Criteria of Democratic Legitimacy

Abstract

Interest in the concept of legitimacy comes and goes in cycles. It becomes an object of academic — even public — debate whenever the state of affairs covered by this term is in doubt or ‘in crisis’. At the same time, this state of affairs appears to be as elusive as the concept of legitimacy is said to be ambiguous. Does this point to the fact that there is no such thing as ‘objective legitimacy?’ Perhaps Max Weber (1978) was right, after all, in stating that legitimacy is nothing more nor less than the belief in it — a quality that, like beauty, only exists in the eye of the beholder.