Barker 2004 Self-Legitimacy of Rulers

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LEGITIMATING IDENTITIESThe Self-Presentations of Rulers and Subjects

Rulers of all kinds, from feudal monarchs to democratic pres-idents and prime ministers, justify themselves to themselvesthrough a variety of rituals, rhetoric, and dramatisations, us-ing everything from architecture and coinage to etiquette andportraiture. This kind of legitimation – self-legitimation – hasbeen overlooked in an age which is concerned principallywith how government can be justified in the eyes of its cit-izens. Rodney Barker argues that at least as much time isspent by rulers legitimating themselves in their own eyes, andcultivating their own sense of identity, as is spent in trying toconvince ordinary subjects. Once this dimension of ruling istaken into account, a far fuller understanding can be gainedof what rulers are doing when they rule. It can also open theway to a more complete grasp of what subjects are doing,both when they obey and when they rebel.

R ODN E Y B A RK E R is Reader in Government at the Lon-don School of Economics. His publications include PoliticalIdeas and Political Action (editor, ), Political Ideas in ModernBritain in and after the Twentieth Century ( ), Politics, Peoples, andGovernment: Themes in British Political Thought since the NineteenthCentury () and Political Legitimacy and the State ().

LEGITIMATINGIDENTITIES

The Self-Presentations of Rulers and Subjects

RODNEY BARKER

The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, AustraliaRuiz de Alarcón 13, 28014 Madrid, SpainDock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa

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Rodney Barker 2004

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Contents

Acknowledgements page viii

Legitimacy and legitimation

Legitimating identities

King John’s Christmas cards: self-legitimation

Cousins at home and abroad

Rebels and vigilantes

Citizens

Conclusion

Bibliography Index

vii

Acknowledgements

I have drawn on ‘Whose Legitimacy? Elites, Nationalism and Eth-nicity in the United Kingdom’, New Community, , (April ),and ‘The LongMillennium, the Short Century, and the Persistenceof Legitimation’, Contemporary Politics, , () for parts of thisbook.

viii

CHAPTER


WHAT THIS BOOK IS NOT ABOUT

There is a convention sometimes found amongst academics of be-ginning books and articles with an inaugural lecture in reverse.Whereas the inaugural lecture conventionally opens with a seriesof polite tributes to predecessors, showing how the speaker is doingnomore than standing on the shoulders of giants, making an inade-quate attempt to fill the majestic shoes of exceptional predecessors,and simply acting as a feeble stand-in, the reverse can occur oncethe scholar is released from ceremonial restraints and unleashedon the wild world of monographs and journals. This reverse ver-sion lists all those who have in any way touched on the author’ssubject, and condemns them as theoretically impoverished, em-pirically threadbare, and intellectually sterile. Their crime usuallyturns out to have been the rather different one of failing to havecontributed to the author’s own enterprise because they were infact doing something quite different. Historians of the poor laware dismissed for not having provided policy recommendations fortwentieth or twenty-first-century governments, writers on politi-cal rhetoric for not having dealt with the distribution of capital,and analysts of trade unionism for having ignored conspiracies inthe cabinet. So might the author of Winnie the Pooh be dismissedfor having failed to contribute anything to the analysis of tacticalvoting.

I am not going to be so self-denying as to refuse from the outsetto make any critical assessments whatsoever of any previous work.But my discussion of other authors will be designed to defend meagainst possible criticisms of theWinnie the Pooh kind, rather than


to make them. It may avoid misunderstanding if I say what I amnot doing, so that no one, or at least fewer people, will complainthat I have done it inadequately. This book is not about legitimacy.Neither is it a criticism of those who havewritten about legitimacy –I have written about it myself – although it argues that legitimacycan frequently be amisleading term, applied beyond its proper anduseful scope. I begin by looking briefly at work which borders onthe topic of this book. My intention is not to dismiss an existingbody of work, but to mark off the boundaries, and the overlaps,between that work and the subject of this enquiry. My intentionin the remaining chapters is to give a brief initial account of anaspect of political life which deserves more attention, and whosedescription can add to the richness of our overall picture. This bookis therefore an essay rather than a detailed historical or empiricalstudy, and relies on the work of others for its illustrative material.

The principal subject of the book is a characterising activityof government, to which Max Weber has drawn attention in hisfamous definition of the state as ‘the human community which(successfully) claims the monopoly of legitimate coercion’. Whatis not always noticed is that Weber is talking not about some ab-stract quality, ‘legitimacy’, but about an observable activity inwhichgovernments characteristically engage, the making of claims. Thisactivity is mentioned by Weber as part of a definition of the state.What characterises government, in other words, is not the posses-sion of a quality defined as legitimacy, but the claiming, the activityof legitimation. This book begins with the question, which is pro-voked by Weber’s definition: ‘What are governments doing whenthey spend time, resources and energy legitimating themselves?’The question is one that is often hidden or obscured in the socialsciences, but is nonetheless more often present there than theattention normally given to it suggests. When Anthony Downsgave the apparently purely utilitarian account of government andpolitics as involving the pursuit of income, prestige, and power,

Max Weber, ‘Politics as a Vocation’ in H. C. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds.), From MaxWeber: Essays in Sociology (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, ), p. .

Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York, Harper & Brothers, ),p. : ‘From the self-interest axiom springs our view of whatmotivates the political actionsof party members. We assume that they act solely in order to attain the income, prestige,and power which come from being in office. Thus politicians in our model never seek


only the first member of the trilogy, income, was tangible, straight-forward, and relatively unproblematic: £ is £, and is twiceas much as £. Power is more complicated, since it is a metaphorfor describing the fact that things happen, or do not happen. Doesa government minister who introduces smaller class sizes, in so do-ing use, or enjoy, more ‘power’ than one who sponsors geneticallymodified maize? Does the same minister enjoy more power whenshe broadens the ‘A’ Level curriculum than when she assists musicin primary schools. And is power an end in itself, or a means toacquire other things, or is it better understood as neither of these,but as a metaphor to describe success in acquiring them? But thecomplications of power are as nothing compared to those of pres-tige. Prestige is the least obviously utilitarian of them all, and seemsalmost to slip in hidden under the cloak of its rational companionsin Downs’s definition.

In giving the pursuit of prestige as one of the three aims of gov-ernment, Downs, far from being iconoclastic, is being thoroughlytraditional. That other alleged exponent of a cynical pragmatic ap-proach to politics, Machiavelli, gave a remarkably similar accountfour centuries earlier, identifying the desire for prestige as one of themotives, and ends, of rulers. Machiavelli speaks of greatness, hon-our, and prestige, whilst the material resources of government arelittle more than instruments for achieving these ends. Political sci-ence therefore gives plenty of precedent for paying attention to theseemingly non-utilitarian activities of rulers. And though the term‘prestige’ can have a wide application, what is being described is avery particular kind of prestige, the prestigewhich applies to princesand presidents, kings and prime ministers, leaders and rulers. Theclaim of rulers to special status or qualities, and the actions theytake in cultivating this claim, are the central part of endogenouslegitimation, of the self-justification of rulers by the cultivation ofan identity distinguished from that of ordinary men and women.

If the desire for prestige, for a sense of their unique identity,is a motive of rulers, how is such prestige to be identified, what

office as a means of carrying out particular policies; their only goal is to reap the rewardsof holding office per se. They treat policies purely as a means to the attainment of theirprivate ends, which they can reach only by being elected.’

Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince ([] Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, ).


are its symptoms, how and where is it enjoyed, and by whom andunder what conditions?What is the utility of such a seemingly non-utilitarian activity? It may be that the question cannot be answered,and that all that can be done is a preliminary clarification, not ofan answer, but of the question. And it may be necessary to rejectthe question, and insist that a narrowly utilitarian account of pol-itics is unhistorical and unempirical. Self-legitimation in the formof the cultivation of a distinguished identity may be a goal in itself.And to say that it is merely a means of justifying other goods is toleave unresolved the question of why such justification is desired ornecessary in the first place. This desire or need for a very particularform of prestige was what Weber identified when he commentedthat ‘in no instance does domination voluntarily limit itself to theappeal tomaterial or affectual or ideal motives as a basis for its con-tinuance. In addition every such system attempts to establish and tocultivate the belief in its legitimacy.’ When rulers legitimate them-selves, they claim that particular species of prestige which attachesto government. Whether or not the apparently universal featureof government, the claiming of prestige, justification, authority,reflects a psychological need of government or of governors, liesoutside the scope of this study or at least lies only at its very fringes.But the character and consequences of such endogenous or self-legitimation can still be studied with that question left to one side.

The intention in this book is to construct a preliminary sketchof a theory with as wide an historical application as possible. Twoqualifications must be made. First, I have drawn for illustration onthe evidence from both the United Kingdom and the rest of theworld, and from a wide chronological range. This of itself meansthat there has been no intensive investigation or presentation ofa particular instance of legitimation. The second qualification isthat the conceptions of state, politics, and political identity andlegitimation which I develop in the following pages are not directlyaddressed to what for many people has been the principal questionassociated with the terms ‘legitimation’ and ‘legitimacy’: are therecriteria, both morally acceptable to the abstracted observer, andpractically effective in the specific historical context, which operate

Max Weber, Economy and Society, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, vols. (London,University of California Press, ), p. .


when regimes sustain their rule over a given population? But whilstnot addressing that question, I suggest answers to other questionswhich will not be uncongenial to those who wish to do so.

THE CORONATION OF NAPOLEON

David’s famous painting of the coronation of Napoleon andJosephine has two features of great interest for anyone looking at theway in which government is carried on, and the way in which rulersconduct themselves. The first feature is well known. Napoleon ishimself placing the crown upon the head of the Empress Josephine.The significance of that is clear. The emperor is not ruling by theconsent of anyone else: not the church, not God, and certainlynot the people. He is exercising and expressing authority, his ownauthority. He is legitimate because he legitimates himself, and thecoronation is in effect a self-coronation. This is not, in any obvioussense of the word, a democratic occasion. The second feature of thepainting is less obvious. Not only is the immediate audience for thisevent relatively small and select, but themost importantmember ofthe audience is the emperor himself. The ritual is, above all, for hisown benefit, telling him who he is, and how he is marked out fromother men. The coronation serves to impress, not the emperor’ssubjects, but the emperor himself.

This inward-turning aspect of legitimation has until recently at-tracted relatively little attention. The principal interest of historiansand political scientists has been in other features of the ritualisticactions of rulers. Most attention has been paid to legitimation as ameans, not of convincing princes and presidents, but of convincingsubjects. The self-legitimation of rulers was discussed byWeber, buthas been partly obscured amongst other features of the legitimationof government, so that the complexity, and difficulties, of his ac-count have largely been lost sight of.His account of self-legitimationslipped further and further into obscurity as attention was focussedon ways of describing politics and government which derived fromother aspects of his work, or in reaction to what were criticised asits undemocratic, or anti-democratic, aspects. In a democratic cen-tury, which was at least the aspiration of the s, rulers were seenas the beneficiaries of legitimation, rather than as either its focus or


its centre. Not until the last two decades of the twentieth centurydid a renewed interest in the non-utilitarian side of government andpolitics lead to a slowly growing attention to the self-confirming,self-justificatory dimension of legitimation. The recognition of thiselement in Weber’s theory has come, in particular, in formulatingaccounts of the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europeand the Soviet Union in , though it can be found too in thework of social anthropologists such as Clifford Geertz. What thisrecognition underlines is that such self-legitimation is not an un-usual or unique feature of one ruler of post-revolutionary France.In the world of everyday government, the language, etiquette, andrituals of self-legitimation are ubiquitous. They are a feature ofall government, and there is much to be gained from remindingourselves of this, and giving a preliminary account and theory oflegitimation at the centre, from the centre, and for the centre.Whenlegitimation is seen from the centre outwards, rather than from theoutside inwards, dimensions of government which have languishedin the shadows are thrown into new, or renewed, relief.

THE RE-EMERGENCE OF GOVERNMENT

One of the features of the series of changes variously described asthe end of the short twentieth century, the end of modernity, theend of the cold war, or the arrival of post-modernity, was a re-newed perception of government as an activity having its own pur-poses and ethos, one aspect of which was self-legitimation. When

Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth Century Bali (Princeton, PrincetonUniversity Press, ).

Language is of course a problem. The terms used in languages other than English areoften only roughly translated, and sometimes misrepresented, by the word ‘legitimacy’.This qualification, whilst a very real one, is not unique to the study of legitimacy. InMay , during the popular demonstrations in major Thai cities which led to therestoration of a form of representative democratic government after a period of militaryintervention, the crowds were reported as shouting ‘Down with the illegitimate regime!’Saitip Sukatipan, ‘Thailand: The Evolution of Legitimacy’ inMuthiahAlagappa, PoliticalLegitimacy in Southeast Asia: The Quest forMoral Authority (Stanford, StanfordUniversity Press,), p. .Whatever theywere shouting, it could not have been that. A similar problemcan arise whenever the language of the system being studied is not English. Hok-lamChan observes, in a study of legitimation in twelfth and thirteenth-century China, that‘legitimate succession’ is an approximate translation only of the Chinese ‘cheng-t’ung’.Hok-lamChan,Legitimation in Imperial China:Discussions under the Jurchen-ChinDynasty ( – ) (London, University of Washington Press, ), pp. –.


the floodwaters of the short twentieth century (as Eric Hobsbawmhas described the years from the Russian Revolution of tothe collapse of East European and Soviet communism after )retreated, they revealed the hulks of government much as theyhad been when they were obscured by the waters of economic andsocial revolution eighty years before. The same priorities of rulersre-emerged, the same symbolic self-protection of government notonly from outside doubts and the opinions of subjects and citi-zens, but from internal uncertainties of the kind that lead not torevolution but to abdication. If the great engagement of the twen-tieth century with the politics of class left behind the politics ofplace, religion, and nationality, it also obscured politics and gov-ernment as self-generating activities, occupations with their ownrewards, and their own justifications and legitimations. Not thatthese dimensions of government activity were absent during theshort twentieth century nor that much sceptical writing was noteager to draw attention to them. But ruling as a distinctive activ-ity with its own aims, justifications, and culture was obscured byseeing government solely or principally as an instrumental activity.The three great standpoints of twentieth-century political scienceeach sustained this vision. For Marxists, the state was either theinstrument or the higher intelligence of capitalism; for democrats,it was the reflex or channel of popular or social pressures; for eco-nomic liberals it was, when behaving properly, the guardian ofmarkets, and when behaving improperly the captive of socialists orthe prisoner of socialist misconceptions. For none of them was itthe institutional form of one of the major activities of humans andof human society, the exercise of power over the general affairs ofother people.

EXISTING WORK

In the last twenty years of the twentieth century, political legiti-mation and political legitimacy attracted an increasing amount of Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century: – (London,MichaelJoseph, ).

A variety of writers, fromMichels and the early elitists to Orwell and the sceptical criticsof power, from anarchists to post-Spencerian critics of bureaucracy, have identified theexercise of power as just as important as the objects for which it was ostensibly employed.


attention amongst political scientists, social scientists, and histo-rians. This was in part in response to the end, and the circum-stances surrounding and following the end, of the short twentiethcentury: the replacement of communist regimes in Eastern Europeand the Soviet Union by various forms of democracy; the emer-gence, particularly with the development of the European Union,of new forms of transnational governance; the conflicts betweendemocratic movements and party and military despotisms in Asia;and the need to restate the conditions under which regimes legit-imated themselves in a world where the simple polarities of com-munist/capitalist, totalitarian/democratic, had either evaporatedor been intertissued with the dimensions of ethnicity, religion, andnational identity.

Within this growing body of literature on legitimacy andlegitimation, there are three principal strands: normative assess-ment of legitimacy as a quality or possession of government; thestudy of popular attitudes towards and support for rulers as a basisfor analysing and predicting regime stability, both at national andtransnational level; and the interweaving of the first two to forma bridge or an alliance between is and ought. Each strand is in

The literature is extensive, and I have given samples only in the following footnotes. William Connolly (ed.), Legitimacy and the State (Oxford, Blackwell, ); Leslie Green,

The Authority of the State (Oxford, Clarendon Press, ); Tom R. Tyler, ‘Justice, Self-Interest, and the Legitimacy of Legal and Political Authority’ in Jane J. Mansbridge,Beyond Self-Interest (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, ), pp. –.

Muthiah Alagappa, Political Legitimacy in Southeast Asia: The Quest for Moral Authority(Stanford, Stanford University Press, ); David Beetham and Christopher Lord,Legitimacy and the EuropeanUnion (London, Longman, ); Grainne deBurca, ‘TheQuestfor Legitimacy in the European Union’, Modern Law Review (), –; SoledadGarcia (ed.), European Identity and the Search for Legitimacy (London, Pinter, ); James L.Gibson and Gregory A. Caldeira, ‘Changes in the Legitimacy of the European Court ofJustice: A Post-Maastricht Analysis’, British Journal of Political Science , (), – ;Simon Hix, ‘The Study of the European Union II: The “NewGovernance” Agenda andits Rival’, Journal of European Public Policy , (), –; Juliet Lodge, ‘Transparencyand Democratic Legitimacy’, Journal of Common Market Studies (), –; HeinzKaufeler, Modernization, Legitimacy and Social Movement: A Study of Socio-Cultural Dynamics andRevolution in Iran and Ethiopia (Zurich, Ethnologische Schriften Zurich, ).

David Beetham, The Legitimation of Power (London, Macmillan, ); Jurgen Habermas,Legitimation Crisis, trans. T. McCarthy (London, Heinemann, ); David Held, ‘Powerand Legitimacy in Contemporary Britain’ in Gregor McLennan, David Held and StuartHall (eds.), State and Society in Contemporary Britain: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge, Polity,); David Held, ‘Crisis Tendencies, Legitimation and the State’ in J. B. Thompsonand D. Held (eds.), Habermas: Critical Debates (London, Macmillan, ).


part an ideal type, and much work incorporates elements of morethan one strand. But the three elements nonetheless give characterto, and illustrate, the predominant approaches. The normativeapproach most frequently employs the terms ‘legitimacy’ and‘legitimate’. ‘Legitimacy’ is treated as a property or characteristicof regimes which satisfy criteria laid out by the observer. Thesecriteria are most usually identified as the transfer of consent bysubjects to rulers, often in some form of regularly renewed demo-cratic contract. Procedural rules, respect for rights, the just exerciseof governmental power, are frequently identified as supportiveor additional criteria. Regimes which fulfil these criteria arethen designated ‘legitimate’. From within this tradition comesthe argument for leaving the empirical or historical study oflegitimation well alone, from those who argue that since there areascertainable principles by which government can be justified,what is of principal importance is not the various claims that aremade by rulers, or the various political rituals whereby supportis expressed, but only the extent to which regimes approachacceptable norms of legitimacy. Normative political theory hasbeen directed to developing a prescriptive theory of legitimacy,and has, in consequence, though not from logical necessity, beenhostile to speaking of legitimacy in circumstances where the rulers,policies, or constitutions are consideredmorally unacceptable. Therulers are moreover perceived as agents rather than as actors, sincethe source of their legitimacy generally is presented as externalto themselves. They are instruments of values whose origin lieselsewhere; the ‘source of the legitimacy of the political process andthe results it produces must lie ultimately outside the process’.

The second, empirical or historical approach also rests mostheavily on the terms ‘legitimacy’ and ‘legitimate’, which describequalities of a political system, as opposed to ‘legitimation’ whichdescribes an activity. Although the first approach is normative andthe second empirical, the normative suppositions of the first areembedded in the second. The normative valuation of democracyguides research in the direction of studies of the opinions of voters

Regina Austin, ‘The Problem of Legitimacy in theWelfare State’, University of PennsylvaniaLaw Review (), –, p. .


and of the efforts of government to influence these opinions. Legit-imacy is used as a term to describe a regime which is supported byits subjects, and democracy is the most reliable manner in whichthat support can be expressed and studied. Perceived in this way,there is a phenomenon of legitimacy which can be numericallymeasured. Four different objections have been raised to this ap-proach. The first is that the argument is circular, inferring consentfrom obedience, and then invoking consent to explain obedience.

Nothing, it is claimed, is added to an understanding of governmentor politics by speaking of legitimacy in such a manner. The secondobjection is that ‘legitimacy’ explains nothing, and is nomore than aredescription of the phenomenon being examined: support. Thethird objection, which leads on to the third manner of using theterms, is that to describe as legitimate a regime which its subjectsbelieve to be legitimate is to empty the term of any moral content,which content it ought to have. A further, fourth objection canbe raised, which is that describing a resource of government, ‘legit-imacy’, makes distinct or even optional an activity which is betterseen as integral to all government. If legitimacy is seen as a distinctresource of government, it can equally be left out of account save

David Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York, John Wiley and Sons, );George Kolankiewicz, ‘The Other Europe: Different Roads to Modernity in East-ern and Central Europe’ in Soledad Garcia (ed.), European Identity and the Search forLegitimacy (London, Pinter, ); Juan J. Linz, The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Crisis,Breakdown, and Reequilibration (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, ); JohnWilliams, Legitimacy in International Relations and the Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia (London,Macmillan, ); David Beetham The Legitimation of Power (London, Macmillan, );Beetham and Lord, Legitimacy and the European Union; Frederick D.Weil, ‘The Sources andStructure of Legitimation in Western Democracies: A Consolidated Model Tested withTime-Series Data in Six Countries Since World War II’, American Sociological Review (), –.

M. StephenWeatherford,‘Measuring Political Legitimacy’, American Political Science Review (), –.

Rodney Barker, Political Legitimacy and the State (Oxford, Clarendon, ), pp. –. Cf.Joseph Bensman’s comment that, in Weber’s account, legitimacy cannot be dissectedout as a causal variable. Joseph Bensman, ‘Max Weber’s Concept of Legitimacy: AnEvaluation’ in Arthur J. Vidich and Ronald Glassman (eds.), Conflict and Control: Challengesto Legitimacy of Modern Governments, – (Beverley Hills, Sage, ).

Brian Barry, Sociologists, Economists, and Democracy (London, Collier-Macmillan, ),pp. – .

This argument is developed, for instance, by Peter G. Stillman, ‘The Concept of Legiti-macy’, Polity (Amherst, North Eastern Political Science Association) , (), –,p. ; and David Campbell, ‘Truth Claims and Value-Freedom in the Treatment ofLegitimacy: The Case of Weber’, Journal of Law and Society , (Summer ), –,p. , and by Beetham, Legitimation of Power.


in extreme situations, a deus ex machina to be called into accountwhen all other explanations fail.

The third manner of using the terms ‘legitimacy’, ‘legitimate’,and ‘legitimation’ involves constructing a theory with the aimof knitting together normative and empirical conceptions andtheories. It is in part a response to the phenomenon described byRudyard Kipling, where

the wildest dreams of Kew are the facts of Khatmandhu,And the crimes of Clapham chaste in Martaban.

When this variety is confronted, the normative theory of legitimacyfaces the problem that people have many different values, and thatregimes which one observer regards as abhorrent nonetheless en-gage in justification, in legitimation, of themselves. One responseof this position is to say that to treat legitimation in this manneris to confer approval on all kinds of distasteful regimes: on crooks,despots, and repressive incompetents. To go down this road is tolose any normative purchase on a concept which has value at itsvery core. The response to this is that an historical or empiricalstudy of legitimation requires an acknowledgement of the varietyof human political values. And whilst a democratic political sciencerests on strong normative and methodological grounds, much ofgovernment is not democratic, and normative aspirations shouldnot prevent a study of a distinguishing feature of all government.The other response is to acknowledge that there are various modesof legitimation, but nonetheless to refine fromeachmoral principleswhich can form a workable means of normative assessment. But

Even so sympathetic an analyst as Leslie Holmes, for instance, can write that ‘communistleaderships typically attempt to move over time from predominantly coercion-based topredominantly legitimation-based power’. In the work of Margaret Levi legitimacy isgiven the role of an emergency generator, called into play only when other sources ofexplanatory power have failed. Leslie Holmes, The End of Communist Power: Anti-CorruptionCampaigns and Legitimation Crisis (Cambridge, Polity, ) p. xiii; Margaret Levi, Of Ruleand Revenue (London, University of California Press, ). This approach is to be foundeither stated or implied in a number of works, e.g. Rosemary H. T. O’Kane, ‘AgainstLegitimacy’,Political Studies , (), – . But see alsoRodneyBarker, ‘Legitimacy:The Identity of the Accused’, Political Studies , (), –.

Beetham, Legitimation of Power ; Habermas, Legitimation Crisis; Held, ‘Power and Legiti-macy’; Held, ‘Crisis Tendencies’.

Rudyard Kipling, ‘In the Neolithic Age’, quoted in Charles Carrington, Rudyard Kipling:His Life and Work (London, Macmillan, ; Harmondsworth, Penguin ), p. .

Williams, Legitimacy in International Relations; Beetham, Legitimation of Power.


even if all and any regimes are considered, the question to ask willbe, what point a regime has reached on whatever scale of progressor excellence the observer is employing, even if that scale is proce-dural rather than substantial. An objective measure of legitimacyis described which simultaneously takes account of the views orbehaviour of the subjects of a government, and sets out criteriaof its own, whereby, in a way that does not depend simply onthe expression of opinion within the state studied, a regime canbe judged either legitimate or not. Such an attempt to bridge thenormative empirical divide acknowledges a variety of opinion, butinsists on the participation of adult members of a community in thepolitical process. This does not solve the problem, for a normativetheorist, of a repressive regime actively supported bymost of its sub-jects, but it does contribute towards a reconciliation of democratictheory with cultural difference.

These three bodies of social science constitute the bulk of recentand contemporary work on the topic. The principal contributionof existing work therefore has been either normative or centredon public opinion, on politics and democracy, rather than ongovernment. But the new, or recovered, perspectives availablewith the end of the short twentieth century are not exhausted bythese approaches.

The end of the cold war, post-modernity, the fading of the po-larities of communism and anti-communism, have all cultivateda condition of things where legitimation within government, self-legitimation, has become far more evident. Governing is an activ-ity legitimated in a myriad ways, and the absence of democraticlegitimation will throw into relief how much legitimation is by gov-ernment and for government. A post-modern, post-class world islikely to be one where the legitimating activities of government arecast into greater relief, once the justifying ends of government aremore contested, and more varied.

NEW WORK

There is now a growing fourth body of work, which picks up onsome underdeveloped, and subsequently largely neglected, ele-ments in the work of Max Weber. This fourth body of work is the


least developed, and the most dispersed, but it is expanding. It in-volves the study of legitimation as a self-referential or self-justifyingactivity characteristic of rulers, pursued with great intensity at thecentre of government and with those engaged in the business ofgovernment as its principal consumers. This fourth body of workis an indication that government as a characteristic human activityis being given increased attention. For whilst legitimation may beconducted with reference to values external to government in away which is congruent with the instrumental perspective on poli-tics, it is conducted also with reference to the internal character ofrulers, with claims to authority rather than to agency. It is worthreturning briefly to Weber, because his arguments give a clue as towhat is increasingly seen as a central feature of governing. Such areturn has the additional benefit of allowing a correction of a well-established misunderstanding of what Weber was doing when hedescribed legitimation. A neglected but central aspect of the workof Weber made a formative theoretical contribution by identify-ing the activity of legitimation, as distinct from the ascribed qual-ity of legitimacy, as a defining characteristic of government, andone whose particular character and manner of expression variedwith the formal and substantive character of the regime. Weber’sdefinition of the state as ‘the human communitywhich (successfully)claims the monopoly of legitimate coercion’ has been quoted fre-quently, and its significance as frequently not noticed. He was notarguing that governments needed some quality called ‘legitimacy’to survive, nor that one of the things that governments sought wassuch a resource. His focus was upon an activity, legitimation orthe making of claims to authority, which was one of the defin-ing characteristics of all government. His principal depiction of itwas as a constituting feature of government, and of its functionwithin the apparatus of rule. The desire or even perhaps needfor a very particular form of prestige was what Weber identifiedwhen he commented that ‘in no instance does domination vol-untarily limit itself to the appeal to material or affectual or idealmotives as a basis for its continuance. In addition every such system

Weber,Economy and Society, Barker,Political Legitimacy and the State; C.Matheson, ‘Weber andthe Classification of Forms of Legitimacy’, British Journal of Sociology ( ), –.

Max Weber, ‘Politics as a Vocation’, in Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, p. .


attempts to establish and to cultivate the belief in its legitimacy.’

Weber is talking not about some abstract quality, ‘legitimacy’, butabout an observable activity in which governments characteristi-cally engage, the making of claims. What characterises govern-ment, in other words, is not the possession of legitimacy, but the ac-tivity of legitimation. Although this theory of legitimation has beeneclipsed by the normative and empirical discussion of legitimacyas a property of some governments only, recent work has renewedthe examination of legitimation as a characteristic activity of allgovernment.

Going on from Weber’s account, it is then possible to developa theory of legitimation which takes account of two neglectedcomponents of government: legitimation as a characterisingactivity of government, and the function of legitimation withinthe governmental sphere and its relationship with the structureand ethos of government. There is a growing body of work whichtakes up this dimension of government, or which touches uponit. Joseph Rothschild has argued that ‘Discussions of legitimacyand legitimation risk irrelevancy if they overlook this crucial di-mension of the ruling elite’s own sense of its legitimacy.’ JosephBensman has commented that ‘Legitimation as self-justificationis only validated inwardly’ and Jan Pakulski has identifiedthe self-legitimation of ruling elites as an important element inWeber’s argument and has applied this perception to the exami-nation of Eastern Europe in general, and Poland in particular.

David Beetham and Christopher Lord identify the need for legiti-mation in international government such as the European Union,though they are reluctant to accept that it is significant within

Weber, Economy and Society, p. . Joseph Bensman is particularly perceptive on the predominance of the claim, rather than

its reception, in Weber’s account. Bensman, ‘Max Weber’s Concept of Legitimacy’. J. Rothschild, ‘Observations on Political Legitimacy in Contemporary Europe’, Political

Science Quarterly , ( ), . Bensman, ‘Max Weber’s Concept of Legitimacy’, p. . Jan Pakulski, ‘Ideology and Political Domination: A Critical Re-appraisal’, International

Journal of Comparative Sociology , – ( ), – ; Jan Pakulski, ‘Poland: Ideology,Legitimacy and Political Domination’ inNicholas Abercrombie, StephenHill, and BryanS. Turner (eds.), Dominant Ideologies (London, Unwin Hyman, ); Jan Pakulski, ‘EastEuropean Revolutions and “Legitimacy Crisis”’ in Janina Frentzel-Zagorska (ed.), Froma One-Party State to Democracy, – (Amsterdam, Rodopi, ).


states. Empirical and historical work, for instance on medievaland seventeenth-century kingship, on the art and architectureof government, or on communist and post-communist regimesin Eastern Europe has dealt with specific instances of this en-dogenous or self-legitimation. Self-legitimation was as importantto Henry III, spending up to two years’ entire royal revenue oncreatingWestminster Abbey as a justification of his own kingship,

as it was for the leaders of Eastern European regimes for whom acollapse of their own confidence in their authority was as importanta factor in the fall of communism as were the pressures from thestreet. What will now be useful and illuminating is a drawing outof the significance of such work and the formulation of a broaderaccount in such a way as will aid or provoke new work of both aparticular and a comparative nature.

QUESTIONS AND POSSIBILITIES

A recognition of the self-absorbed dimension of government pro-vokes a range of questions: what is the nature of the legitimationengaged in as an internal activity of governance and government?What function does this internal legitimation perform in sustainingrulers? What is the relation between internal legitimation and the

Beetham and Lord, Legitimacy and the European Union, p. : ‘Like any other politicalbody exercising jurisdiction, international institutions require justification in terms ofthe purposes or ends they serve, which cannot be met by other means, in this case bynation states themselves, or at the individual state level. A continuing ability to meet thesepurposes, therefore, would seem to be an important condition for the legitimacy of theirauthority. Yet such justifications rarely percolate out beyond a narrow elite group; nordo they need to, it could be argued, since these institutions are not dependent on thecooperation of a wider public to effect their purposes.’

Paul Binski, Westminster Abbey and the Plantagenets (New Haven, Yale University Press,); Peter Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV (New Haven, Yale University Press, );Paul Strohm, England’s Empty Throne: Usurpation and the Language of Legitimation, – (London, Yale University Press, ).

Lawrence J. Vale, Architecture, Power and National Identity (NewHaven, Yale University Press,).

Guiseppe Di Palma, ‘Legitimation from the Top to Civil Society: Politico-CulturalChange in Eastern Europe’, World Politics , (October ); Holmes, The End ofCommunist Power; Maria Markus, ‘Overt and Covert Modes of Legitimation in East Euro-pean Societies’ in T. H. Rigby and Ference Feher (eds.), Political Legitimation in CommunistStates (London, Macmillan, ).

Binski, Westminster Abbey and the Plantagenets, p. .


legitimation of rulerswith reference to citizens, voters, and other ex-ternal ruled or regulated persons?What is the relationship betweenthe particular form of legitimation pursued, and other features ofthe disposition of the resources (time, energy, funds, personnel) ofgovernment? What is the causal and taxonomic character of therelation between legitimation and the manner of rule, the distribu-tion of power, and the manner of regulation? What comparisonsand contrasts can be identified between legitimation within gov-ernment, and within the broader activity of governance? It willnot be possible to answer all or even most of these questions. Butraising them broadens the scope of enquiry into government, andraises the possibility of a more richly dimensional account of it.

OBJECTIONS

Several objections are immediately possible to the depiction of gov-ernment as a characteristically self-legitimating occupation, or tothe paying of serious academic attention to that activity. Legitima-tion within government, it might be argued, is a private game. Likeear lobes, its existence cannot be denied, but it is epiphenomenalor functionless. Existence is not to be equated with significance orimportance. What matters are the outputs of government, and thequality of the relationship between rulers and ruled, representativesand citizens. Carl Friedrich saw no problems in simply dismissingthe whole enterprise: ‘if one stresses the objective fact of conformityof conduct, aswehavedone, the complexity of humanmotivation inadopting such conforming behaviour can be left aside’. Alterna-tively, it can be objected that legitimation is no more than the dressthat power wears. There are two answers to this charge. First, thebehaviour of government is inherently interesting as a major formof human behaviour. To social scientists, whatever people spendtime doing is of interest. And whether or not legitimation appearsimportant to observers, governmental actors appear to treat it veryseriously. The attempt to explain away this attention to legitima-tion ends up by reinstating what it tries to dismiss. David Eastonmany years ago tried to dismiss legitimation as the result of habit or

Carl J. Friedrich, ‘Political Leadership and the Problem of Charismatic Power’, TheJournal of Politics ( ), –, p. .


inertia: ‘The reliance on legitimacy as a source of diffuse supportmay have a peculiar result. So ingrained may it become in somesystems, that we may suspect that it gives birth to a psychologicalneed to find some leaders and structures in which to believe. If so,belief in legitimacy may become an autonomous goal for the mem-bers of a system.’ But if legitimation were not already a need, whywould it be employed or cultivated in the first place? The argumentis a bit like saying that people ate food so often that they becamehabituated to it, which explains why they continue to do so. Farfrom being mere trappings or even mere instruments for deceivingthe masses, legitimation appears to provide for rulers goods thatare valued in themselves. As Inis Claude nicely put it, ‘the loversof naked power are far less typical than those who aspire to clothethemselves in the mantle of legitimate authority; emperors may benude, but they do not like to be so, to think themselves so, or tobe so regarded’. Second, the allocation of resources, energy, timeby government is likely to have consequences for ordinary subjectsand citizens.

