Legitimation

AbstractQuestions of political and legal legitimation have been considerably complicated by the multitude of academic disciplines engaging these questions, by the very different understandings of the process of legitimation and the relevant criteria for measuring legitimacy, by fundamental disagreements about the nature of rationality, existence, and knowledge, and by claims that legitimation is nothing more than a form of ideology masking and perpetuating illegitimate hierarchies based on class, gender, and race. To avoid privileging the parochial assumptions of one of these approaches, three conceptions of legitimation – premodern, modern, and postsecular – are articulated in this entry to capture the depth and breadth of disagreement. Premodern conceptions of legitimation consider governments and rulers legitimate if they are ordained by God or if the political system is ordered in accordance with the normative cosmic order. By contrast, the prevailing modern conception of legitimation in constitutional democracies stems from the “consent of the governed,” which includes two principles of legitimation – the principle of democracy (or popular sovereignty) and the principle of constitutionalism (or the rule of law). Despite the predominance of the modern conception, the dramatic return of religion to public life and the surprising rise of political theology are two prominent developments supporting a shift to a postsecular conception of legitimation, which would transform the prevailing understanding of the principles of democracy and constitutionalism. Nevertheless, the competition among these conceptions continues within and across national boundaries for the coveted prize of informing the social imaginary.