Control,consent and political legitimacy

In this essay, I evaluate Philip Pettit’s theory of republican political legitimacy and maintain that it fails to provide a more satisfactory account of legitimacy than consent-based theories. I advance two interrelated theses. First, I argue that in so far as Pettit successfully narrows the scope that his theory of political legitimacy has to address, his arguments could be adapted to support consent-based theories. Second, I argue that Pettit’s theory fails to satisfy the high standards it sets for itself and is thus unsuccessful. My critique focuses on Pettit’s notions of historical, political and normative necessity, before evaluating whether his requirement of equally individualised popular control of government should be endorsed.     

Religious parties and the problem of democratic political legitimacy

Thinkers committed to an ideal of public reason are suspicious of religiously informed political activity as it undermines democratic political legitimacy. This paper considers Jürgen Habermas’s recent shifts on this question in light of the history of Europe’s religious parties in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These parties made a real and lasting contribution to Europe’s democratization and their history suggests ways in which Habermas and other defenders of public reason misunderstand the nature of democratic political legitimacy.     

1978年以来我国政绩合法性基础探析

1978年以来 ,中国实行改革开放政策 ,经济持续高速增长 ,人民物质生活水平得到极大提高 ,党和政府受到了人民群众的衷心拥护 ,以经济绩效为表征的政绩成为执政合法性最深厚的基础。但在经济建设和社会变迁过程中 ,也出现了“政绩困局”和其他一些消解执政合法性的因素和迹象。执政的合法性维系在经济绩效和经济增长上不可避免的存在局限性和时效性 ,法理合法性是应对挑战的应然选择。     

The national front in France and the construction of political legitimacy

The National Front in France has experienced a meteoric increase in support since 1981, attacting about ten per cent of the vote in elections at every level. The principal issues on which the party has won support ‐ immigration and security ‐ have become key domestic issues. This article analyses the rise of the party and the inability of the established parties of the right to maintain the confidence of their supporters. It also examines a process of construction of legitimacy in which political elites of right and left participated. Finally, an evaluation is made of the National Front's ability to maintain and expand its electoral strength.     

重塑价值反思之维--哈贝马斯政治合法性理论研究

哈贝马斯的"重建式"合法性理论不同于霍布斯、韦伯以降的经验主义合法性理论,经验主义合法性理论强调"统治绩效"与"行政合理性"对"统治权利"论证的重要性,而且认为政治合法性的获得、维系与巩固是政权机构对民众进行"单向灌输"与"主动论证"的结果.哈贝马斯分析了西方晚期资本主义社会合法化危机肇始的动因,指出正是由于"生活世界殖民化"所造成的价值领域"意义缺失"导致了西方晚期资本主义社会合法化危机的产生,唯有在公共领域中彰显"交往理性"与"商谈伦理"的重要性,在交往共同体中增进民众与政权机构之间围绕"统治权利"所进行的交互式论证,在生活世界中重塑多元价值反思与批判的维度,才有可能解决政治合法化危机.     

State sovereignty,political legitimacy and regional institutionalism in the Asia-Pacific

Abstract

Regional institutions in the Asia-Pacific have been of limited efficacy. Asian members of organizations such as ASEAN and APEC have insisted that these institutions not infringe upon their sovereign rights. The basic norms, rules, structures and practices supporting these organizations have, to varying degrees, reflected this concern. A number of factors contribute to explaining this regional reluctance to create effective multilateral institutions. This paper argues that the single most important factor is the concern of most East Asian states with domestic political legitimacy. Drawing on the work of Muthiah Alagappa and Mohammed Ayoob, the paper demonstrates that a significant majority of the states of East Asia see themselves as actively engaged in the process of creating coherent nations out of the disparate ethnic, religious and political groups within the state. As a result, these states are reluctant to compromise their sovereignty to any outside actors. Indeed, the regional attitude towards multilateral institutions is that they should assist in the state-building process by enhancing the sovereignty of their members. As an exceptional case, Japan has encouraged regional institutionalism, but it has also been sensitive to the weaknesses of its neighbours, and has found non-institutional ways to promote its regional interests. The incentives to create effective regional structures increased after the Asian economic crisis, but Asian attempts to reform existing institutions or create new ones have been undermined by the issues connected to sovereignty. East Asian states recognize that they can best manage globalization and protect their sovereignty by creating and cooperating within effective regional institutions. However, their ability to create such structures is compromised by their collective uncertainty about their domestic political legitimacy. In the emerging international environment, being a legitimate sovereign state may be a necessary prerequisite to participating in successful regional organizations.     

Procedural legitimacy and political trust: The case of citizen juries in Spain

Abstract.  During the past few years, new mechanisms of citizen participation in decision making have been introduced into local governance frameworks in many countries around the world. One of the basic objectives of these mechanisms is to bridge the gap between citizens and politicians or, in other words, to build political trust. In Spain, citizen juries are one of the main manifestations of this trend towards local democratic innovation. Their contribution to the building of political trust depends above all on their ability to secure their own procedural legitimacy. Case studies of Spanish citizen juries demonstrate that this mechanism can guarantee sufficient pluralism, and that appropriate amounts of information and deliberation, as well as devices to guarantee neutrality, can be incorporated. However, the limited role that citizen juries assign to associations and the strategic considerations that all political actors have with respect to them are crucial limits to their broader political acceptance. Moreover, their educative effects are limited by two factors: they are isolated experiences in a context of very limited opportunities for participation; and their impact on decision making tends to be irregular and diffuse. Nevertheless, Spanish citizen juries also have the potential to increase citizens' interest in local events and the topics under discussion, and to stimulate reflection on social problems. Their contribution to achieving better informed and more responsive bureaucrats and politicians could also be a crucial step towards establishing a greater degree of political trust.     

