Abstract
The article highlights the intellectual path and the research agenda developed by the author over the years concerning the question of political legitimacy. The first section focuses on issues of legitimation in the context of Latin American authoritarian democracies. The second section of the article refers to political legitimacy as political responsibility in the context of legal and political theory. The third and last section addresses the relevance of political legitimacy at the international level, on which the research agenda of the author now concentrates.
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Notes
At the most general level, legitimate political power is a political power that is seen as just, i.e., that takes into account the demands of justice (in a given social setting). Beyond this there is of course the need to examine what goes into justice.
Having worked for the United Nations (UN) in the 1990s and 2000s I have also published on international organizations (the UN) and international law. The role of emotions and psychology in politics has been another interest of mine.
The research and writing for the book took place in France in the 1980s, in the context of a doctoral dissertation under the supervision of the constitutional law scholar Maurice Duverger. A few years later I revised the dissertation and turned it into a book.
In contrast the European authoritarian and even totalitarian regimes of the 1930s (like Nazism and Fascism) saw themselves as long-term enterprises, aiming at ruling their countries for as long as possible.
The first English version of the book was published in 1976, following the initial German version, published in 1973. At the time I used the French translation of the book, Jürgen Habermas, Raison et légitimité: Problèmes de légitimation dans le capitalisme avancé (Paris, France, Payot, translated by Jean Lacoste, 1978).
The book was first published in Paris under the title Légitimité et Politique: Contribution à l’étude du droit et de la responsabilité politiques.
The book was published in Chinese under the title héfǎxìng yú zhèngzhì (合法性与政治) (Beijing, zhōngyāng biānyì chūbǎnshè, 2002).
This brief analysis of political legitimacy of course does not contain all there is to say on the matter, especially concerning values with which people identify.
It should be noted that the publication, after his death, of Michel Foucault’s lectures at the Collège de France opened new perspectives on his work.
For instance, Foucault favored a negative view of power as disciplining and as turning individuals into subjects.
Any system of truth and justice, while transcending power (this is why it can be called a system of truth and justice) nevertheless relies in part on power, on a situation and exercise of power. In this state of affairs (the imperative to transcend power and the dependence on power) resides the challenging predicament of legitimacy and justice vis-à-vis power.
It is now called the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.
I list below some of the books by the scholars that I read at the time.
Roberto Mangabeira Unger was an exception in this as he mobilizes both, perhaps because of his Brazilian background, the European continental and Anglo-American intellectual traditions, as illustrated in his analysis of law, for instance in the context of critical legal studies. Refer to Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Law in Modern Society and The Critical Legal Studies Movement: Another Time, a Greater Task.
In continental Europe a number of societies can be described as state-dominated societies, in which the state plays a leading role in running society and the country. Such centrality of the state also facilitates the possibility of a radical political challenge: the state and its institutions and personnel are seen as clear and visible targets, making it easier to act against them. This has certainly been the case in France, at different moments of its history. This state-dominated societal feature is, each time in specific conditions, also at work in other parts of the world, like in Russia, China, or Japan, also at different moments of their history. This is in contrast with what we could call a society-dominated society, where the actors of society (like individuals and the private sector) are meant to be the main engines of society and where public institutions, despite at times having influence and power, are not seen as central. For an interesting comparison of France and the United States on this type of issue, consult Laurent Cohen-Tanugi., Le droit sans l’Etat: Sur la démocratie en France et en Amérique.
Think for example about how the 1630 John Winthrop’s expression of “city upon a hill” expresses the religiously charged idea that informed the foundation of America and that continues to be at work in the self-understanding of the country to the present day. For, in the early period of the history of modern America, an analysis of the Puritan contribution to this process and its impact on the United States’ identity and culture, consult Sacvan Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad.
Effective legitimacy is in part a result of naturalization. It leads to a political situation or a political regime being seen as “natural”, as a given.
Which, incidentally, makes it also not very self-reflective, let alone critically self-reflective.
On this specific point, German economist and sociologist Werner Sombart’s book, Why is there no Socialism in the United States?, written in the early years of the twentieth century, is still an interesting and useful read on the United States..
American political and legal philosophy does not refer to an “American State” the way French political and legal philosophy refers to the “French State”.
If all had been fine, Donald Trump would not had been elected president of the United States in the Fall of 2016. His election is in a significant manner the product of the pathologies at work in the American political system as well of the neo-liberal policies of the past 30 years or so, of by and large both, with some differences, the Republicans and the Democrats. The fact that poverty is not really discussed in American politics (in a way it has no legitimacy. Basically, the thinking is: If people are poor, it is their own fault), is part of this story.
Differences of approach can also help thinking on an issue.
One could argue that one of the elements that distinguished political science from (political) philosophy is that political science assumes that we all know what the major concepts of life in society (like justice, legitimacy, power, etc.) mean, while philosophy never ceases to speculate about their nature and meaning. This characteristic of philosophy may at times lead it to look like a form of intellectual neurosis. But it is also one of the sources of its intellectual added-value and fecundity.
There is much “intellectual ideology” in the discipline of international relations in the United States. More often than not it is more about endorsing American views and practices on and in the world than about analyzing them critically. Stanly Hoffman was here somewhat of an exception.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali served as United Nations Secretary-General from early 1992 to the end of 1996. It is during these four years that I worked in his cabinet.
In France, universities are notoriously insular. To some extent this echoes the insularity of other sectors of society, with which universities could partner for their mutual benefit, like the public administration. Consequently, the global outlook of some of its scholars is probably more the product of their own personal curiosity and adventurous spirit than of an institutional design. As for American universities, if they are probably the most international and internationalized there is, they still remain somewhat provincial, even if this provincialism can present itself as global due to what has been in the past decades the hegemonic position of the United States and its various institutions, including institutions of knowledge. Among other things, this shows that the organization of teaching and research is not always a guarantee of open and forward-looking knowledge.
Dominique Moïsi, a well-known French specialist of international relations, had the generosity to recommend me for an Arthur Sachs fellowship at Harvard University and while in Cambridge I interacted with Stanley Hoffman, from the Center for European Studies (now Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies), Samuel Huntington and Robert Keohane, from the Center for International Affairs. But at the time international issues, including international law and the United Nations, were not among my domains of interest.
As a junior speechwriter part of my responsibilities entailed covering some of the meetings of the UN Secretary-General and drafting the reports of the meeting, which the Secretary-General would use for following-up meetings and the UN and his personal archives.
This book is available in Chinese under the title màixiàng guójì fǎzhǐ (迈向国际法治) (Beijing, shēnghuó·dúshū·xīnzhī sānlián shūdiàn, 2008).
The United Nations University (UNU), headquartered in Tokyo, is a UN think-tank that has thematic research centers around the world. It focuses on issues of global security, development, and the environment.
Illustrating this state of affairs is the fact that most UN organizations are headquartered in the West. The United Nations University, based in Japan, and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, are two exceptions.
We can of course argue about the extent to which Japan is non-Western. More than perhaps any other country, Japan has an ambiguous relationship to the West.
But after all, international competition being what it is, maybe it is the fate of all countries to have very few or even no real friends internationally, and only, at best, allies.
Globalpolicyjournal.com.
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Coicaud, JM. Political Legitimacy as a Personal and Intellectual Journey. Chin. Polit. Sci. Rev. 4, 405–418 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41111-019-00134-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41111-019-00134-0