4.

DEMOCRACY AND LEGITIMACY

‘Democracy is the worst form of government

except all the other forms that have been
tried from time to time.’ WINSTON
CHURCHILL
 4.DEMOCRACY AND LEGITIMACY

• In modern politics, debates

about legitimacy are
dominated by the issue of
democracy.
• Until the nineteenth
century, the term
‘democracy’ continued to
have pejorative LEGITIMACY IS
implications, suggesting a RIGHTFULLNESS
form of ‘mob rule’. IN MINDS AND HEARTS
OF PEOPLE
 LEGITIMACY AND POLITICAL
STABILITY
• The issue of legitimacy, the rightfulness of a
regime or system of rule, is linked to the
oldest and one of the most fundamental of
political debates. Do citizens have a duty to
respect the state and obey its laws?
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGqXkcpP3Kk

• Legitimizing power: The classic

contribution to the understanding of
legitimacy as a sociological phenomenon
was provided by Max Weber.
 LEGITIMACY AND POLITICAL
STABILITY
Three kinds of
authority are;
 Three kinds of authority
In effect, traditional authority is regarded
as legitimate because it has ‘always
existed’: it has been sanctified (blessed) by
history because earlier generations have
accepted it.
The most obvious examples of traditional
authority are found amongst tribes or
small groups in the form of patriarchalism
and gerontocracy.
 Three kinds of authority
Charismatic authority is
based on the power of an
individual’s personality.
Charismatic authority
operates entirely through the
capacity of a leader to make a
direct and personal appeal to
followers as a kind of hero or
saint.
 Three kinds of authority
• Legal–rational authority links authority to
a clearly and legally defined set of rules.
• The power of a president is determined in
the final analysis by constitutional rules,
which constrain or limit what an office
holder is able to do.
• However, Weber also recognised a darker
side to this type of political legitimacy.
Bureaucratic forms of organization.
 LEGITIMACY AND POLITICAL
STABILITY
Legitimation crises may
cause revolutions.
Revolution: A popular
uprising, involving
extra-legal mass action,
which brings about
fundamental change (a
change in the political
system itself)
 DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY
Democracy can be seen to promote
legitimacy in at least three ways.
• In the first place. Democracy underpins
legitimacy by expanding the opportunities
for political participation, most
importantly through the act of voting, but
also through activities such as joining a
political party or interest group or by
engaging in protests or demonstrations.
 DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY
• Second, the essence of democratic
governance is a process of compromise,
conciliation and negotiation rather than
the use of naked power.
• Third, democracy operates as a feedback
system that tends towards long-term
political stability, as it brings the
‘outputs’ of government into line with
the ‘inputs’ or pressures placed upon it.
 NON-DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY

• Non-democratic regimes are,

by their nature, illegitimate.
• Nevertheless, some
authoritarian regimes
survive for many decades
with relatively little evidence
of mass political disaffection.
 NON-DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY
Three key forms of non-democratic legitimation
have been used.
• First, elections have been used to give a regime
a democratic façade.
• Second, non-democratic regimes have sought
performance legitimation based on their ability
to deliver high living standards.
• Third, ideological legitimation has been used,
either in an attempt to uphold the leader’s,
military’s or party’s right to rule.
 NON-DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY

However, when such

strategies fail, all semblance
of legitimation evaporates
and non-democratic
regimes are forced either to
resort to progressively more
draconian means of
survival, or else they
collapse in the face of
popular uprisings.
UNDERSTANDING DEMOCRACY
• Democracy is derived from the ancient
Greek word kratos, meaning power, or
rule. Democracy thus means ‘rule by the
demos’ (the demos referring to ‘the
people’).
• However, a term that can mean anything
to anyone is in danger of meaning
nothing at all.
 UNDERSTANDING DEMOCRACY
Democracy is the
following;
• a system of rule by the
poor and
disadvantaged
• a form of government
in which the people
rule themselves
directly
• …………so on.
 WHO ARE THE PEOPLE?
• One of the core features of democracy
is the principle of political equality.
• However, who constitutes ‘the
people’?
• Answer is simple: ‘the demos’, or ‘the
people’, surely refers to all the people;
that is, the entire population of the
country.
 WHO ARE THE PEOPLE?
• In Greek city-states, political
participation was restricted
to a tiny proportion of the
population, male citizens
over the age of 20, thereby
excluding all women, slaves
and foreigners.
• Strict restrictions on voting
also existed in most western
states until well into the
Platon
twentieth century.
 WHO ARE THE PEOPLE?
• Nevertheless, an important restriction
continues to be practised in all
democratic systems in the form of the
exclusion of children, the certifiably
insane and imprisoned criminals.

