Political Legitimacy 

 Dr. Steven Wall

The concept of political legitimacy is central to political philosophy. An entity has political legitimacy if, and only if, it is morally justified in exercising political power. Traditionally understood, only states have political legitimacy for only states exercise (specifically) political power. That is, only states claim a monopoly right to make, apply and enforce laws within a territorial jurisdiction and only states claim that those subject to their authority have a general obligation to obey their directives. Recently, the traditional understanding of political legitimacy has been challenged. It has been claimed that both substate entities and international organizations can and do exercise political power. Furthermore, it has been claimed that in order for an entity to be politically legitimate it need not claim a right to be obeyed.

In this course, we will explore the challenge to the traditional understanding of political legitimacy. Along the way, we will consider two rival views of political legitimacy, one that views legitimacy in terms of the consent of those subject to political power and the other that views political legitimacy in terms of the justified exercise of political power. We will discuss the extent to which these views can be extended with profit to cover substate entities and international organizations. We will also consider the relationship between political legitimacy and other concepts central to political philosophy, such as justice, authority, power and obligation.

Writers to be discussed include Locke, Weber, Rawls, Nagel, Raz, Simmons and Buchanan.