Legitimacy

Legitimacy is the recognized right to rule, the property that makes a claim to political authority something citizens have a genuine moral reason to accept rather than merely a power they are forced to obey. Max Weber's classic sociological account distinguishes three pure types of legitimate authority: traditional (resting on the sanctity of long-standing custom, as in hereditary monarchy), charismatic (resting on the exceptional personal qualities attributed to a leader), and legal-rational (resting on a belief in the lawfulness of enacted rules and the right of those elevated under them to give commands, the dominant form in modern bureaucratic states). Political philosophers before Weber grounded legitimacy differently: social contract theorists located it in the consent, actual or hypothetical, of the governed, while other traditions have grounded it in divine sanction, tradition or demonstrated competence. A government can hold effective power without legitimacy, and the gap between the two, when a population no longer regards a ruler's authority as rightful even though that ruler retains the capacity to coerce, is a recurring source of political instability and revolution.