political activity in its own right. Drawing on recent historical examples, Barker argues for a more diversified understanding of the function and character of political legitimacy, suggesting that rulers are often far more concerned about legitimating their power than are those whom they govern.

East Asian Perspectives on Political Legitimacy

East Asian Perspectives on Political Legitimacy PDF Author: Joseph Chan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108107826
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 446

Get Book

Book Description
What makes a government legitimate? Why do people voluntarily comply with laws, even when no one is watching? The idea of political legitimacy captures the fact that people obey when they think governments' actions accord with valid principles. For some, what matters most is the government's performance on security and the economy. For others, only a government that follows democratic principles can be legitimate. Political legitimacy is therefore a two-sided reality that scholars studying the acceptance of governments need to take into account. The diversity and backgrounds of East Asian nations provides a particular challenge when trying to determine the level of political legitimacy of individual governments. This book brings together both political philosophers and political scientists to examine the distinctive forms of political legitimacy that exist in contemporary East Asia. It is essential reading for all academic researchers of East Asian government, politics and comparative politics.

The Moral Foundations of Politics

The Moral Foundations of Politics PDF Author: Ian Shapiro
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300189753
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303

Get Book

Book Description
When do governments merit our allegiance, and when should they be denied it? Ian Shapiro explores this most enduring of political dilemmas in this innovative and engaging book. Building on his highly popular Yale courses, Professor Shapiro evaluates the main contending accounts of the sources of political legitimacy. Starting with theorists of the Enlightenment, he examines the arguments put forward by utilitarians, Marxists, and theorists of the social contract. Next he turns to the anti-Enlightenment tradition that stretches from Edmund Burke to contemporary post-modernists. In the last part of the book Shapiro examines partisans and critics of democracy from Plato’s time until our own. He concludes with an assessment of democracy’s strengths and limitations as the font of political legitimacy. The book offers a lucid and accessible introduction to urgent ongoing conversations about the sources of political allegiance.

Legitimacy and Power Politics

Legitimacy and Power Politics PDF Author: Mlada Bukovansky
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691146705
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266

Get Book

Book Description
This book examines the causes and consequences of a major transformation in both domestic and international politics: the shift from dynastically legitimated monarchical sovereignty to popularly legitimated national sovereignty. It analyzes the impact of Enlightenment discourse on politics in eighteenth-century Europe and the United States, showing how that discourse facilitated new authority struggles in Old Regime Europe, shaped the American and French Revolutions, and influenced the relationships between the revolutionary regimes and the international system. The interaction between traditional and democratic ideas of legitimacy transformed the international system by the early nineteenth century, when people began to take for granted the desirability of equality, individual rights, and restraint of power. Using an interpretive, historically sensitive approach to international relations, the author considers the complex interplay between elite discourses about political legitimacy and strategic power struggles within and among states. She shows how culture, power, and interests interacted to produce a crucial yet poorly understood case of international change. The book not only shows the limits of liberal and realist theories of international relations, but also demonstrates how aspects of these theories can be integrated with insights derived from a constructivist perspective that takes culture and legitimacy seriously. The author finds that cultural contests over the terms of political legitimacy constitute one of the central mechanisms by which the character of sovereignty is transformed in the international system--a conclusion as true today as it was in the eighteenth century.

Political Legitimacy in Postcolonial Mali

Political Legitimacy in Postcolonial Mali PDF Author: Dorothea E. Schulz
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 184701268X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Get Book

Book Description
An innovative examination of our understanding of political legitimacy in Mali, and its wider implications for democratization and political modernity in the Global South.

Legitimacy

Legitimacy PDF Author: Lynn T. White
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9812569340
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 329

Get Book

Book Description
This book documents the bases for a new view of legitimacy in general and in various parts of Asia, including China, Malaysia, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan. The authors see legitimacy anywhere as always partial, rather than total, and somewhat measurable.