Another objection is to claim that to concentrate on legitima-tion within government is to abandon normative assessment. Theanswer to that charge is the same as that implied in the old jokeabout the Christmas ties, where the giver of two ties, on being con-fronted with the recipient wearing one of the new gifts complained‘Oh, so you don’t like the other one.’ Choosing to study one thingis not necessarily to refuse to study something else as well. Still lessis it to pass judgement on the value of doing so. The normativecomplaint could be further countered by the claim that normativeassessment must be empirically informed.

THERE IS MUCH FOR WHICH WEBER CAN BE BLAMED

The confusion between ‘legitimacy’ as either a resource of gov-ernment or an aspiration of government, and legitimation as adefining characteristic of government, can be found at the start of

David Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York, John Wiley and Sons, ),p. .

Inis L. Claude, Jr, ‘Collective Legitimization as a Political Function of the UnitedNations’, International Organization (), –, p. .


the modern discussion in the work of Max Weber, though Weberis not as confused as subsequent discussion has made him seem.Weber speaks both of the actions of rulers and ruled in claiming ordenying legitimacy, in other words in engaging in legitimation, andof the character of rule. Thus action ‘may be guided by the belief inthe existence of a legitimate order’ and ‘actors may ascribe legit-imacy to a social order’ whilst at the same time ‘legitimacy’ canbe treated as a characteristic of a social order. There is a furtherconfusion, or at least ambiguity, in that sometimes Weber speaksof legitimation as a feature of the relations between people, and, atothers, as a feature of relations between systems or institutions.

The trap into which subsequent commentators have fallen is toassume that, since Weber spoke of the ascription of legitimacy andof belief in legitimacy, the historian or political scientist could mostprofitably proceed by asking the same questions as did rulers andtheir subjects and supporters: ‘Is this regime legitimate, does it pos-sess legitimacy?’ Weber identified this mistake in his criticisms ofRudolph Stammler for failing to distinguish between the norma-tive and the empirical. The error is illustrated if the questionis asked of a specific form of legitimation. It would occur to fewcontemporary observers to ask, ‘Does the king really enjoy divineauthorisation, is he really possessed of divine right?’ Yet as soonas the method of legitimation moves from the pre-modern form ofdivine right to the modern form of contract and consent, it is as-sumed that, because words are used, the things to which they refermust be real, and observable and testable by third parties. We nolonger accept the ontological proof of the existence of God, but arehappy to accept ontological proofs of the existence of legitimacy,or justice, or authority.

It is possible to go too far in the opposite direction. The ironist asdescribed by Richard Rorty, ‘thinks that the occurrence of a termlike “just” or “scientific” or “rational” in the final vocabulary ofthe day is no reason to think that Socratic enquiry into the essence Weber, Economy and Society, p. . Ibid., p. . Ibid., p. . Peter M. Blau, ‘Critical Remarks on Weber’s Theory of Authority’, American Political

Science Review , ( June ), –, p. . Weber, Economy and Society, p. .


of justice or science or rationality will take one much beyond thelanguage games of one’s time’. But ‘the language games of one’stime’ should not be dismissed as trivial. They are engaged in withserious and benign intent by many who seek thereby to advancethe happiness of humanity or the justice with which it arranges itsaffairs. Whether one dismisses such activity as a contingent gameor, alternatively, sees it as a modern version of theological disputa-tion, one is left with its clear embedded presence as a major andubiquitous feature of human life.Onemay say that its aims rest on amisconception, but one cannot say that the observation of its impor-tance rests on amisconception, since it is a clearly real andperennialfeature of that contingent activity summarised as human life.

DEFENDING WEBER

The objection frequently made toWeber’s discussion of legitimacy,that he is saying that legitimacy existswhenpeople believe it exists,

is answered by first acknowledging and then explaining the accusa-tion. There are not two separate things, ‘legitimacy’ and ‘belief inlegitimacy’. ‘Legitimacy’ is a fiction, a metaphor which we employto describe circumstances where people accept the claims madeby rulers. Beliefs, in this sense, are not evidence of some further,distinct phenomenon called legitimacy, they are what we are de-scribing when we say things such as ‘the regime is legitimate’ or‘the regime enjoys legitimacy’. So if we ask whether a regime is le-gitimate, historically or empirically what that question must meanis ‘is the regime legitimated?’ ‘Are there actions which we can ob-serve or infer which constitute legitimation?’ Legitimation, as anactivity, in other words, rather than the metaphorical condition orproperty of legitimacy, is what empirical or historical, as opposedto normative, social science is concerned with. The phrase ‘as op-posed to normative’ is of course crucial. The elaboration of criteriaby which the observer recommends the normative appraisal of Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,

), pp. –. This is a frequent charge, of which David Beetham’s is the most recent restatement.

Beetham, The Legitimation of Power, pp. –. But see also Anthony Giddens, Studies inSocial and Political Theory (London, Hutchinson, ), p. , and Barker, Political Legitimacyand the State, pp. –.


regimes is an inherent aspect of political science. But it is also adistinct and different one from the empirical or historical study ofhow government is carried on.

There are passages where Weber leaves less room for confusion.In the essay ‘Politics as a Vocation’ he writes that the state is that‘human community that (successfully) claims themonopoly of the legit-imate use of physical forcewithin a given territory’. The claim is whatcharacterises the human institutions called states, in other words,not the possession of some abstract quality called legitimacy. Thisis highlighted by a frequent complaint made against Weber, thathe provided no conception of illegitimacy. Melvin Richter, for ex-ample, complains that Weber was not interested in, and did nothave place in his schema, for a concept of illegitimacy. This is com-pared with those writers, including Tocqueville, who developedarguments whereby to call in question the acceptability of the ruleof Napoleon. But the question of states seeking for some propertycalled legitimacy in order to succeed or survive nomore arises thandoes the question of elephants seeking mammalian status. Mam-mals is one of the things that elephants are, and themost one can askare questions of degree: not ‘is it a warm blooded quadruped thatsuckles its young?’, but ‘how many young?’ Similarly with states,as Peter Stillman, whilst still employing the concept of legitimacy,insists, it is a matter of degree. Legitimation is not a condition ofthe success of rulers so much as a characteristic of the phenomenonof being a ruler. In that sense, an unlegitimated state is a contradic-tion in terms, whatever further judgements may bemade about thepolitical character and moral status of the regime. Arthur Vidichand Ronald Glassman suggest that much of the ancient world was‘illegitimate’, and give as examples of non-legitimate regimes,‘Rome’s entire political history from Augustus to Claudius andbeyond to the fall of Rome’; Italian cities during ‘almost the en-tire period of the Renaissance’; and the contemporary regimeswhere ‘almost the entire Third World is ruled by military regimes, ‘Politics as a Vocation’ in Mills and Gerth (eds.), From Max Weber, p. . Italics in the

original. Melvin Richter, ‘Towards a Concept of Political Illegitimacy: Bonapartist Dictatorship

and Democratic Legitimacy’, Political Theory , (May ), –. So Peter Stillman, while still employing the concept of legitimacy, insists that it is a matter

of degree. Stillman, ‘The Concept of Legitimacy’.


dictatorships, or fragile coalitions which exist under conditions ofextreme instability’. As an empirical or historical observation, it israther like saying that half of all sparrows are essentially flightless. Itcan be sustained as a normative judgement, but not helpfully as anhistorical or empirical one. States depend on successful legitimationonly in the sense that mammals depend upon suckling their young.If they lacked that characteristic, mammals would not survive. Butneither would creatures which lacked that characteristic be mam-mals. This is the inverse of the point made by Eugene Huskey in adiscussion ofMancurOlson’s work, ‘Doesn’t your argument rest onthe tautology that a government falls because a government ceasesto be a government?’ Since the claim to legitimacy is one of thecharacteristics of government, to ask is the government legitimatecan be tautologous. To ask in what way, and with what success,does it claim legitimacy, is by contrast an appropriate question.Legitimation is to beliefs about government what worship is to be-liefs about God. It is an observable human activity, whose studydoes not require any judgement about moral worth or, in the reli-gious analogy, theological truth.

SOCIAL SCIENCE AND THE SUBJECT MATTER

OF SOCIAL SCIENCE

The sociological or historical study of legitimation can learn a les-son from the fact of the normative study of legitimacy. The nor-mative study is, for the sociologist or the historian, an instanceof human conduct, one of the many ways in which people actpolitically. But the historical or sociological examination is demo-cratically empirical, and does not imagine that an activity whichis carried on with great skill by a few is not carried on elsewhere Arthur J. Vidich andRonaldM.Glassman, ‘Introduction’ in Vidich andGlassman (eds.),

Conflict and Control: Challenges to Legitimacy ofModern Governments, – (London, Sage, ),p. .

EugeneHuskey, ‘Comment on “TheLogic ofCollectiveAction in Soviet-type Societies”’,Journal of Soviet Nationalities (Summer ), p. .

Roger Scruton comments that ‘From the Norman Conquest to the contemporary reac-tions to trade-union power, the concept of legitimacy has governed political practice, andwhether or not there is any reality which corresponds to this concept is a question thatmay be put aside as of no political (although of great philosophical) significance.’ RogerScruton, The Meaning of Conservatism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, ), p. .


as well, even if with different intensity or less sophistication. Themoral claims and judgements which political philosophers and nor-mative theorists make are not their monopoly. Rulers and subjectsengage in a form of the same activity, and for the sociologist orthe historian or the political scientist, all are instances of politicalconduct, and of a form of conduct which is one of the universal andcharacteristic features of government and of politics. Nor are socialscientists isolated from the world they study: their judgements arepart of it. They immediately add to the body of argument, andquite possibly of legitimation, which they aim only to study. Onejustification for their existence and work is that they do just that, sothat ‘the relation of social scientific and lay discourses may strivetowards attaining an overt dialogue of potentially emancipatory,demystifying critique’. Not only is there ‘a continuum, in otherwords, between the debates among political actors and publics, andthe analytical concerns of political scientists’, but in an importantsense all are versions of the same activity.

LEGITIMATION AND LEGITIMACY

A useful working distinction, despite this double role of the nor-mative political scientist as both subject and object, can be madebetween legitimacy as an ascribed attribute, and legitimation, theaction of ascribing. Each conception has its own contribution tomake, and the possibilities and limitations of each need to be recog-nised. Whilst normative discussions of legitimacy are an importantpart of refining the moral language of politics, they have less tocontribute to an understanding of government, and can misleadthe expectations of those who wish to analyse rulers or regimes

David Campbell, ‘Truth Claims and Value-Freedom in the Treatment of Legitimacy:The Case of Weber’, Journal of Law and Society , (Summer ), –, p. .‘If actors’ beliefs are shown by social explanation to contain mistakes, then these must becriticised by any social science striving for adequacy to its subjectmatter. Some evaluationwill inevitably enter into any account of those beliefs; either ideologically in the form of anobscured evaluation or potentially openly. These beliefs are capable of being reflexivelyexaminedby thosewhoprofess them, and the relation of social scientific and lay discoursesmay strive towards attaining an overt dialogue of potentially emancipatory, demystifyingcritique.’

Beetham and Lord, Legitimacy and the European Union, p. .


of which they may disapprove. Judgmental social science has animportant place, but it also has its limits. Enquiries as to whetheror not a regime is legitimate too easily conclude with a judgementwhich has either no explanatory future, or no descriptive content.If we have to wait, like litigants in court, to hear the judgement ofscholars on whether or not a regime is legitimate, then whateverquality it is that the court of political science is awarding cannothave been of very much significance if the only sign of its existenceis its attribution by observers, and if nothing of any consequenceflows from that attribution. We learn nothing more by the judge-ment than that the regime was, or was not, legitimate. Everythingelse we know about it remains unchanged. On the other hand, anenquiry into the ways a regime legitimates itself and the counter-legitimations which are to be found amongst its opponents canreveal political actions which both constitute and cause a particu-lar outcome in the conduct and character of government.

One simple and already available means of underlining the dis-tinctions involved is to reserve the terms ‘legitimacy’ and ‘legiti-mate’, respectively descriptive of an object and of the property ofan object, to normative enquiry, and to use the term ‘legitimation’for the discussion of observable human activity. Such a distinctionbetween action and property has been briefly suggested by FrancoisBourricaud. The difference is between an argument about howwe ought to behave, and a description of expressions of ‘oughtness’as a feature of political life. Frequently the terms ‘legitimacy’ and‘legitimation’ are used in the course of a single discussion, and in away that implies that all that is involved is a shift of vantage point.But much more than this is involved in shifting from the action oflegitimation to the ‘product’ or ‘property’ of legitimacy, and thechoice of terms involves a fundamental choice of conceptualisa-tion. It is the argument of this book that legitimation is a distinctand valuable concept, and that once it has been distinguished fromother concepts which do different work, a theory of legitimationis possible which solves problems which have held up the study ofpolitics and government, and which facilitates more fruitful inves-tigation in future.

Francois Bourricaud, ‘Legitimacy and Legitimation’, Current Sociology , ( ), – ,p. .


Legitimation is an activity in which rulers engage. They claimthat they possess a distinguishing, specific monopoly of the rightto rule, of ‘legitimacy’. Legitimation is an activity which can beobserved, it is something that people do, just as they challengelegitimation. On the other hand ‘legitimacy’, the thing claimed,is from the point of view of the observer not a phenomenon thatcan be observed. We do not, in other words, need to treat as realobjects the alleged ends of political argument, of rhetoric, of thejustificatory side of political contest. To talk of legitimation is totalk of something that people do, a contest between rulers and theiropponents, or between competing sides in a civil war, a dynasticconflict, or the politics of coups or insurrections. It is to remain out-side the activity, describing and analysing it. To talk of ‘legitimacy’,on the other hand, is to actualise what may be actual to the par-ticipants, but is to the observer simply a metaphor or hypotheticalstate or abbreviation employed by those whom she studies.

The huge amount of energy that rulers put into legitimation canbe observed. Legitimation in this sense is neither a cause nor a con-dition of government, but a defining component. ‘Defining’ in thesense that government nowhere occurs without it because withoutthat component, though not that component alone, it is not gov-ernment at all. When David Beetham and Christopher Lord writethat regime ‘crises typically occur when a significant deficit in thesource of authority and its validating beliefs is compounded by per-formance failure, and leads to the active withdrawal of consent onthe part of those qualified to give it’, it can be replied that crisesdo not occur as a result of those events, but rather the confluence ofthose events is what a crisis is. The crisis is not some further eventcaused by the listed events, but is constituted by them.Crises or ero-sions of legitimacy do not cause crises or erosions of government.They are a constituent part of what crises or erosions of govern-ment are. Since legitimation is a normal part of government, it islooking at the wrong question to ask ‘Is this society legitimate?’

Beetham and Lord, Legitimacy and the European Union, p. . This is a similar point, though arising from a different argument, to that made byRichard

Rorty when he writes of a shift in understanding ‘that makes it impossible to ask the ques-tion “Is ours amoral society?”’, RichardRorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Cambridge,Cambridge University Press, ), p. .


The question to be asked is the different one, ‘In what way doeslegitimation take place in this society?’ There will not be a singleanswer.

Whilst everyone makes ethical or moral judgements on rulers,legitimation has a proper and useful role as a non-normative termused to describe the expression of claims by a particular state orgroup of rulers. At the extreme and uncongenial end of the spec-trum it would make perfect sense to talk of the Pol Pot regime inCambodia before its displacement by Vietnam, or the military dic-tatorship of SLORC and its successors in Burma, as legitimatingthemselves or as engaging in legitimation in that they spent time,effort, and resources on expressing, in a variety of ways, claimsabout their ‘legitimacy’. The regime’s empirical or historical ac-tions of legitimation are distinct from any normative assessmentwhich may be made of them by political scientists or historians.Conversely, the fact that we might feel respect for the benevolentintentions or responsible policies of a regime has no simple or di-rect consequences for the way in which we give an account of itslegitimating actions.

A MORATORIUM ON THE USE OF ‘LEGITIMACY’?

Although the term ‘legitimacy’ unavoidably occurs in the follow-ing chapters, there would have been a great advantage in notusing it at all. There could even be a case for arguing that, atleast for a while, the word should be put in storage, and thatit would be helpful to make a working assumption that there isno such thing as legitimacy, any more than there are ‘power’,‘honour’, or ‘beauty’. Francois Bourricaud has argued pretty muchthis, writing that the idea of a legitimate, or an illegitimate,society ‘has no meaning’. It could be argued that the words aremetaphors used to describe relations between people and the ac-tions people take by treating beliefs as if they were responses toreal objects or phenomena. The metaphors are a useful fiction,derived from the way in which people do in fact speak, and

As I have already argued in Barker, ‘Legitimacy: The Identity of the Accused’. Bourricaud, ‘Legitimacy and Legitimation’, p. .


advancing understanding by empathising with the actions beingdescribed.

So it could be helpful, if only to shift our point of vision, to insistthat ‘legitimacy’ does not exist as a feasible subject of empirical orhistorical enquiry, in the same sense that God does not exist as apossible subject for social scientific study. We need to speak of bothlegitimacy andGod when describing the actions of people engagedin politics and religion, but when we do so, we are describing theiractions and language, not any independent phenomenon, or in-dependent aspect of the institutions they have created or seek tocreate, nor any independent being in relation to whom they stand.So in the argument which follows, when I unavoidably use theterms ‘legitimacy’ and ‘legitimate government’, I am not therebymaking any judgement about the truth of such claims by rulers, norof the moral worth of the character which they present either tothemselves or to their subjects. It is the act of justification or autho-risation which is being described, not the phenomena, character,or principles which are invoked as part of that action.

Expressions of ‘oughtness’ are the raw material with which Iam working not in order to establish a set of recommendationswhich all reasonable or fully informed people should follow, butas a feature of the political conduct which I attempt to describe.As such they are as varied as expressions of loyalty or hostility,association or aversion in religion, or football, or opera. And whilstalmost everyone believes theirs is the right answer to the questionof why and when rulers should be obeyed, and I, like anyone else,have views about obligation, authority, politics, citizenship, andgovernment, I am not setting out here to advance them. I dealwith legitimation because it and the disputes over it are a centralfeature of government and politics, not because I am a participantin a debate about oughtness or obligation. I am not turning myback on those debates save in the sense that to choose to do onething is to choose not to do another. They are important debates

The point has been made from a different angle by the anthropologist David Kertzer:‘Authority, the belief that a person has the right to exercise influence over others’ be-haviour, is itself an abstraction, and people can conceive of who has authority and whohas not only through symbols and rituals’, David L. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power(New Haven and London, Yale University Press, ), p. .


conducted with great skill. But I am not setting out here to make acontribution to them, but to other discussions.

It may be objected that to set aside legitimacy as a word or aconcept which refers to anything identifiable, or which performsany helpful or illuminating function, is to ignore a great manyevents where the term is applied, andwhere it seems an appropriateterm. Does it not make sense to say that East European communistregimes lost legitimacy between and ? Is there not somesense in saying that the European Union lacks legitimacy? Myprovisional answer to this question and this objection is that clearlyevents of great importance were occurring, and that the use of theterm legitimacy draws attention to those events. But it can alsoobscure them. What additional accounts are available or might beconstructed, I will return to in later chapters.

THE MISTAKE OF ORTHODOXY

Moratoriums have their attractions, and one response to the varietyof terms and meanings would be to establish coherence and sim-plicity by criticising all but those uses which could be marshalledwithin a single concept, or replacing them all with such a con-cept. But the prohibition of usage, though briefly illuminating as athought experiment, is not the best way forward. Nor is a search fororthodoxy, for the ‘correct’ meaning of legitimation and legitimacy,the best way to proceed. The terms ‘legitimacy’, ‘legitimation’, and‘legitimate’ do not refer to some single and uncontentious objectivereality. Rather they are used to construct a network of related butdistinct descriptions of government and politics. Although I criticisesome of the existing usages, it is not my intention to establish ortho-doxy, but rather to point to aspects of politics and governmentswhich, despite the profusion, have been ignored or insufficientlydescribed in existing work. This will involve talking about a partic-ular kind of legitimation, and in establishing space for such usagethe argument may seem to cut other usages out of the way. Thatmay be a ground-clearing convenience, but it is not in the end in-tended to reduce the variety of species. The purpose is not to arriveat a ‘correct’ usage of legitimation, far less to establish what legit-imation ‘really is’. Writers who have used the terms ‘legitimacy’


and ‘legitimation’ have sometimes attempted to do this, but sucha search for true meaning does not advance understanding verymuch. It is not my purpose, which is simply to begin the identifi-cation of what appears to be a central and characterising activityof government, to which existing work pays insufficient attention.

The approach outlined in the following pages to some extentshares the view of the world advanced by post-modern theory. Itis sceptical of grand and simple explanations or categorisations; itdoubts the usefulness or closeness to human experience of the iso-lation of factors, causes, and resources which modernism appearsto permit; it accepts the need for a general, even universal settingout of the possible elements of human government and politics –but it expects that the character and experience of any actuallyobservable governed community will be in many ways unique, andthat these unique aspects will frequently be central to the polit-ical experience so described. The account proposed is symbioticrather than, in a one-directional manner, causal or mechanical.This opens up many possibilities, though not possibilities of easylaws, generalisations, or predictions.

If politics is to be properly seen as neither unrooted thoughtnor mindless behaviour, cultural conceptions such as legitimationare essential. Politics as conduct must be seen as the continualcreation, maintenance, erosion, and contestation of government.For that reason I have conceptualised legitimation as an active,contested political process, rather than legitimacy as an abstractpolitical resource. Since it is an activity, not a property, it involvescreation, modification, innovation, and transformation.

Would a different word than ‘legitimation’ be appropriate? Itwould not be necessary, since there are already existing termswhichserve well enough to draw the outlines of the activity I wish to de-scribe. ‘Endogenous legitimation’ or ‘self-legitimation’ draw on the

For instance, Christel Lane comments critically on Rigby’s discussion of self-legitimationwithin a ruling elite, that it is ‘extremely doubtful whether the phenomenon under inves-tigation is still legitimacy, or whether it is perhaps something else, wrongly bestowed withthis name’. Christel Lane, ‘Legitimacy and Power in the Soviet Union through SocialistRitual’, British Journal of Political Science (), –, p. . David Beetham simi-larly argues against the view that legitimacy is ‘chiefly of consequence for the membersof the state apparatus, or the political elite, and has little relevance for the population asa whole’. Beetham, The Legitimation of Power, p. .


accounts of justification, authorising, whilst at the same time beingdistinct from, unqualified nouns. They indicate the use of prestigeand identification in the service of rulers’ justification of themselves,and the articulation of a governing purposes in the cultivation ofprestige and self-identification. They may not be perfect terms, butthey will do in the way that a completely new word, which wouldconceal the connections with existing descriptions and existingusage, would not.

CHAPTER


WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT: THEMES

AND ARGUMENT

It is now possible to return to the coronation of Napoleon, and tostate the position which this book attempts to argue and illustrate. Ishall set out the points of the argument in a fairly dogmaticmanner,not on the assumption that they will thereby be more convincing,but in order that the account given in the book should be clear, andthat there are no consciously or deliberately hidden assumptionsin the discussion.

Endogenous or self-legitimation is a characteristicactivity of government

It is an activity, which can be observed and which comprisesall those actions which rulers, but not only rulers, take to insiston or demonstrate, as much to themselves as to others, thatthey are justified in the pattern of actions that they follow.Self-legitimation is an inherent and characterising activity ofgovernment, just as worship is one of the characterising activities ofreligion, or singing one of the characterising features of choralmusic. It may of course characterise other activities also, but indifferent ways. The self-legitimation of rulers is part of the activityof ruling, and as such contributes to both constituting it and defin-ing it. There will be many views about the value or acceptability ofthe legitimation conducted by different rulers, just as there will bemany views about religious doctrine and ritual, or musical quality.Such disputes are an endemic accompaniment of such activities.


Legitimation is hierarchically pursued

The rituals of rule, which are most commonly presented as part ofthe public face of government, are just as much a part of its privateface. Rulers legitimate their position and power to themselves andto their immediate staff, who are their immediate mirrors, at leastas much as they do to the mass of those whom they govern andwhose support in votes, taxes, and time and effort they cultivate.Those who practise legitimation most do so in relation to their ownreferential hinterland, rather than to the wider community. Legit-imation is an activity conducted in the first place within groups,and only secondarily between them. It is the recognition of thisin Weber’s account of legitimation which enables Bryan Turner todescribe it as ‘ruler-centred’.

Self, as Erving Goffman has put it, may be presented in every-day life. But it is not in the everyday life of everyday people alonethat the presentation of self takes place. Rulers cultivate their dra-matic personalities just as does everyone else, and self is presentedin the signing of treaties just as much as in the buying of breadand marmalade. Everyday life is not always mundane. To invertthe point, but to make the same observation, everyday life goes onat all levels and in all circumstances. It is lived by presidents andprime ministers just as it is by priests and plumbers. Goffman’s ob-servations, however, describe the presentation of self as a functionalform of social communication. It has another function, which is theself-knowledge and self-justification of the actor.

People, not laws or commands, rulers, not regimes are legitimated

I shall argue that the concepts of identity and identification pro-vide a key to the understanding of legitimation and vice versa.

Pierre Muller and Bruno Jobert have employed the notion of the ‘referentiel’ to describesuch a representation of the task and structure one is engaged with and one’s own placewithin it. Bruno Jobert and Pierre Muller, L’Etat en action: politiques publiques et corporatismes(Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, ).

Bryan S. Turner, ‘Nietzsche, Weber, and the Devaluation of Politics: The Problem ofState Legitimacy’, Sociological Review (), pp. – , p. : ‘Since Weber’s theoryof legitimacy is rooted in the nature of normative commands and claims on politicalresources, his construction of the legitimacy problemwas skewed towards the ruler ratherthan to the ruled.’

E. Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York, Doubleday, ).


Harold Laski argued that it was false to assume that ‘the pursuitof evil can be made good by the character of the performer’. Butwhilst that is a sound argument within normative political science,the precise opposite may occur in government and politics as em-pirically or historically observed. Commands are justified not onlybecause their content is claimed to be good, or wise, or advanta-geous, but because of an identification between the person givingthe command and some particular quality, image, or ideal. Goodcommands are commands issued by good people, admirable rulesthe instructions of admirable rulers. This is not to reject Laski’smoral point, but it is to suggest that it is not an adequate empiricalor historical description of how government works.

Legitimation is principally a statement about a person issuingan instruction, making a demand, or stating or implying a wish. Itis a claim or expression made by or on behalf of that person to as-sert the special and distinctive identity which that person possesses,which identity justifies or authorises or legitimates the commandby legitimating the person issuing it. It is in the first place per-sons not systems, rulers not regimes, who are legitimated. If youdo not trust someone, or recognise them, or yourself, as havinga particular identity, no argument or judicial case for legitimacywill change things. This trust of persons can extend to categoriesof person, so that when in the seventeenth century there was awidening acceptance of the results of scientific enquiry, or in thelate twentieth century a growing scepticism, the process involveda perception not of the methods of enquiry or of the institutionscarrying them out, but of the people doing the investigation. Ineach case the judgement was not on science, but on scientists. Sim-ilarly, it is more common to hear calls for ‘no bishop, no king’, thanto receive a demand for the ending of monarchy and episcopacy.The process here described is similar to that involved in personalaffection, or a taste in music or food. In none of these cases is affec-tion, enjoyment, or loyalty the result of rational appraisal from adistance. They arise from an actual experience, direct, indirect, orimagined of a person, a piece of music, a type of food, or an imageor perception of them.

H. J. Laski, Studies in the Problem of Sovereignty, quoted in David Nicholls, The Pluralist State:The Political Ideas of J. N. Figgis and His Contemporaries nd edn (London, ), p. .

Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution (Chicago, Chicago University Press, ).


Weber envisaged a progression from charismatic to legal ration-al legitimation as charisma was bureaucratised. But there was acontrast or at least a tension between his theoretical account of theprogress of history and his more particular observations about thecourse of contemporary politics. There was also, as Peter Blau haspointed out, a tension between his theoretical and his historical ob-servations. ‘When he presents his abstract definitions, he seems torefer to authority in interpersonal relations. In his analysis of empir-ical situations, on the other hand, he is concerned with political sys-tems or institutions, such as feudalism.’ This tension, between anaccount of structures and circumstances, and an account of individ-ual action, is inherent in social science, and progress takes, amongstmany other forms, a continual correction of an undue neglect ofone or an undue dominance of the other. One of the contributionsof rational choice theory within political science has been a reasser-tion of the importance of individual agency, even if it has at the sametime been insufficiently sensitive to the individuality of individuals.

The legitimation of persons rather than of sets of constitutionalarrangements is most obvious in the case of personal rule. Mon-archs, revolutionary leaders, rulerswho in onewayor another claimdivine authority, clearly are making statements about themselves.But rulers in constitutional or democratic systems too legitimatethemselves by describing themselves, rather than the systemswithinwhich they work. As Juan Linz comments, ‘the legitimacy of ademocratic regime rests on the belief in the right of those legallyelevated to authority to issue certain types of commands, to expectobedience, and to enforce them’. To say one is the people’s choiceis to make a statement in the first place about oneself, not aboutthe people.

However much allegiance may be given to the rule of lawor the constitution or due process, law in concrete instances isalways someone’s command. Similarly, the subject of legitimation isspecific and personal, rather than abstract or structural. Legitima-tion is carried out by the king in one or other of his two bodies,

D. Beetham,MaxWeber and the Theory ofModern Politics (London,George Allen andUnwin,).

PeterM. Blau, ‘Critical Remarks onWeber’s Theory of Authority’,American Political ScienceReview , ( June ), –, p. .

Juan J. Linz, The Breakdown of Democracratic Regimes: Crisis, Breakdown, and Reequilibration(Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, ), p. .


not by monarchy. It is individuals, or rather the public roles ofindividuals which is all we can ever deal with in politics anyway,who are legitimated, not institutions. Free-range public claims andprotests, as against battery questionnaires, are generally attachedto identified people, not to institutions. What is striking is how uni-versally legitimation focusses on persons rather than on principlesor processes. Even when institutions are formally the focus of alegitimation claim, the institution is personalised: not the EU com-mission, but ‘those bureaucrats in Brussels’; not federal agencies,but east coast liberals.

There is an in-built disposition against accepting this view, or anin-built disposition in favour of seeing institutions and procedures,rather than persons, as legitimated, in a democratic, contractualapproach to government. It can be objected, from this vantagepoint, that to depict legitimation as justifying systems, sets of rules,or simply an abstract concept such as power, is to depersonalise it,and facilitate a rational, contractarian conception. If it is hopedthat government can be a matter of consent, rules, and agreed pro-cedures, then it is those rules, rather than the persons who employ,or circumvent them, which are to be the focus of legitimation. Totreat legitimation as the justification of persons issuing commandsis, by contrast, to employ an elitist perspective, which underminesdemocratic principles of representation and accountability. If indi-viduals exercise authority, and the focus is on what the commandgiver says and does, then so too is the focus on the ruler, rather thanon the democratic procedures of which he is the agent, or whichconstrain him. A partial answer to this charge is that to analyse aphenomenon is not to condone it, and if one opposes it, analysis isa useful basis for remedy.

Legitimation and identification

Legitimation and identification are inextricably linked. Each is tobe understood in terms of the other. The principal way in which

David Beetham thus speaks of the legitimation of power, and though he discusses alsothe government of persons, his rational contractarian approach sits more easily withhis discussion of systems. David Beetham, The Legitimation of Power (London, Macmillan, ).


people issuing commands are legitimated is by their being identifiedas special, marked by particular qualities, set apart from other peo-ple.When rulers legitimate themselves, they give an account of whothey are, in writing, in images, in more or less ceremonial actionsand practices. The action both creates and expresses the identity.The identity at one and the same time legitimates the person, andis confirmed by the person’s manner of expressing it. Legitimationand identification are in that sense dimensions of an inextricablyintermeshed activity or pattern of activities. At the same time, iden-tification between rulers and the people to whom the commandsare issued serves to legitimate compliance with commands. Uncon-genial commands from ‘our people’ can be more acceptable thancongenial commands from ‘foreigners’ or those who are ‘not oneof us’. Identification is the key to understanding legitimation, andlegitimation one of the principal functions of identification. Eachconcept is incomplete in itself – brought together they become apowerful form of explanation. This conceptualisation of identifica-tion and legitimation gets beyond the limitations both of ‘legitimacyas a resource’ and of the brick wall which rational choice theoryfinds itself confronting in the matter. Identification has come to betreated as a major element in politics. What has been less attendedto is that it is a major element in government. Nor need interestand identity be juxtaposed. It is not necessary to insist that we ‘act,not in defence of our interests, but in defence of our identity’.

Each is constructed in terms of the other, and each is necessary tomake the other comprehensible.

Two meanings of identification

The term identification has two meanings, both of which are partof what is being described here. I identify myself in the sense ofhaving a sense of my own identity. But I identify with those whoseem tome to share withme some characteristic which I value. Thetwo forms of identification relate to and sustain each other. The

Erik Ringmar, Identity, Interest and Action: A Cultural Explanation of Sweden’s Intervention in theThirty Years War (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, ), p. .

Rodney Barker, ‘Hooks and Hands, Interests and Enemies: Political Thinking as PoliticalAction’, Political Studies , , Special Issue ().


existence of prestigious others withwhom I can identify strengthensmy sense of my own identity and its worth. My sense of myself ashaving a particular identity strengthens my identification of my selfwith others whom I see as similar.

Identification and legitimation are significant activities

This argument depends upon or is at least sustained by and asso-ciated with the argument that people take identification and legit-imation very seriously, and that these are political activities of thehighest importance. They, and politics and government, are notproperly understood if they are seen as auxiliary, epiphenomenal,ormeans simply to other ends. Rulers spend a great deal of time, ef-fort, and resources on activities which have no immediate materialfunction but are elements in a culture of legitimation. Democraticempiricism may oblige us to take seriously the apparently irra-tional rituals of popular politics; aristocratic empiricismmakes evengreater claims.

Enemies and the common people

The converse of the limited referential community of elite legiti-mation is the role played by the conception of enemies. Enemiesare necessary to identification, since by saying who it is not, anindividual, community, or group marks out its boundaries moreclearly. There is a polarity here. The common people are in a senseless part of the referential community of the elite than are enemies.

