Rightful Authority

Abstract

AbstractLegitimacy is not conventionally viewed as embracing power-holders’ own need to believe in the moral validity of their authority. The main focus on legitimacy has been on its audience dimension; that is, legitimacy as perceived by those over whom power is exercised. However, legitimacy cannot be sufficiently understood from the perspective of power-audiences alone; a fuller analysis of legitimacy necessarily requires a focus on power-holders’ beliefs in the moral validity of their own claims to power. Max Weber argued that power-holder legitimacy was a precondition for any attempt at cultivating audience legitimacy. Yet in their empirical analysis of legitimacy, police scholars have not given power-holder legitimacy the importance Weber indicated it deserves. Tony Bottoms supervised the chapter author’s doctoral research, in which the author first explored the notion of self-legitimacy; this was subsequently developed in two joint publications. This chapter re-analyses the data collected in Ghana for the chapter author’s doctoral research to examine the conditions associated with police self-legitimacy.