How Stable is the Legitimacy of the Democratic Nation State?

Abstract

Have internationalization and deparliamentarization led to a legitimacy crisis of the democratic nation state? In this chapter, we turn to our empirical material and investigate to what extent the ‘erosion of legitimacy’ or ‘collapse of legitimacy’ hypotheses are correct, that is, whether there are indications of a type I or II legitimacy crisis in Swiss, German, British, and American legitimation discourses. If one of these crisis scenarios holds, media communication should be characterized by a predominance of delegitimating rather than legitimating evaluations of the four political systems and their core institutions, and legitimacy levels should fall as globalization progresses. However, in order to assess the existence of a clear and general trend in media communication towards more delegitimating evaluations, we first require a better understanding of the inner workings of legitimation discourses: how do such discourses arise, develop, and fade? The first section of this chapter reports on some pertinent insights gleaned from our examination of short-term discursive dynamics. The second section presents an overview of legitimating and delegitimating communication in Switzerland, Germany, Britain, and the United States. The third section offers a more detailed picture of the way in which specific political institutions and regime principles — legitimation objects — are evaluated in each of the four countries.