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On Communitarian and Global Sources of Legitimacy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2011

Amitai Etzioni
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Extract

Although the concept of legitimacy is widely invoked in social science literature, political discourse, and common parlance, key empirical and normative questions about legitimacy are often left far from answered, especially “Legitimated by whom?” and “Legitimate by what criteria?” Recently these questions have been raised with particular acuteness with regard to the nascent international society, for instance, the standing of the International Criminal Court and the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States-led coalition.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 73 , Issue 1 , Winter 2011 , pp. 105 - 122
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2011

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References

1 Isaac Bashevis Singer, Nobel Lecture, December 8, 1978 (available at http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1978/singer-lecture.html).

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5 Max Weber's analysis of legitimacy as a form of domination led many discussions of the subject to limit explorations of its normative side. Ian Clark writes that for Weber, “rule is legitimate when its subjects believe it to be so” (“Legitimacy in a Global Order,” in “Governance and Resistance in World Politics,” ed. Armstrong, David, special issue, Review of International Studies 29 [2003]: 79Google Scholar). Robert Grafstein writes: “In Weber's hands … legitimacy no longer represents an evaluation of a regime; indeed, it no longer refers directly to the regime itself. Rather, it is defined as the belief of citizens that the regime is, to speak in circles, legitimate” (“The Failure of Weber's Conception of Legitimacy: Its Causes and Implications,” Journal of Politics 43, no. 2 [1981]: 456Google Scholar). Jean-Marc Coicaud also blames Weber for the way legitimacy has been dealt with in social science writing: “Although legitimacy is indissociable from the faculty of judgment, most works and reflections that make use of it are loath to take into account the dimension of judgment it implies. They refuse to conduct research into the conditions for the right to govern by inquiring about the criteria used to evaluate political life. Max Weber's analyses of legitimacy … have a great deal to do with this phenomenon” (Legitimacy and Politics, trans. Curtis, David Ames [New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002], 1Google Scholar).

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31 Etzioni, The New Golden Rule, 16–17.

32 Clark, Legitimacy in International Society; “Legitimacy in a Global Order,” 75–95.

33 This conception of legitimacy stems in large part from the work of Max Weber (see footnote 5 above). As one author puts it, this understanding of the concept makes the test for legitimacy “not the truth of the philosopher, but the belief of the people” (Schabert, Tilo, “Power, Legitimacy and Truth: Reflections on the Impossibility to Legitimise Legitimations of Political Order,” in Legitimacy, ed. Moulakis, Athanasios [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1985], 102Google Scholar; quoted in Clark, “Legitimacy in a Global Order,” 80).

34 Lipset, Seymour Martin, Political Man: The Social Basis of Politics (New York: Doubleday, 1960)Google Scholar, 77; Applbaum, “Culture, Identity, and Legitimacy,” 24–25; Franck, Power of Legitimacy, 19; Watson, The Evolution of International Society, 17; Hurd, “Legitimacy and Authority,” 381; Bukovansky, Legitimacy and Power Politics, 24; Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, 95–96; Beetham, Legitimation of Power.

35 Michael Walzer argues that a “given society is just if its substantive life is lived … in a way faithful to the shared understandings of the members” (Spheres of Justice [New York: Basic Books, 1983], 313Google Scholar). For a comprehensive critique of Walzer on this point, see Etzioni, The New Golden Rule, 233. Walzer later changed this position, asserting a robust set of universal values (Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, 3rd ed. [New York: Basic Books Classics, 2000]Google Scholar).

36 Sally Bland, “So-Called Honor Crimes Revisited,” Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News, April 2, 2007; Katherine Zoepf, “A Dishonorable Affair,” New York Times Magazine, September 23, 2007, 22; Sandler, Lauren, “When Love Is a Crime,” The New York Times, October 7, 2004Google Scholar.

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38 The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. “Original Position” (by Fred D'Agostino), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/original-position/.

39 Habermas, Jürgen, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990)Google Scholar, 94; Habermas, , Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996)Google Scholar, 110; Habermas, , The Postnational Constellation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Held, Democracy and the Global Order; Barber, “Democracy and Terror,” 255; Murphy, “Global Governance,” 790; Devetak and Higgott, “Justice Unbound?” 490.

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43 Although these do help narrow the field of that which remains to be judged, a variety of proceduralism is, of course, at the heart of one version of democratic theory. My criticism is not that all procedures are worthless, but rather that they cannot, in and of themselves, provide a grounding point for the question at hand.

44 This is a core concept of deontology (see The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. “Deontological Ethics” [by Larry Alexander and Michael Moore], http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/), although philosophers add to it numerous assumptions and implications, none of which are here embraced.

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49 Actually a closer examination may reveal that universal values have nevertheless at least some appeal even to people so indoctrinated; however, this cannot be demonstrated here.

50 It is important to recall that moral dialogues are not the source of legitimacy for these universal values; they merely allow people access to the self-evident truths that otherwise might be hidden from one.

51 For the same reason, in earlier eras, in which much of the world was dogmatic and sealed off, many people were prevented from hearing the voice of the same basic values. One would expect these values to apply to all futures, however in the same basic way constitutions apply, namely through interpretations that reflect the ever changing historical context.

52 Rorty, Richard, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Rorty, , “Putnam and the Relativist Menace,” The Journal of Philosophy 90, no. 9 (1993), 443–61Google Scholar; Fish, Stanley, “Don't Blame Relativism,” The Responsive Community 12, no. 3 (2002), 27–31Google Scholar.

53 Rorty, “Putnam and the Relativist Menace,” 444.

54 On his philosophical antifoundationalism, Rorty writes: “When we go, so do our norms and standards of rational assertibility. Does truth go too? Truth neither comes nor goes. That is not because it is an entity that enjoys an atemporal existence, but because it is not an entity at all. The word ‘truth’, in this context, is just the reification of an approbative and indefinable adjective” (ibid., 453). See Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity.

55 Jamieson, Dale, “When Utilitarians Should Be Virtue Theorists,” Utilitas 19, no. 2 (2007), 160–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.