Legitimacy is Everything.

In politics, at least.

After all, the powers of government, as I have stated previously, are inherently limited. The power of the government is limited to the repressive power of the security apparatus and it's power to tax. The rest is all predicated on assistance, or at least a lack of opposition, on the part of the general populous.

Think about it. The in order to stop someone from doing something the only real choices are rendering it illegal thus sanctioning the use of force against those who engage in such behavior and taxing it to hell and back thus sanctioning the use of force against those who engage in such behavior without paying up first. To make someone do something the choices are functionally identical, you either pay people for doing it or you sanction the use of force against against those who fail to do it.

These are remarkably ham handed tools.

So, how does the government, restricted to these things, manage to exist. The amount of force that the government can bring to bear is a tiny fraction of the total force available to the people in general. I have to say that the answer is legitimacy.

Legitimacy is the belief that the rule of the government is right, just, or otherwise correct.

In the United States today the government pulls most of it's legitimate authority from the concept that it represents and is selected by the people and that law is transcendant and equally applicable.

Legitimacy of Kingdoms tends to come from the idea that the king is a powerful war leader capable of ensuring safety where there is otherwise none, that the authority of kings is annointed by religious authority, and that men surrender their natural powers to the office as part of the natural order of things.

Communist Dictatorships hinge on putting the power of the lower classes in trust, that people should not resist the will of the workers as represented by the government and that the government functions to preserve equality.

Military Dictatorships tend to be simpler in theory that the government exists to maintain security otherwise provide for those who provide security, and that resistance to the government is essentially an act of war because it damages the ability of the military to provide security.

All these governments operate differently. They all require that people accept the principles behind their kind of legitimacy as valid and at least do not actively oppose the functioning of government. It's strange how a population can accept multiple theories of legitimacy and justification for rule in a relatively short period of time with only minor things that deal with other elements.





We could probably use research into the mechanisms for legitimacy. Why do these concepts exist? Why are we predisposed to accepting the rule of others? I'm kind of afraid that if we knew those answers then they would be used against me, though.