Conclusions

Abstract

The modern concept of credibility and legitimization of power is a crucial element of every state aspiring to legal functioning in world politics. Nevertheless, legitimacy is a highly complex phenomenon that is neither difficult to measure empirically nor to define unambiguously. Nonetheless, it exerts a fundamental influence on the international political system as well as the functioning of states, even if the causal mechanisms behind their actions are only indirect. Legitimacy gives strength and power to the rules established by international institutions, even though they have little—and often even none—the opportunity of enforcing them.