• ‘the people’ may in practice be taken to

mean ‘the majority’.
 HOW SHOULD THE PEOPLE RULE?
• In the case of direct democracy,
popular participation entails
direct and continuous
involvement in decision-making,
through devices such as
referendums.
• The alternative and more
common form of democratic
participation is the act of voting,
which is called ‘representative
democracy’.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6jgWxkbR7A
 HOW FAR SHOULD POPULAR RULE
EXTEND?
• Liberal democracy have usually
proposed that democracy be
restricted to political life.
• Instead of endorsing mere
political democracy, socialists
have called for ‘social
democracy’.
 MODELS OF DEMOCRACY
In reality, there are a number of rival
theories or models of democracy.
Four contrasting models of democracy:
• classical democracy
• protective democracy
• developmental democracy
• people’s democracy.
 CLASSICAL DEMOCRACY
The form of direct
democracy that
operated in Athens
during the fourth
and fifth centuries
BCE is often
portrayed as the
only pure or ideal
system of popular
participation.
 CLASSICAL DEMOCRACY
• What made Athenian democracy so
remarkable was the level of political
activity of its citizens.
• The most influential critic of this form of
democracy was the philosopher Plato. Plato
attacked the principle of political equality.
• His solution, advanced in The Republic, was
that government be placed in the hands of a
class of philosopher kings.
 CLASSICAL DEMOCRACY
The classical model has
been kept alive in the
township meetings of
New England in the
USA, the communal
assemblies that operate
in the smaller Swiss
cantons and in the
wider use of
referendums.https
://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLJBzhcSWTk SWISS VOTE
 PROTECTIVE DEMOCRACY
• In the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, democracy was seen as a
device through which citizens could
protect themselves from the
encroachments of government.
• This view appealed particularly to early
liberal thinkers whose concern was,
above all, to create the widest realm of
individual liberty.
 PROTECTIVE DEMOCRACY

