Legality, Legitimacy and Compliance

Power, rule, and legitimacy have always been core concerns of political science. However, as Suchman (1995: 572) observes, “(m)any researchers employ the term

legitimacy

, but few define it.” If it is defined, reference is mostly made to Max Weber and his definition of the three types of legitimate domination. For Weber, the systematic empiricist and action theorist, a social order is legitimate if it is held to be binding and exemplary; it is the

belief

in the exemplary and binding nature of a social order that constitutes legitimacy, whether this is the order of marriage or of political rule (Weber 1956: 26). The legitimating belief attributes the right to make binding decisions to some person or institution, and constitutes at the same time the normative (moral) obligation of specified subjects to comply, irrespective of the costs or benefits accruing to them if they do. Though this is often not done, the social scientist should insist on Weber’s definition: legitimacy is a belief, an empirical phenomenon to be established as other socially relevant subjective phenomena, and not something to be inferred from compliant behavior nor deduced from the presence or absence of its presumable determinants. Whether a legitimating belief is widely shared or not is an empirical question of great practical importance, but need not be included in the very definition of legitimacy.