Legitimation enables people to obey and to command

Legitimation is ameans of achieving ethical coherence, ofmatchingthe account given of a person’s identity to others of their actions.If a person is to act in a manner which is markedly different from

Charles Taylor, following Hegel, has spoken of ‘recognition’ in describing some of what Iam talking about here. Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism: Examining The Politics of Recognition,ed. and with Introduction by Amy Gutman, nd edn (Princeton, Princeton UniversityPress, ).

Barker, ‘Hooks and Hands, Interests and Enemies’, p. .


the actions of other people, the created, cultivated, or sustainedidentity must in its turn be distinctive. Otherwise the actions, inthis case those of governing, are incoherent and random, lackingthe patterned correspondence with each other which is familiar orexpected in that particular society. Karl Deutsch, whilst using theterm in a sense at one remove from that employed here, contributesto the same understanding when he comments that legitimacy ‘isthe expectation of long-run compatibility of a personal or socialgoal, role, or value with other salient goals, roles, or values whichare critical for the maintenance of the personality of the actor, or ofthe survival and cohesion of the social group’. Thomas Luckmancomments that ‘legitimation is making sense of power . . . to thosewho exercise power; to those who are subject to the exercise ofpower; or to both’. A similar point is made by Peter Berger.Legitimations are ‘answers to any questions about the “why” ofinstitutional arrangements’ andas suchare just as necessary to thosein charge of such arrangements as to those arranged by them.

But if legitimation assists people to obey, it is evenmore importantin assisting people to rule, in justifying their rule and making itcoherent for them. Weber talks of the need for ethical meaning orjustification. He argues that ‘when a civil servant appears in hisoffice daily at a fixed time, he does not act only on the basis ofcustom or self-interest which he could disregard if he wanted to’ butalso because not to do so ‘would be abhorrent to his sense of duty’.

His description has been heavily influential, but not pervasively so.Otto Hinze sounds uncannily likeWeber when he writes that ‘Mandoes not live by bread alone; he wants to have a good consciencewhen he pursues his vital interests.’ Joseph Bensman goes so faras to argue that ‘the self-justification that is the motivating drivefor legitimacy is a particular expression of what for Weber was adeep, metaphysical need: the need for a rational meaning of the

Karl Deutsch, ‘The Commitment of National Legitimacy Symbols as a VerificationTechnique’, The Journal of Conflict Resolution , (September ), –, p. .

Thomas Luckman, ‘Comments on Legitimation’, Current Sociology , ( ), – . Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Garden City,

NY, Doubleday, ), pp. , . MaxWeber, Economy and Society, Guenther Roth and ClausWittich (eds.), vols. (London,

University of California Press, ), p. . F. Gilbert (ed.), The Historical Essays of Otto Hintze (New York, Oxford University Press,

), p. .


cosmos, the world, and for man’s place in it. It includes the needfor an ethical interpretation of the world.’ The studies of PierreBourdieu of what he terms the ‘state elite’ in contemporary FrancefollowWeber’s account of the need for self-justification closely, andwhen Bourdieu writes that ‘No power can be satisfied with existingjust as power, that is, as brute force, entirely devoid of justification –in a word, arbitrary – and it must thus justify its existence’, theintellectual lineage is clear.

Picking up a clue from Weber: the correspondence of typesof rule and types of legitimation

The formation of institutional identities both justifies the exerciseof power and describes the ways and ends of its use. The point wasmost succinctlymadebyWeber: ‘according to the kindof legitimacywhich is claimed, the type of obedience, the kind of administrativestaff developed to guarantee it, and the mode of exercising author-ity, will all differ fundamentally’, i.e. the relationship is reciprocaland organic, rather than in any simple sense causal. The role oflegitimating identification is not a unique feature of ‘ceremonial’or ‘traditional’ societies, though its manner will differ with otheraspects of government. This relationship between legitimation andother features of rule can be detected in representative regimes andautocracies alike. The nature of this correspondence lies beyondthe scope of this book, save to argue that there is a reciprocal rela-tion between legitimation and other aspects of rule. Each sustains

Joseph Bensman, ‘Max Weber’s Concept of Legitimacy: An Evaluation’ in ArthurJ. Vidich and Ronald Glassman (eds.), Conflict and Control: Challenges to Legitimacy of ModernGovernments – (Beverley Hills, Sage, ), p. .

Pierre Bourdieu, The State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power, trans. Lauretta Clough(Cambridge, Polity, ), p. .

Weber, Economy and Society, p. ; cf. the attempt to simplify this relationship by makingit a one-way causal one by C. Matheson, ‘Weber and the Classification of Forms ofLegitimacy’, British Journal of Sociology ( ), –.

‘even in cases where the system of rule is so assured of dominance that its claim to legiti-macy plays little or no part in the relationship between rulers and subjects, the mode oflegitimation retains its significance as the basis for the relation of authority between rulersand administrative staff and for the structure of rule’, T. H. Rigby, ‘Introduction: PoliticalLegitimacy, Weber and Communist Mono-organisational Systems’ in T. H. Rigby andFerenc Feher (eds.), Political Legitimation in Communist States (New York, St. Martin’s Press,), p. .


the other, and since rulers seek for coherence, and for justificationwhich is a form of coherence, this correspondence will always be tosomeextent deliberately sought and cultivated.This is an importantform of rationality: not the matching of internal values to externalactions, because there are only external actions of one form or an-other, but thematching of one action so far as possible with another.

THE SCOPE AND CHARACTER OF A THEORY

OF LEGITIMATION

What use is an account of legitimation?

Any account or theory of legitimation is likely to be of little helpin either predicting or influencing the course of government andpolitics. This is so for several reasons. First, the distance betweenacademic theory, however accessible, and actual political circum-stances, is frequently considerable. Second, the account whichpolitical scientists can give of legitimation will describe the relation-ships between a number of factors, all of which are likely to sustainand influence one another. In these circumstances, the message tothe political actor is likely to be, ‘If you want to get to Dublin, Iwouldn’t start from here.’ Illuminating perhaps, but massively un-helpful. The states of Eastern Europe in the years after werenot short of academic advice and academic advisers. None of thisactivity seems to have had any systematically helpful influence ontheir subsequent developments.

The elaboration of theories versus the clarification of language

There is a danger that political science will become a battle ofabstract concepts, models, theories which fight for the right to im-pose their rule on reality. But since any theory is an abbreviationof evidence, any model a simplification of what can be observed,the greater the dominance of any particular theory, the greaterthe alienation from historical or empirical reality. The artificial-ity of much discussion of this type is evident in arguments aboutwhich theory is correct, or whether identity can be seen to shapelegitimacy, or legitimacy qualify identity.


My intention is more cautious and less ambitious: an accountof possible ingredients of political situations, without hoping to beable to be even so certain as that about their likely or possiblecombinations or outcomes. The warnings of Hirschman after theevents of in Eastern Europe are thoroughly apposite here:‘It does not seem to have occurred to these people that if the events,which are the points of departure of their speculations, were so hardto predict, considerable caution is surely in order when it comes toappraising their impact.’ Whilst I have drawn on both theory andempirical and historical research in the following chapters, I haveadopted an eclectic stance, which views theoretical discussion as anattempt to clarify language, which then can be used in a flexible,non-dogmatic, and multidimensional way in the examination ofpolitical life.

AlbertO.Hirschman, ‘GoodNews isNot BadNews’, NewYork Review of Books, October, , quoted Guiseppe Di Palma, ‘Legitimation from the Top to Civil Society:Politico-Cultural Change in Eastern Europe’, World Politics , (October ), p. .

CHAPTER

King John’s Christmas cards: self-legitimation

King John was not a good man,And no good friends had he.He stayed in every afternoon . . .But no one came to tea.And, round about December,The cards upon his shelfWhich wished him lots of Christmas cheer,And fortune in the coming year,Were never from his near and dear,But only from himself.

A. A. Milne’s King John provides a metaphor, if an exaggeratedone, for the self-legitimation of government. In addition to the pic-ture of legitimation frequently presented, as the means wherebysubjects and, ideally, subjects in a democracy, authorise govern-ment, or rulers gain the consent of the ruled, legitimation is also anactivity carried on by rulers for their own benefit, by the state forand from itself. Legitimation is not only a circus for themass of sub-jects, but also a private theatre for rulers, where they see their ownidentity portrayed, confirmed, and justified. The near and dear,inasmuch as they are part of the community of rulers, will sendcards, but nobody else will. The larger part of the population willnot even know that the ceremonies are occurring. Rulers appear toneed to legitimate their power, to demonstrate constantly by ritualsboth spiritual and secular their unique prestige, as persons autho-rised in a manner that ordinary subjects are not, as persons setapart to exercise the powers and privileges of government. This at-tribution of apparent need rests neither on a deductive view of what A. A. Milne, Now We Are Six (London, Methuen, , edn) p. .


rulers require, nor on an empirical psychology of rulers. Rather, aswith Weber, it is a matter of observing the regularity with whichrulers, of all kinds and in all kinds of regimes, engage in legitimation.The attribution of need is therefore a hypothetical explanation ofobserved behaviour, not a theory about governmental behaviourwith predictive aspirations. It depends upon the assumption thatif a group of people consistently behave in a certain way, that be-haviour can reasonably be described as arising from need ratherthan whim or contingency. It could, alternatively, be seen as a con-stitutive need in the same way that animals need warm blood inorder to be mammals – without it they would not be mammals,and the need is a need for certain characteristics or functions inorder to be one thing rather than another.

THREE GROUPS OF ACTORS

In the drama of legitimation there are three groups: custodians –rulers, kings, presidents, prime ministers – all those engaged ingoverning; cousins, the ‘near and dear’ – those who stand in aprivileged position in relation to the custodians without them-selves actually governing; and subjects – the ordinary citizens,voters, and people. Different identities are formed and operatewithin the world of custodians, within the world of cousins, andwithin the world of citizens. The world of cousins forms a medi-ating one between custodians and citizens, influencing both anddrawing on the strengths of both. But a drama is acted out by thecustodians, in which ordinary citizens and subjects play no part,and where the plot is constructed within a structure composed ofthe needs, satisfactions and conventions of the private world ofgovernment.

DEMOCRATIC AND MOST POST-WEBER THEORY ASSUMES

THAT LEGITIMATION IS ENGAGED IN BY CUSTODIANS AS

AN INSTRUMENT OF RULE

This attention to the world of rulers stands at some remove frommost recent political science. The prevailing use of the terms legiti-mation and legitimacy is to indicate the conferring of authority on

King John’s Christmas

government by citizens, or the acceptance by citizens of the right ofgovernment to rule because the appropriate criteria of efficiency,or fairness, or probity, or representativeness have been met. Theactivity described is of government as the recipient or beneficiaryof acts or beliefs of subjects, rather than an active and initiatingagent. And in so far as government does act, its actions are seennot as part of the business of legitimation, but as the evidence uponwhich the court of public opinionwill make its judgement about theacceptability of the regime. Legitimation is the school report whichthe electorate issues on the governmental term rather than one ofthe distinguishing features of government itself. When legitima-tion is seen to be a problem, it is a problem because governmenthas failed to fulfil the expectations of citizens, whether in the caseof conventional states, or in the case of international institutionsof governance such as the European Union.

There is both a theoretical and amethodological or practical rea-son for the direction of attention away from the self-legitimation ofgovernment. Political science, for much of the twentieth century,and since the reaction against the elitism of the late nineteenthand early twentieth centuries, has been a democratic discipline.Normatively government has been justified by its representation ofthe views, and protection and promotion of the interests, of citi-zens. To give an account of normative activity within governmentwhich seemed to owe little directly to public consent could seemto confer approval on elites and to free them from the qualifyingtest of public approval or consent. For the purposes of research,it has been far easier to study the actions and opinions of citizens

T. R. Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton, Princeton University Press, ), p. ; RodneyBarker, Political Legitimacy and the State (Oxford, Clarendon, ), pp. –, –; andchapter below.

‘“legitimacy” is just a suspension of withdrawal of consent’ and it ‘will no longer be granted if itdoes not find real corollaries in material interests’, Adam Przeworski, Capitalism and SocialDemocracy (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, ), p. .

See, for instance, SimonHix, ‘TheStudyof theEuropeanUnion II: the “newgovernance”agenda and its rival’, Journal of European Public Policy , (), –.

This objection is raised specifically in the case of the analysis of the state by GeoffreyMarshall who argues that the concept of a coherent state has consequences for thepotential of such an institution to flourish, and the ability of republicans to resist it: ‘forRepublicans the struggle to subject the executive to law begins with a conceptual struggleto separate and clarify what the term “State” confuses’, Geoffrey Marshall, ConstitutionalTheory (Oxford, Oxford University Press, ), p. .


than the internal behaviour of government. The closer the centreof power is approached, the more practice, convention, etiquette,ideology and law narrow and impede the view. When governmenthas been seen therefore as itself engaged in legitimation, this activ-ity has been perceived predominantly or exclusively, as it was byMarx, as part of the ruling strategy of manipulating the people.

The ‘rites of rulers’, as analysed by Robert Goodin, are the cir-cuses which government adds to the bread of welfare in order tocultivate popular support. Goodin’s examination of these rites orrituals significantly slips from referring to them as rituals of rulersto calling them political rituals, rituals which serve, in other words,a persuasive function in the world of citizens and subjects. But therituals of rulers are also governmental rituals andmay, like themoreesoteric religious rituals, be carried out away from the public gaze.Goodin’s discussion of the medieval European priesthood drawsattention to the way in which the withdrawal of the priest beyondthe rood screen to celebrate mass was a ritual expression of thesubordinate position of the peasantry, who were visibly excludedfrom the ceremony. But were that all that was happening, andwere this simply or solely a means of expressing and reinforcingthe subordination of the laity, once the priest was removed fromthe sight of the congregation he would need to do no more, butwait for a time before reappearing. In fact, of course he did a verygreat deal more, and the witness to the ceremony, if others werethere at all, was provided by other members of the priesthood andimmediate servants of the altar. The ‘secret’ ceremony was onlysecret if one assumes that it was solely for public consumption. AsPeter Berger long ago pointed out, for legitimation to work, it hasto be more than a device to fool the masses. The practitioners haveto believe just as much as everyone else does; the ‘children must beconvinced, but so must be their teachers’.

Barker, Political Legitimacy and the State, pp. –. Robert E. Goodin, ‘Rites of Rulers’ in Goodin, Manipulatory Politics (New Haven andLondon, Yale University Press, ).

Ibid., p. . Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Garden City,NY, Doubleday, ), p. . This is the opposite of the view taken by Jeremy Rayner,who argues that in order to succeed, the leaders of belief have to encourage views whichthey do not themselves hold: Jeremy Rayner, ‘Philosophy into Dogma: The Revival ofCultural Conservatism’, British Journal of Political Science , (October ), –.


LEGITIMATION OF RULERS, BY RULERS, FOR RULERS

What has frequently been ignored is that, as Weber pointed out,legitimacy functions as self-justification for the administrative per-sonnel of government. It may well be, though he did not ar-gue this, that this is the most important function and location oflegitimation. No party, faction, class or group, Weber suggested,is ever content to control simply the coercive and administrativemeans of government. There is in fact some ambiguity in Weber’sown account here. One part of his argument certainly suggests thatlegitimation is carried on because ‘custom, personal advantage,purely affectual or ideal motives of solidarity, do not form a suf-ficiently reliable basis for a given domination’. This utilitarianfunction exists because ‘the basis of every authority, and corre-spondingly of every kind of willingness to obey, is a belief, a belief byvirtue of which persons exercising authority are lent prestige’. Buttwo aspects of the argument are often neglected. First, that Weberis here describing the relations between ‘the chief and his admin-istrative staff ’, not those between rulers and ruled. Second, thathe elsewhere suggests that the activity of legitimation, whateverits function in sustaining the solidarity of immediate subordinates,also functions to sustain the ruler himself: ‘he who is more favouredfeels the never ceasing need to look upon his position as in someway “legitimate”’. Some commentators have elided these var-ious points, so that even the passage quoted above is presentedas an account of a purely instrumental function whereby rulers

BeethamandLord suggest that ‘Analysts of political legitimacy fromMaxWeber onwardshave argued about whether the recognition or acknowledgement of a regime’s legitimacyis only important to the behaviour of its elites or administrative staff, rather than ofsubjects more widely’, David Beetham and Christopher Lord, Legitimacy and the EuropeanUnion (London, Longman, ), p. . But they do not develop the point, nor do theysustain it with citation or discussion of work which has paid attention to legitimationwithin elites. Beetham’s and Lord’s use of the words ‘recognition or acknowledgement’is interesting. The main focus of their argument, as of Beetham’s own earlier argument,is that legitimacy is an objective status earned by regimes, and earned principally thoughnot exclusively through their fulfilment of democratic criteria of representativeness andprocedure. To speak of ‘recognition or acknowledgement’ is not inconsistent with this,but it does focus on the regime, rather than on the procedures, context, or history whichin Beetham’s and Lord’s terms, justifies it.

Max Weber, Economy and Society, Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (eds.), vols.(London, University of California Press, ), vol. I, p. .

Ibid., p. . Ibid., p. . Ibid., p. .


sustain the obedience of the mass of their subjects. Joseph Bergerand Morris Zelditch write that

The supposedly most powerful actor in society is, in fact, dependent onthe subordinates who actually control the facilities of force. Their loyaltymight be bought with side payments, and the larger population boughtwith promises of benefits, but inducements are also unstable in the longrun. The value of inducements depends on the preferences of the subor-dinates, which vary over actors and across time. Hence, every system ofdomination attempts to cultivate a belief in its legitimacy.

Weber’s point is glossed by the incorporation of his words intoBerger’s and Zelditch’s own text, but with the addition of the word‘hence’. But the seemingly ubiquitous priority given to this activ-ity, the activity of legitimation, deserves attention. Equal attention,and by way of compensation for relative neglect even greater atten-tion, needs to be given to one other vital feature of Weber’s origi-nal comments. Weber wrote of ‘the claims of obedience made bythe master against the “officials” and of both against the ruled’.

Legitimation is an activity, in other words, carried on within gov-ernment. And not only is legitimation carried out by government,it is frequently carried out for government, and for the private sat-isfaction of government rather than for its public acclaim. There isan observable and universal need to justify the possession of gov-ernment by claiming legitimacy. ‘The fortunate is seldom satisfiedwith the fact of being fortunate. Beyond this, he needs to know thathe has a right to his good fortune . . .Good fortune thus wants tobe “legitimate” fortune.’ ‘Simple observation shows that in ev-ery such situation he who is more favored feels the never ceasingneed to look upon his position as in some way “legitimate”, uponhis advantage as “deserved”, and the other’s disadvantage as beingbrought about by the latter’s “fault”.’ DrawingonWeber amongstothers, Dolf Sternberg appeared to have no doubts on the matter.‘Legitimacy is the foundation of such governmental power as is

Joseph Berger and Morris Zelditch, Status, Power and Legitimacy (London, TransactionBooks, ), p. .

Weber, Economy and Society, p. . Weber in H. H. Gerth and C. W. Mills (eds.), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (London,

), p. . Weber, Economy and Society, p. .


exercised both with a consciousness on the government’s part thatit has a right to govern and with some recognition by the governedof that right.’ The word ‘some’ is of greater significance than theranking of the parties. Applying this observation to the rulers ofimperial Rome, Paul Veyne comments that this ‘tendency of thesovereign’s to express his majesty is no more rational than his needto justify himself: themeans are not proportionate to the ends. Justi-fication and expression lend themselves secondarily to ideologicaluse or to “machiavellian” rationalisations, but they are not pri-marily weapons’ . . . ‘the king wants to satisfy himself and has littlenotion of the effects his ostentation produces on the spectator’.

As David Kertzer comments, ‘In order to invest a person withauthority over others, there must be an effective means for chang-ing the way other people view that person, as well as for changingthe person’s conception of his right to impose his will on others.’

His own conception of himself appears to be an essential elementin the business. Veyne’s comparison of non-rational legitimationwith ‘“machiavellian” rationalisations’ is illuminatingly inappro-priate. Machiavelli’s own account of the aims of rulers places justsuch apparently non-rational or non-utilitarian goals to the fore.Rulers seek not wealth or material comfort, but prestige, greatness,and honour. Some of the actions of rulers can be explained interms of the desire for tangible goods. But that does not give asufficient explanation. And whilst it may provide important cluesto marginal changes – which may be of great significance in theirconsequences – it cannot explain the choice of rule, as against thechoice of banking or ballet. The analysis of powermust share dissat-isfactions with mere or narrow utilitarianism which are analogousto those felt by John Stuart Mill.

The need for self-justification amongst rulers seems universal.When Henry III spent the equivalent of two entire years’ royal in-come on creating Westminster Abbey as a declaration of both the

Dolf Sternberg, ‘Legitimacy’ in The International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, vol. IX,pp. – (New York, ), p. .

Paul Veyne, Bread and Circuses: Historical Sociology and Political Pluralism, trans. Brian Pearce(London, Penguin, ), p. .

David L. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power (New Haven and London, Yale UniversityPress, ), p. .

Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince ([] Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, ).


sanctity of Edward the Confessor and the legitimation by associa-tion of his own kingship, the likely audience was a tiny fragmentof the population. As Paul Binski comments on the architecturaland iconographic demonstration of royal legitimation which theabbey constituted, the manifestation was ‘not to some notional“public”, but rather to the community which produced it in thefirst place’. And the most important receiver of the sacramen-tal royal message was perhaps the king himself. Even when suchreligious construction or ritual was publicly displayed, as whenHenry V spent almost as much on the reburial of Richard II ashe had spent on the funeral of his own father who had usurpedRichard, the public was limited, and the most privileged ob-server was Henry himself. As Paul Strohm comments, ‘Well mighta Lancastrian, besieged by apparitions and rumors, hope to closethe troubled space of their origin by returningRichard to his propergrave. Henry V’s decision to effect this return is here treated not asan isolated act of piety but as a positive political stratagem – a formof symbolic struggle which addressed (though it could not settle)continuing problems of Lancastrian legitimation.’ But problemsfor whom? Such endogenous, regnal self-legitimation is not an ac-tivity peculiar to either monarchy or the European middle ages.At the end of the twentieth century, the Iraqi President SadamHussein possessed many presidential palaces. But the only occa-sion on which they were entered by the people of Iraq was dur-ing when those ordinary subjects were brought in to deterAmerican and British air raids. Presidential palaces are to impresspresidents, not subjects. Nor is the seclusion of palaces and theirreservation for the ruler and his immediate entourage a featurepeculiar to despotic or undemocratic regimes. The degree of seclu-sion will differ markedly, but even the rulers of the most politi-cally egalitarian regimes will have their distinctiveness marked bythe buildings which they use. Harold Lasswell and Merritt Foxcontrast autocratic separation, the Forbidden City or the Kremlin

Paul Binski,Westminster Abbey and the Plantagenets (NewHaven, YaleUniversity Press, ),p. .

Ibid., p. . Paul Strohm, England’s Empty Throne: Usurpation and the Language of Legitimation, –

(London, Yale University Press, ), pp. –. Ibid., p. .


under both tzars and communism, with popular government in theUnited States:

The sharpest contrast to despotism and autocracy is a well-establishedpopular government. The official meets the citizen on a common leveland the chief of state lives with an insignificant physical barrier separatinghim from his fellows. TheWhite House inWashington expresses the basicrelationship that connects the transitory holder of the presidential officeand the rank and file of the nation. The White House is neither remotenor exalted; it has the approachability of a private home.

But the White House is clearly far more ‘exalted’ than the averageAmerican home, and significantly less approachable. The citizensof the United States may visit and be impressed by the WhiteHouse once or even several times in a lifetime, but the presidentcan be impressed by it, and what it says about the incumbent of thepresidential office, every day. According to Edelman,‘That a manmeets with his aides in theOval Office of theWhite House remindshim and them and the public to whom the meeting is reported ofhis status and authority as President, just as it exalts the status ofthe aides and defines the mass public as nonparticipants who neverenter the Office.’

There is a substantial literature in political psychology on the in-ternal or personal satisfactions of power, which I have not touchedupon, and whose concerns, though relevant to the wider discussionof power and legitimation, lie on the borders of what I deal withhere. Harold Lasswell saw leadership as arising from the needto work out private problems in public places, Erik Erikson con-sidered leadership as a conjunction of personal history and socialsituation. But it is possible to speculate about the nature of any

Harold D. Lasswell and Merritt B. Fox, The Signature of Power: Buildings, Communication, andPolicy (New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction Books, ), p. .

They can now visit a virtual White House whenever they wish, and tour its public spaces.www.whitehouse.gov/. Circuses have been replaced by vdus.

Murray Edelman, ‘Space and the Social Order’, Journal of Architectural Education , (November ), – , p. .

See, for instance, Robert E. Lane, ‘ExperiencingMoney and Experiencing Power’, in IanShapiro and Grant Reeher (eds.), Power, Inequality, and Democratic Politics: Essays in Honour ofRobert A. Dahl (Boulder and London,Westview Press, ); David C.McClelland, Power:the Inner Experience (New York, Irvington Publishers, ).

Dankwart A. Rustow (ed.), Philosophers and Kings: Studies in Leadership (New York, GeorgeBraziller, ).


‘need’ for self-legitimating identity cultivation without crossing intopsychology. Rulers can be depicted as seeking ethical or perceptualcoherence, a fit between their account of themselves, and theirother actions. This search for coherence, whilst it might be investi-gated in terms of its psychological dimension, can be described alsoas a feature of the actions of rulers. Inis Claude remarks illuminat-ingly that ‘power holders are burdened, like other human beings,by the necessity of satisfying their own consciences. By and large,they cannot comfortably regard themselves as usurpers or tyrantsbut require some basis for convincing themselves of the rightness oftheir position.’ It can be suggested that such legitimation servesto consolidate ruling groups, providing the self-justification thatenables elites to function, not with the consent of their subjects, butwith the consent of their own conception of themselves and theirsocial and governmental identities.

The effort devoted to legitimation within the community of gov-ernors is a feature of the effort to cultivate an appropriate identity.Because the identity of rulers is of greatest importance to rulersthemselves, the cultivation of governing identity, the legitimationof rule, becomes more important the further up the governmentaltree one climbs. Legitimation is the legitimation of an activity bydescribing, cultivating, and identifying it and its actor in a partic-ular way: the more that people engage in the activity, the morelegitimation they are likely to engage in. This account of legiti-mation and its location is consonant with Weber’s conception ofelective affinity: the legitimating ideas and concepts are adopted,refined, and cultivated with a vigour relative to the extent to whichthe person or group is engaged in the activity of governing, andhas therefore the interests which go with that occupation. But onecan also observe that the more demanding the activity, the more

Inis L. Claude, Jr, ‘Collective Legitimization as a Political Function of the UnitedNations’, International Organization (), –, p. .

Ibid.: ‘How was system integration sustained in imperial societies? Three sets of factorsseem most important: the use of coercive sanctions, based on military power; the legiti-mation of authority within ruling elites, making possible the establishment of an administra-tive apparatus of government; and the formation of economic ties of interdependence’;Anthony Giddens, A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism (London, Macmillan, ), p. : ‘This is not to say that the legitimation of power was unimportant in thesystem integration of imperial societies; but its significance is to be found primarily interms of how far it helped to consolidate the ruling apparatus itself.’


necessary the legitimation. And governing is a far more time-consuming (though not necessarily more onerous) activity than be-ing governed. Amongst the various forms of political legitimation,the legitimation carried out by rulers is the most important – andit is accorded by them to themselves.

This endogenous regnal self-legitimation of rulers in their owneyes and for their own consumption is a major feature of govern-ment, and a minor feature of politics. It is, in an amendment of theGettysburg phrases, legitimation of government, by government,and for government. To ignore this is to ignore a major featureof all government. The proper and desirable wish of political sci-entists to establish normative criteria for assessing government, todo so in conjunction with the procedures of democracy, and henceto present legitimation as a public communication between rulersand ruled has been accompanied by a neglect of another world oflegitimation. This diversion of attention is sustained, or not chal-lenged, by the behaviour of government itself. The way in whichgovernment sets about legitimating itself contributes to this lacunain political science, since legitimation, however much it may havea public face, is in the first place carried on relatively privately. Itis in the first place for the benefit of rulers, not of subjects, and ispursued in the sight of rulers, not in the sight of the ruled. It canbe argued that legitimation is necessary to subjects not to causethem to obey, but to enable them to obey. But it may be equallynecessary to enable rulers to issue commands by confirming themin their belief that they have the authority to do so, that they act ina way which confirms and cultivates their particular legitimatingidentity as rulers.

LEGITIMATION OF RULERS IN THEIR OWN EYES

For the legitimation which is carried out, initiated, and directed byrulers, the rulers themselves are the principal audience. Even whenrecognition is cultivated in others, it ismost actively sought from therulers’ own immediate associates, institution, or community. Theprincipal focus of the activity of legitimation is the rulers them-selves. It is for their own self-definition, rather than for their justifi-cation in the eyes of their subjects, that legitimation is principally


conducted. A royalmarriagemay be, as Bagehot put it, the brilliantedition of a universal fact, but rulers may seek a confirmation ofthis distinctiveness out of the public gaze as well as in it. It is not onlyPharisees who thank God that they are not as other men. PeterBurke, in his account of the legitimation of Louis XIV, commentsthat one of the audiences was posterity. It could be argued in de-velopment of this point that a concern for posterity is a concern forone’s own survival, an attempt to reassure oneself thatmortality canbe transcended. Certainly, impressing posterity does not contributeto the grip on power of the living. As Burke elsewhere observes, theeffects of legitimation need to be considered, ‘not least on the kinghimself ’ who, after all, amidst the wealth of iconography, ‘sawhimself everywhere, even on the ceiling’. The function of cere-mony in confirming the sense of the principal actor of his or herauthority can be detected as readily in twentieth-century France asunder the monarchy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.Francois Mitterand consulted experts on the rituals and symbolsof the revolution of when planning his own presidential in-auguration in . However many or few might appreciate thesignificance of the resulting ceremonial detail, the new presidentwould do so. The difference was in this respect not great between apresident, and a king for whom the ‘panegyrics in prose and versewere addressed in the first place to an audience of one, the kinghimself ’. Paul Veyne comments of the justificatory displays ofimperial Rome that the ruler ‘is ready to proclaim his own gloryeven if nobody is listening’. Sometimes even the presidents andprinces may have difficulty gaining effective sight or experience ofthe artefacts of legitimation. But they know they are there, whereas

Quoted in David Cannadine, ‘Introduction: Divine Rites of Kings’ in David Cannadineand Simon Price (eds.), Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, ), p. .

Luke , . Peter Burke,The Fabrication of Louis XIV (NewHaven, Yale University Press, ), p. . Ibid., p. . Ibid., p. . Sean Wilentz, ‘Introduction: Teufelsdrockh’s Dilemma: On Symbolism, Politics, and

History’ in Sean Wilentz (ed.), Rites of Power: Symbolism, Ritual and Politics Since the MiddleAges (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, ), p. .

Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV, p. . Veyne, Bread and Circuses, p. .


for the population as a whole they may be, by their location or theirvery character, inaccessible. Veyne writes of the effectively invisi-ble frieze celebrating, on Trajan’s column, the emperor’s militarytriumphs in Dacia, ‘Archaeologists examine this frieze with binoc-ulars. We may doubt whether Trajan’s subjects paid much moreattention to it.’

One of the ways in which rulers legitimate themselves is by theconstruction or development of physical environments which ex-press and confirm their governing identity. Leaders surround them-selves with objects which ‘acknowledge’ their importance. LouisXIV was frequently portrayed in the midst of ‘a whole clusterof dignified or dignity-bestowing properties such as orbs, scep-tres, swords, thunderbolts, chariots and various kinds of militarytrophy’. The juxtaposition of people with objects ‘proclaims’authority. It might seem that such activity is invalid unless car-ried out in the public gaze, and that privacy negates the exercise.The reverse is the case. It follows from the logic of such legiti-mation that other people should not be in juxtaposition with thelegitimating objects, or at least not at the same time as the leader. Itis the objects which announce authority, and if the leaders sharedthat juxtaposition with others, the announcement would either besharedwith them, or be evaporated andmeaningless.The verybathwater of the West African kings of Akuapem is specially disposedof, to prevent mere ordinary humans using it and hence acquiringsomething of the distinctiveness of royalty. Only if the leaderscan be seen in exclusive proximity to the authority acknowledgingobjects can the magic still work. So when kings of Akuapem wereenthroned, or enstooled, the ritual took place beyond the publicview. The articulation and enactment of their special character wasconducted in private. English kings and queens, though crownedbefore witnesses, were similarly anointed in the view of God alone.

What is the peculiar contribution of objects and the manufac-tured world to legitimation? Cannot people, subjects, acknowledge

Ibid., p. . Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV, p. . Michelle Gilbert, ‘The Person of the King: Ritual and Power in a Ghanaian State’ in

Cannadine and Price (eds.), Rituals of Royalty, p. . Ibid.


authority? They can, but they are neither so malleable nor so reli-able as objects, nor so permanently on call. TheWiltonDiptych, thedevotional painting which formed part of the portable possessionsofRichard II, ‘served to focusRichard’s ownmeditation, to re-enacthis devotion, whether he was present or not, to proclaim to himselfthe certainty of his prospective welcome in Heaven, and finally, toreinforce his idea of earthly kingship under heavenly protection’.

The diptych was for private, not public display, but was an asser-tion for the king of his authority and his unique status in relation toGod and man. Paul Binski comments on Richard’s devotion to theroyal shrinewhichWestminster Abbey had become, that it reflected‘the peculiar anxieties of an insecure, fastidious and hypersensitiveyoung king’. The assuaging of royal anxieties was for the kingalone. It was his doubts that were calmed, his sense of authoritythat was confirmed. His consciousness, not that of his subjects, wasthe focus. The rituals of power, fromVersailles to Nuremberg, fromDelhi toWashington, however much they may impress the subjectsand citizens of their regimes, impress the rulers at least as much. Atriumphal entry intoRomemay have been accompanied by a whis-pered reminder, ‘Remember you are mortal’, but the triumphalquotidian life of rulers is accompanied by the far louder statement,‘Remember you are not like others.’

The secret garden of government

The public, though they may be an audience, have never been theprincipal audience in the theatre of endogenous legitimation, of the‘courtly rituals which are unknown to or unobserved by the major-ity of the population’ and which coexist with public displays. The

Lucy Freeman Sandler, ‘The Wilton Diptych and Images of Devotion in IlluminatedManuscripts’ in Gillian Gordon, Lisa Monnas, and Caroline Elam (eds.), The Regal Imageof Richard II and the Wilton Diptych (London, Harvey Miller Publishers, ), p. .

Binski, Westminster Abbey and the Plantagenets, p. . ErnstH.Kantorowicz,TheKing’s TwoBodies (Princeton, PrincetonUniversity Press, ),

p. . Ibid., Kantorowicz quotes Francis Bacon on this point, to the effect that the two precepts

‘Memento quod es homo’ and ‘Memento quod es deus, or vice Dei’ between them check the powerand the will of kings, p. . But the checks imposed by the first are balanced by thepower which comes from the authorising identification of oneself as unique.