合法性

合法性在不同语境下具有不同含义。在一般语境下,合法性即合乎法律的特性。它常用于讨论某种行为是否符合法律,或某种规章或法律是否符合具有更高效力的法律的场合。作为政治学概念的合法性,则有所不同。政     

Political legitimacy

These comments take issue with two aspects of the treatment of Rawls in On The People’s Terms. First, I criticize the characterization of Rawls as downplaying political liberties and focusing instead on social justice. Second, I take issue with the claim that Pettit provides a more robust conception of legitimacy than Rawls. The basis for this claim is that Rawls, along with others in the Kantian tradition, downplays the question of legitimacy by ‘going hypothetical’. Yet in common with Rawls, Pettit’s republican conception of legitimacy imposes a stringent test of legitimacy that many democratic regimes would not pass. This leads him to propose a weaker standard of ‘legitimizability’ that appears to involve the same kind of counterfactual judgment for which Rawls is criticized.     

Partisan legitimacy across generations

In this paper we argue that parties shape their supporters’ views about the political system via the messages they communicate about the desirability of the political system. Moreover, we contend that the effectiveness of such communication varies considerably across generations. Combining data from election surveys collected in 15 democracies as part of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) project with data on the policy positions of 116 political parties collected by the Comparative Manifestos Project, we find that supporters of parties that express positive positions toward the political system report systematically higher levels of political legitimacy than supporters of parties that communicate negative views. Moreover, this communication is particularly effective among older party identifiers whose partisan identification tends to be more pronounced. Taken together, these findings suggest that political parties play an active role in shaping citizens’ views of the political system but their success in mobilizing consent among citizens in contemporary democracies may weaken with partisan de-alignment and generational change.     

Crisis of political parties and representative democracies: rethinking parties in associational,experimentalist governance

The contrast between the normative functions of political parties in representative democracies and their empirical working is stark and rapidly increasing. This article starts from a sober, realist account of the empirical state of affairs and from structural problems of democracy and participations – in terms of limits of time, information, qualification and relevant expertise – that have to be acknowledged by any realist–utopian proposal of alternatives beyond the exclusive alternative of ‘thin, realist democracy’ or emphatic ‘strong, participatory, direct, or mass democracy’. We can do better. My search for institutional alternatives looks not for the replacement of political parties but for their relief. Many, not all, of their normative tasks can be shared with other functional networks, associations and organizations. In exploring such a new division of political labour I draw on older debates and designs of associative democracy and on recent discussions to democratize expertise and to expertise democracy in order to address urgent societal problems of high-risk decisions under conditions of extreme complexity, contingency, unpredictability and uncertainty and deep contestedness of our knowledge, problems that turn out to be unmanagable by party politics and representative democracy.     

Development and legitimacy of Chinese informal finance

Abstract

Cambodia is facing the familiar problem of achieving sustained rates of economic growth that could help it alleviate widespread poverty. Against the background of some encouraging developments, and quite a few that are not equally reassuring, we argue that any push for development needs to consider both agriculture and industry. This is so as both labour absorption, primarily in secondary sector activities, and productivity growth in agriculture are necessary to lift large segments of the population out of the poverty associated with subsistence agriculture, landlessness and informal sector activities. Given that the major success story of the past decade – the garment and textile industry – is under threat, we conclude that Cambodia is yet to achieve an economic take-off.     

How campaigns promote the legitimacy of elections

Why do people see elections as fair or unfair? In prior accounts, evaluations of the election depend on people's candidate preferences, where supporters of the winning candidate tend to call the election fair while those on the losing side feel it was unfair. I argue that perceptions of election fairness reflect not just the election outcome, but also the campaign process. Using a set of multilevel models and data from the 1996–2004 American National Election Studies, I explore the consequences of campaign experiences in shaping people's evaluations of the fairness of a presidential election. I find that as campaign competition increases, people are less likely to translate their feelings about the candidates into their evaluations of the election. Rather than alienating citizens, competitive campaigns mitigate the effects of prior preferences in a way that promotes the legitimacy of elections.     

Political legitimacy and china’s transition

This study reveals a distinctive Chinese cognitive model of political legitimacy, and analyzes how political leaders in Beijing have maintained its legitimacy through cultivating different elements of this traditional model. The central argument developed in this study is that so far the government in Beijing has shown remarkable adaptability to a changing political environment. However, the transition towards a market economy has redefined the meanings of the century-old cognitive model. Consequently, the existing system of legitimization is being seriously challenged. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Brandies University. His recent articles appeared onAsian Survey, Modern China Studies, Twenty First Century (Hong Kong), andAmerican Review of China Studies. The author wishes to thank for the helpful comments made on earlier drafts of this paper by Yang Zhong, A. Jack Waskey, He Li, Jim Stevenson, John Hebestreet, Tang Wei, and anonymous reviewers.     

A political genealogy of political economy

If, at the end of the eighteenth century, political economy became the prevailing representation of economic phenomena, this was due to the fact that, better than other economic or political discourses, it constructed a political framework in which three forces could co-exist. These forces were those that all the authors of this century tried to articulate: the state, capitalism, and those who tried to protect themselves from their power.