Legitimacy: the Treasure of Politics by Tage Kurtén and Lars Hertzberg, eds.

Excerpt

Legitimacy: the Treasure of Politics is based on a research project focused on the concepts of legitimacy and morality, funded by the Academy of Finland from 2005 to 2008. The volume contains contributions from scholars in philosophy, human rights and theology and seeks to address conceptual issues of legitimacy primarily in European societies. Although existing literature on legitimacy is abundant, Tage Kurtén and Lars Hertzberg’s preposition is that some aspects of this term have still been overlooked and are best explored using a trans-disciplinary research approach. While Max Weber considers “legitimacy as dependent upon tradition (a historical criterion), the extra-ordinary qualities of the ruler (a criterion of personal character), upon legality (a formal and procedural criterion)” (9) in contrast this volume seeks to re-conceptualize the term by focusing on the people surrounding the authorities. In other words, this book views legitimacy “as something primarily dependent, not upon the nature of governments, politicians or court judges, but upon the people subject to the actions of such authorities” (9). …