Cannadine, ‘Introduction: Divine Rites of Kings’, p. .


‘theatre state’ of Bali described by Clifford Geertz, with its massiveemphasis on spectacle and ceremony, where ‘Power served pomp,not pomp power’, was not an exotic oddity, but simply an extrav-agant point on a single continuum. Sydney Anglo comments onthe arrival of Henry VII in London after the Battle of Bosworth,that it was ‘for the great majority of ordinary folk who made up thecheering roadside throng on the way to the capital, probably thelast time that they ever saw their monarch in the flesh’. Hence‘One of the greatest obstacles barring the way to a sensible ap-preciation of the ways in which Renaissance rulers were perceivedby their contemporaries is that we know a great deal more aboutthese kings and queens than did even the best informed of theirsubjects. It is true that we cannot hear their voices, interview themor see them in the flesh: but in these respects we are no worse offthan all but their tiny circle of intimates.’ This was not an acci-dental or random effect. Government is a secret garden, and itsceremonies, rituals, and life both exceptional and mundane servetomark off even its most egalitarian practitioners from those whomthey rule. Themessage is an externally directed one but, evenmoreimportantly, an internally directed one, confirming the legitimatingidentity of the ruling group. TerenceRanger andOlufemiVaughancomment that the ‘need for rulers to be confident in their own legit-imacy and to define their relationswith othermembers of the rulinggroup underlies those “secret” rituals of kingship of which the gen-eral population of African states often seem to be ignorant’. The Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth Century Bali (Princeton, Princeton

University Press, ), p. . Though Gordon Kipling has drawn on Geertz’s concep-tions to draw conclusions with a different emphasis for medieval Europe: ‘The pageantsmay, indeed, “flatter and cajole” the prince, but their primary purpose lay in celebratingand renewing the communal political bond which united the sovereign and his peo-ple’, Gordon Kipling, Enter the King: Theatre, Liturgy and Ritual in the Medieval Civic Triumph(Oxford, Oxford University Press, ), p. .

It is one, too, which received fictional depiction over a quarter of a century before Geertzemployed it as a means of anthropological explanation. The world described by MervynPeak in his first two Gormenghast novels is precisely driven by the need to continueand enact ceremony. Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan (London, Eyre and Spotiswood, );Gormenghast (London, Eyre and Spotiswood, ).

Sydney Anglo, Images of Tudor Kingship (London, B.A. Seaby, ), p. . Ibid., p. . Terence Ranger and Olufemi Vaughan, ‘Introduction’ in Terence Ranger and Olufemi

Vaughan (eds.), Legitimacy and the State in Twentieth-Century Africa: Essays in Honour of A. H. M.Kirk-Greene (London, Macmillan, ), p. .


message of ritual and ceremony can be disseminated not just byformal, institutional distinctions, but by the entire culture of rule.As Benedict Anderson observes of pre-colonial Java, ‘Although theruling class of traditional Java could be defined in structural termsas the hierarchy of officials and their extended families, like anyother ruling class they were also marked off – indeedmarked them-selves off – from the rest of the population by their style of life andself-consciously espoused system of values.’ The use of expertlanguages, for instance, whetherMandarin or managerial strategicmilitary jargon, serves both to exclude the bulk of the populationfrom the exchange, and to indicate to the users of the languagetheir special status, their particular identity and justification. Theelaborate ritual codes of theT’ang dynasty inChinawere the key toceremonial events which, though theymight on occasion have pub-lic spectators, were in the first place the preserve of a ruling elite.

In a society as apparently open and public as nineteenth-centuryBritain, its royal rituals could still have an essentially private char-acter: ‘great royal ceremonials were not so much shared, corporateevents as remote, inaccessible group rites, performed for the benefitof the few rather than the edification of themany’. Evenwhen thelegitimating message is ostensibly public, the manner of its trans-mission, and the limited nature of the public, canmake it an almostprivate communication. The audience of ‘privy councillors, courthangers-on, continental observers, university scholars, and Britishclerics’ described by Lori Ferrell for the sermons emanating fromthe court of James I &VI was quite select. Even funerals could beoccasions for such enactments, as Jennifer Woodward comments

Benedict R. O’G. Anderson, ‘The Idea of Power in Javanese Culture’ in Claire Holt (ed.),with the assistance of Benedict R. O’G. Anderson and James Siegel, Culture and Politics inIndonesia, – (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, ), p. .

David McMullen, ‘Bureaucrats and Cosmology: The Ritual Code of T’ang China’ inCannadine and Price (eds.), Rituals of Royalty.

David Cannadine, ‘The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual: The BritishMonarchy and the “Invention of Tradition”, c. – ’ in Eric Hobsbawm andTerence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition, pp. – (Cambridge, CambridgeUniversity Press, ), p. . Interestingly, the illustration on the cover of the paper-back edition of The Invention of Tradition shows just such an ‘inaccessible group rite’, thepresentation of a dead stag by Albert to Victoria and her children, by flaming torch light,at a door to Balmoral.

Lori Anne Ferrell, Government by Polemic: James I, the King’s Preachers, and the Rhetorics ofConformity, – (Stanford, Stanford University Press, ), p. .


of the royal obsequies of Renaissance England: ‘By taking partin the procession each individual acknowledged and enacted hisrelative status in society.’ Pierre Bourdieu, discussing the educa-tional recruitment, and selection, of the twentieth-century Frenchelite, argues that ceremonies and procedures of initiation transform‘the representation that the invested person has of himself, and thebehaviour he feels obliged to adopt in order to conform to thatrepresentation’. But it is not only in the entry into an elite, butin the entire subsequent life of its members, that their identity islegitimated, and their identification legitimates their position.

Writing of the Soviet Union before , Joseph Schull com-ments on the importance of ideology not as a means of commu-nicating with or persuading the mass of the population, but as ameans of legitimating governing elites in their own eyes:

The masses were simply not the audience to whom political claims werelegitimated. In these societies, ideology was essentially the language ofpolitical elites who constrained each other to obey its conventions.When theleaders of these societies used ideology to legitimate some claim, they werespeaking to their colleagues as the co-tenants of ideological orthodoxy, notto the population at large. This is not to say that Marxism-Leninism wasnot propagated to the masses in such societies. Of course it was, but thiswas not the arena in which ideological discourse (as opposed to propaganda)was taking place.

Schull could equally well have been writing of Louis XIV, ofwhose copiously produced iconography Peter Burke commentedthat it was ‘unlikely that it was intended for the mass of Louis’subjects’. As Norbert Elias commented on the court of Louis,and on courts in general, ‘The practice of etiquette is, in otherwords, an exhibition of court society to itself. Each participant,above all the king, has his prestige and his relative power posi-tion confirmed by others . . .The immense value attached to thedemonstration of prestige and the observance of etiquette does not

Jennifer Woodward, The Theatre of Death: The Ritual Management of Royal Funerals in Renais-sance England, – (Woodbridge, Boydell Press, ), p. .

Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, ed. John B. Thompson, trans. Gino Ray-mond and Matthew Adamson (Cambridge, Polity, ), p. .

Joseph Schull, ‘What is Ideology? Theoretical Problems and Lessons from Soviet-TypeSocieties’, Political Studies , (December ), – , p. .

Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV, p. .


betray an attachment to externals, but to what was vitally impor-tant to individual identity.’ Many of the rituals of kingship andits creation have been in this way, as David Cannadine remarks,‘unknown to or unobserved by the majority of the population’.

Architecture can be a powerful expression of such political factsand political aspirations. The character of capital cities, the style oftheir buildings and the construction of the spaces which link them,can forcefully express the claims of government. Chandigarh, thestate capital of the Indian Punjab, despite being part of a formaldemocracy, said more about the independent authority of rulersthan about the rights or participation of citizens, with ‘pedestrianresistant’ expanses of plaza. Brasılia, similarly, was constructedin a way which ‘effectively discouraged mass involvement’. AsMurray Edelman put it, ‘Settings not only condition political acts.They mold the very personalities of the actors.’ Space, and theguarding and marking of space, pronounced to those who couldenter or occupy the forbidden cities of government that they weremarked off from ordinary people. The very difficulty and compli-cation of reaching the king, or the president, or the prime minister,the layers of courts and courtiers through which it was necessary topass, proclaimed to those who were in the inner sanctum or whowere given access to it, how exceptional they were.

LEADERS AND IMMEDIATE FOLLOWERS

The persons exercising governing power can be variouslydescribed: as ruler or rulers, as governing elite, as the entire person-nel of the state. A frequent and useful distinction is that between therelatively small number of people who either directly or indirectlycommand the system of government, and the mass of the popula-tion.Weber, for instance, speaks of ‘the chief and his administrative

Norbert Elias,The Court Society, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Oxford, Blackwell, ), p. . Cannadine, ‘Introduction: Divine Rites of Kings’, p. . Lawrence J. Vale, Architecture, Power and National Identity (NewHaven: Yale University Press,

), p. . Ibid., p. . Murray Edelman, The Symbolic Uses of Politics (London, University of Illinois Press, ),

p. ; ‘We should expect, then, that a person’s values, style of life and of political action,and expectation of others’ roles would be shaped by his social setting, symbolic andnonsymbolic’, p. .


staff ’, and contrasts them with ‘subjects’, and though his examplesaremilitary – ‘bodyguards, Pretorians, “red” or “white” guards’ –the concept can apply equally to an administrative or bureaucraticelite. But a distinction can be made within a distinction, not onlybetween the ruling group and the ruled, but within the ruling groupbetween leader and immediate supporters and staff. In autocraticregimes where there are no settledmechanisms for changing rulers,and where such change will occur only through coup or rebellion,the boundaries between ruler and staff will blur. In representa-tive electoral systems with distinctive bureaucracies the distinctionwithin the governing elite will be clearer. Whilst the officials may,particularly at themost senior levels, be partisan appointments whochange when governments change in response to electoral choices,there will frequently be a larger or smaller relative number of offi-cials whose tenure is not dependent on the results of elections, whodisplay a degree of non-partisan neutrality, and whose loyalty isto an identity – professional, constitutional, national, professional,state – distinct from that of party.

But the distinction between ruler and immediate staff is equallyvalid for regimes formally governed by a single ruler. No one canrule alone, andgovernment is in all cases anactivity carriedout by atleast one hierarchy and frequently several overlapping hierarchiesof governors who, whatever their ostensible status as leaders, ad-ministrative staff, soldiers, or advisers, are all engaged in a commonenterprise. Whether the regime is representative and democratic,monarchic, or a one-party autocracy, rulers need to legitimatethemselves not only in their own eyes, but in the eyes of their imme-diate staff, whilst ruler and staff collectively need to legitimate them-selves to themselves. However the differentiation is applied, fouraspects of legitimationare observable.Rulers are legitimating them-selves in their own eyes; at the same time they are legitimating them-selves in the sight of their immediate supporters – administrators,advisers, military leaders; the governing community is legitimatingitself collectively in its own eyes; and the governing community islegitimating itself in the eyes of ordinary subjects. ‘When legitima-tion comes from the top’, Guiseppi di Palma argues, ‘the decisiveoperative relationship is not that between rulers and people, but

Weber, Economy and Society, p. .


that between rulers and Weber’s administrative staff – in commu-nist parlance, the cadres’. The point is similar to one made byT. H. Rigby, also talking about communist European systems ofgovernment before , when he writes that ‘even in cases wherethe system of rule is so assured of dominance that its claim to legiti-macy plays little or no part in the relationship between rulers andsubjects, the mode of legitimation retains its significance as the ba-sis for the relation of authority between rulers and administrativestaff and for the structure of rule’. The observation can be appliedequally to the case ofChina underMaoXedong, ofwhichFrederickTeiwes comments that ‘the acceptance of the leader’s legitimacy byhis high-ranking colleagues is the crucial factor for survival in Lenin-ist systems’. In regimes with ‘princes’ of one kind or another, theloyalty of courtiers is essential, and systematically cultivated, in away that that of ordinary subjects may not be. Nor are princesconfined to monarchies. The method of addressing Mao Xedongbore strong similarities to the method of addressing emperors, asthe prostrate prose of the defence minister addressing his leaderin illustrates: ‘I am a simple man . . . and indeed I am crudeand have not tact at all. For this reason, whether this letter is ofreference value or not is for you to decide. If what I say is wrong,please correct me.’

But whilst relations within the sphere of government may beof primary importance, distinctions within the sphere of govern-ment are conversely of far less significance than distinctions be-tween the community of governors and the rest of the popula-tion. If rulers and those immediate followers and administratorswho participate in their rule employ human mirrors for their self-creation, they provide those mirrors for each other as much as theyseek them amongst the mass of citizens, voters, or subjects. The Guiseppe Di Palma, ‘Legitimation From the Top to Civil Society: Politico-Cultural

Change in Eastern Europe’, World Politics , (October ), –, p. . T. H. Rigby, ‘Introduction: Political Legitimacy, Weber and Communist Mono-

organisational Systems’ in T. H. Rigby and Ferenc Feher (eds.), Political Legitimation inCommunist States (New York, St. Martin’s Press, ), p. .

Frederick C. Teiwes, Leadership, Legitimacy, and Conflict in China: From a Charismatic Mao to thePolitics of Succession (London, Macmillan, ), p. . Italics in the original.

At the court of Louis XIV, ‘for the courtiers, especially the higher nobility’ attendance atcourt was ‘virtually compulsory’, Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV, p. .

Teiwes, Leadership, Legitimacy, and Conflict in China, p. .


origins of the fusion of royal and saintly identities in a Westmin-ster Abbey which celebrated both Edward the Confessor and thePlantagenets lay ‘somewhere within the specific institutional circleswhich had nurtured the saint’s reputation in the first place, namelythe Benedictines of Westminster and, perhaps, the immediate cir-cle of the king. There never was, and never would be, a popularcult.’

But just as autocratic rulers can be at least as dependent in theirlegitimation on their administrative staff as representative ones, sorepresentative rulers, who because of their election might seem tohave less need to justify themselves, legitimate themselves withinthe secret garden of government as energetically as do princes anddespots. There may be less difference than at first appears betweenmonarchical and other absolute institutions of governments, anddemocratic, liberal, representative and constitutional ones. Itmightappear that the leadership of the latter is collective, that of theformer single or individual. But the solitary ruler is AlexanderSelkirk or King Lear, not a reigning monarch. There is a necessaryextension of even absolute rule beyond the immediate person of theking, president, or general, just as, by contrast, there is a contractionof democracy into the inner circle of the representative ruler. But, ineach case, legitimation is both collective and social, and individuallyexperienced.

LEADERS AND LED IN NATIONALISM

One instance which might seem seriously to qualify the claim thatrulers justify themselves to themselves as much if not more so thanthey do to or in the sight of those whom they rule, is providedby nationalist regimes. The leadership it might be argued justifiesitself continuously to its following, and its principal claim is that itrepresents that following. Legitimation is almost entirely exogen-ous rather than endogenous, there is little if any self-referentialjustification, and there is an overwhelming emphasis on the linkbetween the people and their leaders. It is a claim which has beensubject to severely sceptical review by, in different ways, Russell

Binski, Westminster Abbey and the Plantagenets, p. .


Hardin who speaks of parasitic leaders, and Aijiz Ahmad, whoargues that national and ethnic identity is a myth exploited by afew politicians and opportunists. There are good initial reasonsto be sceptical of the national or ethnic claim of leaders to speakfor a community of equals. As a form of legitimation, nationalismfamiliarly presents the leader, party, soldier, or revolutionary as therepresentative of the nation, the culture of the community or patriapolitically expressed.Nationalism seeks exceptional representativesof itsmundane virtues, and has a long history of fondness for heroes.EricHobsbawm comments onMiroslavHroch’s three-stagemodelof nationalism, where it is only in the third stage that the nationalistelite turns to and enlists the masses, that the ‘official ideologies ofstates andmovements are not guides to what is in the minds of eventhe most loyal citizens or supporters’. But one might reply thatthat indicates not so much the importance of the neglected people,as their relative unimportance.

There are two dimensions of elitism involved in nationalism.First, it is the elite which most fully represents the nation, whichexpresses its distinctive character more fully than do ordinary peo-ple. At a time of national danger or crisis, the nation’s interestsare frequently invested in one outstanding individual, to whosejudgements ordinary peoplemust defer.WhenW. J.M.Mackenziecommented of the subtitle of a book by Lucien Pye, Burma’s Searchfor Identity, that ‘“Burma” is in no position to search for an iden-tity unless it already has one’, the point was not, at least poten-tially, simply negative. ‘Burma’ may not have been searching foran identity, but somebody must have been. Princes and potentates,or publicists and politicians, stand in for fictional communities onsuch occasions.

Second, not only do an elite or a leader normally possess themagic symbols of nationalism, but the national message is directedwith especial force and articulacy to a minority. The greater thenumbers involved in its reception, the less frequently is the message Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (London, Verso, ), pp. –;

Russell Hardin, One for All: The Logic of Group Conflict (Princeton, NJ, Princeton UniversityPress, ).

Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since : Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge,), p. .

W. J. M. Mackenzie, Political Identity (Harmondsworth: Penguin, ), p. .


transmitted and the less its articulacy and complexity. This meansthat many of the standard accounts miss the point: nationalism isnot only expressive of the values of an elite, it expresses those valuesprincipally to an elite.

Is not this, however, simply an occasional feature of some nation-alisms, rather than a regular characteristic of all? Do not twentieth-century totalitarian regimes represent a different use of national-ism, aimed principally at the masses? Is this not one of the waysin which they differ from simple despotisms? Totalitarian regimeshave certainly directed a lot more propaganda at the masses thanhave other kinds of regime. But the employment of nationalistlegitimation for and within the elite is also, correspondingly, in-creased. It is not, in other words, the relative distribution of na-tionalist messages of legitimacy which is changed in such regimes,but the overall volume or amount of those messages. The nation-alist propaganda of Nazi Germany was considerable, and in somecases apparently specifically designed for mass consumption. LeniReifenstahl’s Triumph of the Will was not so much a film of a partyrally, as a film for which the rally was specifically stage managed.The organisation of the rally was a part of the creation of the film,and the ritual for the party elite was subordinated to the creation ofimages for mass consumption. But the closer one went to the heartof the Nazi regime, the greater the amount of time and effort thatwas spent on legitimation. Members of the SS spent far more timeon Nordic flummery than ever did the ordinary subject of NaziGermany. Totalitarian regimes were in this respect typical of afar wider spectrum of regimes. In even the most liberal and demo-cratic regimes, presidents spend a greater proportion of their time atformal, and closed, occasions of one kind and another – banquets,receptions, ceremonies, ritual tete-a-tetes with visiting dignitaries –than ever they do on walkabouts in the street or the supermarket.Totalitarian or populist nationalism is in this respect not so differentfrom democratic or constitutional versions. As the central symbolof English or British nationalism, the larger part of the rituals andceremonials in which the queen participates are relatively or com-pletely private. But since the queen is not a major political player,

Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power, pp. – .


these activities are significant as legitimation, not for her, but forothers on whom she confers, or mirrors, the dignity of office.

FORMS OF LEGITIMATION AND FORMS OF GOVERNMENT

One corrective to an impression of similarity in a ubiquitous self-legitimation by rulers is provided by Weber’s suggestion about therelation between the manner in which rulers legitimate themselvesand the manner of their rule. This frequently overlooked relation-ship is presented as organic rather than mechanical or evidentlycausal. It is of particular relevance at a time when worries are beingexpressed amongst political scientists about the legitimation of theEuropean Union, and the governance of the European Union isconsidered bymany to show serious flaws.Most such discussion hasbeen of the ways in which those subject to the government of theEuropean Union might be normatively persuaded to comply. Theproblem described has been how to legitimate subjecthood. Whathas not been considered is the importance of legitimation not forobedience or loyalty amongst citizens of the European Union, butin shaping, restraining, and sustaining the manner of governance.The question that is then raised is not, ‘Is the EuropeanUnion legit-imate?’ but ‘What is associated with the particular ways in which itlegitimates itself ?’ The EuropeanUnionCommission in the periodleading up to themass resignation of commissioners inMarch was not endogenously un-legitimated. But it was legitimated in away which sustained, and was sustained by, unaccountability, highself-regard which was not supported by any reference to polity, citi-zens, or representatives, secrecy and lack of publicity, and a largelyinwardly referring referential framework. ‘What is relevant is theimage one has about oneself, and about the policy one is mak-ing . . .That is what public interest is. Outside influences do notweigh (very much).’ In other words, in terms ofWeber’s observedoccurrence and function of legitimation, legitimation was in the ‘Official ’, quoted in Liesbet Hooghe, ‘Images of Europe’, p. ; cf. Helen Wallace,

‘Deepening and Widening: Problems of Legitimacy for the EC’, in Soledad Garcia (ed.),European Identity and the Search for Legitimacy (London, Pinter, ), p. : ‘Reforms weremade periodically to the EC and its institutions. These did add to the trappings ofdemocratic form, but marginally so, leaving the patrician and technocratic processespredominant.’


first place internal to government, not external. It was part of howgovernment was conducted, not part of the relations it had withthose whom it governed. But the manner of legitimation and thecharacter of government will be organically related.

THE FAILURE OF SELF-LEGITIMATION

Self-legitimation is necessary for rulers. The legitimation of theunique identity of governers, and the legitimation of governersby the enactment of their unique identity, is part of the contin-ual rationalisation of rule. When this fails, government fails, it infact ceases to be government. A range of instances of this can befound in studies of communist regimes in Eastern Europe bothin and before , which see the loss of confidence, the failureof self-justification of rulers, as the key element. Well before thecollapse, in , Joseph Rothschild argued that the importanceof the self-legitimation of ruling elites had been ignored: ‘Discus-sions of legitimacy and legitimation risk irrelevancy if they overlookthis crucial dimension of a ruling elite’s sense of its legitimacy andfocus exclusively on the other dimension of the public’s or themasses’ perceptions of that elite’s legitimacy.’ Five years beforethe events of , Paul Lewis was suggesting that ‘it is elite dis-integration and the failure of its internal mechanisms of authoritythat have engendered the more general collapse of legitimacy andthe onset of political crises in communist Eastern Europe’. Ina discussion of East Germany in , Martin McCauley wroteof ‘the self-defined or self-ascriptive legitimacy based on the writ-ings of Marx and Engels. If the umbilical cord linking the SEDto Marx were cut, the party would wither away.’ A similar viewwas expressed at the same time by Jan Pakulski who argued that‘Doctrinal consensus and the sense of legitimacy play a crucial

I have left aside here the question of whether, or in what sense, institutions such as theEuropean Union can be considered as governments.

J. Rothschild, ‘Observations on Political Legitimacy in Contemporary Europe’, PoliticalScience Quarterly , ( ), – , p. .

Paul G. Lewis (ed.), ‘Legitimation and Political Crises: East European Developments inthe Post-Stalin Period’ in Paul G. Lewis (ed.), Eastern Europe: Political Crisis and Legitimation,pp. – (London, Croom Helm, ), p. .

Martin McCauley (ed.), ‘Legitimation in the German Democratic Republic’ in Lewis(ed.), Eastern Europe, p. .


role in unifying elites and cementing the links between the leadersand the political-administrative apparata.’ With the collapse ofcommunist regimes across Eastern Europe in , Pakulski wasable to apply the general point to the Polish example: ‘Ideologicaldisintegration of the elite-apparatus and the loss of Soviet supportheralded the collapse of the regime and started a massive socialtransformation.’ Such accounts presented the events of asan internal failure, rather than principally the result of external,popular pressure. LeslieHolmes summed up the argument in retro-spect. ‘If the whole, or at least most of the key elements, of the eliteloses faith in what it is doing and in the very system it is supposed tomaintain – if there is near-universal collapse of self-legitimation –then the fourth form of legitimation crisis has occurred. In manyways, this concept provides one of the most important and persua-sive explanations of the collapse of communism.’

Such an account of the collapse of communist regimes in EasternEurope in departs from the democratic assumptions of muchpolitical science. There are two counter-narratives. The first, therelatively weaker response, argues that the loss of self-confidence inthe ruling elite was vital, but that the elite lost confidence only be-cause of popular protest. An interesting application of this insightcan be found in the discussion, though not in the arguments, of JanKubik, who suggests that the development of counter-legitimationsby opposition groups inPolandbefore facilitated the change ofpolicy by the communist ruling group. The second and strongerresponse is that the elite’s loss of self-confidence was nomore than aregistering of a notice of dismissal that had already effectively beendelivered by the people, so was of no consequence. A third, andsubtle, variant is the argument that the elite’s loss of confidencecan actually stimulate the development of counter-legitimations. Jan Pakulski, ‘Ideology and Political Domination: A Critical Re-appraisal’, International

Journal of Comparative Sociology , – ( ), – , p. . Jan Pakulski, ‘Poland: Ideology, Legitimacy and Political Domination’ in Nicholas

Abercrombie, Stephen Hill, and Bryan S. Turner (eds.), Dominant Ideologies (London,Unwin Hyman, ), p. ; cf. Jan Pakulski, ‘East European Revolutions and “Legiti-macy Crisis”’ in Janina Frentzel-Zagorska (ed.), From a One-Party State to Democracy, –(Amsterdam, Rodopi, ).

Leslie Holmes, Post-Communism: An Introduction (Cambridge, Polity, ), p. . Jan Kubik, The Power of Symbols against the Symbols of Power: The Rise of Solidarity and the Fall

of State Socialism in Poland (Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania State University Press, ).


Mancur Olson argues somewhat along these lines, not with re-spect to the mass of the population, but with respect to the middleand lower-range officials of the regime. If these arms and legs ofthe regime lose confidence in it, then the way is open for controlto evaporate. ‘Accordingly, when there is a successful insurrectionagainst an autocratic regime, I hypothesize that it is normally dueto the problems, divisions, irresolutions, or other weaknesses ofthe regime, not because of an increase in the animosity of thepopulation.’

The implications of these argumentsmight seem to be discourag-ing for democrats, though advocates of a broadly democratic theoryof legitimation such as David Beetham and Christopher Lord havegiven them guarded acknowledgement. But the discouragementis more apparent than real. Democratic protests were clearly an el-ement in the events of , and Di Palma has offered consolationto democrats by arguing that regimes which are self-legitimating,and which lack popular normative support, which are not demo-cratically legitimated, are uniquely vulnerable. What Di Palmacalls legitimation from the top is, he argues, a distinctive form oflegitimation, found in regimes which cannot convincingly claimthat they have emerged or been sustained as a result of democraticchoice. But a different observation is that legitimation from thetop is a feature of all regimes, not just of despotisms. There is then agradient of legitimation and identification, and the confidence, andthe crises of confidence, are more important the closer the heartof the activity of government is approached. If legitimacy is moreimportant for rulers than for subjects and citizens, so is the collapseof legitimacy. The failure or weakening of legitimation becomes Mancur Olson, ‘The Logic of Collective Action in Soviet-type Societies’, Journal of Soviet

Nationalities (Summer ), – , pp. –. Beetham and Lord, Legitimacy and the European Union, p. : ‘Analysts of political legiti-

macy fromMaxWeber onwards have argued about whether the recognition or acknowl-edgement of a regime’s legitimacy is only important to the behaviour of its elites oradministrative staff, rather than of subjects more widely. Naturally, any regime is particu-larly dependent on the co-operation of its own officials, and their acknowledgment of itsauthority is therefore especially important. Yet it is rare in the contemporary world forsubjects to be so powerless that a regime can dispense with anywider claims to legitimacy.’The use of the word ‘rare’ is a small qualification through which a major qualification ofthe argument could intrude.

Di Palma, ‘Legitimation from the Top to Civil Society’, pp. – . Ibid., pp. – .


more important the further up the institutional tree one climbs.All regimes are characterised by legitimation from the top, and allrulers therefore suffer when top-down legitimation, endogenousself-legitimation, fails. Legitimation and the collapse of legitima-tionmay affect the allegiance of subjects. It is crucial to the internalhealth and survival of ruling groups. The most serious legitimacycrisis for any group of rulers will be that which occurs, not amongstits subjects, but amongst its own ranks. Regimes can survive an ab-sence, failure or collapse of legitimation amongst their subjects.

They cannot survive a collapse of legitimation within the person-nel of government. When subjects lose faith in rulers, governmentbecomes difficult. When rulers lose confidence in themselves, itbecomes impossible.

IS LEGITIMATION A PRIVATE GAME?

If there is a form of legitimation carried on away from the publicgaze, and for the satisfaction of rulers rather than of subjects, isthis activity any more than a private game of government? Does ithave any consequences for either the way in which government isconducted or its impact on those who are ruled by it? The questionhas been raised in a related context by David Cannadine, when heasks of his own jointly edited collection of studies of royal ritual, ‘Butto what end? To say of pomp and pageantry that there has alwaysbeen a great deal of it about, and here are some more examples,albeit from unusually exotic locations, is not of itself particularlysignificant.’ There are two principal answers. The first is that anyactivity to which humans devote a regular and significant amountof attention is prima facie of importance for students of humansociety. Time, energy, and resources go on what, from a limited

J. Pakulski, ‘Legitimacy and Mass Compliance: Reflections on Max Weber and Soviet-Type Societies’, British Journal of Political Science, , (), –; Pakulski, ‘Poland’;J. Pakulski, ‘Ideology and Political Domination: A Critical Re-appraisal’, InternationalJournal of Comparative Sociology , – ( ), – ; N. Abercrombie and B. S. Turner,‘The Dominant Ideology Thesis’ in Anthony Giddens and David Held (eds.), Classes,Power, andConflict: Classical andContemporaryDebates (London, ); Abercrombie,Hill, andTurner (eds.), Dominant Ideologies; J. Rothschild, ‘Political Legitimacy in ContemporaryEurope’ in B. Denitch (ed.), Legitimation of Regimes: International Frameworks for Analysis(Beverley Hills, Sage, ).

Cannadine, ‘Introduction: Divine Rites of Kings’, p. .


perspective, is a non-functional aspects of government. But thejudgement of non-functionality is deductive not inductive. The rawmaterial, in such an instance, sets the perimeters of the enquiry,and not vice versa. The second answer is that since governmentis a game with public consequences, it matters very much how itis carried on, with what justifications, self-descriptions, and hopedfor or believed in identifications. Looking at government from thecentre outwards by focusing on endogenous legitimation, the self-legitimation of rulers, will not give a ‘correct’ account, nor will itsupersede ‘incorrect’ accounts, but it will add an extra dimension,and give a fuller, more rounded, description.

But however self-regarding the legitimation of rulers may be,they do not act alone. If they did so, they would not be rulers.The difference between a king in office and a king in exile is thatthe latter has no subjects. There are not only subjects, but mightysubjects who demand particular attention, and rebels who engagein a legitimation of their own, as well as ordinary subjects who arenever entirely excluded. Their relation to the legitimation of rulers,and their own identifications and legitimations will be consideredin the remaining chapters.

CHAPTER


CIRCLES AND HIERARCHIES

At the beginning of the twentieth century the reigning and rulingfamilies of Britain, Norway, Romania, Sweden, Germany, Greece,andRussia were all related by blood ormarriage. Amonarch in onecountry could look to the head of state in another and recognise atone remove or another, a cousin.Ahundred years later thingsmightseem to have been transformed. The disappearance of monarchyover much of the world has brought to an end the familial linksbetween governments. But the informal fraternity of the powerful,and their mutual sustaining of each other’s identities and status,has continued. And just as royal families had cousins both at homeand abroad in the form of mighty subjects and rulers of states, sonon-royal rulers engage in mutual legitimation with ‘cousins’ bothamongst their own subjects, and amongst the rulers of other states.Courts are not a monopoly of royalty, nor is a private world ofmutual identity confirmation the preserve of an aristocracy.

Legitimation by rulers for the confirmation of their own identityand authority is carried on in a series of concentric circles. It takesplace first at the centre, and for the benefit of the immediate ruleror rulers. Then it takes place at one remove from the centre, bothbetween ruler and staff, and amongst the staff themselves. Next ittakes place in an exchange between the ruling group as a whole orsome of its members, and the cousins, the members of the rulinggroups in other states and the mighty subjects who stand nearer tothe throne or the presidential palace than do ordinary subjects orcitizens, and at some distance from the street, the factory, or theforum. Finally, legitimation takes place between rulers and their


staff either collectively or individually, and more probably individ-ually, and subjects and citizens as awhole.At each stage out from thecentre it is likely to be carried out with less time, attention, energyand intensity, though at any stage the investment can be greaterthan a narrow utilitarian view would lead one to expect or couldobviously explain. And, at each stage, the legitimation is reciprocal.

Because legitimation confirms and cultivates identity, when gov-ernment legitimates itself in communication with cousins, the pres-tige of the cousins is enhanced at the same time. Because rulersseek to confirm their particular form of identity and prestige, theylegitimate themselves both downwards and sideways. This legiti-mation, which is both external, in communication with other statesand other rulers, and internal, in communication with the rulers’own mighty subjects, works to cultivate and sustain the identitiesof all parties to it.

INTERNAL COUSINS: ELITES

Rulers, in order to sustain and cultivate their own identity andauthority, sustain and cultivate not only their own but that of thosethey recognise as marked off from the mass of their subjects byidentities which attach them to both other individuals and groups,and raise them above them as leaders, representatives, and spokes-persons. This has been frequently depicted by those discussingthe powers and strategies of rulers as a means for them to legiti-mate themselves in the eyes of the whole body of those whomthey govern. Heisler and Kvavik comment that the ‘legitimation ofoutputs emanating from the decision-making sub-system is greatlyfacilitated by the cooptation of important groups or sectoral ac-tors (while the particular identities of such actors are sustained or

The support of significant others as described by Arthur Stinchcombe is thus a two-wayprocess. The significant others can benefit just as can rulers. Arthur L. Stinchcombe,Constructing Social Theories (New York, Harcourt Brace, ), pp. – , –.

