Legitimacy — Concept and Relevance of Legitimacy in the Exercise of Political Power

Two governments can pass the identical law banning a protest. One country accepts it as the fair decision of an elected parliament; the other erupts, because the same parliament is widely seen as fraudulently elected. The law and the power behind it are the same. What differs is legitimacy — and it is legitimacy, not law alone, that decides whether power is exercised smoothly or at the point of a baton.

In two minutes

Legitimacy is the widely shared belief among the governed that a government's exercise of power is rightful and deserves obedience — the belief that turns authority from a fact people submit to into a claim people actually accept.

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