Principle Of Legitimacy Research Articles

Ethnic Democracy and the Legal Construction of Citizenship: Arab Citizens of the Jewish State

The citizenship status of its Arab citizens is the key to Israel's ability to function as anethnic democracy, that is, a political system combining democratic institutions with the dominance of one ethnic group. The confluence of republicanism and ethnonationalism with liberalism, as principles of legitimation, has resulted in two types of citizenship: republican for Jews and liberal for Arabs. Thus, Arab citizens enjoy civil and political rights but are barred from attending to the common good.The Arab citizenship status, while much more restricted than the Jewish, has both induced and enabled Arabs to conduct their political struggles within the framework of the law, in sharp contrast to the noncitizen Arabs of the occupied territories. It may thus serve as a model for other dominant ethnic groups seeking to maintain both their dominance and a democratic system of government.

The Right to Political Participation in International Law

INTRODUCTION Is international law prepared to accept a right to democratic governance? To answer this question one would need to examine the many facets of international law potentially affected by a principle of democratic legitimacy: recognition of States and governments, the accreditation of delegates to international organizations, the use of force, treaty law, etc. But such an inquiry into the consequences of a democratic right would be a rather sterile enterprise if one had not first asked whether the right itself has achieved a firm legal grounding. Does international law in fact speak to the ways in which citizens choose their leaders? Is the right confined to treaty law or is support to be found in State practice as well? Do efforts by international organizations to foster transitions to democracy constitute norm-generating State practice? And is relevant opinio juris confined to regions of the world in which democratic government is already well established? These questions about the sources of a democratic right immediately raise another, more complex question: when inquiring into the normative status of a “right to democratic government,” what, precisely, is one looking for? If “democracy” is understood in consequentialist terms as one or another comprehensive visions of “the good life,” then the relevant sources of law would be potentially infinite. All manner of political, social, economic, environmental, and other rights could potentially contribute to democracy so defined.

Perspectives ethnologiques dans les organisations modernes

Denis Guigo, Anthropological Perspectives in Modern Organization.?This paper presents an anthropological analysis of human behaviour in big modern organizations, based on two fieldworks in a French car company and an Argentinian municipality. A firm or a public office establishes a specific context for the activity of its members (work places, tools and regulations; agents' categorization and hierarchy...); these logics of differentiation?a peculiar cutting up of reality?are theoretically governed by an agreement concerning ends and means; the relative transcendency of official institutional objectives legitimates organizational autho rities. Nevertheless, members may also invoke other facets of their identity and mobilize external principles of legitimacy; so they perform imaginative bricolages with the material and symbolic organizational elements, and mobilize the symbolic and the imaginary in their practices. Thus big organizations appear as promisory fields for anthropology; as in the study of ? traditional ? objects, the matter is not to apprehend the whole society, but ? to distinguish levels which are worth comparing, and thus, significant ? (Levi-Strauss 1958: 100).

Legitimation from the Top to Civil Society: Politico-Cultural Change in Eastern Europe

Communism has collapsed in Eastern Europe because the regimes, no ionger justified by their Soviet hegemon, lost confidence in their “mandate from heaven.” Domestically and internationally discredited, East European regimes had traditionally shielded themselves behind a principle of legitimation from the top that saw communism as the global fulfillment of a universal theory of history. Once the theory became utterly indefensible, a crippling legitimacy vacuum ensued. Reacting against that theory, East European dissent, and a civil society of sorts, survived under communism not just as an underground political adversary but as a visible cultural and existential counterimage of communism. This fact must be given proper weight when assessing the capacity of civil society to rebound in postcommunist Eastern Europe.