The ‘leadership maintains its sense of self-confidence and legitimacy by engaging incontinuous efforts to gain the support of other individuals and groups wherever they maybe found inside or outside the territorial limits of a claimed territorial and supposedlynational or at least consensus-oriented jurisdiction’, Arthur J. Vidich, ‘Legitimation ofRegimes inWorld Perspective’ in Arthur J. Vidich andRonaldM.Glassman (eds.),Conflictand Control: Challenges to Legitimacy of Modern Governments, – (London, Sage, ),p. .


even reinforced, rather than challenged)’. This can involve eitherincorporation or delegation, whereby, ‘Authority to formulate andimplement public policy has been delegated in substantial degree tothe administrative subsystem which, in turn, has passed some of itsresponsibilities to the “private sector”.’ But a problem for such anaccount lies in the co-option of discrete groups. How can this assistlegitimation as an exchange between rulers and subjects?Why doesnot the seemingly privileged association of some persons with gov-ernment alienate everyone else? Particularly in democracies, whydoes not a special relationship with government for some, offendthe egalitarian expectations of the majority, especially if that rela-tionship not only rewards the distinctive identities of aminority, butleads to those identities being ‘sustained or even reinforced’? PhilipSelznick responds to this difficulty by arguing that such cooptionmust be concealed or at least veiled. ‘If adjustment to specific nu-cleuses of power becomes public, then the legitimacy of the formalauthority, as representative of a theoretically undifferentiated com-munity (the “people as a whole”), may be undermined. It thereforebecomes useful and often essential for such cooptation to remainin the shadowland of informal interaction.’ But the problem maybe one that is suggested by democratic expectations as much asby historical evidence. A contractual or representative democratictheory could lead to the expectation that government is at all times,or predominantly, representative of the whole people. Discretelegitimating or representative relations with particular groupswould infringe the principles incorporated in such a theory. Butit is less clear that in observable historical instances popular orwidespread disaffection or dissatisfaction arises from such varied,particular, and partial relationships. Further, the phrasing of the dif-ficulty assumes that the function of legitimation for governments isthe maintenance of support amongst ordinary subjects. But if thatis not the case, and if a significant feature of legitimation is the con-firmation and cultivation of the identity of rulers themselves, then

M. O. Heisler and Robert B. Kvavik, ‘Patterns of European Politics: The “EuropeanPolity” Model’ in M. O. Heisler (ed.), Politics in Europe: Structures and Processes in SomePostindustrial Democracies, – (New York, David McKay, ), p. .

Ibid., pp. –. Philip Selznick, ‘Cooptation: AMechanism forOrganizational Stability’ inR.K.Merton(ed.), Reader in Bureaucracy, – (Glencoe, IL, Free Press of Glencoe, ), pp. – .


the partial or select character of its legitimation dialogues has adifferent importance.

The reciprocal nature of the exchange is an aspect not just ofrelations between states and elites whose character and identity aregiven at the start of the relationship and unchanged by it, but of thedevelopment and formation of the identities of each side. Just asmonarchs can create aristocrats, so can governments call ‘cousins’into existence. Michael Saward comments that ‘co-optees are notalways drawn from“constituted” groups, and indeed . . . canbe cre-ated, incorporated and their leaders co-opted as barely separableparts of the same state action’. Cooption and endorsement by gov-ernment are aspects of a single process giving reciprocal advantagesand influencing reciprocal identities. Marc Raeff comments that

classes (in the Marxist sense of groups defined by their members’ role andinterests in the prevailing modes of production rather than by their socialstatus and function) were the result of the encouragement and stimulationprovidedby the initiatives of thewell-orderedPolizeistaat . By intervening inthe daily activities of its subjects and by fostering the maximum utilizationof all resources and creative energies, the absolutist state undermined theestate structure, on which it often relied in practice and promoted thedynamics of modernization and the formation of classes.

A similar function, though a deliberate rather than an almost acci-dental one, has been attributed to the state in its creation of propertyrights. Margaret Levi follows Douglass C. North in this, and quoteshim on the way in which rulers are to be observed ‘separating eachgroup of constituents and devising property rights for each so as tomaximize state revenue’.

Michael Saward, Co-optive Politics and State Legitimacy (Aldershot, Dartmouth, ),p. .

Marc Raeff, ‘The Well-Ordered Police State and the Development of Modernityin Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Europe: An Attempt at a ComparativeApproach’, American Historical Review (), .

DouglassC.North, Structure and Change in EconomicHistory (NewYork,W.W.Norton, ),p. , quoted inMargaret Levi,OfRule and Revenue (London, ), p. . Thework of Leviand of North is part of a wider insistence within political science that government shouldbe seen not only as active and initiating, but as influencing, shaping, and creating the soci-ety upon which it works. Patrick Dunleavy’s criticisms of Anthony Downs are thus part ofthis wider tradition, Patrick Dunleavy,Democracy, Bureaucracy and Public Choice: Economic Ex-planations in Political Science (Hemel Hempstead, Harvester Wheatsheaf, ), pp. –.The selling of shares in publicly owned enterprises by the Conservative governmentsin Britain between and can be seen as an attempt, amongst other things,


The cultivation by government of identities amongst its morepowerful subjects canbe informal or formal. Informal instances canfrequently fit Selznick’s model of tactical secrecy. Patrick Dunleavycomments on the secrecy which characterises dealings betweengovernment and selected businesses and organisations in rela-tionships whereby government ‘can offer favourable treatment tothe leading representative organisation and help to promote it asthe sole legitimate spokesman of the industry. In return, the De-partment gains a simplified external environment and demands“responsible conduct” from the interest group.’ A formal instance,involving incorporation and legal regulation is provided by the cul-tivation of professional identities. The development of professions,which has sometimes been presented as a competition for powerbetween private associations and the state, can be seen more con-vincingly as a collaborative, though negotiated and contested, re-lationship from which each party can benefit, and by which eachis shaped. One of the functions of professional organisations is toregulate entry into the occupation, and if they are to do that, theyrequire ‘institutions endowed with authority’ and the ‘most impor-tant source of that authority is the state’. But each side can gainfrom such development, and the history of both medicine and lawin the United Kingdom, and elsewhere, is one of the creation andcultivation and modification of professions in association with thereciprocally changing financial, administrative, and legislative pow-ers of government. In that association each side has its identity

to create or cultivate a group who saw themselves as investors with a stake in a marketeconomy, and for whom a Conservative government was thus compatible. The creationof a sense of identity as shareholders was to this extent of greater importance than theactual distribution of shares, and was not vitiated by the fact that a decreasing proportionof shares were in fact in private hands.

Patrick Dunleavy, ‘Quasi-governmental Professionalism: Some Implications for PublicPolicy-making in Britain’ in Anthony Barker (ed.), Quangos in Britain: Government and theNetworks of Public Policy Making (London, Macmillan, ), p. .

Margaret Brazier, Jill Lovecy, Michael Moran, and Margaret Potton, ‘Falling from aTightrope: Doctors and Lawyers Between the Market and the State’, Political Studies , ( June ), .

‘the professions are emergent as a condition of state formation and state formation is amajor condition of professional autonomy’, T. Johnson, ‘The State and the Professions:Peculiarities of the British’ in Anthony Giddens and G. Mackenzie (eds.), Social Class andthe Division of Labour: Essays in Honour of Ilya Neustadt, – (Cambridge, CambridgeUniversity Press, ), p. .


legitimated, not as a static and merely acknowledged status, but asan actively developed consciousness whose importance is not prin-cipally dependent on the publicity or otherwise of the legitimation,but on its simple enactment.

MUTUAL SUPPORT

The pattern of legitimation in which cousins and rulers sustainand cultivate their legitimating identities is similar in this respectto the wider patterning of social order and command. Feudalismprovides an intense example of a hierarchy where authority passeddown from one rank to the next, and where the rituals of allegianceand alliance confirmed the identity and status of each party. Thepatterns of legitimation exchange in a wide range of societies bothtold people who they were, and in so doing, told them how theywere distinguished from others. Norbert Elias comments on themembers of the ‘court society’ of the ancien regime that: ‘In their eti-quette, too, they did not come together for etiquette’s sake. To enacttheir existence, to demonstrate their prestige, to distance themselvesfrom lower-ranking people and have this distance recognized by thehigher-ranking – all this was purpose enough in itself. But in eti-quette this distancing of oneself from others as an end in itself finds itsconsummate expression.’ The progression of visitors to the royalpresence at Versailles was through a series of courts, vestibules, andcourtyards of increasing grandeur and remoteness. Each stage an-nounced and dramatised the identity of both parties. The grandeurof monarchic, as of totalitarian, courts, might seem to make thema case apart from other types of rule and rulers. But within the dis-tinguishing extravagance of the manner of expression is a far fromunique mode of identification and authorisation. The courts ofthe ancien regime and the utopian settlements of nineteenth-centuryindustrial philanthropy, for instance, shared functional parallels.Social order in the nineteenth-century model industrial townshipof Saltaire was reproduced, symbolised, and sustained by a patternof streets and houses with the manager at the centre, and each

Norbert Elias,The Court Society, trans. Edmund Jephcott (st edn ; Oxford, Blackwell,), pp. – .

Ibid.


street ordered by the corner-capping houses of the foremen. Thedistance of mighty subjects from ordinary citizens and subjects isas important for their cultivation and confirmation of their ownidentity as is their closeness to rulers and governors. Rituals of in-clusion and exclusion are a part of the conversation between rulersand cousins, by which the special identity of each is confirmed.

The rituals of death can be as effective as those of life in this re-spect, confirming the status of participants in a funeral procession,and marking them off from the bulk of ordinary subjects. And,in each case, since it is the difference from ordinary people thatis being celebrated, cultivated, and confirmed, the participation,presence, or even awareness of ordinary people is not a central oreven necessary part of the process.

THE PEOPLE ARE NOT THE PEOPLE

There is more interplay between governors and cousins than be-tween government and subjects, and even when rulers or heads ofstate appear to be engaging in a public cultivation of their iden-tity, the audience, even if numerous, can be anything but popular.Two celebratory nineteenth-century British paintings illustrate thepoint. Each shows a monarch visiting a part of the kingdom awayfrom London, and, apparently, meeting the people. Each showsthe monarch in the company of large numbers of non-royal per-sons. William IV is in a thronged square, Victoria on a dais facinga crowded assembly room. But closer attention shows that this isfar from the case. Paintings of William IV in Lewes, and Victoriaat the Imperial Exhibition in Glasgow, are each accompanied bycharts identifying those assembled around the monarch. In each

Pierre Bourdieu comments of the investiture ‘of a knight, Deputy, President of theRepublic, etc.’ that the ‘act of institution is thus an act of communication, but of aparticular kind: it signifies to someone what his identity is, but in a way that both expressesit to him and imposes it on himby expressing it in front of everyone . . . and thus informinghim in an authoritative manner of what he is and what he must be’: Pierre Bourdieu, ed.John B. Thompson, trans. Gino Raymond and A. Matthew, Language and Symbolic Power(Oxford, Polity, ), pp. , .

Jennifer Woodward, The Theatre of Death: The Ritual Management of Royal Funerals in Renais-sance England, – (Woodbridge, Boydell Press, ), p. .

A. Archer,The Visit of King William IV and Queen Adelaide to Lewes, October nd (Lewes,Lewes TownHall); Sir John Lavery, The State Visit of Her Majesty Queen Victoria to the GlasgowImperial Exhibition in (Glasgow, Scottish Royal National Concert Hall).


case, the crowd, or rather the company, consists of the local greatand good: members of the aristocracy, clergy, officials, notables ofone kind and another. And access to any wider public is difficultor barred by either the interior venue or the exterior barriers. Farfrom meeting the people, William and Victoria are meeting thevery top layer, the governing layer, of local society. It is a meetingof symbolic head of state, and cousins, not of rulers and subjects.Because what was happening on such an occasion was the culti-vation and affirmation of particular identities within a hierarchyof prestige, just as those who were present could feel assured intheir sense of their rightful place amongst the elite, so those whowere not present could feel excluded and affronted. Aworking-classmember of one of Cambridge’s friendly societies was offended thatrepresentatives of associations such as his were thought ‘not goodenough’ to take part in a church procession in celebration ofQueenVictoria’s Diamond Jubilee in .

David Cannadine comments on this aspect of nineteenth-century British royal relations as a peculiar feature of the periodwhen the monarchy was not held in particular esteem, and themeans of public display were decayed or disappeared. Royal ritual,he nicely puts it, ‘was not somuch a jamboree to delight themasses,but a group right in which the aristocracy, the church and the royalfamily corporately re-affirmed their solidarity (or animosity) behindclosed doors’. But such restricted involvement in the legitimationof rulers was not a feature only of monarchies in low times. Ordi-nary subjects of Louis XIV might catch glimpses of him in public,but they did so only if they took the trouble to do so. The effortsof royal propagandists were not directed at them, but at a smallminority of the population. But when the formal or informalrulers or exercisers of sovereignty come out onto the public stagein more flamboyant monarchic times, or in more democratic ones,this does not of itself decrease the importance of the private one. Elizabeth Hammerton andDavid Cannadine, ‘Conflict and Consensus on a Ceremonial

Occasion: The Diamond Jubilee in Cambridge in ’, Historical Journal , ( ),–, p. .

David Cannadine, ‘The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual: The BritishMonarchy and the “Invention of Tradition”, c. – ’ in Eric Hobsbawm andTerence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition, – (Cambridge, Cambridge Univer-sity Press, ), p. .

Peter Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV (New Haven, Yale University Press, ),pp. – .


An increase in public display does not by any means necessarilycomplement a decrease in private display. Nor is the public theprincipal beneficiary or audience of either.

NATIONAL GROUPS, ETHNIC GROUPS, AND ELITES

The role of elites, of cousins, in maintaining regimes in power byeither positive support or negative lack of opposition has been fre-quently documented. Mary Fulbrook, in discussing the history ofWeimar Germany, observes that when ‘elites fail to sustain thatsystem – as in theWeimar Republic – it has little chance of success.When elites condone it, or acquiesce in it – however apparentlyunjust the systemmay be – then it has less chance of being broughtdown by internal unrest.’ The type of ‘cousins’ whom rulerslegitimate and in interaction with whom they are legitimated willdiffer according to the kind of society being governed. Wherecivil society is repressed, or the kinds of associations that wouldconstitute it are incorporated or formalised by law or bureau-cracy or dominant party organisation, the ‘cousins’ will be cor-respondingly formalised. But they will still be ancillary to theactual governing groups, anddistinguishable from them. InEasternGermany before reunification, the Communist Party provided justsuch a formalisation of civil society, and its Central Committeeperformed functions analogous to those performed by presenceat court in a monarchy. Membership was ‘an emblem of hav-ing arrived’. There was a mutual exchange of acknowledge-ment, or mirroring, of self-estimations, and membership ‘reflectsthe top leadership’s view of its own future composition but alsoconcessions to the importance of different intraparty groups. Inproviding such group representation, it is a critical instrument ofinner-party legitimacy.’ Societies with a less formally regulatedstructure, and characterised by ethnic, cultural, or religious plu-ralism will have their own distinctive cousins. But all such groups,

Mary Fulbrook, The Divided Nation: A History of Germany, – (Oxford, OxfordUniversity Press, ), p. .

Thomas S. Baylis, The Technical Intelligentsia and the East German Elite: Legitimacy and SocialChange under Mature Communism (Berkeley, University of California Press, ), p. .

Ibid., p. .


like rulers themselves, are likely to aspire to govern, whilst claim-ing to represent, those whom they define as their community orconstituency. And all such groups, in making these claims, areopen to the criticism that simultaneously to claim to represent agroup or community, and to be distinguished from it by skill, ad-vocacy, piety, or whatever quality, is to create a contradiction, ofthe kind that Gramsci attempted to resolve with the notion of the‘organic intellectual’. As Jon Lawrence has argued in an exam-ination of radical, socialist and labour politics in late nineteenthand early twentieth-century Britain, the organic activist, ‘indistin-guishable in every respect from his or her fellow workers’, was ‘nomore thana romantic illusion; “representation”necessarily involvesexclusion’.

Thus the claims to identity and authority made on behalf ofethnic or cultural groups will seek to increase the influence whichthe leaders of those groups have over the community’s membersor claimed members. Karl Renner, speaking of nationalism as aself-ascribed status, could equally well have been talking of ethniccultural, or other forms of group identity. It was, he wrote, ‘freelychosen, de jure, by the individual who has reached the age of ma-jority, and on behalf of minors, by their legal representatives’. Itis not only with regard to minors that such patriarchal assump-tions are made. It is for that reason that the state is so valuableto all manner of leaderships and aspirant leaderships. For whilst itmay be true, as Hobsbawm puts it when speaking of nationalism,that ‘nationalism comes before nations’, he goes on to insist that

AntonioGramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, ed. and trans.QuintinHoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (London, Lawrence and Wishart, ); James Joll,Gramsci (London, Fontana/Collins, ).

Jon Lawrence, Speaking for the People: Party, Language and Popular Politics in England –(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, ), p. .

Karl Renner, Synopticus, Staat und Nation (Vienna ), pp. ff. quoted in EricHobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since : Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge,Cambridge University Press, ), p. .

There is a conflict in contemporary discussion of cultural diversity between a tolerantpluralism which acknowledges the specificity of individual identity, and one which seesindividuals as the bearers of group identity. Some of the problems of this are interestinglydiscussed byK. AnthonyAppiah, ‘Identity, Authenticity, Survival:Multicultural Societiesand Social Reproduction’ in Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism: Examining The Politics ofRecognition, ed. and introducedbyAmyGutman, nd edn (Princeton, PrincetonUniversityPress ), p. .


‘states and nationalisms’ make nations. The state, in other words,as an active and coercive institution, is essential to the creation ofa nation, because of the exercise of cultural power or power overculture to which nationalism aspires and for which the state is itsinstrument.

But this special place of elites in the various forms of legitimationis found in both nationalist and ethnic or cultural politics. The stateis necessary to nationalism, but has too a vital role to play in thepolitical identity of ethnic groups. The sustenance in their legitima-tion which rulers may gain by being seen as expressing the valuesof those whom they govern is not a one-way process. And whateverthe differences between ethnic and national minorities, their rela-tionship with the rulers is in this respect the same. In respondingto national or ethnic minorities, rulers must find, or create, rep-resentatives who can speak for and thus also to an extent control‘their’ communities. By seeking to sustain their own legitimationby alliances with national and ethnicminorities, rulers unavoidablyconfer status on and even create leaders and representatives, and atthe same time contribute to the defining, sustaining, and creationof national and ethnic minorities. In sustaining or increasing theirlegitimation by their association with the representatives of groupsof whatever kind within their territories, rulers at the same timeincrease or even confer the authority of those representatives bothin their relations with other representatives of other groups, and intheir dealings with those whom they claim to represent. Governorshave an essential role in creating ethnic identities by recognisingand sanctioning representatives and leaders – the national/ethnicaspect of corporatism. The place of central control within corpo-ratism is not therefore a unique feature of its fascist form. Anydealings by rulers with the representatives of groups or communi-ties assists those representatives not just in speaking for others, but

Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since , p. . I am aware that a distinction is made between cultural nationalism and civic nation-

alism, and that what I am describing here is the former. In everyday language, how-ever, the term nationalism usually refers to this first form. I do not intend to dismisscivic nationalism by omission, but rather to leave it on one side as a rather special,if valuable, form of nationalism which does not bear directly on the subject of thisdiscussion.


in speaking to them and controlling and defining them. When theeast London socialist, trade unionist, and MP, Will Thorne, spokeof ‘my people’, the phrase conveyed ‘the sense both of “my folk”and of “my subjects”’.

Even when they recognise other communities than those fromwhich they themselves traditionally spring, rulers recognise themin the persons of those who come closest to their own conceptionof order. In most countries this means they choose the patriarchs.So rulers, in dealing with groups within their territories, create andassist the power of elites. Nationalism and cultural pluralism hasas one of its important aspects the claim to power over its alleged‘constituents’ by an elite. Both nationalists and ethnic minoritiesseek political power, and though this will be presented as poweragainst an unrepresentative state, it will also be a claim to powerover those who are seen by the national or cultural elite as part of‘their’ community. This claim can be surprisingly intrusive. This ismost obviously so within the private sphere of sexuality and genderrelations, where it most frequently involves the claim of males tolay down the rules which should govern the conduct and aspira-tions of women and children, the distribution of power and statuswithin the family and the church, and the forms of education andaspiration appropriate for males and females. This seems to bethe direction in which Islamist Muslims in the United Kingdomare moving, and in which churches of all faiths have frequently

There is a substantial discussion within political theory over this aspect of pluralism, andabout power within groups and associations. See, for instance,Will Kymlicka,MulticulturalCitizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford, Oxford University Press, ); WillKymlicka (ed.), The Rights of Minority Cultures (Oxford, Oxford University Press, );David Nicholls, The Pluralist State: the Political Ideas of J. N. Figgis and His Contemporaries, ndedn (London, Macmillan, ); Rodney Barker, ‘Pluralism, revenant or recessive?’ inJ. Hayward, Brian Barry and Archie Brown (eds.), The British Study of Politics in the TwentiethCentury (Oxford, Oxford University Press, ).

Lawrence, Speaking for the People, p. . It is exactly this problem which has been the basis for criticisms of pluralism as a basis

for constitutional representation. Who is to determine what is a group? I have used the term ‘Islamist’ rather than ‘fundamentalist’, the deficiencies of which

have been widely pointed out. ‘Islamist’ indicates a desire to extend the prescriptions offaith into law and the coercive regulation of social and individual life. It is used in thissense by Fred Halliday, ‘The Politics of Islam: A Second Look’, British Journal of PoliticalScience , ( July ).


moved. Thus, despite talk of a ‘Muslim Parliament’, the enterpriseenvisaged appears to have as much aspiration to control citizens,as to influence the state. So Gilles Kepel argues that the protestsin Yorkshire over the publication of Salman Rushdie’s novel TheSatanic Verses was a deliberate attempt by the local Muslim imamsboth to increase their influence with government and, by so do-ing, to increase their power within their own communities. In ad-dition, their concern over The Satanic Verses was that in so far asRushdie could be seen as havingMuslim origins, the book, and theauthor, represented a dangerous example of an escape from com-munity control: ‘They had set themselves a precise aim: to establishthemselves more firmly as intermediaries who could demand, asthe price of social peace, concessions that would strengthen theircommunal position.’

EXTERNAL COUSINS: STATES

AND INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS

The German Reich Chancellery built in for Adolf Hitlercreated great distances and transitions from space to space whichhad to be traversed in order to reach the Fuhrer’s office. CharlesGoodsell has pointed to the role of theChancellery as a use of grandspaces to impress visitors. But those visitors were not the public,the people, the subjects, but cousins of one kind and another, par-ticularly foreign cousins, ambassadors, ministers, and politicians.

The proposal in the late summer of was for a bi-cameral assembly, with a represen-tative lower house of around and an upper house composed of wealthy businessmenand professionals. One of the stated aims of such a body would be to give Muslims thekind of power or influence, the lack of which had prevented them securing the ban-ning of The Satanic Verses, The Glasgow Herald ( September , p. ). Subsequently, inthe autumn of , representatives of the Muslim Parliament commented publicly onthe dispute arising from the proposed vaccination of children against measles, follow-ing the recommendation of the headmaster of Ampleforth, a private Roman Catholicboarding school, that because products from aborted foetuses had been used at stages ofthe production of the vaccination, Roman Catholic boys, but not Roman Catholic girls,should refuse vaccination.

Gilles Kepel, The Revenge of God: The Resurgence of Islam, Christianity and Judaism in the ModernWorld (Cambridge, Polity, ), p. .

Charles Goodsell, The Social Meaning of Civic Space: Studying Political Authority through Archi-tecture (Lawrence, University Press of Kansas, ), p. .


Whilst rulers affirm their own identity and authority in theirexchanges with internal, domestic cousins, they do so to an equalor greater extent with their governing peers, the rulers of otherstates. The meetings between Hitler and representatives of othergovernments, whether they were potential allies whom he wishedto encourage, or possible enemies whom he wished to intimidate,were carefully and massively stage managed. Foreign relations arepeer relations and have as one of their essential components theexchange of esteem, and the confirmation and cultivation of iden-tity. But when Goodsell comments on the rituals conducted in civicspace that their ‘formalistic, solemn format reminds those whoare present of the grand and even mysterious compulsion of stateauthority’, it is well to remember that even though the audi-ence is likely to be small and select, the principal performer ismore involved in the ceremony than any of them. Peter Burke hassuggested that the presentation of Louis XIV, similarly, had threeaudiences: posterity, the upper classes of France, and foreigners.

But the ritual progressions which had filled the huge stage whichwas the Palace of Versailles did not depart with the ancien regime asthe theatricals of the Berlin Chancellery show. In the Soviet Union,the reception of an ambassador was as choreographed as anything years earlier, but was typical of rituals across a broad swathe ofregimes where the elite of one regime had their importance con-firmed by the elite of another. From the arrival of the ambassador,the officials who will speak, what they will say, on which side, left orright, they will stand, at what point they will appear, or disappear,were minutely set down. An order was prescribed for the presenta-tion of credentials, the making of formal speeches, the welcomes,the handshakes, the moment of bowing, and the degree to whichthe head, in such a gesture, would be lowered. Rulers habituallyseek to impress those whom they regard as their peers with theirown authority, and in so doing, confirm their own beliefs in theirunique identity. It is not a form of legitimation which is restricted

Ibid., p. . Burke, Fabrication of Louis XIV, p. . Thomas M. Franck, The Power of Legitimacy Among Nations (New York, Oxford University

Press, ), pp. –.


to monarchies or despotism. It may be expressed with jesters andjousting as when Henry VIII of England met Francis I of France atthe Field of the Cloth of Gold in , or with the presentation ofturkeys by President Eisenhower to a visiting Premier Khrushchevto illustrate the fecundity of American agriculture. The function ismuch the same.

Thomas Franck has argued that legitimating exchanges in in-ternational relations are the pure form of legitimacy, since thereis no coercive context or sanction for laws or commands. Hedescribes a mutually legitimating relationship between the UnitedNations and individual states analogous to that which exists be-tween national rulers and powerful groups or individuals withintheir own communities: ‘The U.N., in voting to admit a new mem-ber, symbolically validates the status of a new state. At the sametime, however, the U.N. manifests, and so reinforces, its own au-thority to bestow status by institutional acts of authentication.’ Forthe Eastern European communist leaderships in the years leadingup to , the approval of rulers of the Soviet Union provided apowerful confirmation of their governing roles, so that ‘the leadersmight still believe in their own right to rule because of direct orindirect external support, even though they are aware of their un-popularity and lack of authority among their own population’.

In Poland, the role of Marxism-Leninism as justificatory ideologyfor the leadership was thus crucial, not only in giving them an ac-count of themselves, but in sustaining and mirroring that accountin the eyes of the Soviet backers, ‘in legitimizing the rulers in theeyes of their crucial external constituency – the Soviet leaders’.

Sydney Anglo, Images of Tudor Kingship (London, B. A. Seaby, ), pp. –; SydneyAnglo, ‘The Hampton Court Painting of the Field of the Cloth of Gold’, The AntiquariesJournal (), – .

Franck, The Power of Legitimacy Among Nations. Ibid., p. ; cf. Michael N. Barnett, ‘Bringing in the New World Order: Liberalism,

Legitimacy, and theUnitedNations’,World Politics , ( July ), – ; Inis Claude,Jr, ‘Collective Legitimization as a Political Function of the United Nations’, InternationalOrganization (), –.

Leslie Holmes, Post-Communism: An Introduction (Cambridge, Polity, ), p. . Jan Pakulski, ‘Poland: Ideology, Legitimacy and Political Domination’ in Nicholas

Abercrombie, Stephen Hill, and Bryan S. Turner (eds.), Dominant Ideologies (London,Unwin Hyman, ), p. ; cf. Jan Pakulski, ‘East European Revolutions and “Legiti-macy Crisis” ’ in Janina Frentzel-Zagorska (ed.), From a One-Party State to Democracy, –(Amsterdam, Rodopi, ).


But legitimation is not to be understood only as a servant of power,or if it is the servant, it is the domestic chaplain not the secre-tary or the estate manager. The denial of appropriate recognitionby other rulers can be the cause of intense unease or resentment,and whether from addiction to the pleasures of the knowledge ofpower, or from a need for the confirmation through legitimationof one’s own governing identity, any apparent failure to accordproper recognition to what is perceived by one set of rulers astheir status can lead to resentment, grievance, and complaint. Sothe rulers of the Ottoman Empire ‘found themselves increasinglyobliged to assert their legitimate right to existence as a recognisedmember of the concert of Europe’, and protested when it was feltthat the Egyptian delegation was being given precedence at QueenVictoria’s jubilee celebrations. Their competitive desire for equalstatus would have been familiar in seventeenth-century Swedenengaging in self-assertive war, or in ancient Rome, where am-bassadors from German tribes, feeling themselves similarly over-looked, were reported to have taken unilateral action to sit in theseats assigned to thosewhose equals theywished to be considered.

Like the rulers of nation-states, the principal actors in interna-tional or transnational institutions which exercise functions of gov-ernment, legitimate themselves both within the community of theirimmediate colleagues, or in communication with their cousins. Inthe legal relations between states, ‘law provides us not only witha means of adjudicating between right and wrong, but also witha way through which identities can be established, recognized,and developed’. Similarly, in the institutional relations within

Power can be its own reward, and the satisfaction of knowing one exercises it an au-tonomous source of pleasure or well-being. Robert E. Lane, ‘Experiencing Money andExperiencing Power’ in Ian Shapiro and Grant Reeher (eds.), Power, Inequality, and Demo-cratic Politics: Essays in Honour of Robert A. Dahl (Boulder and London, Westview Press,).

Selim Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the OttomanEmpire, – (London, I. B. Tauris, ), pp. , –.

Erik Ringmar, Identity, Interest and Action: A Cultural Explanation of Sweden’s Intervention in theThirty Years War (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, ).

The incident is quoted by Thomas Franck from the account of Alberico Gentili, Franck,Power of Legitimacy Among Nations, p. .

Erik Ringmar, ‘The Relevance of International Law: A Hegelian Interpretation of aPeculiar Seventeenth Century Preoccupation’, Review of International Studies (),–, p. .


organisations such as the European Union, there is a process thatHelen Wallace describes as ‘indirect legitimation via the politicalsystems of the member states’. David Beetham and ChristopherLord similarly discuss the way in which the EUmay be legitimated‘only indirectly via the political and administrative officials of itsmember states’.

Like any other political body exercising jurisdiction, international institu-tions require justification in terms of the purposes or ends they serve,whichcannot be met by other means, in this case by nation states themselves,or at the individual state level . . .Yet such justifications rarely percolateout beyond a narrow elite group; nor do they need to, it could be argued,since these institutions are not dependent on the cooperation of a widerpublic to effect their purposes. It is not the direct cooperation of ordinarycitizens that is required to maintain the authority of the UN, of GATT, ofNATO, etc., but that of the member states and their officials; and it is forthe behaviour of these alone, therefore, that considerations of legitimacyare important.

The qualification added by the use of the word ‘rarely’ opens theway to a much larger revision of both the general account, and theassessment of the relative roles of the political actors. Arthur Vidichhad much earlier argued that in such circumstances ‘the connec-tion between legitimacy and consent or democracy breaks downcompletely’. But it is clear from such accounts of the EuropeanUnion that, whatever conclusions may be drawn in normative the-ory from such activities, there is a legitimation taking place whichis endogenous and self-legitimating, rather than democratic orcontractual.

Observing the high importance which is attached to the ritualsand procedures of legitimation within the closed world of interna-tional cousins, students of politics and international relations havesuggested various explanations for this investment of time and ef-fort. The rites of legitimation, it has been suggested, are symbols,representing the reality of a state’s existence. Clearly, rites which are

Helen Wallace, ‘Deepening and Widening: Problems of Legitimacy for the EC’ inSoledad Garcia (ed.), European Identity and the Search for Legitimacy (London, Pinter, ),p. ; Beetham and Lord, Legitimacy and the European Union (London, Longman, ),p. .

Beetham and Lord, Legitimacy and the European Union, p. . Vidich, ‘Legitimation of Regimes in World Perspective’ in Vidich and Glassman (eds.),

Conflict and Control, p. .


wholly out of accord with other realities will not function. ThomasFranck cites, in , the uniform of an admiral in the Serbiannavy: the trappings of office in a non-existent state, and a territorywith no access to the sea. The symbols serve, argues Franck, ‘incueing a government’s entitlement to the full range of rights andprivileges that come with peer status’. Clearly, there are practicaladvantages to be gained from international approval. Describingthe assertion of the political and religious identity of James I andVI in Stuart court sermons, Lori Anne Ferrell lists among theselective audience ‘privy councillors, court hangers-on, continentalobservers, university scholars, and British clerics’. The ‘conti-nental observers’ were not there out of mere theological curiosity.And the changing attitudes of world rulers towards the rulers ofSouth Africa, as David Black and Audie Klotz have argued, firstlegitimated and then de-legitimated Afrikaner nationalism in away which had practical consequences. But the other examplesof diplomatic and inter-state ritual which Franck gives illustrateforcefully that such rituals cannot be reduced tomere symbols. Therituals and the identities which they cultivate and confirmare them-selves an important part of the ‘rights and privileges that comewith peer status’. And whilst no benefit or good can be depictedin total isolation from any other which a person may enjoy, it isas plausible to describe access to material benefits and services asassisting the cultivation and confirmation of legitimating identity,as vice versa. Franck does not go quite this far, though his argu-ment suggests such a resolution. Recognition, he argues, ‘is of greatpractical significance to the beneficiary – in getting the mail deliv-ered, a loan advanced or repayed, etc. – and may well be guidedby such utilitarian considerations. However, these acts of validationhave additional symbolic dimension. By using symbolism tactically,they help the new entity consolidate its authority.’ But unless‘authority’ is to be reduced to a mere means of getting the post Franck, The Power of Legitimacy Among Nations, pp. – . Ibid., p. . Lori Anne Ferrell, Government by Polemic: James I, the King’s Preachers, and the Rhetorics of

Conformity, – (Stanford, Stanford University Press, ), p. . David Black and Audie Klotz, International Legitimation and Domestic Political Change: Im-

plications for South African Foreign Relations (Bellville, University of Western Cape, ),pp. –.

Franck, The Power of Legitimacy Among Nations, p. . The point is made in a more util-itarian fashion by M. J. Peterson: ‘As long as new regimes need recognition, and other


delivered and the loan advanced, it is desirable in itself as theconfirmation of sovereign identity.

CONCLUSION

The relation between rulers and the leaders of powerful groups isoften represented as either power negotiation, or corruption, orclass rule. Recognition by other states has clear financial, military,and political advantages, giving access to organisations which canconfer trading, diplomatic, or financial services. But it fulfils anotherfunction as well. As Inis Claude comments of the self-presentationsof statesmen, ‘it is a political judgment by their fellow practition-ers of international politics that they primarily seek’, above that ofeither legal opinion or domestic opinion. If the cultivation andconfirmation of the authoritative identity of rulers, their legitima-tion, is conducted to a significant degree in communication withcousins, both internal and external, the approval of those cousinshas an importance for rulers which is distinct from any materialrewards or sanctions they may have at their disposal. It is a coinwhich is valued for itself as well, as an important component ofthe action of ruling. It cultivates and sustains the identities of thoseinvolved. It is a mutual exchange of Christmas cards.

governments’ recognition decisions are not so predetermined by application of legal rulesthat they become matters of routine, governments can exploit a new regime’s need ofrecognition for policy ends by withholding recognition unless or until the new regimedoes certain things’,M. J. Peterson,Recognition of Governments: Legal Doctrine and State Practice, – (Basingstoke, Macmillan, ), p. .

Claude, Jr, ‘Collective Legitimization’, pp. , .

