Legitimacy
By Robert Higgs • Thursday January 17, 2013 11:19 AM PDT • 11 Comments
What is the difference between a government and a criminal gang or protection racket such as the mafia? In a word, it is legitimacy. In practice, this vague notion suggests that people view the government—its institutional composition, its personnel, and its conduct—as morally acceptable or proper, whereas they view the mafia—at least in its conduct—as morally unacceptable or improper.
Many governments claim that their legitimacy rests on the Lockean grounds of consent of the governed, but in practice this consent proves to be highly problematic because the governed population is rarely, if ever, presented with the choice of being ruled or not being ruled under the established governmental institutions. Regimes use public education, propaganda, judicial decisions (rendered by the government’s own judges), political elections, public hearings, and other artifices to imbue the people with the idea that their rulers are legitimate authorities taking legitimate actions. Many if not all of these justificatory efforts are highly questionable, if not entirely bogus, and none of them represents decisive evidence of the people’s consent to be ruled as they are by the rulers who dominate them.
In reality, the so-called consent of the governed consists for the most part of mere acquiescence—a widespread resignation that signifies only that most people would rather endure the government’s robbery and bullying than openly resist it at the risk of injury, imprisonment, and death. The people’s acquiescence, in many cases a sort of sullen, resentful, implicit surrender, hardly endows the rulers with any moral approbation. Indeed, even in the countries with the greatest degree of popular political participation, the bulk of the people may look upon the governing politicians and bureaucrats with ill-concealed contempt and sometimes with openly expressed hatred.
If a government succeeds in remaining in power for a long time, however, many people may come to accept it simply by force of habit. In some eyes, it will be seen as beyond question merely because it has “always been there” and its actions amount to “how things are.” People of conservative cast of mind may actually believe that antiquity alone is not only a sufficient but also a compelling basis for the approval and preservation of established institutions. Even great liberal philosophers such as David Hume and, in our own time, Anthony de Jasay consider rights to be nothing but conventions that have somehow become established over long periods and thereby have acquired their bona fides and their demonstrated evolutionary fitness in a society’s successful functioning. To be sure, many people get used to things as they are, even when these things are irrational and abusive.
In any event, the ostensible bright-line demarcation of legitimacy that separates the government from ordinary criminal gangs fades and blurs under close inspection. It does not disappear completely, however, because for some portion of the ruled population, the government’s efforts to sell its legitimacy do succeed. These beguiled individuals are the ones who volunteer for service in the government’s palace guards—its armed forces, police, and other agencies of physical violence and intimidation—and who willingly send their children to be sacrificed in the government’s foreign wars and other adventures. They provide, as it were, legions of “essential idiots,” parallel to the “useful idiots” among the intelligentsia, who fight on the government’s behalf in the war of ideas and ideologies.
From one country to another, the division of society between the hopelessly beguiled and the merely intimidated varies greatly. All governments seek to move the demarcation line so that a greater proportion of those it rules falls in the former class. Thus, all governments carry on ceaseless efforts to convince the people of their competence, good intentions, close representation of the people’s desires, and morally impeccable standards of conduct. Although these efforts provide little more than fodder for bitter laughter among individuals with open eyes and unsullied hearts, they succeed often enough to keep the rulers afloat as they continue their plunder and repression. Their prevailing legitimacy, however, is rarely anything more than ersatz or counterfeit as a sound foundation for a government whose composition, personnel, and conduct are generally desired and approved.
Tags: Morality, Philosophy, Politics, Power, Propaganda, The State 
The government we have in America is the way it is because a voting majority want it that way. Also many politicians make the decisions they do because outside special interest money,donated to the politician’s campaign funds,often buys votes. Government is a sort of mafia. Businessmen pay protection money and citizens,too lazy to work,vote for a living. But,at the same time,its a monopoly on the use of “legitimate” lethal power. Subsequently we get the government we vote for or buy. If a voting majority wants free handouts and largess from the state then they will vote for politicians that will promise to give it to them. If a businessman wants to retain his monopoly or have special tax loopholes or regulations that will put his competition at a disadvantage that businessman will buy influence by either bribes or campaign contributions. This situation occurs not just in America,but throughout the world. China,India,Europe and South America are good examples that are just as,if not more corrupt, then America. This problem has been in place for Centuries. Government is an institution where politicians have access to the levers of power. There are too many laws. As Tacitus once said “the more laws the more corruption.” Unfortunately in America,at all levels government is very corrupt. Its so corrupt that,like an acid,it will eat away at the foundations of the American Republic and America will collapse as did Rome 1600 years ago. Its inevitable.
libertarian jerry | Jan 17, 2013 | Reply
That’s why it’s so important we continue to attack the myth of legitimacy.
James | Jan 17, 2013 | Reply
The masses are arrogant, ignorant, gullible, and infantile.
richard | Jan 18, 2013 | Reply
A voting majority do NOT want the current government. The only influence most people have on government is a ballot every two years, each office gets a single vote which is only on which of two choices they think will make less of a mess, and almost nothing to do with what policies they want to follow, because the politicians lie so much. Consider how much candidate Obama differs from President Obama on basic policies such as war, national debt, marijuana legalization, gay rights, immigration, and other important policies for only one of many recent examples of politicians with flexible promises.
One vague fuzzy vote every two years does not confer legitimacy. If anything, I would say the vast numbers of people who do not vote shows how illegitimate the government is.
Felix | Jan 28, 2013 | Reply
I like to think of organized crime as just another competing government...
Captain Profit | Jan 29, 2013 | Reply
Alas, no one has yet invented a device to keep horrible bandits at bay that is as effective as a not-quite-so-horrible bandit.
Don’t like American government? Nor do I; but its successor will surely be very much worse. Enough worse that the difference is worth my life, your life, and a lot of other lives.
What government needs more legitimacy than that?
A6 | Jan 29, 2013 | Reply
Dr. Higgs,
Like most libertarians I have long thought about whether there is a core idea which has enabled the State to gradually take over our economy and gradually shrink our freedoms. I had thought it was the legitimacy of “taxation,” but in keeping with your article “Legitimacy” I am currently homing in (not “honing in!”) on the “political election” part you mention. I think this may enable all of the rest. Once enough people are sold on the idea that “voting” is a fair, just way of deciding things, anything, the minority is cooked. Especially where their participation is not even required. The minority is literally forced to go along with the majority whether they agreed to the process or not.
In principle “voting” is a form of warfare – who wins has acquired the state’s machinery of coercion. It is not legitimate.
“Representative” government only gives leverage to whoever can scrounge up the votes – through propaganda, welfare, military-industrial subsidy, etc. Once their “people” are in office, in agencies, etc., they actually dictate to the real majority.
A constitutional republic was supposed to protect us from “democracy,” but because it permits “voting” without everyone’s consent it goes the way of “democracy.”
I enjoy your writing. Thank you.
Muskie | Feb 4, 2013 | Reply