Communism: A Coroner's Inquest

Communism:A Coroner's Inquest Pierre Hassner (bio) Communism is dying, communism is dead! Nobody seems to deny this fact any longer, not even communist parties themselves. Even when they win elections, as in Romania and Bulgaria, or when they succeed in limiting their decline, as in Italy, they hurry to change their names and to rally to the banners of their old historical rival, social democracy. It remains to be determined, however, what has really perished with the demise of communism and what still survives under other labels. It is also worth reflecting more broadly on what communism has carried with it to its grave, and what now has a chance to revive thanks to its demise. Three elements that seemed to constitute the strength of communism appear to be dead everywhere, at least in Europe.1 The first of these is Marxism-Leninism, both as an ideology claiming to hold the key to history and as a principle of political legitimacy. The second is totalitarian power, as a bid for total control based on ideology and terror. And the third is the power of the Soviet Union over its external empire in Eastern Europe and, to a great extent, over its internal empire in the Soviet republics as well. Three other elements, however, still survive from the period of communist rule. The first is a diffuse but powerful ideological legacy that takes on particular importance when it is linked to national traditions concerning the attitudes of citizens toward the private and the public realms, toward property and the state. The survival and the progress of civil society do not necessarily entail the flourishing of the competitive spirit, the work ethic, or the spirit of citizenship. The state often [End Page 3] continues to be perceived not as an impartial authority but, to use Aleksander Smolar's expression, either as an oppressor or as a protector (in the sense of a "protection" racket)—a conception that seems closer to "really existing socialism" than to the new capitalist utopia. Second, although communism as a system is dead, the power of the communists survives in different places and under different forms. The nomenklatura still retains its political power in Romania and, to some extent, in Bulgaria. It is trying to convert its former political power into economic power and to become the core of the new bourgeoisie in Hungary, in Czechoslovakia, and in Poland. More often than not, these are rearguard battles that can only be won in part and for a limited time; but the idea of "Mexicanization"—of communist parties being converted into "institutional revolutionary parties" that would manage capitalism and respect freedom of expression but keep the reality of political power and the privileges that go with it—cannot be ruled out everywhere. Finally, the Soviet Union remains a nuclear superpower; even if it were to be reduced to only its Slavic peoples, or to Russia alone, it would continue to weigh heavily upon the evolution of Europe, particularly Central and Eastern Europe. This description of the situation does not shed much light on the mystery of the Marxist-Leninist and the totalitarian collapse. To grasp fully the meaning of this collapse, we would have to identify its causes. These may be either endogenous or exogenous. In other words, it is possible to die a natural death—through old age or illness—or to die as a consequence of an external shock: accident, murder, or suicide. In the case at hand, all these types of causation seem to be present in one way or another; the problem is to determine their interrelation and relative importance. The sudden character of the death suggests exogenous explanations. Many people (not all of them Western conservatives) believe that it is Ronald Reagan who has slain the communist dragon. Many others (not all of them Soviet conservatives) accuse Gorbachev of being responsible for the suicide of communism and of Soviet power.2 Accidents like Chernobyl and the fall of oil prices also contributed to making the economic and ecological crisis of the Soviet empire both more acute and more visible. But they did not create it. It certainly remains as mysterious as it...

The Mirage of Neo‐Corporatism

The assessment of neo-corporatism as a societal concept involves a cooptation of large organized interests by political decision makers as negotiators that are made coresponsible, or even completely responsible, for the implementation of the results of the institutionalized political bargaining. It is argued that such a private-interest government would violate basic principles of democratic legitimacy and control. Furthermore, no solid theoretical underpinnings are recognizeable that would justify the hope that such a concept would allow the overcoming of the problems of governability and economic performance of the welfare state. Finally, the concept appears to suffer even more from a pretense of knowledge than the present pluralist economic interventionism. Copyright 1988 by WWZ and Helbing & Lichtenhahn Verlag AG

De la quête de légitimation à la question de la légitimité : les thérapeutiques « traditionnelles » au Sénégal.

E. Fassin & D. Fassin — From the Quest for Legitimation to the Question of Legitimacy : 'Traditional' Therapies in Senegal. The quest for new forms of recognition for traditional therapists raises the question of the relations between the different kinds of medical practices and, more precisely, that of medical legitimacy. Through three case studies carried out in Senegal, the authors attempt to show how principles of legitimation are defined today with, as essential characteristics: recognition of the least legitimate of the healers, strengthening of the legitimator's authority, and recourse to legitimating bodies outside of the medical field. This analysis shows the inanity of the classical modem/traditional opposition and leads to an examination of the meaning of a legitimacy crisis which seems to affect both doctors and healers.

Traditional medicine and the stakes of legitimation in Senegal

Traditional medicine has been recently confronted by a new phenomenon in Senegal: the quest for new sources of legitimation. The cases presented here—an association of traditional practitioners, an encyclopedia of traditional knowledge and a controversy on a traditional leprosy center—illustrate the three following points: healers who are the most inclined to search for official recognition are also those who have the weakest traditional legitimacy; actors who claim for official recognition of healers reinforce at the same time their own legitimacy; and these new principles of legitimacy necessitate authorities for legitimation situated outside the scientific world. This Weberian analysis seems more accurate than usual descriptions of traditional medicines to explain the work of redefinition of social boundaries in the medical field. Far from being limited to Senegal, these stakes of legitimation can also be observed in other African countries and even in industrial ones with the question of parallel medicines.

Revolution and Legitimacy

Abstract Twenty years ago Julien Freund wrote: “We should be grateful to Guglielmo Ferrero for having once again drawn the attention of political science to the importance of the notion and principles of legitimacy, the fight for which, in his view, constituted the invisible basis of history.” Freund's gratitude was a little premature. Political science — above all American political science — continues to ignore Ferrero. Even the renewed interest in the sociological analysis of revolutionary phenomena has failed to bring Ferrero's work back into the limelight, despite the fact that Ferrero has provided the most instructive interpretation yet on the totalitarian dynamics of revolutionary power.

