I'm Ian Hurd, I'm a professor of political science at Northwestern University in Chicago.
The idea of legitimacy, I think refers to the belief that a person might have, that
some rule or institution has a kind of rightful authority and that it deserves their deference.
I see the concept as being fundamentally subjective, in the sense that it exists inside a person
and it refers to their sense of the rules and institutions around them. When a person
feels the legitimacy of some institution or rule, then I think it makes sense to imagine
that they will see it as deserving of respect. If it's a rule, I think they're more likely
to defer to it and acquiesce in the rule. If it's an institution, they're probably less
likely to seek to overthrow the institution. So, from the person's point of view, this
belief changes their orientation toward institutions of political power and authority.
The concept of legitimacy I think travels pretty well across different political settings,
and it makes just as much sense to ask about how people feel regarding legitimacy of, let's
say, the International Monetary Fund, as it does to ask them about the legitimacy of the
EU or of their national government. It might also make sense to think about private institutions
of authority and power in terms of legitimacy, thinking of something like a bank that finances
a mortgage, and how a person might think about the kind of authority that that entails over
them. So, the concept travels across quite well, but the dynamics of what it means to
be in a relationship of legitimate authority presumably change in different contexts, because
the stakes are different. The interests are different. The kinds of political power that
are involved are presumably different. The strategies of legitimation presumably are
different. And, whether legitimacy matters or not may be different as well. There may
be situations where political power exists, and its legitimacy is sort of immaterial,
people are just stuck under its authority, they have no capacity to resist. In that case,
it may make less sense to analyse the situation in terms of legitimacy, even though it's a
power relationship, a hierarchy.
We can think about international institutions, let's say, the UN in sort of the same way
we might think about supreme courts in the domestic constitutional setting. It's an institution
that's meant to have some kind of supreme political authority, but doesn't really have
the capacity to enforce its decisions directly. Those kinds of institutions presumably rely
on legitimacy more than others to get anything done. Since the compliance of subordinates
is in some sense more consensual, it can only be consensual, it has to be voluntarily given,
since the institution doesn't really have the coercive enforcement capacity to back
up its decisions. So, we might think of international institutions in the same way we think about
supreme courts as being tremendously reliant on perceptions of their legitimacy in order
to have any effect.
I think the current moment is a useful one for distinguishing a couple different ways
of thinking about legitimacy. Some people would see the Brexit crisis and the Trump
crisis as evidence that these international institutions perhaps didn't have as much legitimacy
as one thought. I think it makes more sense to see this as evidence that legitimation
and de-legitimisation are used strategically by political actors who are looking to accomplish
some political goal. So those who were pushing for Brexit before the vote used the language
of legitimacy and illegitimacy to create a voting possibility for Brexit. And, I think
it shows how legitimation is perhaps better understood as a resource, a strategic tool,
that can be, if you like, weaponised in the hands of people who to accomplish something.
And this makes as much sense for those critics of international institutions, as the Brexiters
are, as it does for the defenders of international institutions. Since those people, the defenders,
are looking to use the language of legitimation to support an institutional order that they
favour, just as much as the critics are using the same tactics to undermine it. So, I think
the current moment is a really neat illustration of the fact that legitimisation is a constantly
contested phenomenon that's very important for certain kinds of social stability, but
that is never settled. And it's always being invoked instrumentally by actors who are looking
to accomplish something with it. Fighting for or against some policy.
Well, let's separate a couple things. On the one hand, the intellectual models by which
people understand the world, then separate that from the international rules that, if
you like, govern or are used to govern actual outcomes. On the intellectual models side,
one story from the liberal internationalists is that the current institutions of global
governance provide a kind of consensual, mutually beneficial institutional order, a frame within
which politics can happen. I think that vision of what the world is can be contrasted with
an alternative interpretation that sees these institutions as essentially dominating rather
than consensual. And those two visions compete with each other for attention. We can use
various kinds of empirical evidence to make the case for one or the other, and so I think
there's a bright future in the contestation over those interpretations. Now, on the other
side, the more empirical side, we have an actually existing order of rules and institutions
that, to some degree, governs outcomes, and it may be more contested than in the past,
in the sense that perhaps the international order represented by the UN Security Council
with the respect to the use of force may be less hegemonic than it looked 20 years ago
in practice. But, I think on that empirical side, the institutional order has always been
somewhat shallow or at least needs to be accompanied by an understanding of the sort of great power
interests and desires that seem to me to be a more direct piece of governance, so the
actual outcomes of international affairs, I think are more directed by what these strong
states want to accomplish, and they may well use international rules and institutions to
accomplish it, when they do it helps them if those are seen as legitimate. So those
strong states, I think are pushing their agendas. It's hard to say whether they will continue
to see these institutions as a useful way to push their agenda, as their agendas conflict,
but I think it's safe to say that the main engine of international outcome is going to
be what these strong governments want.