Legitimacy in Autocracies: Oxymoron or Essential Feature?

Johannes Gerschewski

EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, 2018, vol. 16, issue 3, 652-665

Abstract: Legitimacy is a key concept in political science. It has deep normative roots in democratic theory and refers usually to righteous, just, fair, and therefore acceptable rule. However, non-democracies also try to create a following among their citizens. They also engage in justifying their rule through politicization, be it of religion, ethnicity, or ideologies ranging from left-wing communism to right-wing nationalism. Against this backdrop, I pose the question: does it make sense to use the concept of legitimacy for both types of regimes, democracies and autocracies alike? Or, do we overstretch the concept when transplanting it to the non-democratic realm? And, empirically, how can we assess to what degree a non-democracy is viewed as legitimate by its citizens? I aim therefore at defining what legitimacy and legitimation is in autocratic settings; drawing a semantic map of rival concepts like support, trust, and loyalty; and tackling concrete challenges in measuring this elusive concept.

Keywords: legitimacy; authoritarianism; concept-building (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/218835/1/F ... y-in-autocracies.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:espost:218835

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().