Paradoxes of Legitimacy in Mass Democracies

Abstract

The issue of establishing political legitimacy is a complicated one in political philosophy. Strengthening legitimacy is an essential task for modern democracies. The danger of underestimating the threat to the state posed by an illegitimate government becomes obvious in the context of the second half of the twentieth century. The article reveals some essential aspects of the functioning of legitimacy in modern mass democracies. The authors analyze the concept of “legitimacy”, referring to the main interpretations, and demonstrate how the distinction between the normative and descriptive concepts of political legitimacy helps us better understand legitimacy. The primary purpose is to find an approach to answering the question: What degree and form of political participation in the framework of representative democracy will satisfy the condition of legitimacy in modern regimes?

Keywords

• political legitimacy
• political philosophy
• democracy
• consent
• normative concept
• descriptive concept
• political regime