I found Power, Authority, Legitimacy at Electric Politics to be a very interesting article. It talks about these three important elements to effectively government and how they interact with each other. The focus is on legitimacy, but George Kenney also explains how power and authority can be in place without bestowing any legitimacy.
As I started reading, before Kenney began speaking about the United States government, my thought was that our government is suffering from issues of legitimacy not unlike Mexico or Iran. There is no doubt about the authority or the power associated with our government, but legitimacy is definitely a question.
Nowhere do we see intelligent discussion regarding whether the government of the United States is legitimate or, if not, to what degree it is not, how it got that way, and what should be done about it.
Despite that claim in the article I think that the discussion has been happening on a small scale for some time although I’m not sure the discussion has been framed with the term “legitimacy.” I also think that it is being discussed more broadly and more openly. Kenney also makes this claim which might explain why I see the discussion differently than he does:
American voters have done their job: they’ve elected politicians who promised to satisfy their preferences. But politicians haven’t delivered. Should we blame the voters? That’s one approach . . . Another approach is to blame our leaders. . . All such complaints, though, have to do with either power or authority.
I am among those who has talked about whether the federal government has the authority to do what they are doing and what they propose to do going forward. When Mr. Kenney talks about authority he is not talking about theoretical authority, which is what I am questioning. Instead he is talking about functional authority, which is not in doubt. As the only government operating in the entire United States and with no state governments putting up any real challenge to their mandates, the federal government unquestionably has the functional authority to do what it is doing.
It seems to me that there really is no “authority” independent of power and legitimacy. Functional authority is really just the power to do something. Theoretical authority is really just the legitimacy to do something.
Kenney claims that voters have done their job. I think that would depend on what their job is. What their job is would help illustrate what constitutes legitimacy in government.
I like how Kenney pointed out that only the United States in modern history has chronically suffered from issues of legitimacy over a period as long as three or four decades. I also believe there is a reason that it has continued for so long – the reason has to do with the two constructive paths that he pointed out. I don’t believe they form an either/or choice.
There are, indeed, only two constructive paths available: the first is to point out, insistently, that the government of the United States is in many fundamental respects illegitimate and, incidentally, completely out of step with the modern world; the second is to debate what alternative system of rules, what governing covenant, could be appropriate for our society.
In my opinion we must travel both paths to solve the issue of legitimacy. The first path, pointing out that the government of the United States is illegitimate is a necessary first step to spurring the discussion involved in the second path. When there is enough noise about the government being illegitimate then people begin to discuss in earnest what it means to be legitimate. I believe that we are getting to that point now where people are beginning to question what it means for the government to be legitimate.
Kenney’s assumption, and one held by many people, seems to be that whatever the voters want, in aggregate, is what the government should be and do. In other words, doing what the voters want is what constitutes legitimacy. Perhaps the greatest reason that our government has suffered from issues of legitimacy for so long is that the voters are nowhere near united on what they fundamentally want. Most talk in terms of the government needing to do what voters want, but despite a concurrence of verbiage there is one group that believes that the will of the people is the source of “right” while there is another group of people that believe that “right” is something that transcends the will of the people. That things remain right even when people do not want them, and that other things remain wrong even if the people do want them.
This is where we get into the question of what the job of voters is and whether they have done it. If the will of the people is the ultimate source of what is right then the voters have done their job and the source of illegitimacy rests in the actions of the politicians. Interestingly many of those would would argue this to be the case are more than willing to gather a majority of politicians independent of a majority of voters and declare that what they do is right because the voters have voted. If they prefer the popular preference of the voters over the majority vote of the politicians then they declare that the politicians are acting illegitimately.
On the other hand, the argument that there is some absolute right and wrong (which I believe) means that the job of voters is to pursue those things which are right regardless of their popularity. That means regardless of whether they are popular among voters, regardless of whether they are popular among a political party, and regardless of whether they are popular among politicians. If this is the case then a large number of voters have not done their job because their job would include putting in the mental exertion to identify those absolutes of right and wrong and put the jigsaw puzzle together to do what is good without ignoring what is true or right.
For example, it is good to make medical care available to everyone and it is good to help those in economic distress but it is false that government is a tool that can be applied to any need and it is wrong to steal – even if it is called taxation – to do things that government is unqualified to do. That’s a tricky proposition, but if my example is accurate then voters are not done with simply wanting to do what is good and going to the polls to choose politicians to do it – they must insist that politicians keep government operating within its proper bounds and meet the requirements of those things that are good but outside the bounds of government by some means other than government – even if it’s hard.
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