Legitimation as Political Practice

"'Legitimacy' has held an unwavering prominence within Western political philosophy. It is to an extent its founding debate as to the rightful use of power (Mulligan 2006). Weberian influenced legitimacy studies have more recently aimed to prise empirical legitimacy from normative, what is over what should be, in the service of good social science. In this book, I argue that empirical legitimacy remains only partially represented. This partiality is due to an entrenched focus on the actions of state elites and state, or inter-state, institutions. From legitimacy's earliest framings, theorists have conflated political power with state power. The state is legitimate force: ergo legitimacy is the state. Its study is thus hamstrung by recursive, state-based rationalities, which mask the extent to which Western norms and normativity imbue world politics and its study (Dodworth 2014; 2018a)"--