CHAPTER


It is not only the fortunate with a need to justify their good for-tune who legitimate their governing identities. The legitimation ofthose aspiring to be fortunate is at least as important, and rebelslegitimate themselves as vigorously as do rulers. Aspiration is lesstangible than achievement, and a conviction of one’s own author-ity can have a relatively greater role in the identity of someonewho, waiting on the success of rebellion, lacks armies, palaces, orgovernment offices, and has little more than a belief in their ownauthority to sustain them. Nor is such legitimation restricted tothose rebels who challenge existing government in its entirety byaiming for control of the state. Those vigilantes who seek by coer-cive direct action against other subjects or citizens to appropriatesome of the functions of government by compelling others to actin accordance with their own political, religious, cultural or moralbeliefs, will engage in a corresponding legitimation of themselvesas the proper exercisers, in a bespoke manner, of governmentalpower. For rebels and vigilantes alike, self-legitimation, by the cul-tivation and creation of distinctive identity, is a defining aspect oftheir political activity. In legitimating themselves in this way, theyare defining themselves as set apart from those whom they aspireand claim to lead, govern, or represent.

REBELS ARE NOT NECESSARILY DEMOCRATS

There are normally two contrary aspects to rebellion. On the onehand, a challenge is laid down to the existing regime, and a rangeof existing values is rejected. But, on the other, the self-legitimationof rebels is likely to be in all manner of ways a mirror image of


the legitimation of those whom the rebels seek to overthrow. Thecredentials of the existing rulers will be challenged or dismissed.But this is unlikely to be solely because they have defaulted on somecommon contract. They will be rejected as the wrong people, or asoccupying positions which rightly belong to others. Writing of themaquis fighting against theGerman occupation in southern Franceduring the Second World War, H. R. Kedward comments on theway in which the legitimations of the Vichy rulers were appropri-ated, mirrored, or trumped: ‘There were inversions at every turnof the Resistance, and in every act of the maquis. The national andpatriotic aim of driving out the occupier, which stood at the fore-front of all Resistance motivation, produced more than symbolicinversions of occupation when the maquis “occupied” Oyonnax,Cajarc, Lasalle, and many other villages and small towns, well inadvance of the process of liberation.’ ‘The entiremaquis discourse,as a distinctive part of wider Resistance assertion, inverted the no-tion of legality and proclaimed the rightness and legality of revolt.The Chantieres de la Jeunesse were replaced by the “maquis desjeunes” as the rightful uniformed presence of young men in thecountryside’; ‘The cult of the venerable Petain as the “Chef ” withinstinctual charisma, was not just abandoned; it was inverted inthe oppositional cult of the maquis chef, of the instinctual author-ity of the young leader for whom many maquisards would, anddid, give up their lives.’ The members of the resistance developeda counter and combatant patriotism to that of right-wing politi-cal and social theorist and propagandist Charles Maurras, whosewritings in L’Action Francais attacked foreigners and outsiders. Theydepicted instead a broader and more civilised nationalism whichincluded those whom Vichy sought to exclude.

Those who challenge an existing government are likely not sim-ply to reject or dismiss the legitimation claims of existing rulers, butto legitimate themselves with claims drawn from or attuned to thevalues of their own society, and from the governing legitimations of

H. R. Kedward, In Search of the Maquis: Rural Resistance in Southern France, –(Oxford, Oxford University Press, ), p. .

Ibid., pp. –. Ibid., p. . Ibid.


that society. As Dolf Sternberg put it, ‘attempts to clothe a usurp-ing power with legitimacy, whether successful or not, have oftenrevealed what the standards of legitimacy are for a given societyor civilization’. Communists may challenge the predominant val-ues of capitalism, but not those of democracy, and have frequentlyused with great success the values of nationalism and patriotism. Indemocratic societies, or societies where democratic values or aspi-rations play a major part, legitimation is likely to involve referenceto some form of popular sovereignty, just as in societies where ruleis legitimated by divine right or human succession, legitimationwill be contested in terms of divine sanction or heredity. And whatabove all rebels normally share, whether their claims are cast inelitist or populist terms, is their attention to the satisfaction of theirown sense of authority, in their own eyes. So even if the claim ofthe rebels is expressed in democratic terms, it can be illuminat-ing to enquire what the function of the democratic argument is,and how it contributes to identifying and legitimating the rebels.Patrick O’Neil argues, of the overthrow of the communist regimeinHungary in , that the revolution ‘was the result of a peacefultransition fromwithin and of the Communist party by intellectuals,marginalised after the reform response which followed , butwho were finally able to assert themselves in favour of a form ofsocial democracy’. The rhetoric was democratic, but it served tojustify the particular position of a new elite, and, paradoxically, todefine their distinction from the mass of citizens. Self-descriptionand self-justification thwarted or ignored, was succeeded by self-description and self-justification vindicated.

Nationalist and other revolutionary politics is for these reasonsnormally best seen as a politics of rebellion rather than of revolu-tion. What is being offered is an alternative government, not analternative to government. ‘It’s our country, not theirs’, as one na-tionalist republican put it when talking of Protestants in NorthernIreland, is not necessarily a democratic claim. The activities of

Dolf Sternberg, ‘Legitimacy’ in David L. Sills (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of theSocial Sciences, vol. IX, pp. – (New York, Free Press, ), p. .

Patrick H. O’Neil, ‘Revolution from Within: Institutional Analysis, Transitions fromAuthoritarianism, and the Case of Hungary’, World Politics , ( July ).

Kevin Toolis, Rebel Hearts (London, Picador, ), p. .


rebels frequently serve to cultivate and confirm their own authorityto rule. Each side justified its violence both by giving an accountof itself as defender of its community, and by depicting an enemywhich threatens that community. The Provisional IRA presenteditself as the police force of its community, whilst Protestant violencewas justified, particularly in response to the Anglo-IrishAgreement, on the grounds that its perpetrators were the onlytrue defenders of law and the constitution. Defenders of the con-stitution, existing or hoped for, are by definition marked off fromordinary subjects and citizens. A member of the Provisional IRAreported that: ‘We got a big buzz out of the arms training. I cameback with my chest sticking out – “Big Man!” I should have had asticker printed on my forehead – “TOPMANNOW!”’ It was notonly the necessary secrecy of an insurgent terrorist organisationthat kept this sticker off the forehead. The knowledge, howeverhumorous, that it could be there, was a satisfaction in its own right,as was the knowledge that one was marked off from the ordinarycrowd.

The rhetoric and rituals of nationalism give a central place to therulers in waiting, the heroes of the nationalist challenge. The mostapparently democratic or populist claims can rely on this featureof the politics of rival legitimation. George Orwell, making a casefor popular revolution in dialogue with the anti-elitist argumentsof American Trotskyism, could nonetheless present the alternativesfor Britain in the war years as either Winston Churchill or StaffordCripps. Even for revolutionary democrats, the choice was not be-tween rulers’ power and people’s power, but between a leader whowas depicted as sharing an identity with the people, and one whowas depicted as more closely associated with the old ruling class.

The legitimation of rebels by appeals to transcendent principles ofreligion or morality is essentially similar. For those who conceive ofIslam or Christianity or Hinduism as the sole basis for governingauthority, the justification is readily available for their own special

Alan Bairner, ‘The Battlefield of Ideas: the Legitimation of Political Violence inNorthernIreland’, European Journal of Political Research (), –, p. .

Quoted in Toolis, Rebel Hearts, p. . JohnNewsinger, ‘The AmericanConnection: GeorgeOrwell, “Literary Trotskyism” and

the New York Intellectuals’, Labour History Review , (), –, pp. –.


status, and for the invalidity of the claims of merely secular rulers.

Prophets who denounce an entire regime as ungodly, and call forthe establishment of government by those who share or apply theirown divine insight, are making a claim about themselves at least assweeping as any they may be making either against existing rulersor for their own religious beliefs. As Hok-lam Chan observes:

The later prophets of Israel could also be considered as performing thefunction in government that has since come to be called ‘the opposition.’In numerous instances, prophecy, based on revelation of a superior willby an extraordinary leader who claimed preconceived knowledge, hasalso been effective in inspiring volatile political movements, often of arevolutionary nature. It not only sanctioned the leadership of such move-ments, but also strengthened the legitimacy of the resultant governmentalorganizations, in the medieval as well as in the modern world.

If the society is one in which rule is conventionally aristocraticor princely, the prince is legitimated by his peculiar insights intothe source of the religious sanction. But the use of religion tolegitimate single leaders or clusters of leaders can equally be foundin societies which make formal acknowledgement of the role ofthe masses provided there is an employment of other beliefs whichhave a secure social hold. The Islamist, Sayyid Qutb, writingat the beginning of the s, envisaged a true Muslim princewho would govern according to the law of God, the shari’a. Suchgovernment would be accomplished by an elite of believers whowould, on the one hand, separate themselves from society as itwas at present constituted, but on the other, seize control of it inorder to inaugurate a godly government. This principle givesan absolute justification to both rulers and rebels. Rebellion isa rejection not of government, but of a government. It does notreject or resist the power of the state, but seeks to appropriate it.And it identifies a select group, marked off by piety, or courage,or insight, or dedication, who are uniquely qualified to undertake Y. M. Choueiri, ‘Theoretical Paradigms of Islamic Movements’, Political Studies ,

(March ); Antony Black, ‘Classical Islam and Medieval Europe: A Comparison ofPolitical Philosophies and Cultures’, Political Studies , (March ), –.

Hok-lam Chan, Legitimation in Imperial China: Discussions under the Jurchen-Chin Dynasty[ – ] (London, University of Washington Press, ), p. .

Quoted by Gilles Kepel, The Revenge of God: The Resurgence of Islam, Christianity and Judaismin the Modern World (Cambridge, Polity, ), p. .


the appropriation. The chosen remnant can be characterised bytheir religion, or their race, or their class, or their culture, or theirpolitical insight, but they will always be characterised in a waywhich both stresses their exceptional nature, and demonises thoseagainst whom, and against whose values, they are opposed.

THE PEOPLE’S REBELLION

It is often assumed or implied that rebels and vigilantes are not anelite, are in fact the very reverse, and that opposition to an existinggovernment or regime will be popular, a movement of the people,an assertion from the bottom of the pyramid of power against thetop. Vilfredo Pareto may have cast doubts on this narrative over ahundred years ago with the suggestion that all that ever happenedwhen regimes appeared to be overthrown from below was that oneelite replaced another – a circulation of elites. But the democraticvalues of the twentieth century have sustained a picture of rebel-lion as offering more than an alternative government, almost analternative to government. If legitimate government was legitimatebecause of the support or consent of the people, then challenges toit must, equally, be popular and democratic.

This perspective has been marked in accounts of the most famil-iar form of popular reaction against existing governments at theclose of the twentieth century (both the short twentieth century andthe chronological century), nationalism. A widespread assumptionin describing nationalism has been that it is a movement of peoplesagainst states, of the led against their leaders, of the many againstthe few. The national and ethnic groups which constitute the re-sistance to ‘inappropriate’ constitutional structures or ‘misdrawn’frontiers have been conventionally portrayed as a collective asser-tion by all the people, or peoples, against a narrow and insufficientlyrepresentative political elite, which is in its turn identified with thestate, or a ruling class or group. At the very least, nations and ethnicgroups are presented as providing the fine tuning for the coarsercontours of existing political arrangements, while in less cautiousaccounts they are depicted as presenting a challenge to the estab-lished elites of states such as theUnitedKingdom.But however they


are presented, the assumption, more or less explicit, is that nationaland ethnic groups are popular, democratic communities, in whichthe ordinary citizen plays a full and powerful role. Whilst existingarrangements may be elitist, ethnic and national challenges comefrom the people.

One of the themes running through the writing of a nation-alist revolutionary such as Tom Nairn, in books such as TheBreak-up of Britain, The Enchanted Glass, or After Britain, is just sucha division of power and interest. On the one hand, there is theUkanian ‘Crown-State’, on the other, the peoples who inhabit theUnitedKingdom. It is a contrast between popular, if deceived, re-pressed, side-lined but always potentially triumphant, radical com-mon sense, and elite manipulation which has a strong and variedancestry.Nairn can quoteChestertonwithout any substantial irony,and could equally well, had it not threatened to be ideologicallydisconcerting, have quoted Orwell. The journalist Neal Asch-erson spoke in similar terms of the consequences of membershipof the European Community for the old systems of governmen-tal power in the United Kingdom: ‘Power will escape, flying up-wards to the Community – but also downwards to subjects whobecome citizens, to cities which grow proud and free, to nationslike Scotland or Wales which acquire parliaments of their own.’

The various proposals that have been mooted for federalism as asolution to the antagonisms of Northern Ireland, for the aspirationsof Wales, or for national self-determination for Scotland within theEuropean Community, were approached and discussed principallyin terms of the Scots, theWelsh, or the Irish as peoples. A conflict of Tom Nairn, The Break-Up of Britain: Crisis and Neo-Nationalism (London, Verso, );

Nairn, The Enchanted Glass: Britain and its Monarchy (London, Radius, ); Nairn, AfterBritain: New Labour and the Return of Scotland (London, Granta, ).

The Chesterton quote is the familiar ‘We are the people of England, that never havespoken yet’, Nairn, The Break-Up of Britain, p. . Orwell’s comment that ‘in all societiesthe common people must live to some extent against the existing order. The genuinelypopular culture of England is something that goes on beneath the surface, unofficially andmore or less frowned on by the authorities’, is in the same tradition. George Orwell, TheLion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius in Orwell, The Collected Essays, Journalismand Letters of George Orwell, Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (eds.), vols. (Harmondsworth,Penguin, ), vol. II, p. .

Neal Ascherson, ‘The Spectre of Popular Sovereignty Looms over Greater England’, TheIndependent on Sunday, November , .


interests and views was presented not just between governmentsboth existent and hypothetical, but between the existing state andthe people, or rather between the existing state and various peo-ples. Nationalism has been depicted as a popular, even a populist,phenomenon. The state is by contrast presented as an elite, whichgoverns, oppresses, deceives, or holds in artificial uniformity, indefiance of their national or ethnic character, the population atlarge.

Is this distinction between a state elite and a nationalist peopleilluminating? Are the legitimation conflicts of nationalism or eth-nicity conducted principally, on the nationalist or ethnic side, byor even amongst the masses? Is the national or ethnic claim, eventhough it may be made on behalf of ordinary people rather thandirectly by them, nonetheless marked off from the elitism whichit challenges not only by national or ethnic distinctiveness, but bya genuine equality in the sharing of power and in the creation,expression, or defence of communal identity? Are those who areportrayed as members of national or ethnic communities, whilstremaining essentially subjects within the existing constitutions orpolities which the nationalist claim challenges, truly citizens withinthose other, alternative communities?

A warning that this might not be so can be deduced fromMiroslav Hroch’s account of nationalism as having three stages,in each of which it is a nationalist elite which takes the initiative,and indeed during the first two of which ordinary subjects andcitizens have no significant part to play at all. National identityis displayed by leaders, who then appeal to ordinary subjects forrecognition and support. The nationalist identity, and the legit-imation of the nationalist aspiration, always seems clearest, mostarticulate, in the actions of the minority, most inchoate in the mass.The history of nationalism seems very full of heroes, and charismalies heavily across the record of national assertion and uprising.

Miroslav Hroch, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe: A Comparative Analysisof the Social Composition of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European Nations, trans. BenFowkes (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, ); ‘From National Movement tothe Fully-formed Nation: the Nation-Building Process in Europe’, New Left Review (March/April ), –.


THE ARCHETYPAL REBEL IS A PRETENDER

Treason doth never prosper, what’s the reason?For if it prosper, none dare call it treason

The observation, at the beginning of the seventeenth century,by Sir John Harington describes an essential similarity betweentraitors and monarchs, rebels and rulers. The importance of self-justification for the rebellious or usurping ruler appears universal.Charles I was put on trial in the seventeenth century, much as wasNawaz Sharif in Pakistan in the late twentieth century, as muchto confirm the legitimation of his replacement, as to justify his re-moval. For if the successful usurperwas not a usurper at all, but justi-fied when a rebel, then the ostensible governor was not a justifiedgovernor, and was guilty of usurpation even when he ruled. Theydiffer only in that one is out and the other is in. The claim can some-times be grander than any the existing government might make.When Davide Lazzaretti, the Italian millennial leader, descendedwith his followers from the Monte Amiata in , he had alreadyproclaimed himself as king and Messiah. The archetypal rebelis a pretender. When the actions of the IRA in Northern Irelandare described as ‘an act of rebellion against what was perceived tobe an illegitimate state’, the language of legitimation carries inits knapsack the claim of an alternative state, and of its aspirantrulers and leaders. The claim made by the leaders of the OfficialIRA at a time when the organisation was sitting on the politicalmargins, and the military initiative has passed to the ProvisionalIRA, to be ‘the legitimate government of Ireland’ was eccentric,but it was the eccentric end of a prevalent continuum. The lan-guage of heroes and heroism is a frequent feature of the language

Sir John Harington, Epigrams (), book , number . The poetic judgement of theseventeenth century cedes nothing in clarity to the prosaic of the twentieth: ‘Revolutions,unlike usurpations or coups d’etat, are not necessarily illegitimate. If they succeed theyintroduce a new principle of legitimacy that supersedes the legitimacy of the formerregime’, Dolf Sternberg, ‘Legitimacy’, in Sills (ed.), International Encyclopaedia of the SocialSciences, vol. IX, p. .

Eric Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels, rd. edn (Manchester, Manchester University Press, ), p. .

Toolis, Rebel Hearts, p. . Ibid., p. .


of rebellion. The leaders can be more frequently depicted andpraised than the people, and the elite of nationalist rebellion aspireto, and are accorded, heroic status. ‘Belfast was at war and the IRAwas for most Catholics a heroic organization, its Volunteers fetedas the people’s defenders.’

The secrecy of nationalism and other forms of rebellion is tac-tical. But it is not inconsistent with the regnal, or counter-regnal,character of endogenous self-legitimation amongst rebels. The fic-tional LittleMalcolm in David Halliwell’s play of the same name,

created his leadership self more effectively in the bed-sit than in thestreet. When rebels speak of ‘we’ and oppose that ostensibly broadplural to a narrow ‘them’ what is striking is the narrowness of the‘we’ or rather the narrowness of the intense ‘we’, and the thinnessof the broad ‘we’. The aspirant nationalist elite is passionate in itsinternal legitimation. This internalisation is often exacerbated byits rebellious and hence semi-secret manner of operation. It cannotproclaim its beliefs in itself openly, even if it might otherwise wishto do so. So the rebel songs, the Jacobite anthems, have to be sungin secret. This is in part because even those rebel songs which aredesigned to cultivate public support have to be sung with care. Theexisting rulers recognise the power of ritual and symbol as weaponsin the fight for government. But some of the rituals and representa-tions of rebellion have a limited audience, and are communicatedprincipally or exclusively to the aspirant rulers, whose conceptionof themselves they serve to mirror. As Hobsbawm put it: ‘Theclassical secret brotherhood was a hierarchical elite group, with atremendous paraphernalia of initiation and other rituals, symbol-ism, ritual nomenclature, signs, passwords, oaths and the rest.’

At a more exalted level, the royal portraits of the Jacobite court inexile were never glimpsed by the actual or potential supporters ofthe Stuart claimants to the thrones of England and Scotland. Buttheir imagery was nonetheless carefully constructed to contribute

Ibid., p. , cf. pp. – , , . David Halliwell, Little Malcolm and his Struggle Against the Eunuchs (London, Faber, ). As the editor of theDerry Journalobservedof nationalist rebels suchasMartinMcGuinness,

‘they just seem to feel more intensely about these things than the rest of us’, Toolis, RebelHearts p. .

Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels, p. .


to the self-legitimation of the Stuarts. For rebels of all kinds, fromthe Liberty Tree during the War of American Independence tothe rituals of Nazism in the s, the internal cohesion of theaspirant state is as important as popular support, and legitima-tion, or counter-legitimation, is a vital activity for those who seethemselves as the rightful exercisers of governmental power. It is ameans of cultivating loyalty, identity, and solidarity.Whether or notothers believed in them, they needed to believe in themselves. AsDavid Kertzer puts it: ‘In order to invest a person with authorityover others, there must be an effective means for changing the wayother people view that person, as well as for changing the person’sconception of his right to impose his will on others.’ The secondcan exist without the first, but the first is ineffective without thesecond.

THE LEGITIMATION OF REBELS

The self-legitimation of rebels is similar in kind to the self-legitimation of rulers, and is cultivated for the same reasons. AsClifford Geertz comments, ‘Thrones may be out of fashion, andpageantry too; but political authority still requires a cultural framein which to define itself and advance its claims, and so does op-position to it.’ Challenging the legitimation of the existing rulersbecomes an essential part of the rebellion, because the legitimationof existing rulers denies that of their would-be successors. In Parisin the communards demolished the Vendome Column withthe statue of Napoleon on it. But that action can be seen not so ‘The family portrait painted by Pierre Mignard in depicts the prince as a bold

and majestic youth, standing apart from the trio of his parents and sister: he gesturestowards a crown and sword in the foreground of the picture. These two works illustratethemain theme of court art at St. Germain in the s: the hereditary right of the Princeof Wales’, Paul Kleber Monod, Jacobitism and the English People, – (Cambridge,Cambridge University Press, ), p. .

David L. Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power (New Haven and London, Yale UniversityPress, ), pp. , .

Ibid., p. . Clifford Geertz, ‘Centres, Kings, and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power’

in Sean Wilentz (ed.), Rites of Power: Symbolism, Ritual and Politics Since the Middle Ages(Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, ), p. .

Maurice Agulhon, ‘Politics, Images, and Symbols in Post-Revolutionary France’, inWilentz (ed.), Rites of Power.


much as a denial of rule, as the cancellation of a visual expression ofa claim which clashed with the self-legitimation of the commune.

A group, whether secret or not, which sees itself as entitled torule, and whose self-description is of an elite with a distinguish-ing ruling identity, will legitimate itself accordingly. An ‘inheritorparty’ of the kind described by J. P. Nettl in his study of the GermanSocial Democratic Party (SPD) will thus display many of the ac-tions characteristic of rebels, and hence also of rulers: ‘By already the SPD had all the appearance of a state within a state,andwhenBebel jocularly referred to theExecutive as “your govern-ment” no one took exception or expressed surprise at the phrase.’

This legitimation by rebels of themselves is part of a broader phe-nomenon identified by Antonio Gramsci when he described thecreation and cultivation of counter-hegemonies by revolutionarymovements. To replace one system by another involved replac-ing one way of depicting the world by another. Legitimation is partof that process of depiction, the depiction of rulers and leaders.Thus when Adam Przeworski discusses the collapse of communistregimes in Eastern Europe in – , he uses the term counter-hegemony to describe the challenge posed to them by rebellioussubjects.

Rebels are not against government. They are more passionatelyfor it than the ordinary citizen or subject. But they believe it is theywho are authorised to exercise it. And since they do not exerciseit, their legitimation of themselves for the cultivation and mainte-nance of their own authoritative identity is all the more intense.

AsMichael Rosen has argued, even to challenge rulers with appar-ently overwhelming power requires a form of thinking and acting

J. P. Nettl, ‘The German Social Democratic Party – as a Political Model’, Pastand Present (April ), –, p. .

AntonioGramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, ed. and trans.QuintinHoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (London, Lawrence and Wishart, ); James Joll,Gramsci (London, Fontana/Collins, ).

Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europeand Latin America (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, ), p. .

Kevin Toolis’s observation and report is relevant. Writing of one IRA man, he observesthat he ‘wanted what we all probably want – respect from our peers. Ironically, his wifeElizabeth said Paddy told her that if they had been living at peace in a different countryhe would have wanted to be a policeman’, Toolis, Rebel Hearts, pp. –. Not perhapsas ironically as all that.


which is beyond the normal perimeters of rational calculations ofoutcomes. A moral conviction of rightness may be both a re-quirement and a distinguishing characteristic of successful rebels,but also one which marks them off from the bulk of the population.Rebels thus represent the most acute challenge to the legitimatingself-identification of rulers, because they present to government itsown mask carried by other players.

So, therefore, far from challenging the activity of government assuch, rebels, in legitimating their claims to government, frequentlycultivate their own identities in a way which legitimates not simplya different incumbent for the powers of state, but a more exten-sive and comprehensive use of those powers. The very certainty ofthe legitimating claim is frequently conducive to a more sweepingambition for the use of state power.

However populist, nationalist, or democratic the rebels claimmay be, there will frequently be a dimension which nonethelessmarks the rebels off from the large part of the population. And evenif rebels eschew any desire to rule themselves, but describe theiraim as catalytic rather than governing, their account of their owncatalytic character can have grandiose dimensions. ThusWeather-man, the group within the student radical movement in the UnitedStates at the end of the s which advocated terrorism as ameans of overthrowing or destabilising capitalism and imperialism,spoke of itself as like the Vandals or Visigoths bringing down theRoman Empire. Political self-effacement could hardly be moreflamboyant.

VIGILANTES, LIKE REBELS, LEGITIMATE THEMSELVES

Rebellion presents a comprehensive challenge to an existingregime. But there are too, selective challenges which whilst notseeking to usurp government as such, seek to usurp some of itsfunctions. This is the difference between civil disobedience anddissenting coercion. The former is political and potentially demo-cratic, whereas the latter is an attempt to commandeer some of

Michael Rosen, On Voluntary Servitude: False Consciousness and the Theory of Ideology(Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, ), p. .

Harold Jacobs (ed.), Weatherman (New York, Ramparts Press, ), p. .


the functions of rulers. The major symptom of the difference islegitimation. Engaging in politics does not involve legitimation ofoneself as someone with governing authority: ordinary citizens canengage in politics. Aspiring to government involves legitimatingoneself as a governor, acting or in waiting. Although those whoseek to exercise the powers of government in respect of particu-lar areas of policy are not challenging the regime or the rulersin their entirety, they nonetheless legitimate themselves in respectof the coercive direct action which they undertake. Those whocampaign against abortion in the United States by means of arsonand murder, present themselves in apocalyptic terms as divinelyinspired and authorised, as saints, prophets, and martyrs. ‘We, theremnant of God-fearing men and women of the United States ofAmerika [sic], do officially declare war on the entire child killingindustry.’ Thedivine sanction confers and confirmsbothminoritystatus and exceptional status, the qualifications of an elite. As such,the violent opponents of abortion authorise themselves to employcoercion against their fellow citizens and hence to govern them.Michael Griffin, who murdered a doctor working at an abortionclinic, was described by Michael Bray, another prominent activistin the violent fundamentalist Christian anti-abortion movement,as having acted ‘legally, morally, and heroically’. The law of Godgave members of the direct action anti-abortion organisation Op-eration Rescue a sanction which could trump their obligation toearthly laws. Randall Terry of Operation Rescue, who referred tohimself as ‘God’s anointed’, claimed that ‘We have an injunctionin the Bible that commands us to rescue innocent children . . .Wefear God, the supreme judge of the world, more than we fear afederal judge.’ ‘Christian patriots’ of this kind believe themselvesto be the guardians of a culture, a religion, a constitution, and arace which is under threat from a world-wide conspiracy. They seethemselves as under a sacred obligation to resist a pervasive en-emy, though not necessarily on behalf of all people. Some of them

‘Army of God’ manual, quoted in Jim Risen and Judy Thomas, Wrath of Angels: TheAmerican Abortion War (New York, Basic Books, ), p. .

Risen and Thomas, Wrath of Angels, p. . Ibid., pp. , .


divide humanity into God’s humans and Satan’s humans, the latterclassified not entirely as a result of free will, but by race amongstother identities. The chosen governors, in such a perspective, arenot just select, but permanently select.

The legitimating justifications which in the United States wentinto the campaigns against abortion, in England went into cam-paigns for animal rights. Arson and various forms of sabotageused by animal rights activists in the United Kingdom can be jus-tified by militants by appeals to ‘the higher law of which they areguardians’. A leading member of the Animal Liberation Frontcan exhort in the language of heroes, ‘History is in the makingbut, so much more importantly, we have evil on the run. Be brave,be strong, be determined.’ Vigilantes can frequently be lead-ers in sheep’s clothing. Their language is egalitarian and fraternalrather than elitist. But the language used and the appeals madecan nonetheless evoke governing authority, whatever the size ofthe governing group. Politics could be described as ‘toadying to thepublic’, and the hope of achieving change through the politicsof persuasion ‘an impossible dream’. The way forward was by di-rect action whereby the ‘“animals for food trade” will be smashed,destroyed, and finally buried’. In this activity, the activists setthemselves apart from the bulk of humankind who were dismissedas ‘selfish’ or ‘scum’. A dismissal of ordinary people is not a nec-essary aspect of an elevation of one’s own self-image, but it can be apowerful obverse. The less seriously ordinary people are assessed,the more remarkable, if only by default, is the actual or potentialleadership.

James A. Aho, The Politics of Righteousness: Idaho Christian Patriotism (Seattle, University ofWashington Press, ).

The two countries illustrated reversals of opposition in this case. In the United Kingdomthe anti-abortionmovementwas generally law abidingwhilst the animal rightsmovementused terrorism, in the United States the reverse was the case.

Keith Tester and John Walls, ‘The Ideology and Current Activities of the Animal Liber-ation Front’, Contemporary Politics , (), .

Liberator, Spring/Summer , quoted in ibid., p. . Ronie Lee of the ALF, quoted in David Henshaw, Animal Warfare: The Story of the Animal

Liberation Front (London, Fontana/Collins, ), p. . David Henshaw, Animal Warfare, p. . Ibid., pp. , .


THOSE WHO SEEK TO GOVERN, EITHER IN WHOLE

OR IN PART, LEGITIMATE THEMSELVES

This chapter has neither answered nor addressed an old question inpolitical science, ‘Why do people rebel?’ Many contributions to theanswer to that question, however, have been limited by a merelyutilitarian conception of rebellion, as the response to intolerabledeprivation. And the answers, in consequence, have sometimesbeen to another question, ‘How or in what manner do peoplerebel?’ Gurr’s hypothesis that the ‘intensity and scope of normativejustifications for political violence vary strongly and inversely withthe intensity and scope of regime legitimacy’, is a neat instanceof this. Separate aspects of a single situation are separated outas explanations of each other, without pursuing the clue therebyprovided to a rounder and multidimensional account of rebellion.

The creation and cultivation of authoritative identities is partof the reality or the aspiration of government. To say that oneshould govern, or that one should exercise some of the powers ofgovernment, is to say that one is a particular kind of person, withparticular qualities and qualifications, a particular identity. To callyourself the messenger of God, or the father of the nation, or thedefender of the weak, is in each case to set yourself apart from ordi-nary people, whether subjects or citizens. There is an old anarchistjoke that whoever you vote for, the government always gets in. Itcould be said that whoever you support in a rebellion, the govern-ment always wins. If legitimation were only for ordinary men andwomen, then rebels would not need to engage in it. Rebels differfrom rioters, protesters, and all other kinds of opponents of rulersin that they believe themselves fitted and entitled to govern in placeof the present incumbents. But governing can be a limited activ-ity as with anti-abortion or anti-animal-testing campaigners whoseek to regulate one aspect only of their fellow citizens’ behaviour.Legitimation may not be the sole litmus test to distinguish rebelsfrom critics, but it is a characterising difference. Revolutionaries

TedGurr’s is the classic exposition of this approach, T.R.Gurr,WhyMen Rebel (Princeton,Princeton University Press, ), but cf. Michael Rosen, On Voluntary Servitude: FalseConsciousness and the Theory of Ideology (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, ).

Gurr, Why Men Rebel, p. .


may be fish who swim in the sea of the people, but the amountof water they can use is limited both by their own resources andpower, and by the need for secrecy until they are no longer revolu-tionaries, but rulers. Yet despite this, rebels legitimate themselves tothe full extent of their resources, and they do so because they needto, not in order to persuade themasses, but to persuade themselves.One consequence of this is that it can be as difficult for rebels tosurrender as it can be for rulers. For to do so involves a contradic-tion between their self-description and perception, and others oftheir actions. A redescription becomes necessary, and this can be atleast as difficult as an admission of tactical or strategic failure. Thejournalist Andrew Marr commented perceptively on an instanceof this difficulty when discussing the demands being made in theearly Spring of that the IRA in Northern Ireland should be-gin to give up their weapons. When weapons are given up, wroteMarr, those who previously used or who had possession of arms‘are the only people who lose. They lose local status, they lose thegrim romance of it all – and now they are told they must lose theirweapons, the tangible emblems of their power and status.’ Theconflict of identities which is part of rebellion is so severe that itcannot easily be resolved save by a change of rulers. But the con-flict can arise either from the severity of the difference, or from theabsence of other means of resolving it. Democratic politics providea means of reconciliation, or of remedy by replacement, and thepossibilities of this are discussed in chapter .

Andrew Marr, ‘IRA Must Stop This Idiocy’, The Observer, February , .

CHAPTER

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PRIVATE LEGITIMATION

Rulers legitimate themselves in the sight of their subjects. Butthough they do so in part to impress their subjects, they do so also inorder to impress themselves.The self-legitimation of government,and of governing identity, is an activity which appears to have littleregard to the views or approval of the larger part of the population.It is an activity which is more conducive to seeing the mass of peo-ple as subjects rather than as citizens. In that respect, endogenousself-legitimation is comparable to other aspects of rule, and to the‘basic confidence to know that you’re right when everyone else issaying that you’re wrong’ which is essential to rulers. Rulers arenot in the first instance concerned about what those whom theyrule think, nor whether their own cultivated image of themselvesis recognised and approved of by ordinary people. Indeed theymay well deliberately act in a way which excludes their rituals andceremonies of legitimating identity from public gaze, hearing, orknowledge. The relative indifference to their subjects on the partof rulers corresponds to a relative distribution between rulers andsubjects, of the attention given to legitimation. Self-legitimationis a continuous concern of rulers. It is at best an intermittentconcern of subjects. The distribution of attention to legitimationcorresponds, too, to the distribution of attention to government.Governing is inherently and by definition an undemocratic activity.To rule is to commandother people, not to be commandedby them.

An anonymous Newcastle local government planner, in J. Gower Davis, The EvangelisticBureaucrat (London, Tavistock, ), p. , quoted in John Gyford, Citizens, Consumers,and Councils: Local Government and the Public (London, Macmillan, ), p. .

Citizens

Government is always by somebody, of somebody. It requires bothrulers and ruled. Legitimation is undertaken as part of the activity ofgoverning, which is a continuous and absorbing activity; the activ-ity of being governed, despite the extension of the modern state, isnot. Legitimation is not a part of normal public life for most peo-ple most of the time. So even whilst rulers legitimate themselvesin the sight of their subjects, and even though they do so in partto impress their subjects and to cultivate their assent and support,they do so also in order to impress themselves. If one asks, ‘where,by whom, and for whom?’ is the activity of legitimation carried on,the answer in almost every case will be ‘amongst rulers, by rulers,and for rulers’.