The main components of the situation in Poland: 1980–1983

Abstract The paper consists of five parts. Part I describes the situation on the eve of martial law. Its main conclusion says: The release of this enormous tension could be achieved only through free elections, but it was absolutely clear that such a solution, tantamount to the total surrender of Communism in Poland, would never be accepted by the Russians’. Part II describes the evolution of the system of ‘partocracy’ in Poland from the early 1950s to the late 1970s. This evolution consisted in the gradual de‐ideologization of the party and the consequent change in the basic principle of legitimation. In the beginning it legitimized its rule by the Marxist theory of historical progress, in later years this was replaced by invoking the objective interests of the nation in given historical conditions. A positive feature of this development was the de‐ideologization of many spheres of life; this, however, did not entail their de‐politicization, in the sense of replacing changing and arbitrary political comm...

ILLEGITIMATE BIRTH STATUS AND FATHERLESSNESS

The Principle of Legitimacy as formulated by Malinowski (1930) states that the father is indispensable for the full status of the child and that distinctions are always drawn which stigmatise those who are fatherless in a social sense. The universality of this rule has been a moot point since there is empirical refutation of it in Caribbean societies, which have consistently high illegitimacy rates (Hartley, 1980) and more recently, the concurrent rise of illegitimacy rates in the U.S. (U.S. Bureau of Census, 1982:66) and in many European countries since the 1950s (Eurostat, 1983) suggests that the Principle of Legitimacy is an anachronism. Whether it is limited in its application or obsolete cannot be determined, however, without first considering the validity of illegitimacy rates as a measure of fatherlessness. That is, can high or escalating illegitimacy rates be taken as evidence that the father's role is diminished and the mother‐father‐child triad supplanted? In Scandinavian countries, it is clearly the case that they cannot. Trost (1977; 1978) has pointed out that in Sweden, cohabitation is increasingly regarded as a viable alternative to marriage and that many children born illegitimate are fatherless only according to a strictly legal definition. Similarly, Carter (1977: 131) discussing historical data from Great Britain, has maintained that illegitimacy rates denote official categorisation and do not necessarily reflect the formation of incomplete families. He argues that whereas birth and death are defined biologically, illegitimacy and suicide are social definitions. The same problems hindering the utility of suicide data, he asserts, arise in the construction of illegitimacy rates and ratios and in an equally intractable form.

The Holy Alliance: Prerequisites, Creation and Plans for Establishing International Law

The article describes the prerequisites, the creation and the plans of the Holy Alliance to establish international law and order. The end of the Napoleonic wars was marked by the Congress of Vienna. Its participants sought to restore the rule of the nobility in the conquered states of Napoleon. Based on the so-called principle of legitimacy, Congress supported the restoration on the thrones of former dynasties and noble orders in many countries. In the first place, each of the participating countries sought to meet their invasive goals, to profit from the redistribution of Europe and the colonies. In order to consolidate the conquests of, Alexander I initiated the formation of a permanent organization – the Holy Alliance. It was a kind of ideological and military-political superstructure over the “Viennese system” of diplomatic relations, founded under the guise of Christianity.
 The text of the union treaty in its form and content was atypical, unlike other international agreements. This has led many international law professionals to treat it as a declaration. The organization had existed until the mid-19th century before the Crimean War, although contradictions in the alliance have been around since the 1920s.
 The treaty of the Holy Alliance was concluded in Paris on September 14 (26) 1815 by the governments of Russia, Austria and Prussia. It was a rather vague statement about the mutual assistance and cooperation of all Christian states.
 Under the terms of the treaty, everyone who recognized him could join the alliance. After approval, almost all European rulers, except the Pope, the head of the Christian world who considered his signature superfluous, and the Turkish Sultan who professed Islam, joined him. England also did not join the alliance, though proposals from the founders were. It should be said that in England, the treaty was treated with the greatest caution. The absence of the Holy See’s signature in England did not prevent her from being an active participant in all its congresses.
 The original task of the Holy Alliance was to fulfill the role of a communication platform in which the leading powers of the world would coordinate their actions to ensure peace in Europe, preventing aggression that could harm the security of international law and order on the continent. With varying success, but in the first years of existence of the alliance these goals were achieved.
 The Holy Alliance was the first collective security institution in the world after the Napoleonic wars.

The Independence of a Strong Axiom of Choice

There is a growing realization among mathematicians and logicians of the many-sided role played by the axiom of choice in various branches of mathematics. Many of them tend to accept the axiom of choice as a legitimate principle provided, of course, it is proved to be independent in a suitable axiom system. This tendency has been accelerated by Gödel’s proof of the compatibility of this axiom in a reasonably broad system of axioms [2]. Such a view seems to have been shared by Fraenkel and Bar-Hillel [1; pp. 44-80] in their excellent exposition of the function of the axiom of choice in the modern mathematics in general and the axiomatic set theory in particular.