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Empirical Legitimacy and Normative Compliance with the Law

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Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance

Introduction

This entry considers the role that empirical legitimacy plays in motivating people to comply with the law. The first section differentiates between normative and empirical concepts of institutional legitimacy. The second section discusses the criteria that citizens use to judge the rightfulness of court and police power. The third section reviews the motivational influence of legal legitimacy in the context of (a) the sanction independent and content-independent qualities of legitimacy and (b) some ways to broaden the motivational scope of the concept.

Empirical and Normative Concepts of Legitimacy

When debating the ethical use of political power, philosophers often employ legitimacy as a normatively laden term to describe whether states and state institutions meet certain desirable standards (Hinsch 2008). Whether those who abide by a power structure recognize the moral validity of that power structure is peripheral to the normative concept of legitimacy:

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Methodology, London School of Economics, London, UK

    Jonathan Jackson

  2. Centre for Criminology, Oxford University, Oxford, UK

    Jenna Milani

  3. Department of Security and Crime Science, UCL, London, UK

    Ben Bradford

Authors
  1. Jonathan Jackson
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  2. Jenna Milani
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  3. Ben Bradford
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jonathan Jackson .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida, USA

    Ali Farazmand

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Jackson, J., Milani, J., Bradford, B. (2018). Empirical Legitimacy and Normative Compliance with the Law. In: Farazmand, A. (eds) Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_1914-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_1914-1

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