PUBLIC LEGITIMATION

However much rulers may legitimate themselves, they engage alsoin public displays. The fact that the public legitimation of rulersis the most evident to most observers does not make it the mostsignificant for rulers. But it is nonetheless a consistent aspect of theconduct of rulers, and requires explanation. The question ‘whatare rulers doing in the public rites of legitimation?’ has no singleor simple answer. It is nonetheless important. Beyond the innerand outer circles of government lies the area of politics which hasbeen the starting point for democratic theorists, and for politicalscientists whose analytical and descriptive work contains demo-cratic assumptions or aspirations. It is here that legitimation in thesight and in the hearing of the ordinary subjects of governmentis carried out. The context in which such legitimation takes placeis popular: the forum, the street, the newspaper, the cinema, theradio, television, or the internet. The focus of writing and researchon such legitimation in the sight and hearing of ordinary subjectsis, correspondingly, on the voters, on their stated opinions, theirsocioeconomic character, on turnout, and on shifts in party sup-port. It is appropriate and unsurprising that the focus of studiesof democratic politics is on the demos, rather than on the mostpersistently active players in the democratic political game.

And yet despite this, the principal actor, the most consistentlyengaged performer, is still not the subject, but the ruler. Rulers,


governors, politicians not only take the most consistently sustainedrole in democratic politics, but they can have an important role inshaping the character of the human environment within which thegame is played. It has been argued by Patrick Dunleavy in criti-cism of Anthony Downs that the actions of political parties and ofgovernment can play a significant part in cultivating the aspira-tions of voters. But rulers can be active in democratic situationsin other ways as well. They can arrange, purchase, coordinate,require, or summon up displays of recognition of themselves, fromthe ‘spontaneous’ demonstrations of Soviet Russia or CommunistChina to the statue erection campaigns orchestrated by the govern-ment of Louis XIV. What standard democratic theory can ignoreis that it is rulers, and aspirant rulers, not citizens, who are theactive players. This has always been the argument of elite theorists,from Weber and Michels to Schumpeter. Schumpeter’s fusion ofdemocratic and elitist theory accorded the active role to leadersin competing for the support of the electorate for policies whichthey supported, but did not generate. George Bernard Shaw pre-sented a more graphic version of the same insight fifty years earlier,commenting that it was as absurd to expect the voters to be thesource of policies as it was to expect the audience to write theplay.

And whilst one part of the public performances of rulers servesto cultivate the aspirations and aversions, the loyalty and acqui-escence, of subjects, that is not their only role. The parades andtrumpets arranged by rulers have a function which is the very op-posite of that normally ascribed to the circuses which ice the breaddispensed to the people. They may indeed serve to conscript theloyalties of the populace, but they also provide, on a massive scale,Christmas cards for the king. The admiration of the crowd is an

Patrick Dunleavy, Democracy, Bureaucracy and Public Choice: Economic Explanations in PoliticalScience (Hemel Hempstead, Harvester Wheatsheaf, ), pp. –.

Christel Lane, ‘Legitimacy and Power in the Soviet Union through Socialist Ritual’,British Journal of Political Science (), – ; Christel Lane, The Rites of Rulers:Ritual in Industrial Society – the Soviet Case (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, ); Peter Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV (New Haven, Yale University Press, ),p. .

Joseph A. Schumpeter,Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, th edn (London, George Allenand Unwin, , st edn ), pp. –.

George Bernard Shaw, Ruskin’s Politics (London, Ruskin Centenary Council, ), p. .

Citizens

expression of support. It is also identity confirming. A ruler is some-one who does not wish to be an eminence grise, with his significanceknown only to himself. The enjoyment of that identity may inautocracies of one kind or another be largely beyond the publicgaze, but if the public is a significant element in the polity, then itsrole is as amirror on thewall, telling the ruler that he or she is indeedthe fairest of them all. The paradox is that in such self-legitimation,rulers both accord importance to the mass of the people, and denyit, concentrating significance on themselves alone. The paradoxis accentuated at the furthest remove from open democratic poli-tics. The satisfactionwhich theGermanFuhrer AdolfHitler gainedfrom seeing himself asmirrored in the nation is an extreme instanceof this: ‘I stand here as representative of the German people. Andwhenever I receive anyone in the Chancellery, it is not the privateindividual Adolf Hitler who receives him, but the Leader of theGerman nation – and therefore it is not I who receive him, butGermany through me.’ The greater the apparent dependence ofthe ruler on the mass of ordinary subjects, on whom he claimsto depend and of whom he presents himself as no more than arepresentative, the greater his exceptional character as depicted byhimself and for himself becomes, and the greater the gulf betweenruler and subjects.

DEMOCRATIC THEORY AND LEGITIMATION

Democratic theories which attempt to make a dynamic connec-tion between normative arguments about legitimacy, and histori-cal accounts and predictions about the behaviour of subjects, mightseem to have little interest in, and little to gain from, an accountof endogenous self-legitimation as an activity most actively carriedout by those within the permanently active centres of power. Theprincipal strands in democratic theories of legitimation are thatlegitimation is a process whereby voters consent to government,

Quoted by Charles Goodsell, The Social Meaning of Civic Space: Studying Political Authoritythrough Architecture (Lawrence, University Press of Kansas, ), p. .

E.g. Jean Blondel, Richard Sinnott, and Palle Svensson, People and Parliament in the EuropeanUnion: Participation, Democracy, and Legitimacy (Oxford, Clarendon Press, ); Grainnede Burca, ‘The Quest for Legitimacy in the European Union’, Modern Law Review


or authorise government, or consider government normativelyacceptable, or its actions and policies just, or express their wishesin a manner which creates a democratic will which governmentthen expresses. In a version which gives a less active role to voters,a more active one to the outside observer, legitimation is argued toarise from a correspondence of values between rulers and ruled.

In each case, government is the activity and rulers are the per-sons who are legitimated, and the role of citizens is to initiate orauthorise the process, rather than to engage in it in any autonomousor self-sufficient way. But whether citizens are seen as clients ofgovernment, or are accorded a more active role, legitimation isnot a process of which states are simply the objects. At the endof the analysis, legitimation is about rulers, and once the citi-zens have made their contribution, and that contribution has beenassessed, they can be put temporarily to one side of the account.Even if they begin with the status of active subjects in the businessof legitimation, it is not a status they continuously retain. If the

(), –; Juan J. Linz, ‘Legitimacy of Democracy and the Socioeconomic Sys-tem’ in Mattei Dogan (ed.), Comparing Pluralist Democracies: Strains on Legitimacy (Boulder,CO, Westview Press, ); R. Judson Mitchell, ‘Leadership, Legitimacy, and Institu-tions in Post-Soviet Russia’, Mediterranean Quarterly , (), – ; Helen Wallace,‘Deepening and Widening: Problems of Legitimacy for the EC’ in Soledad Garcia (ed.),European Identity and the Search for Legitimacy (London, Pinter, ); J. H. H. Weiler,‘After Maastricht: Community Legitimacy in Post- Europe’ in Adams (ed.),Singular Europe: Economy and Polity of the European Community after , – (AnnArbor, University of Michigan Press, ); Karlheinz Reif, ‘Cultural Convergence andCultural Diversity as Factors in European Identity’ in Soledad Garcia (ed.), EuropeanIdentity.

Tom R. Tyler, ‘Justice, Self-interest, and the Legitimacy of Legal and Political Authority’in Jane J. Mansbridge (ed.), Beyond Self-Interest, – (Chicago, University of ChicagoPress, ).

Seyla Benhabib, ‘Towards a Deliberative Model of Democratic Legitimacy’ in SeylaBenhabib (ed.), Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political (Princeton,Princeton University Press, ); J. Cohen, ‘Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy’in Alan P. Hamlin and Philip Pettit, The Good Polity: Normative Analysis of the State (Oxfords,Blackwell, ); John S. Dryzek, Discursive Democracy: Politics, Policy and Political Science(New York, Cambridge University Press, ).

Peter G. Stillman, ‘The Concept of Legitimacy’, Polity (Amherst, North Eastern PoliticalScience Association) , (Fall ), –; H. Eckstein, Support for Regimes: Theories andTests, Centre for International Studies, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and Inter-national Affairs, Research Monograph (Princeton, Centre for International Studies,). A similar view is part of the argument of David Beetham, The Legitimation of Power(London, Macmillan, ).

Citizens

appropriate criteria are met, then government is deemed legi-timate. Legitimacy is a quality of states which in some sense havethe active consent of their citizens. But the paradox of this accountis that it proceeds from democratic premises to a concluding state-ment which is not about citizens, but about rulers, a judgement anda description not of politics, but of government. The final focus restson rulers, whose occupation, and the study of whose occupation,is justified in the last resort by the rights and interests of citizens,rather than on those citizens themselves who are the reason forboth the practical and the academic exercises.

THE LEGITIMATION OF CITIZENS

Subjects also legitimate themselves, as citizens. They do somost ob-viously by voting, but also by party and group activities, by demon-strations, strikes, and public campaigns. It has been the centralcomplaint about the account given by Weber of legitimation, thatit leaves democracy out of account, or implicitly or explicitly putsit to one side. Certainly Weber was sceptical about democracyand legitimation, but if his arguments are followed further than hetook them, a rather different conclusion can be reached. The alter-native account developed from the argument in this book presentslegitimation, self-confirmation and justification taking place in allsectors of the concentric circles of government. Such an account ofendogenous self-legitimation might seem to jar with the prevailingperceptionof legitimation, or rather of legitimacy, inmodern states.What therefore, if anything, is to be said about democracy both as a

Thus one strand of analysis of democratisation sees the process as involving the activeconsent and involvement of citizens, and describes such a condition either as legitimacytout court, or as conducive to legitimacy. See, for instance, Adam Fagin, ‘Democratizationin Eastern Europe: The Limitations of the Existing Transition Literature’, Contempo-rary Politics , ( June ), : ‘the formal democratic institutions and mechanismsnow established may lack the capacity to effectively channel a diversity of societalinterests and, without any foundation within society, will not deliver inclusiveness andlegitimacy’.

Dolf Sternberg, ‘Typologie de la Legitimite’ in P. Bastin et al., L’Idee de Legitimite (Paris,Presse Universitaire de France, ), p. ; David Beetham, Max Weber and the Theoryof Modern Politics (London, ), p. ; Rodney Barker, Political Legitimacy and the State(Oxford, Clarendon, ), pp. –.


political practice and as a political value, in the light of the descrip-tion of legitimation as the self-justifying, self-identifying activityof rulers? What is going on, not normatively but historically in‘democratic legitimation’? When this question has been answered,a different account of democratic politics is available. Availabledemocratic approaches to the matter of legitimation may give amisleading account of the actual distribution of energies, and bothunderestimate, ignore, or dismiss the self- legitimation of rulers. Butthey may also not pay sufficient attention to the self-legitimation ofcitizens.

If legitimation is an activity which serves to confirm the identityof the legitimator, then democratic legitimation is not an excep-tion to this function. In so far as people act as citizens as well assubjects, they too engage in actions, legitimations which cultivate,sustain, create, or confirm that identity. ‘Democratic legitimation’is most commonly thought of as the transfer of consent from citi-zens to government. But there is another activity, also democratic,also legitimation, whereby subjects cultivate and sustain their ownidentity, the legitimation, not of rulers, but of citizens. Democracyinvolves subjects cultivating their own identity as participating andactive members of a polity. A recognition of the self-legitimationof rulers, in other words, is only problematic for democrats if it isnot realised that citizens too legitimate themselves, and do so in away which makes them more than simply clients of a democrati-cally sanctioned state. So it is appropriate to ask where this activitycan be observed. What do subjects do which seems to have a func-tion for them similar to that of the various self-legitimating actionsconducted by rulers?

To begin by asking what actions subjects take which identifythem not just as subjects, but as citizens, is to draw immediateattention to the characterising feature of democracy in modernstates: voting. A great deal of attention has been devoted to vot-ing, but much or most of it casts little light on this question. Fornormative theorists, voting is the exercise of choice or the grantingof consent. For explanatory or descriptive political scientists, par-ticularly those using variants of rational choice theory, voting is acalculated investment of time and energy. Drawing attention to theadequacies and inadequacies of the second of these bodies of work,

Citizens

Donald Green and Ian Shapiro have argued for more attention tobe paid to the phenomena, less to the method. An account ofvoting in terms of rationally appraised costs and benefits, they sug-gest, has to rely to a disconcerting extent on the value to voters of‘psychic gratification’. But this entails askingwhat exactly are peo-ple doing when they vote in elections for representative assemblies.Responding to such criticisms, Stewart Wood and Iain McLeanmake the significant observation that the attack on rational choicetheory and voting is justified, and that while it ‘makes little sense toargue that voters are rational calculators, it makes a lot of sense toargue that legislators and lobbyists are’. But the limitations of theusefulness of rational choice theory arise not from an ignoring ofnon-rational forms of action, but from an inadequate conceptionof the individual or the self who makes the rational calculations inthe first place. The listing by William Riker and Peter Ordeshookof ‘psychic gratifications’ whichmight be fed into a rational balanc-ing of the costs and benefits of voting, includes ‘complying with theethic of voting’, ‘affirming a partisan preference’, and ‘affirmingone’s efficacy in the political system’. Two things are notableabout this listing. The first is that ‘complying with the ethic of vot-ing’ is strikingly reminiscent of Weber’s sense of duty. Acting ina particular way because it is consistent with an ethic or value iswhat Weber was describing when he spoke of the bureaucrat ful-filling the obligations of his office because not to do so would be‘abhorrent to his sense of duty’. The second is that each of thethree gratifications cited is a form of identity cultivation, assertion,and maintenance. If the individual is seen as someone who activelyasserts, maintains, and cultivates his or her identity, actions such as

Donald P. Green and Ian Shapiro, Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory: A Critique of Appli-cations in Rational Choice Theory (New Haven, Yale University Press, ), p. . Greenand Shapiro argue for a more eclectic use of theory, and accounts which pay attentionboth to rational and other aspects of political action.

Ibid., p. . StewartWood and IainMcLean, ‘RecentWork in Game Theory and Coalition Theory’,

Political Studies, , ( December ), – , p. . William Riker and Peter C. Ordeshook, Introduction to Positive Political Theory (Englewood

Cliffs, NJ, Prentice Hall, ), p. , quoted in Green and Shapiro, Pathologies of RationalChoice Theory, p. .

MaxWeber, Economy and Society, Guenther Roth and ClausWittich (eds.), vols. (London,University of California Press, ), p. .


voting no longer lie outside a world of rationally acting individuals.Green and Shapiro provide a clue in this direction when they com-ment that one of the reasons for the unfruitfulness of rational choicetheory when applied to voter turnout is that such theories are ‘silentabout the process by which people develop tastes and identities’.

The problem here is not the irrationality of voting, but the inade-quate conception of rationality, which takes identities and interestsas given, rather than as dynamic, and which fails to take account ofidentity cultivation, maintenance, and expression, as a major partof public life.

An analysis of voting as a rational investment of time and effort inthe pursuit of tangible utility can cast light onmarginal variations invoting, on the level of turnout, the extent of abstention, or changesin party allegiance. It has less to say about the initial action of vot-ing as such, since this involves forms of political action which falloutside, or prior to, rational action as conventionally conceived.

Voting is a self-legitimating activity for citizens. Questions abouthow people apportion their votes, about the numbers who vote,about changes in allegiance, are all auxiliary to the primary ques-tion of why people vote at all. That question is best answered if itis replaced by another: ‘what are people doing when they vote?’This is the question which arises from Green and Shapiro’s rec-ommendation that more attention be paid to phenomena, less tomethod, that political science in other words be properly empiricaland historical, and less deductive.

In so far as voting is part of the cultivation of identity, voters areclearly doing something different from rulers. Although democ-racy can be described as government by the people, voters arenot governing. At the very strongest, they are choosing governors.But that is an action of identity legitimation. In voting, citizens areacting out, creating, sustaining, and legitimating their character assignificant members of political society. They are demonstratingand enacting, particularly to themselves, their character as arbitersof the composition of governments, or legislative assemblies, or

Green and Shapiro, Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory, p. . Kay Lehman Schlozman, Sidney Verba, and Henry E. Brady, ‘Participation’s Not a

Paradox: The View from American Activists’, British Journal of Political Science, , ( January ).

Citizens

public officers. So an extension of the legal right to vote, such asthat in Britain in , can be described as ‘a critical moment inthe construction of a new “rational and respectable” male politicalsubject’. Rulers legitimate themselves. So do citizens, and in sodoing they often challenge the confidence of ruling elites.Hence theoutrage amongst those whose self-reflected identity is that of mem-bers, or close cousins, of a ruling elite at the presumption of the ritualsand language of citizenship. Despite the fact that even in democra-cies the citizens only impinge on the activity of ruling sporadically,whereas full-time rulers rule full time, the people, even though withless intensity and far less regularity or continuity, legitimate them-selves. In a democracy they legitimate themselves as citizens.

To legitimate is to authorise or justify by confirming identity.There are other ways of doing this than voting, which complementthe ballot. And just as it has been argued that voting is an insuffi-cient exercise of citizens’ power and that, for instance, strikes are afar more effective means of political action, or that the English astypical democrats by representation are free only once every fiveyears, so it can be argued that voting is only one of the ways inwhich citizenship identity is expressed and cultivated. When peo-ple demonstrate or petition, march or protest, deface or destroy thesymbols of government, they are asserting or creating their ownidentity, and legitimating themselves. The actions of democraticdemonstrators in Poland in the years leading up to the revolutionof were not only a pressure applied to the regime, they werealso an expression, cultivation, and confirmation of the people ascitizens. The people were legitimating themselves as the demos, andthe banners and symbols, both secular and religious, of the demon-strations were an expression and a creation of the citizen identity ofthe protestors. Theway in which the people legitimate their polit-ical identities will often be a deliberate reversal of the legitimation

James Vernon (ed.), Re-reading the Constitution: New Narratives in the Political Historyof England’s Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, ),p. .

R. A. Leeson, Strike: A Live History – (London, George Allen & Unwin, ),p. .

Jan Kubik, The Power of Symbols against the Symbols of Power: The Rise of Solidarity andthe Fall of State Socialism in Poland (Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania State University Press,).


of rulers, using, and inverting, the symbols and claims of those theyoppose in order to express their own identity, grievances, or claims.When demonstrators marched to Dublin Castle in on theoccasion of Queen Victoria’s Silver Jubilee, they used the event ofthe Jubilee celebrations, but marked it with their own rituals andsymbols: a draped coffin, a banner reading ‘Starved to Death’.

The rituals of popular procession can rival in their symbolic elabo-rateness the ceremonies of established authority. Trade unionbanners in Britain in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries werewoven, embroidered and painted celebrations of the identity ofthose who carried and followed them, and were a rich obverse ver-sion of the religious and secular imagery of governing authority.

The antagonistic identifications of Northern Ireland in the latetwentieth century were similarly cultivated in paraded banners andregalia.

When citizens legitimate themselves, they strengthen themselves.They cultivate, sustain, and develop both their role as powerfulfoundation members of the polity, and their claim that their viewsboth formally expressed in the ballot and informally expressedin demonstrations, meetings, agitations, and protests should as amatter of course be heeded by their rulers. Seen in this light, thediscussion of self-legitimation, whether of rulers or of citizens, mayappear less distant from some at least of the democratic concernsof normative political theorists, and of those who have sought toconstruct theories with both normative and historical/empiricaldimensions.

LEGITIMATION, IDENTITY, AND THE STABILITY

OF GOVERNMENT

The account I have given is not inconsistent with a democraticpolitical science, or with its democratic normative aspirations. E. Hammerton and D. M. Cannadine, ‘Conflict and Consensus on a Ceremonial

Occasion: The Diamond Jubilee in Cambridge in ’, Historical Journal ( ),p. .

John Gorman, Banner Bright (Harmondsworth, Allen Lane, ). Dominic Bryan, Orange Parades: The Politics of Ritual, Tradition and Control (London, Pluto,

).

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Neither the self-legitimation of rulers in the sight of subjects, northe self-legitimation of subjects, appears to be accounted for instandard democratic theory. There is at first sight an antagonismbetween the two different perspectives. In one case the democraticargument appears to be undermined by an account of governmentas the self-referential preoccupation of a ruling elite. In the othercase both consent and representation appear to be ignoredby anac-count of citizens as legitimating their identities in a self-referentialmanner which does not obviously or immediately connect withgovernment. Are we then left with either the unempirical and un-historical moral or the atheoretical, positivist and amoral, with nopossibility of communication between them? I do not believe so. Anaccount of legitimation as an activity of subjects gives more helpto democratic theory than this. It suggests how democracy mayoperate in a distinctive manner to make more likely a correspon-dence between the self-identification of rulers and ruled, and tomake dissonance less likely. And since the self-identification of cit-izens includes a characterisation and cultivation of them as agentswith interests, the avoidance of legitimation dissonance involvescoherence of a broad sweep.

THE RELATION BETWEEN LEGITIMATION AND OTHER

DIMENSIONS OF POLITICAL ACTIVITY

Before that possibility is examined further, some clarification willbe useful of the relations between the self-legitimation of rulers andstable government, and between the legitimating identification ofcitizens and civic order. If legitimation is taken to be characteris-tic of all government, and one of its defining features, then it maybe thought that it functions in part to make government possi-ble. But it may be that the causal question is misarranged. Just asrulers need to legitimate their identities, to legitimate themselvesby identification as rulers in order to rule, so subjects need to legiti-mate themselves as subjects and hence by inference rulers as rulers,in order that they can obey – they do not obey because rulers havebeen legitimated. Something of this is contained inMichaelRosen’sargument about the relation between ideology and compliance,


and the role of belief in sustaining or facilitating subordination.‘Non-rational beliefs should be approached, in my view, not assomething wholly pathological – a deviation from reasonable pro-cesses for the formation of consciousness – but as attempts to makethe world acceptable by making it intelligible.’ For ‘intelligible’onemight substitute ‘coherent’ or ‘consistent’, although the point issimilar.We expect actions to be justified.What does that mean?Weexpect an action to contain as a dimension (dimension rather thanaspect, since aspect may be a part, but dimension is a quality ofthe whole) a claim about its appropriateness. That appropriatenesswill arise from the character of the actor, and that character will beexpressed in action. Compliance with commands is an action, andpossesses as a dimension of itself a statement of justification. We donot comply because we legitimate compliance. But we cannot read-ily comply unless we legitimate compliance, because legitimation isa dimension of compliance. It does not precede it. Legitimationand identification are then viewed not as a cause or support ofobedience, let alone of the securing of obedience, but as a facil-itating dimension of it. The understanding of legitimation as thecultivation of coherent character contributes to an understandingof what is happening when people obey, or resist, laws. It explainscriminal investigations in a way the prisoner’s dilemma cannot.If a criminal decides not to inform on the colleague in the othercell, this may well be for reasons similar to those which motivateWeber’s bureaucrat: grassing up associates is not something thatpeople like you do. It is a weakness of rational choice theory that,faced with the existence of legitimation, it tries to describe it asrational support based on a calculation of interest. But whilst thatcan account for a choice of supermarket, it fits uncomfortably withlegitimated government and subordination. More recently, thosewho have tried to apply the rational individualism of methodologi-cal individualism and rational choice theory to government ratherthan to subjects have seen ideology – of which legitimation be-comes a sub-category – as a non-rational alternative or additionalexplanation for conduct. Both Douglass C. North and, drawing onhis work, Margaret Levi, see a belief in the rightness of compliance Michael Rosen, On Voluntary Servitude: False Consciousness and the Theory of Ideology

(Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, ), p. .

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as a distinct motive, separate from rational compliance, for obeyinggovernment.

RULING, LEGITIMATION, AND IDENTIFICATION

When people identify a person or group of persons as like them-selves they are seeing an idealised or at least improved versionof themselves. They see themselves, or values or characteristicswhich they mark out as characterising themselves, expressed withdramatic grandeur, heightened clarity or colour. The leader orcommand giver may or may not ‘recognise’ them in speeches, tele-vision appearances, or writing. When we identify with somethingoutside of ourselves, we both recognise it and seek recognitionfrom it. There is an active relation, not simply a passive, observedcorrespondence. But that recognition is not necessary for themto see in the leader or ruler an idealised, or for the first time trulyexpressed, expression of themselves. This importance of identity inlegitimating rule is well recognised by conservatives. Roger Scru-ton, comparing monarchs with elected presidential heads of state,comments ‘the president will be chosen for his “style”, where stylecarries an implication of inward identity between president andnation’. Those who are most successful in governing, or in chal-lenging government, are those who create, adapt, or present theidentity of the political community in a way which most effectivelysustains their own legitimation and identification. In this process,the prize goes to those who with greatest skill craft identities, not tothose who discover or represent them. When this identification

Douglass C. North, Structure and Change in Economic History (New York, ), ch. ;Margaret Levi, Of Rule and Revenue (London, ).

‘Recognition’ is a term which has been used in several ways, frequently with a distinctiveHegelian gloss. See, for instance, Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism and ‘The Politics of Recog-nition’ ed. and introduced Amy Gutmann (Princeton, Princeton University Press, ).In the hands of Francis Fukuyama, and ennobled as ‘thymos’, it is given a crucial role inmoving towards the end of history, Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man(London, Hamish Hamilton, ).

Roger Scruton, The Meaning of Conservatism (Harmondsworth, Penguin, ), p. . Cf. Taylor, Multiculturalism: Examining The Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutman, nd edn

(Princeton, Princeton University Press, ). I am doing somethingmuch less ambitiousthan Taylor and his colleagues and critics. They are attempting to set down guidelines forpolities; I am trying to give an account which illuminates how polities and their membersand subjects relate to one another in the process of legitimation and identification.


can be made, much can be done by the ruler that could nototherwise have been done, much excused, which under a differentset of governors would have been inexcusable. Margaret Thatcher,notoriously, asked of a senior civil servant being considered for pro-motion whether he was ‘one of us’. But the relationship workedeven more powerfully from the people upwards, and for those forwhom Mrs Thatcher was one of them, the character of the lead-ership carried a force quite distinct from any judgement about thequality of the policies.

Congruence and affinity between legitimations identifies peo-ple not policies. A stable relationship between the legitimation andidentification of citizens and the legitimation and identification ofrulers is a feature of working democracies, where people are ableto feel an identification between their own expressed selves andthose of their rulers. If subjects feel that their interests as expe-rienced in their own self-identification are not being promotedor defended, the form that dissatisfaction takes will be a con-trast between the character of the rulers and their own character ascitizens. The complaint will not be that rulersmanage the economyincompetently, but that they are incompetent; not that rulerspromote the interests of only one party, but that they are parti-san; not that rulers fail to defend the interests of the nation, butthat they are not patriotic. Hence when politicians or regimes arecriticised following a breach of democratic procedures, the mostcommon accusation is not that they have cheated, but that theyare cheats. Their breach of procedure, in others words, is notwhat unfits them, but it has revealed those character flaws whichdo disqualify them from office. The distinction is important, andexplains, for instance, why right-wing governments can be moresuccessful at doing radical things than are left-wing ones, and viceversa. The crucial factor in determining a coherent relationshipof legitimations is not the relation between the actions or poli-cies of government and the self-assessed interests of its supporters,but the relation between their conception of themselves – as con-servatives, or patriots, or godly, or ordinary working people – andtheir conception of their rulers. It is no accident that despots are The attributed phrase is used by Hugo Young as the title of his biography, Hugo Young,

One of Us: A Biography of Margaret Thatcher (London, Macmillan, ).

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sometimes referred to as the fathers, or mothers, of their people,but not usually as their top managers. Parents share an identitywith us that line managers do not. This identification is powerfuleven when the relationship between subjects and rulers is defer-ential. For the recognition of superiority occurs within a culturewhich is seen as distinct from other national cultures. Leaders mayexhibit extraordinary qualities, but they are an extraordinary ver-sion of qualities which mark us off from our neighbours or ourenemies. The power of nationalism lies in evoking a familial iden-tity, which marks us off from other nations who are neither us norours.

LEGITIMATION AND UNSTABLE RULE

The legitimation of rulers and that of citizens may not relate toone another. Government is still possible when that happens, butso is coup, rebellion, or abdication. Correspondence or lack ofevident conflict between the self-legitimation of rulers and ruledis not necessary, but does make government both more stable andmore representative. In the absence or weakness of such corre-spondence, government is still possible, and subjects whilst theyare most likely to be merely acquiescent may still obey the lawsand commands of rulers. Walker Connor argues that ‘In general,people can pursue their daily business, obey the laws, go to work,and the like, while living in a state to which they do not accordlegitimacy.’ Jan Pakulski has described Eastern European gov-ernments such as that of Poland before as ruling withoutthe need for any legitimating participation from, or relationshipwith, their subjects. Michael Rosen has argued that legitimationand ideology have far less to do with explaining the compliance ofsubjects than is often supposed. It may even be the case that anabsence of any correspondence between the self-identification of

Walker Connor, ‘Nationalism and Political Legitimacy’, Canadian Review of Studies inNationalism , ( ), –, p. . For a similar argument see Alan James, SovereignStatehood: The Basis of International Society (London, Allen and Unwin, ).

Jan Pakulski, ‘Poland: Ideology, Legitimacy and Political Domination’ in NicholasAbercrombie, Stephen Hill, and Bryan S. Turner (eds.), Dominant Ideologies (London,Unwin Hyman, ).

Rosen, On Voluntary Servitude, pp. –.


subjects and the perceived identification of rulers can be accompa-nied by punctilious observance of the law. Religious sects such asJehovah’s Witnesses, Christadelphians, or the Exclusive Brethren,whilst not accepting that the state has any legitimate claim on them,nonetheless scrupulously observe its laws.

The self-identification of subjects and citizens in governing rela-tions other than with conventional states shares many of the sameconsequences as thosemore conventionally ruled. An internationalpolitical organisation such as the Communist Party, a governmen-tal one such as the European Union, or a religious one such asthe Roman Catholic Church will exhibit in the relation betweenthe perceived legitimating identities of command givers, and theself-legitimations of ordinary members, features similar to those tobe found in the relations between citizens and the rulers of states.Where commands are issued by officials who are members not ofstate elites but of organisations which either cross state boundariesor claim the allegiance of a part only of a state’s subjects, the attitudeof those receiving the command will be affected to a major degreeby the extent of correspondence between the potential subjects’legitimation and self-identification, and the transmitted legitima-tion and self-identification of the issuer of the command. Thus amoral instruction from the Papacy may be seen as coming froma unique office in a homogeneous community, or from a distantand cloistered Italian bureaucracy with little association or affinitywith the community of the command receiver. The degree of cor-respondence does not depend on the degree of similarity betweenthe command issuer and a conventional state. Similarly with com-mands perceived as issuing from the European Commission, or theEuropean Courts of Justice or Human Rights, a major element intheir reception is the conception of the degree of correspondencebetween the legitimated identity of the command issuer, and thatof the command receiver.

Whilst pragmatic acquiescence as one possible relation be-tween subjects and rulers does not of itself threaten rulers, citizen BryanWilson, ‘Religion and the Secular State’ in S. J. D. Green and R. C.Whiting (eds.),

The Boundaries of the State inModern Britain (Cambridge, CambridgeUniversity Press, ):‘Nor, in a country where voting is not compulsory, do these self-imposed restraints leadto direct confrontation with the law, even though, implicitly, they impugn its legitimacy’,p. .

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self-identification does not necessarily sustain them. A move fromacquiescence or unenthusiastic obedience to citizen identificationis not necessarily a move from indifference to rulers to enthu-siasm for them. Much of the growing body of writing on thepotential politics of the European Union assumes that the develop-ment of a European-wide sense of citizenship, of active member-ship of a European demos, will legitimate European government,or would even to all intents and purposes be synonymous with suchlegitimation. That is not necessarily the case. Citizen identifica-tion is in the first place the self-identification of citizens, and canbe a ground for affinity or dissonance with the self-legitimation ofrulers. ‘Citizen’ is, after all, a word with revolutionary associationsas well as participatory ones.

If citizens do not identify with the governed community, theymay move to secession or nationalism. If they do not identifywith rulers, theymay become rebels and seek a form of governmentwhich can relate to their own self-identification. In so doing theywill undermine the self-legitimation of rulers, increase rulers’ lackof confidence, and increase the likelihood of abdication. Rebellionand democratic dissonance are thus significantly different degreesof failed relations between rulers’ and citizens’ legitimations andidentifications. The first is a claim to govern, the second a claimto politics. Rebels are identifying themselves as rulers, dissidentsas citizens. In real situations, these distinctions can frequently dis-appear, but they retain their useful analytical distinctiveness. Oneof the most frequent ways in which citizens may experience a dis-sonance between their own legitimated identity and that of theirrulers occurs when there is a mismatch of polities, when the polityor governed community which is claimed by the rulers differs from

Reif, ‘Cultural Convergence and Cultural Diversity’, in Garcia (ed.), European Identityand the Search for Legitimacy; Brigid Laffan, ‘The Politics of Identity and Political Order inEurope’, Journal of CommonMarket Studies , (March ), –; HeidrunAbromeit,Democracy in Europe: Legitimising Politics in a Non-State Polity (Oxford, Berghahn Books, );Dimitris N. Chryssochoou, Democracy in the European Union (London, Tauris AcademicStudies, ).

‘The doctrine that a people ought not to be ruled by those they deemed aliens hasrapidly gained converts during the past two centuries’, Connor, ‘Nationalism and PoliticalLegitimacy’, p. .

James, Sovereign Statehood.


that claimed by citizens. The normal form of this mismatch is agreater claim by rulers, a claim which appears to citizens to besubordinating or homogenising them in a way which challengesor ignores their own legitimating self-identification. So in when a Conservative government with a British majority, but onlyminority support in Scotland, introduced the poll tax in Scotland,and did so a year earlier than in England and Wales, this was seenas in part an alien imposition, an affront equally to nationalism anddemocracy.

Nor of course are rulers simply passive parties to this process.They may respond to dissonance not by amending their own ways,but by amending the character of the governed community. ‘Ethniccleansing’ is the most brutal and murderous form of this response,but there are many milder versions. Dissonance between the char-acter of a local government area as expressed in its representativesand the character of its services can lead either to citizens seekingchanges because they perceive a clash between their identity andthat of local government, or local government seeking to preserveor create a particular social character in the area for which it isresponsible. In Southwark from the s onwards it was demandsof new arrivals, gentrifiers, ethnic minorities, single parents on acouncil whose image was nuclear family white working class. InTower Hamlets in the s it was a council trying to preserve aworking-class character, and in Bromley amiddle-class character.

DEMOCRACY AND LEGITIMATION

Democracy as rule, or citizen action, by the people solves, or makesless likely, problems of dissonance and is an expression of a condi-tion of things where it is less likely to arise. It provides mechanismsfor making coherence more likely. Democracy can be viewed notonly as a system of popular government, but as a system of popularrestraint on government. In such a view the people do not rule,but they provide a context within which ruling takes place. Apply-ing the account of legitimation in the preceding pages to this view,

Rodney Barker, ‘Legitimacy in the United Kingdom: Scotland and the Poll Tax’, BritishJournal of Political Science , (October ).