This same concern

with unchecked
power was taken up in
the seventeenth
century by John Locke.
 PROTECTIVE DEMOCRACY
• The more radical notion of universal suffrage
was advanced from the late eighteenth
century onwards by utilitarian theorists such
as Jeremy Bentham and James Mill (1773–
1836).
• Bentham came to believe that, since all
individuals seek pleasure and the avoidance
of pain, a universal franchise (manhood
suffrage) was the only way of promoting ‘the
greatest happiness for the greatest number’.
 PROTECTIVE DEMOCRACY
Liberty must also be guaranteed
by a strictly enforced separation
of powers via the creation of a
separate executive, legislature
and judiciary, and by the
maintenance of basic rights and
freedoms, such as freedom of
expression, freedom of
movement, and freedom from
arbitrary arrest.
 DEVELOPMENTAL DEMOCRACY
• An alternative focus: a
concern with the
development of the
human individual and
the community (Jean-
Jacques Rousseau)
• They came to have an
impact on the Marxist
and anarchist
traditions as well as,
later, on the New Left.
DEVELOPMENTAL DEMOCRACY
In Rousseau’s view, developmental
democracy required not merely political
equality, but a relatively high level of
economic equality.
Although not a supporter of common
ownership, Rousseau nevertheless
proposed that ‘no citizen shall be rich
enough to buy another and none so poor as
to be forced to sell himself ’.
DEVELOPMENTAL DEMOCRACY
For Mill, the central virtue of
democracy was that it
promotes the ‘highest and
harmonious’ development of
individual capacities.
By participating in political
life, citizens enhance their
understanding, strengthen
their sensibilities and achieve
a higher level of personal
development.
DEVELOPMENTAL DEMOCRACY
• As a result, Mill proposed the broadening of
popular participation, arguing that the franchise
should be extended to all including women but
those who are illiterate.
• Mill did not believe that all political opinions are of
equal value. Consequently, he proposed a system of
plural voting: unskilled workers would have a
single vote, skilled workers two votes…
• He had typical liberal fear which was famously
described by Alexis de Tocqueville as ‘the tyranny
of the majority’.
 PEOPLE’S DEMOCRACY
The term was used, in
particular, to designate
the goal of social
equality brought about
through the common
ownership of wealth in
contrast to ‘political’
democracy, which
establishes only a facade
of equality.
 PEOPLE’S DEMOCRACY
• Marx’ admiration for the Paris Commune of
1871.
• The form of democracy that was developed
in twentieth-century communist states,
however, owed more to the ideas of V. I.
Lenin than it did to those of Marx.
• The weakness of this model is that Lenin
failed to build into it any mechanism for
checking the power of the Communist Party.
 DEMOCRACY IN PRACTICE: RIVAL
VIEWS
The most important interpretations about
democracy are advanced by:
• pluralism
• elitism
• corporatism
• the New Right
• Marxism.
 PLURALIST VIEW
More specifically, it refers
to a form of democracy
that operates through the
capacity of organized
groups and interests to
articulate popular
demands and ensure
responsive government.
 PLURALIST VIEW
• Pluralist ideas can be traced back to early liberal
political philosophy, and notably to the ideas of Locke
and Montesquieu.
• In considering the transformation of America from a
loose confederation of states into the federal USA,
Madison’s particular fear was the ‘problem of factions’.
Madison argued that unchecked democratic rule might
simply lead to majoritarianism. He therefore proposed
a system of divided government based on the
separation of powers, bicameralism and federalism.
Madison’s model is the first developed statement of
pluralist principles.
 PLURALIST VIEW
• The system of rule by multiple
minorities may simply have
been a device to prevent the
majority (the propertyless
masses) from exercising
political power.
• A further problem is the
danger of ‘pluralist
stagnation’, resulting in the
problem of government
‘overload’.
 ELITIST VIEW
• Elitism developed as a
critique of egalitarian ideas
such as democracy and
socialism.
• Classical elitists; for
example, in The Ruling Class
[1896] , Mosca proclaimed
that, in all societies, ‘two
classes of people appear – a
class that rules and a class
that is ruled’.
 ELITIST VIEW
In his view, the resources
or attributes that are
necessary for rule are
always unequally
distributed, and, further, a
cohesive minority will
always be able to
manipulate and control
the masses, even in a
parliamentary democracy.
 ELITIST VIEW
• Pareto suggested that the qualities
needed to rule conforms to one of two
psychological types: ‘foxes’ and ‘lions’ .
• Michels developed an alternative line of
argument.
Power is to be concentrated in the hands of
a small group of dominant figures who can
organize and make decisions. He termed
this ‘the iron law of oligarchy’.
 ELITIST VIEW
• Whereas classical elitists strove to
prove that democracy was always a
myth, modern elitist theorists have
tended to highlight how far particular
political systems fall short of the
democratic ideal.
• Wright Mills’ The Power Elite, offered
a portrait of USA. In his view, this
‘power elite’ comprised a triumvirate
of big business, the US military and
political cliques. The power elite is
able to shape key ‘history-making’
decisions.
 ELITIST VIEW
• Whereas the power elite model
portrays the elite as a cohesive body,
bound together by common or
overlapping interests, competitive
elitism (called also ‘democratic
elitism’) highlights the significance
of elite rivalry. In other words, the
elite is fractured.
• Joseph Schumpeter’s ‘realistic’
model
 ELITIST VIEW
• The electorate can decide which elite rules,
but cannot change the fact that power is
always exercised by an elite.
• Anthony Downs argued that a system of
open and competitive elections guarantees
democratic rule because it places
government in the hands of the party
whose philosophy, values and policies
correspond most closely to the preferences.
 CORPORATIST VIEW
• The origins of corporatism date back to the
attempt in Fascist Italy to construct a so-called
‘corporate state’ by integrating both managers
and workers into the processes of government.
• In the form of neocorporatism, this gave rise to
the spectre of ‘tripartite government’, in which
government is conducted through
organizations that allow state officials,
employers’ groups and unions to deal directly
with one another.
 CRITICS OF CORPORATISTS
• In the first place, ‘Insider’ groups possess
a political voice, while ‘outsider’ groups
are denied one.
• Second, corporatism can work to the
benefit of the state not of citizens.
• Finally, corporatism threatens to subvert
the processes of electoral or
parliamentary democracy.
 NEW RIGHT VIEW
• The emergence of the New
Right from the 1970s
onwards has generated a
very particular critique of
democratic politics.
• ‘Democratic overload’: the
paralysis of a political
system that is subject to
unrestrained group and
electoral pressures.
 NEW RIGHT VIEW
• The economic consequences of
unrestrained democracy are high levels
of inflation.
• New Right theorists are keen advocates
of the free market.
• The New Right view is that ‘democracy is
harmless in small doses; sickening in
excess.’
 MARXIST VIEW
• The Marxist view of democratic politics is rooted
in class analysis.
• In this view, political power cannot be
understood narrowly in terms of electoral rights.
• Political power reflects the distribution of
economic power and, in particular, the unequal
ownership of productive wealth.
• The Marxist critique of liberal democracy thus
focuses upon the inherent tension between
democracy and capitalism.
 MARXIST VIEW
• The Marxist view
parallels the elitist
critique of pluralism.
• Both views suggest that
power is ultimately
concentrated in the
hands of the few.
 TOWARDS COSMOPOLITAN
DEMOCRACY?
• Policy-making authority has shifted from
national governments to international
organizations. Two basic models;
• The first would involve the construction of
a world parliament such as the United
Nations, the World Trade Organization,
the International Monetary Fund and so
forth. They favour a multilevel system in
which no body or level is able to exercise
final authority.
 TOWARDS COSMOPOLITAN
DEMOCRACY?
• The alternative model of
cosmopolitan democracy often
linked to the strengthening of
global civil society (NGOs).
• However especially major states
are likely to block any trend
towards global democracy.
• Egalitarian thrust implicit in the
idea of cosmopolitan democracy is
simply out of step with the deep
economic, political and military
disparities of the existing global
system.