• What is legitimacy?
• Difference between legality and legitimacy
• legitimacy of power
• Causes of loss of legitimacy
• social legitimacy

We explain what legitimacy is, how it differs from legality and why it can be lost. Also, the legitimacy of power.

Legitimacy is a principle of acceptance of a given authority.

What is legitimacy?

In the law and the social Sciences, something is said to be legitimate when it is given fairly, correctly, in accordance with what is established in the law and what is accepted by the people. In other words, the legitimacy of an act depends on how much it is accepted and recognized by people as correct, fair and in accordance with common law, without the need to use coercion or force.

We can thus speak of the legitimacy of a government, for example, from a authority or a judicial decision, or we can refer to the legitimacy of a plot within a discussion. Whatever the case may be, "legitimacy" can be considered as a principle of acceptance of a given authority.

According to legal theory, the legitimacy of an act necessarily implies that it has three characteristics:

• Validity: That it has a correct origin.
• Justice: That grants to each one what corresponds to him.
• Effectiveness: That is governed by the rules of game.

It is enough for any of these three elements to fail for an action to cease to be legitimate or, at least, to have questionable legitimacy. If an authority is not legitimate, for example, we are not really obligated to obey it.

Difference between legality and legitimacy

The word legitimate comes from the Latin legitimus, derived from laws (“law”), and it is an adjective that in our language has two main meanings, according to the Dictionary of the Language: “In accordance with the laws” and “lawful or fair”.In other words, legitimacy is at the same time the adequacy of something to the law, but also to what is considered legal and fair, since both things may not be exactly the same.

Let's take an example of this: in Nazi Germany during World War II, Jews were legally stripped of all their citizenship rights and reduced to slave labor in concentration camps.

This happened legally, that is, through the laws that were dictated by the Nazi government of Adolf Hitler, but it was not a legitimate action in the face of Human Rights and what the majority of the world considered and considers today as just, lawful or correct. For that reason, the Nazi war survivors were tried and sentenced in the famous Nuremberg trials.

Another possible example of this difference is in dictatorial regimes that attain power through democratic exercise: a president comes to power with the majority of votes and once in power, changes the laws of the country at his convenience and remains in power forever. .

Well, the command of that president will be legal, since it is governed by what the laws establish (which he himself drafted), but he will have lost his original legitimacy, since he has broken the rules of the democratic game and has become a dictatorship .

legitimacy of power

Legitimacy is very important for the exercise of can in the framework of societies civilized. They establish procedures, rules and parameters to define and monitor those who have power, especially the Condition, since the latter is the institution responsible for making and enforcing the laws.

Those who break the norms defined by society lose legitimacy despite being nominally in power. Consequently, for society they do not deserve to be obeyed and thus they can also lose their power.

When a State is forced to force the obedience of the majority of its citizens through violence or coercion, said State has generally lost its legitimacy, since the citizens they no longer regard their authority as valid. In other words, modern States require a certain margin of consensus among the population to be able to decide peacefully who will exercise power.

Without legality, we would live according to the law of the strongest, where the powerful take control and their authority is imposed by force. Or we would lack a social pact and everyone would obey only the power that suits them, which leads to social chaos.

Causes of loss of legitimacy

An authority can lose its legitimacy due to many specific factors, such as:

• illegitimacy of origin. The power that is achieved through illegitimate means, not recognized or endorsed by society (such as hit of State, fraudulent elections, etc.), is illegitimate from its very origin.
• Corruption and inefficiency. When an authority abandons the tasks that it is expected to fulfill, or simply dedicates itself to benefiting the people who hold power, their legitimacy is usually diminished or lost, since they are not using power for what they should.
• Abandonment of the rules of the game. If the authority violates the rules of the game, using its power to remain in office, to favor individuals or for any purpose not considered valid and fair, it will lose legitimacy before the people.
• Demonstration of incapacity for power. When the powerful or the authorities exhibit erratic, or criminal, or immoral or irresponsible behavior, which discredits them in the eyes of their followers, their will to command is weakened and it is likely that in one way or another they will be disobeyed and removed from power.

Each human group and each legal framework contemplates the specific cases and the measures to be applied in the event that the authority loses legitimacy and it is necessary to elect a new one.

social legitimacy

Social legitimacy is often spoken of to refer to the forms of collective approval received by individuals, organizations or initiatives far removed from political power.

Social legitimacy, thus, is equivalent to the vision and approval of the rest of the group, that is, to how willing society is to recognize an organism, an entity or a specialized voice. Social legitimacy differs from politics in that there are no agencies or institutions that manage it, but rather it depends entirely on the appreciation of the collective.

For example, international organizations such as the UN they have seen their international social legitimacy affected when they were unable to prevent powerful countries like the United States from invading several Middle Eastern nations at the beginning of the 21st century.

For this multilateral organization, military intervention was not justified. However, his authority was insufficient to prevent it, so that, henceforth, his social legitimacy has been diminished among third world societies.