Gyford, Citizens, Consumers, and Councils, pp. –.

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it is possible to ask what context, what restraints, are placed onrulers’ self-legitimation by the operations of democracy and whatassociations this has with other aspects of government?

Rulers do not need subjects, or citizens, to enable them to legit-imate themselves or to cultivate their governing identities. Theirfirst mirror is themselves, and subjects are at the edge of the outercircle. So what comfort is there for democrats? The actions of citi-zens will be taken into account in so far as they constrain rulers, andin a democracy electoral defeat is such a constraint. Democracyprovides the best available circumstances for securing correspon-dence between the identification of citizens and the legitimatingself-identifications of rulers. The more citizen identity is cultivated,the more there is a possibility of dissonance between the legiti-mating identification of rulers and the identifications of citizens.The more subjects legitimate themselves as citizens, the greaterthe significance of that identification for them, and the greater thedissonance if it jars with the legitimated identification of rulers.There are many forms which comparison of the self-legitimatingidentities of citizens and the expressed self-legitimation of rulerscan take, but democracy is the most effective method. Some move-ments which argue for greater accord between the values of sub-jects and the values of rulers condemn democracy as ‘alien’, as hasthe political movement of puritanical or fundamentalist Islam inAlgeria. Democracy, however, involves not only the regular expres-sion of some sort of political opinions by subjects, but regular andfree public discussion about the claims of the government and thecharacter of the constitution. In democracies, because there aremechanisms for reducing incoherence, it is less likely to arise.Whenit does arise, it is likely to do so because there is a lack of coherencebetween the legitimating identities of citizens and the perceivedlegitimating identification of rulers. Democratic rules have enabledthe voters to detect a discrepancy between their, the electors’ viewof themselves or at least of their higher selves, and the experiencedcharacter of their rulers. The conformity between constitutional rules and ‘shared beliefs’ which David Beetham

presents as one of his components of legitimacy thus requires democracy not so much forits existence as for its identification. This is distinct from the declaratory and contractualfunction which Beetham accords such devices as elections, Beetham, The Legitimation ofPower, pp. ff.


I shall argue that it is possible to deploy a workable, if not per-fect, theory of legitimation which will be helpful to supporters ofdemocracy. Democracy, or at least some of the values and featuresassociatedwith it, provides the best hope for an account of legitima-tion which is both empirically sustainable, and morally acceptable.I shall generalise freely about the politics of legitimation, but do soon the basis of observable rather than ideal conduct. Going withthe grain of human experience is only amoral to those who have anon-human standard for humanity.

Democracy is effective not because of any contractarian or pop-ular sovereignty theory, but because elections are a means wherebysubjects can choose people they consider to be like themselves.What I am arguing for is therefore not a theory of democracyas the quantification of consent or the aggregation of individualsovereignties. It might seem unremarkable to make such claimsfor democracy, but it has been more common in fact to argue orassume either that democracy is not a formof legitimacy, or that it isnot even a means to legitimacy. Max Weber is the most prominentexample of this position, and the example which has been sub-jected to most criticism. But the North American school containsmany similar examples. Parsons’s argument about power and legiti-macy is at the very least a-democratic, whilst Lipset’s is quite specifi-cally elitist and conservative.

If democracy is a context within which rulers operate, the morethey do so in the public eye, themore democratic the system.Open-ness is thus a feature of an ideal democracy not only because it

This has been the argument underlying the work on legitimacy of scholars, such as TedGurr who speaks of the intensity and extent of legitimacy, the former being ‘the extent towhich the political unit, its governing institutions, and the incumbents are thought properand worthy of support’, the latter being ‘the proportion of people in the political unitwith feelings of legitimacy above some specified threshold’. Intensity could be a conceptwhich provided means of distinguishing both between different forms of legitimacy – aqualitative distinction, in other words, arising out of a quantitative one – and of discussingits differential distribution. But in Gurr’s use of the term, it is taken to be characteristicof the ‘political unit’ as a whole, rather than spread within it in, at least potentially, amanner neither even nor uniform, just as power could be in the pluralist model of policymaking. Extent, as is proper for a democratic theory, is a matter simply of number, TedGurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton, ), p. .

Anthony Giddens, ‘ “Power” in the Recent Writings of Talcott Parsons’. Sociology, , (), –. Rodney Barker, Political Legitimacy and the State (Oxford, Clarendon, ),pp. –.

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allows citizens the fullest possible information with which to dis-cuss policy, but also because it places the greatest possible restraintson the secret garden of rulers’ legitimation, with its potential forlosing, or failing ever to establish, connections or affinities with theidentifications of citizens.

But even a vigorous and effective democracy does not guaran-tee a coherence of legitimating identities. There will be sections ofruling groups who aremore or less insulated from democratic com-parison. And since legitimating identities will always be cultivatedin relation to other ruling actions, a lack of coherence between legit-imating identities will facilitate a lack of coherence between otheractions of rulers on the one hand, and the expressed identities,aspirations, and aversions of subjects on the other.

Because rulers nonetheless seek coherence, there will be contin-uous contrary pull towards making the public displays coherentwith the more private self-legitimation. The image of the duplici-tous ruler, whilst it can be sustained by plenty of instances of rulersemploying deception and secrecy, cannot so easily be sustained inthemanner of legitimating identities. But provided there is no pres-sure to tailor or shape public displays tomake them consonant withthe identities of subjects, the possibility of tension or incoherencein the self-legitimation of rulers is insulated against. The principalfunction of legitimation is to justify rulers in their own eyes. Whilstthis appears to be a necessary function of legitimation, it can con-flict with the cultivation of legitimate relations between governersand governed if it involves a style or ritual with which the massof subjects cannot associate themselves. At the extreme end of thespectrum, the legitimation of the ruling groups can become a formof alien triumphalism which decreases and undermines relations ofrule and compliance between rulers and ruled. This is particularlythe case with imperial or colonial regimes. The very rituals whichsatisfy and sustain the rulers incite disaffection amongst the ruled.

The necessities of democratic politics provide checks and sanc-tions against this form of alienation. Democratic elitism, in otherwords, does not give elites a free hand in determining how theywill present themselves either to the electorate or in the face ofthe electorate. Ian McAllister is thus able to argue, on the basisof a study on citizens and elected representatives in Australia, that


‘among legislators, contact with democratic institutions increasessupport for ethical standards’.

The relationship between democratic politics and greater coher-ence is organic rather than causal, each sustaining the other andeach being aspects of a total complex of actions and patterns ofactions which, collectively and in interaction with each other, theyconstitute. No one element is a cause of the others. Nonetheless,for those who wish to use political science as a practical disciplinefor changing or preserving political arrangements, any leverageat any point of a system may be expected to assist correspondingadjustments elsewhere.

ENEMIES

Despite the advantages of democracy, there are deep and possiblyirresolvable problems in democratic legitimation of the kind I havedescribed. If legitimation and identification are inextricably relatedprocesses, or different dimensions of a single complex process,then democracy may provide the most accessible and effective wayfor maximising the possibilities of citizen self-identification. In ademocracy, themass of people are providedwith the greatest oppor-tunities to cultivate their identity as citizens. The same point maybe made from the other side by saying that when citizenship is thuscultivated, the term democracy is a useful way of describing sucha condition of things. But the very processes which maximise thelikelihood of coherence between citizen legitimation and rulerlegitimation, contain also possibilities of other dissonances withina polity.

K. Anthony Appiah has discussed the way in which recognitionis sought not just from those with whomwe identify, but from thosefromwhomwe distinguish ourselves. This seems for Appiah to beso for two reasons: as both those with whom we identify and thosefrom whom we distinguish ourselves are part of our social develop-ment, we cannot identify ourselves without reference to them; as we

Ian McAllister, ‘Keeping them Honest: Public and Elite Perceptions of Ethical Conductamong Australian Legislators’, Political Studies , (March ), – , p. .

In Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism: Examining The Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutman,nd edn (Princeton, Princeton University Press, ).

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see ourselves as to some extent disadvantaged in relation to them,their acknowledgement of our identity is part of a process of mov-ing towards equality. The role of others which Appiah describes issupportive, potentially supportive, or at least ‘dialogical’. Anotherrole is not at all supportive, or rather it functions positively by be-ing not supportive but antagonistic. We identify ourselves in thissense by comparing ourselves with others, by contrasting ourselveswith others who are in some sense enemies. Since legitimation isso powerful a process, being part of the sustaining of governmentand hence of the mobilisation and use of coercion, the presence ofantagonism and the depiction of hostile others as perhaps an un-avoidable part of the legitimating identification process, suggeststhat one aspect of government will always be ground for misgiving.

The stronger the identification, the more exclusive, and thegreater the tension and conflict between the dominant character,and all others. This is so because one way in which people maylegitimate their own identities is by cultivating an enemy identitywith which to contrast their own. The obverse of intense citizenidentification is the symbolic creation of enemies, the gremlin in themachinery of democracy. This is the democratic paradox which isintensified if one community, or ethnic group, or party, or religionis uniquely associated with the legitimating identifications, or if ittries to be so. It may increase its own partisan advantage, but itweakens the overall unity of the state. This is a greater problem thegreater the diversity of the governed community. In a multiculturalsociety, identification and its obverse, the depiction of enemies,seem to anticipate conflict and/or oppression. The problem is onewhich had become more evident by the end of the twentieth cen-tury, both with a proliferating assertion of cultural, religious, andnational identities, and with multinational or transnational formsof government such as the European Union.

The creation of identity also involves the creation of hostile oralien identities. The identity of a group is both sustained and threat-ened by the presentation of minorities of one kind and another asrepresenting alternative, conflicting, disruptive or minatory iden-tities. Thus the events surrounding the various attempts of NewAge travellers in the United Kingdom to reach Stonehenge for thesummer solstice in the years – involved both the cultivation


of a myth of the travellers as folk devils, and an assertion of theidentity of ‘established’ groups and cultures. The prime minister,Margaret Thatcher, proclaimed her intention to ‘make life diffi-cult for such things as hippy convoys’, whilst the home secretary,Douglas Hurd, described the travellers as ‘A band of medieval brig-ands who have no respect for law and order and the rights ofothers.’

The use of the law and of the officials and institutions of govern-ment to ‘make life difficult’ for eccentric groups was the obverseside of the proliferating assertions of national identity in Europein the s and s. In the new Czech Republic, municipalauthorities inNorth Bohemia called for new powers to enable themto force gypsies, whom they described as ‘unwanted’ elements, tomove to Slovakia from where it was alleged they had come. ‘Weare talking about areas where civilisation is disintegrating’, claimedLukas Masin, mayor of Usti nad Labem. The prosecutor generalof the Czech Republic, Jiri Setina, meanwhile asked the nationalparliament, at the beginning of January , to approve measuresenabling police to search private premises in application of a five-day limit on visits to them by persons other than relatives, and tooblige visitors to obtain approval from the local authorities. BorekValvoda,mayor of Most, argued that these extra powers ‘have noth-ing to do with gypsies as such, the point would be to reintroducelaw and order’. Order in such usage is a package with a substan-tial cultural content. Such conflict between legitimated identitiescan be as much a creation of government, or of citizenship, as aresponse or reaction of governors or citizens. It can lead to suchantagonism that the groups depicted as hostile, even though theiralien identification has been cultivated to serve the purposes ofothers, are ejected by those very people whose self-identification

The phrase was originally used by Cohen to describe the depiction ofMods and Rockers,Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers (London,McGibbon and Kee, ).

National Council for Civil Liberties, Stonehenge. A Report into the Civil Liberties Implications ofthe Events Relating to the Convoys of Summer and (London, National Council forCivil Liberties, ), p. .

June , Quoted in ibid., p. . Adrian Bridge, ‘Czech “Civilisation” Demands Gypsy Expulsions’, The Independent,

January , .

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their presence sustains. If custodians regard a part of the humanaggregate which they rule as not part of the governed community,they will subordinate or marginalise it, but they will not normallyseek to dispense with it. If they do, they will attempt to keep theterritory and dispense with the people.

If legitimation is inextricably involved with identification, howcan there be legitimation or therefore stable government in amulti-cultural society? The problem arises from the place of enemies inthe cultivation of identity. The solution of Richard Rorty, for liberalirony and solidarity in the public sphere, and contingent loyaltiesin the private will hardly work in the modern world where reli-gious, ethnic, and cultural identifications are loud, insistent, andvery public. Liah Greenfeld and S. H. Beer, the one in a gen-eral sense, the other in specific praise of the American republic,have described a form of identification which perceives liberal tol-erance not as a neutral value holding a multicultural society fromabove and outside, but as the most general culturally specific char-acteristic of that society. To be American in this sense is not tobe Protestant, or White, or Black, or Hispanic, but to recogniseall of these identities whilst also claiming a historically contingentAmerican identity which is not universal, which arises from a par-ticular history and particular negotiations, victories, defeats, andcompromises, but which entails one particular version of liberaltolerance in its mode of government and citizen activity.

The existence of diverse identification has no simple and pre-dictable consequence for either orderly government or politicalpeace. The confirmation of self-identification by contrast with oth-ers who are perceived as different is not necessarily synonymouswith the symbolic cultivation of enemies.When diversity fragmentspotentially powerful and antagonistic identifications, it may workfor stability. Where it intensifies the demands for internal controlof other members or claimedmembers of the group, and the exter-nal hostility towards other groups who are perceived as different,

Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,).

Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (New Haven and London, HarvardUniversity Press, ); Samuel H. Beer, To Make A Nation: The Rediscovery of AmericanFederalism (London, Harvard University Press, ).


it may work for disruption and conflict. Though consociationaldemocracy and other reformed democratic structures and formsof constitutional pluralism are both proposed as responses, it is notclear that such constitutional solutions can by themselves achievepeaceful politics.

TWO MODELS OF A COHERENTLY LEGITIMATING POLITY

Democracy takes two principal forms, or has two principal dimen-sions: rule by the people, and majority rule. And whilst the sec-ond contains the possibilities of the egregious cultivation of citizenidentity and of enemies, the first contains the possibilities of cit-izen identification which is loosely textured, variegated, flexible,and dynamic. The cohesion of a polity with varieties of subjectidentification can be strengthened if the symbols of citizen iden-tity are distinct from those of a partisan or sectarian character. Ifdemocracy is rule by the people, rather than rule by the major-ity, then the legitimating identities of rulers will need to be eitherrestrained or complex. There can, in other words, be somethingto be said for the bland or the diverse. The choice is between apolitics and a government of vision and a politics and a govern-ment of voices. Vision concentrates everything on a single imageof the nation, the people, or the public destiny. Voices on the otherhand accepts that variety and a certain incoherence is an inevitablefeature of any real political community, and that government bythe people, as opposed to rule by a dominant majority, involvessome conciliation, negotiation, and mutual tolerance. Voices maygo further, and articulate a social habitat which consists of morethan one governed community, or of citizens governed at differentlevels or spheres in different ways, and with varied or multilayeredcitizen identifications. Such a multiple citizen identification couldoccur in federal states, or in states which were part of interna-tional or transnational government, such as the European Union.Vision and voices thus represent not only two different concep-tions of legitimation, but two different conceptions of democracy.The distinction is, of course, set within a long tradition of similarcategories: Michael Oakeshott’s enterprises and associations, plu-ral and monolithic polities, Arendt Lijphart’s majoritarian and

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consociational or consensual democracies, Anthony D. Smith’scivic, ethnic, and plural nations, Liah Greenfeld’s two types ofnationalism, ethnic and civic.

Democratic legitimacy

Vision Voices

Majority rule Rule by the peoplePartisan state style, head of Non-partisan head of state

state, rituals, etc. style, rituals etc.Party = nation Party is NOT the nationIntense state Bland stateCharisma ConvenienceHigh mobilisation Low mobilisationEnemies Others

One of the main institutions for identification in a democracyis the political party. But parties may influence cohesion betweenruler identification and citizen identification in very different ways.If rulers are so permanently entrenched that the fusion of theiridentification as rulers and that of their party appear to be a perma-nent feature of government, rather than a temporary consequenceof electoral fortunes, then other groups and other parties may ex-perience growing discord between their own identification and thatof their rulers. If, by contrast, party identification is occasionallyassociated with rule, occasionally with opposition, coherence is lesslikely to be threatened. Rulers then have the role of voices in a var-ied governmental and political discourse, rather than visionarieswith a single and exclusive identification.

An argument can be advanced in favour of vision and againstvoices. More identification means intenser but narrower legitima-tion. A state which is wholly neutral about the identifying concernsof its subjects may avoid alienating, but it is argued by some thatit will not be viewed by them as in any particular sense their state,

Michael Oakeshott, On Human Conduct (Oxford, Clarendon Press, ); Arend Lijphart,Democracy in Plural Societies (New Haven, Yale University Press, ); Anthony D. Smith,National Identity (London, Penguin, ); Greenfeld, Nationalism.


and will thus legitimate itself with difficulty. Green and Whitingcomment on the absence of any particular cultural identity in thelate twentieth-century British state: ‘the British state is today quiteself-consciously and increasingly less of a good state. That is, it hasbecome less and less of a state which publicly sustains any explicit,coherent and integrated notion of the good in British society.’

This decline in the association of the state with a particular iden-tity is then associated with declining compliance with law. But itcan be argued conversely that a ruling character that is either civic,or bland, or multifaceted is capable of existing profitably with avaried society in a way that a ‘good’ state is not. In that case, thehistory of the United Kingdom over the past years is a historyof a broad though punctuated move away from ‘goodness’ and to-wards multiplicity, and the secular and ‘amoral’ constitution of theUnited States is a valuable arrangement for preserving social orderin a varied society.

CONCLUSION

Democratic legitimation, far from being a utopian or revolutionaryideal, is a practical and realistic means of minimising the problemsof government and politics, and of creating a form of both whichhas many attractive features, both for subjects and for other states.

The claim I make for democracy is thus both modest and lim-ited. I have not claimed any other virtues for democracy, thoughthere are many which might be claimed. I have not tried toargue that democracy gives less corrupt, or more efficient, or moreeconomically effective, or cheaper government, only that it seemsthe least ineffective way of achieving or sustaining congruence bet-ween popular self-identifications and the legitimating identities ofrulers. Nor have I claimed that a government which enjoys legiti-mating identity congruence with as large a number as possible of itssubjects is necessarily more stable than one which has such congru-ence with a smaller but more powerful section of the population.Legitimated democracies in this sense are not immune to military

S. J. D. Green and R. C Whiting (eds.), The Boundaries of the State in Modern Britain(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, ), p. .

Ibid., p. .

Citizens

coups, foreign subversion, or elite take-over. And I have of coursemade the wholly unargued prior assumption that a congruence ofcitizens’ and rulers’ legitimations is something worth having, andworth preserving. But since the evidence from all societies suggeststhat this assumption is one which people actually hold, the onus ofproof is on those who would argue to the contrary.

The legitimation of rulers in their own eyes is of even greaterimportance to them than their legitimation in the eyes of their sub-jects. Democracy sustains government which is least likely to ignorethe cultivated identifications, aspirations, and aversions of subjectsnot because of any contractual consent, but because it is a politicalsystem which makes difficult substantial and sustained disparitiesbetween the legitimated identity of rulers and that of subjects. Themost immediately potent form of legitimation is the confirmation,in their own eyes, of the authoritative identity of rulers. But thatidentity is most likely to be challenged in democracies where disso-nance between the legitimations of rulers and the legitimations ofordinary subjects and citizens is both most readily articulated andmost readily redressed.

CHAPTER

Conclusion

The central place of self-legitimation in the activity of governmenthas implications both for how we understand the activity of gov-erning, and for what we can reasonably expect from it. Governingis not for those most directly involved in it only an instrumental ac-tivity but, like William Morris’s useful work, inherently satisfying,an end in itself. As a self-sufficient activity in this sense, the activ-ity of ruling or governing involves the cultivation of a distinctiveidentity which both depicts and justifies ruling. Endogenous self-legitimation acts as an identification which justifies and explainsthe actions of rulers, and each dimension, justification and expla-nation sustains the other. If the greatest investment in legitimationis endogenous rather than exogenous, arguments about legitima-tion as involving the recognition or acknowledgement or approvalof the qualities or qualifications of rulers need recasting. It is not somuch recognition in the market place or the street, or on the tele-vision or computer screen that will frequently be sought, as muchas recognition in the embassy, the legislature, the council chamberor the presidential palace. This helps to explain the relative impor-tance for rulers of relations, on the one hand, with other states andgoverning organisations and, on the other, with their subjects. Itcontributes to answering the question ‘Why do rulers bother withendogenous self-legitimation?’ ‘Why are they not cynically mani-pulative, keeping legitimation solely for public use?’ On one view ofpolitics, that is of course exactly what they do do. But in that case

J. Rayner, ‘Philosophy into Dogma: the Revival of Cultural Conservatism’, British Journalof Political Science , (October ), –, argues that in order to succeed the leadersof belief have to encourage views which they do not themselves hold. Such a view, if not

Conclusion

everything outside the immediate public gaze would be utilitarianand informal, and it is not. Legitimation is important to rulers forthe cultivation of their own identification, quite apart from anyconventionally instrumental function it may have.

This does not mean that there is no instrumental dimension togovernment, nor that this dimension can be relegated to a lowerlevel of significance. But the instrumental dimension does not com-prise the whole of the activity of governing, nor always even itsessential elements. Michael Rosen’s question as to why subjectsobey and how that obedience is justified can be complementedby a question as to why rulers bother to rule, and what are theirown satisfactions and self-justifications. Just as the activity of rulinghas an endogenous character, so it has an endogenous justifica-tion or legitimating self-description. Whether or not a politics ofgreat causes lies in the past rather than the future – and there wasmore reason to believe this towards the end of the twentieth cen-tury than at its conclusion – we should not expect a governmentof mere housekeeping to be the pattern of the future. There is noevidence to suggests that there will not always be those who seekto govern and in so doing to legitimate their power and cultivatetheir distinctive governing identity. This aspect of governing maywell induce a democratic, anarchic or liberal scepticism. Citizensneed to be on their guard. Their agenda is not necessarily at all thesame as that of their rulers.

There is an unavoidable logic in the self-legitimation of rulersand their cultivation of distinctive and, to that extent, alienatingidentities. The implications of this account are not encouragingfor liberals, or at least not encouraging for the sort of expecta-tions liberals have of how what they want can be brought about,and what its conditions and foundations will be. A politics oflegitimation and identification will also be a politics of enemies andcultures which, however much they may be clothed in reason, arenot founded upon it. If the analysis of this book is correct, then iden-tity, and hence legitimation and government, will always rest on thecultivation of something which is distinctive, and which moreover

determined, is certainly made very likely, by a view which sees legitimation as a claimmade only by rulers to subjects.


will be sustained to a greater or lesser degree by the depiction ofenemies.

It could be asked how the account given in this book couldbe tested. What for instance could be shown by a time log ofrandomly chosen governors or clusters of governors? There areseveral difficulties with such a programme. Access would be dif-ficult or impossible. It would require permanent shadowing. Norcould an audit of time or expenditure do the job, since legitimationis not a distinct and autonomous activity, but a dimension of mostor all government. In that sense whilst some such testing might beilluminating, it could not ‘prove’ what is an alternative narrative,rather than a testable empirical hypothesis. It might even, para-doxically, be the case that democratic regimes would be less opento this kind of examination. The private ostentations of monarchswere not necessarily hidden, even though they were part of theirprivate self-creation rather than of their public display. The privateostentations of presidents and prime ministers may specifically beconcealed from public view, both because they might be criticisedor ridiculed, and because it is part of their character and justifi-cation that they are not accessible to ordinary people. This createsdifficulties for pursuing what is a largely unpursued suggestion ofthe preceding argument: that there is a significant relation betweenthe manner of endogenous legitimation and other features of gov-ernment. The account of legitimating identities is best seen not asa theory of government which could be tested, but rather as anaccount of government which can be used to provide a differentand to that extent fuller understanding of what governments andrulers are doing.

The conclusion to be drawn from the argument of this bookis not that legitimation is an irrational process. The pursuit oftheories to explain what kinds of legitimation work, and what donot, does not have to succumb before emotion or arbitrariness.But the kinds of questions which are most worthwhile askingwill not take as their premise a concept of a utility maximisingindividual, though a well-being and coherent identity maximisingindividual would provide a sound premise. This is not because anemphasis on individuals is unhelpful but because, in the matter oflegitimation it is more illuminating to pay attention to those aspects

Conclusion

of politics which involve identity seeking. Unless this is done, alarge slice of political conduct will seem either incomprehensibleor irrelevant, which offends democratic empiricism since to thepeople themselves it is neither.

This book has not addressed the question, which has enjoyedthe attention of many of those who have written on authority andthe legitimation of government, of the relation of legitimation toobedience, or resistance, to the commands of rulers. But two con-tributions to such a discussion nonetheless arise from the featuresof legitimation which have been considered here. First, legitima-tion is an aspect of the action of obeying, or not obeying. Second,a coherent sense of identity appears to be generally sought bypolitical actors, to be a good or a utility which they either seek,or strive to preserve and cultivate. An observation of this fact helpsan understanding not just of the behaviour of subjects towardsdomestic government, but of the behaviour of states towards eachother.

Rulers and leaders who legitimate themselves endogenously withlittle or no regard for the forms of legitimation which will be com-prehensible to, and will accord with the identifications of, thosewhom they rule are cultivating a difficulty for their own govern-ment. Such an understanding of the relation between endogenouslegitimation and the identification of subjects will not necessarilymake possible prediction of tensions and breakdowns, but it willassist the understanding of those that occur.

There is every reason to try to construct an account of legitima-tion which will assist the understanding of government success andfailure, and which will increase our understanding of why somethings work and others do not. So the self-absorption of rulers,though endemic to and a characterising feature of government,has at least the self-defeating feature that the more purely self-referential it is, the less is it able to ensure the conditions necessaryfor its own continuation. Democracy may not work in quite theway its normative advocates propose or expect. But it is the bestway available of checking the inconvenient consequences of theself-legitimation of rulers. It works to beneficial ends which maynot be the ends of any of the parties to the process, but which arenonetheless to the general good.


If predictions of less state dirigisme after the year are accu-rate, thatwill not necessarilymean less government. Social scientistsshould keep a sharp look out for the trappings of office, which arethe symptoms of government. ‘By their fruits ye shall know them.’But not only by their fruits, but also by their suits, by their pompand their circumstance. It was pointed out many years ago whenDesmond Morris described humans as naked apes that humanswere in fact not naked, but clothed, and that the construction ofartefacts for use and display was a characteristic of the species.Virginia Woolf made a similar point when discussing the elaboratefeathered finery of the male establishment in Three Guineas. Anacademic study of the politics of clothing may be some way off, butas an indication of the estimate made by rulers of their own impor-tance, and thus of the extent of the time and resources devoted tomaintaining that sense of importance, observation of the externaltrappings of governing will prove to be, at the very least, evidenceof the continuing vigour of the activity of governing into the newcentury. When Paine dismissed Burke for pitying the feathers butforgetting the dying bird, he made a sharp polemical point. But hediverted attention from the fact that without the feathers, the birdis scarcely a bird at all, and that if we want to go birdwatching,or regime spotting, one of the most reliable indicators to keep oureyes peeled for is the plumage.

Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape (London, Jonathan Cape, ). VirginiaWoolf,Three Guineas (London,HogarthPress, , repr. London, Penguin, ).

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Index

abortion, –Ahmad, Aijiz, Akuapem, kings of, Algeria, Anderson, Benedict, Anglo, Sydney, Animal Liberation Front, animal rights, Appiah, K. Anthony, –architecture, Ascherson, Neal, Austin, Regina, n.Australia, –

Bagehot, Walter, Bali, banners, Baylis, Thomas S., n.Bebel, August, Beer, S. H., Beetham, David, –, n. , ,

, Bensman, Joseph, , –Berger, Joseph, Berger, Peter, , Binski, Paul, , , Black, David, Blau, Peter, Bourdieu, Pierre, , Bourricaud, Francois, , Brasılia, Bray, Michael, Brazier, Margaret, n.Bromley, Burke, Edmund, Burke, Peter, , , Burma,

Cambodia, Campbell, David, n.Cannadine, David, n., , , Chan, Hok-lam, Chandigarh, Charles I, Chesterton, G. K., China, , Christian right, USA, –Christianity, –citizens, –citizenship, European, civil disobedience, –class, , , Claude, Inis, , , Cloth of Gold, Field of, coercion, –cold war, , communism, ,

collapse of in Eastern Europe and SovietUnion, , , , , , – ,

communist rulers, Connor, Walker, co-option, –coronation, , Czech Republic,

David, Louis, democracy, , –, –democratic legitimation, –,

Deutsch, Karl, di Palma, Guiseppi, –, diplomatic rituals, divine right, , Downs, Anthony, –, Dunleavy, Patrick, ,

Index

Eastern Europe,collapse of communism in, , , , ,

, – , Easton, David, –Edelman, Murray, , Egypt, Eisenhower, President, elections, –Elias, Norbert, –, elite theory, elites, –, –, enemies, , –Erikson, Erik, European Court of Human Rights, European Court of Justice, European Union, –, , , –, ,

, –

Ferrell, Lori, , Field of the Cloth of Gold, Forbidden City, China, –Fox, Merritt, –Francis I, Franck, Thomas, , Friedrich, Carl, Fulbrook, Mary, funerals, – ,

Geertz, Clifford, , , Germany, , Glassman, Ronald, –Goffman, Erving, Goodin, Robert, Goodsell, Charles, –Gramsci, Antonio, , Green, Donald, , Green, S. J. D., Greenfeld, Liah, , Griffin, Michael, Gurr, Ted, Gypsies,

Halliwell, David, Hardin, Russell, –Harington, Sir John, Heisler, M. O., –Henry III, , –Henry V, Henry VII, Henry VIII, Henshaw, David, n.

Hinze, Otto, Hirschman, Albert O., Hitler, Adolf, –, Hobsbawm, Eric, , , , Holmes, Leslie, Hooghe, Liesbet, n.Hroch, Miroslav, , Hungary, Hurd, Douglas, Huskey, Eugene, Hussein, Sadam,

identification and legitimation, –,–

identity/identification, –imams, inaugural lectures, IRA, , –, Iraq, Islam, –, ,

Jacobites, –James I & VI, , Java, Josephine, Empress,

Kantorowicz, Ernst, n., Kedward, H. R., Kepel, Gilles, Kertzer, David, Kipling, Rudyard, Klotz, Audie, Kremlin, –Khrushchev, Nikita, Kubik, Jan, Kvavik, Robert, –

language, Laski, Harold, Lasswell, Harold, –Lawrence, Jon, Lazzaretti, Davide, Lee, Ronnie, n.Leeson, R. A., n.legitimacy

distinguished from legitimation, ,–, –

empirically or historically assessed, ,–

fusion of normative and empiricaltheories, –

normatively assessed, –, –, , –

Index

legitimationand compliance, –and co-option, –and democracy, ff.and ethical coherence, –and privacy, –, –and public support, –, –and types of rule, –, –crises, distinguished from legitimacy, , –,

–endogenous/self-legitimation, –,

–, – , –failures of, –, –new attention paid to, –of citizens, –of leaders and of followers, – , –of rulers by rulers, – , –possible objections to theory of, –three groups of actors, , –

Levi, Margaret, , –Lewis, Paul G., liberalism, economic, Liberty Tree, Lijphart, Arendt, –Linz, Juan, Lipset, S. M., Little Malcolm, liturgy, local government, Lord, Christopher, –, n., , ,

Louis XIV, , , –, , Lovecy, Jill, n.Luckman, Thomas,

Machiavelli, Niccolo, , Mackenzie, W. J. M., Mandarin language, maquis, Marr, Andrew, Marxism, , , , mass, Maurras, Charles, McAllister, Ian, –McCauley, Martin, McLean, Iain, Mill, John Stuart, Mitterand, Francois, modernity, monarchy, , , –, – , –, Moran, Michael, n.

Morris, Desmond, Morris, William,

Nairn, Tom, Napoleon, nationalism, , –, –, –Nazism, , –, Nettl, J. P., new age travellers, –North, Douglass C., , –Northern Ireland, –

O’Neil, Patrick, Oakeshott, Michael, Olson, Mancur, , Operation Rescue, Ordeshook, Peter, Orwell, George, , Ottoman empire,

Paine, Tom, Pakistan, Pakulski, Jan, , –, papacy, Pareto, Vilfredo, Paris Commune, –Parson, Talcott, patriarchy, Pol Pot, Poland, , , , , poll tax, post-modernity, , Potton, Margaret, n.power, –prestige, –priesthood, prisoner’s dilemma, Przeworkski, Adam, Pye, Lucien,

Qutb, Sayyid,

Raeff, Marc, Ranger, Terence, rational choice theory, –rebellion, –rebels, –, –Reifenstahl, Leni, religion, , –, , –, Renner, Karl, Richard III, Richter, Melvin,

Index

Rigby, T. H., Riker, William, Ringmar, Erik, n.Roma, Roman Catholic Church, Rorty, Richard, –, Rosen, Michael, – , –,

, Rothschild, Joseph, , Rushdie, Salman, Russian Revolution ,

Saltaire, Saward, Michael, Schull, Joseph, Schumpeter, Joseph A., science, scientists, Scotland, , Scruton, Roger, sects, religious, Selznick, Philip, Serbia, sermons, , Shapiro, Ian, , shari’a, Sharif, Nawaz, Shaw, George Bernard, SLORC, Smith, Anthony D., Social Democratic Party (SPD), Germany,

South Africa, Southwark, Soviet Union, ,

collapse of communism in, , , Stammler, Rudolph, state, , Sternberg, Dolf, – , Stillman, Peter, Strohm, Paul, Stuarts, –Sukatipan, Saitip, n.Sweden,

Taylor, Charles, n.Teiwes, Frederick, Terry, Randall, Thailand, n.Thatcher, Margaret, , theocracy, –,

Thorne, Will, Tocqueville, Alexis de, Toolis, Kevin, n.– , n.Tower Hamlets, trade unions, Turner, Bryan, twentieth century, short, ,

United Kingdom, –, United Nations,

Vaughan, Olufemi, Vernon, James, n.Versailles, , Veyne, Paul, , –Vichy regime, Victoria, Queen, –Vidich, Arthur, – , vigilantes, –voting, –

Wales, , Wallace, Helen, Weatherman, Weber, Max , –, ,

account of legitimation, , , –,–

confusions by and misunderstandings of,–

criticisms of, –elective affinity, on democracy, , on justification of action, –, –,

, on leaders and followers, –on relation between type of legitimation

and type of regime, –, –on self-legitimation, , , –,

Weimar Republic, Westminster Abbey, , , White House, Whiting, R. C., William IV, –Wilton Diptych, Wood, Stewart, Woodward, Jennifer, –Woolf, Virginia,

Xedong, Mao,

Zelditch, Morris,

Documents

Barker 2004 Self-Legitimacy of Rulers