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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.
4 replies on “Questions of Legitimacy”
Excellent. I’m glad you liked the post. I heartily recommend the Electric Politics podcast as well. You may not agree with George’s point of view all the time, but he is very knowledgeable and has some very interesting guests.
The job of voters – aye, there’s the rub. It’s like a group of students who’ve been in a history class all year then get faced with a standardized test except it’s not multiple choice, it’s only binary choice and neither answer is correct. Half the class skips the test altogether and the the rest pick either A or B because it seems marginally better than the other or because they actually think it is correct.
Can there be binary choices? Is there always an absolute right and wrong in making political choices? I’m not so sure. There are some moral absolutes and one might make a case that permitting children or even adults to die or become gravely ill because they lack access to proper medical care is immoral, or that allowing people to go hungry and homeless is immoral. I don’t think you could make a case that providing medical care or food and housing assistance through tax dollars is immoral. You make the case that government is not qualified to provide these services (and I agree at present), but I don’t buy the idea that taxation is theft. Taxation without representation is theft, but if the people freely elect representatives who support taxation to provide a social good, then that isn’t theft. We could have a argument about whether it is likely to be effective or whether it is the best methodology, but it is not theft.
As George Kenney points out
Over time, the public’s policy desires will change as well, and unless the state is willing and able to change along with the public, it will lose legitimacy. That’s what has happened here. We can’t impose an 18th century view of the proper role of the state on a 21st century situation. If the 18th century role definition doesn’t work then we need to alter or abolish it, rather than allow our society to be crippled by its inadequacy.
The problem with the history test analogy is that it leaves the students outside the process of writing up the exam choices. Yes, eventually the choices boil down to A or B but voters have the opportunity to get informed and help make selections about who A and B are going to be.
I don’t believe that there is always an absolute right and wrong to each political choice, but I do think that we make a grave mistake when we say we have done our part while arguing that we only had two bad options. At the very beginning of the process there are tens, hundreds, or even thousands of choices (depending on the scope of the race you are looking at). Odds are decent that you can start pulling for at least one decent choice that early.
Not to be picky but I didn’t call it theft. Checking the definitions you are right that taxation does not quite qualify as theft, but as close as the two words are I used the term steal and it applies. The first definition of steal is to take another’s property especially as a habitual practice. Sounds a lot like taxes.
Quoting Kenney on legitimacy won’t work here because I already outlined that I don’t buy his definition of what is legitimate. His definition works only for those who subscribe to the idea that what the people want is the definition of what government is supposed to do. As far as I can tell you subscribe to something like that definition, but I don’t so that will have to remain a point where we disagree.
After what I read today I am planning to keep an eye on Electric Politics.
I assume you’re referring to the primary system. In Utah and some other states, it may be possible for a minimally-funded newcomer to win a primary for Congress or maybe even the Senate, but in larger states this is very unlikely. Like it or not, most voters are not well informed on the issues and make decisions on gut feelings – most of which are created by clever (and expensive) media campaigns. About 50% of eligible citizens simply abdicate their responsibility. Of the remainder who do vote, 25-30% vote in response to a mindset created through talk-radio, Fox News, and/or certain Christian fundamentalist groups. They will inflexibly vote for the candidate identified by their in-group authority as the correct choice.
That leaves about 35% of the electorate that takes its civic duty seriously enough to vote and who might be persuaded by advertising. Given the billions spent on our elections, it seems likely that at least half those people can be persuaded by a slick advertising campaign and the rest (now we are in the < 20% area) actually weigh the issues and make independent decisions. (I'm sure we are both in this elite group!)
So in New York, where we are blessed with multiple parties and the ability to cross-endorse candidates, I can go into the booth and find 5-6 candidates for Congress or Senate races in the general election. Of course, all but 2 of them are people I never heard of running as Libertarians, Socialist Workers, Greens, or acolytes of Lyndon LaRouche. Primary races are rare and they usually are the result of an underfunded challenger trying to make a political statement – example: Jonathan Tasini ran against Hillary Clinton and is challenging Senator Gillebrand next year. He is a smart articulate labor leader who is far more in tune with the Democratic base in New York than either of his opponents but will never break out of the single digits since no one knows his name except us political geeks. It's a big state and media buys are very expensive.
As for the legitimacy issue, we probably will have to agree to disagree. Democratic governments are creations of their people, "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed". I think the original idea assumed that this was an informed consent, not a manufactured consent. The current government's legitimacy is based on a carefully managed perception, not on reality. Whether it should or should not undertake to solve a particular national problem is somewhat academic. As currently constituted, our government is simply not capable of addressing these issues, regardless of whether you or I think they should. IMHO, the #1 problem is making our government work again. Once it works, the question of what it should do becomes important again.
I think you are misunderstanding what I am talking about with getting involved before there are only two choices. You talk of the difficulty of getting on the ballot as a little known and underfunded candidate. That’s absolutely true, but I’m talking about more than that. I’m talking about taking the time to get informed and to encourage people to run who you have found to be competent. Start at the ground level. I don’t know the specifics in New York so I’ll use what I know of Utah as an example. The first thing I can do is run to be a party delegate at the state and county level. Not only can I run myself, but I can talk to others and ask for their support at that level. I can also encourage some of them to run for those positions. From there it you have much more ability to get to know others who are politically active and you can find the best people in the party to carry the banner – before it ever comes up for a primary vote you can identify the best people in the party and encourage them to run. If people like you and I were doing that in every precinct in the nation and getting the best people we can elected at all levels and holding them accountable for their actions in office the whole system would be much more functional – even including the fact that we disagree with each other on so many issues.
I’m not talking about persuading other voters, I’m talking about persuading candidates and parties before the average voter even gets to choose between the least bad of the available choices.
I don’t think it is realistic to ever expect a properly functioning government of the people when a majority or near majority of the people have, as you admit, abdicated their responsibility. I don’t care who we get in office, the results of their efforts will be bad or ineffective until we have more people engaged in the process from beginning to end.