Tools of legitimating of the State. (UPSC CSE Mains 2021 - Political Science and International Relations, Paper 1)
- The state’s very strength is based on legitimation. The structure of power, peculiar to the state, has to be legitimately derived and evolved; the exercise of the power of the state also needs to be used legitimately. What it means is that all forms of state power require legitimation. If the state is to carry on its business, with at least a minimum amount of consent from its citizens, and if the government is to survive, it requires legitimation/legitimacy. In the absence of legitimation or say legitimacy, how can the will of the state be enforced? Obviously, without legitimation of state power, the alternative is the use of physical force or terror to enforce the orders of the state. In a democratically structured society, state power is legitimate when (a) the power to rule the people is given by the people, and is exercised with the consent of the majority of the people – this would mean that those who exercise power are elected directly or indirectly by the people for a limited period only, and also when a system of control is in place (b) when the state power is exercised corresponding to the principles stated in the constitution of the land, especially those relating to legality.
- The state alone possesses power, the power to rule people, the power to administer public affairs, the power to establish social order, the power to protect the system. The state alone has the responsibility to safeguard the country and promote its interests. It is because of its performance of responsibility that the state has power. Power of the state is the necessary corollary of the duty it is supposed to perform; power, thus, is the essential consequence/product of the job the state is called upon to do. That the state has the power, i.e., the lawful right of the state to use power, is what may be called legitimation. Legitimation involves the use of the power of the state legitimately ordained. One aspect of legitimation, thus, is the inherent lawful authority empowered to exercise power which means, the power of the state to exercise its authority with the provision that it has the power and more than that, the exercise of the power is legitimate, legitimately authorised.
- Legitimation is related to the state in more than one way. It is related to the state in the sense that the state alone has the legal authority to use its power. It is also related to the state in the sense that what the state does is legitimate by virtue of the fact that the state alone is authorised to do what it does. It is related to the state in the sense that the exercise of the will of the state is the legalised exercise permitted by the already framed basic rules prevailing in the political system, written, unwritten or both. Where there is, for example, no legal authorisation of the exercise of power, there is no legitimation there.
- Legitimation, therefore, demands a set of norms, principles, rules and regulations on the basis of which the state exercises its power. If the power or the exercise of the power of the state is to be deemed legitimate, there is a need for the power of the state to fall back, for its support, on certain basic and fundamental rules, i.e., a framework from which the state derives its power and the support on which it rests. Legitimation is not only a matter of structural rules and regulations, it is also a matter of procedure. It, therefore, requires the fundamental routes in which the power of the state has to pass through. If the power of the state is to be legitimate, it has to follow certain procedures, and has to work through certain already set procedures.
- Legitimation is not a zigzag walking, it is a procedural following, walking on a well-established path already laid down. Legitimation, in the context of the state, also demands compliance from the people where the state exercises its power. When the power of the state is accepted by the people, there is no crisis of legitimation. A crisis of legitimation occurs when the power of the state, exercised as it is, is challenged by the people or a part thereof.
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