I feel a bit sorry for “democracy” these days. The burden this word is forced to bear, the weight of the unspoken and contradictory assumptions it must carry, must be the source of interminal back pains. Its invocation by political theorists, by defenders of countermajoritarian institutions, and by ordinary citizens, may yet bend it to the breaking point. “Liberty,” and its close cousin “freedom,” suffer a similar disorder. These three are probably the most acute cases. But “legitimacy” is not far behind.
Poor “legitimacy” must mean both what we should believe are just institutions and authorities, and what people treat as being just. Often these senses are conflated to create an entirely muddled picture. I suspect that the sociologists are to blame for taking a more or less moralistic term and using it descriptively. But it is precisely the sociologist’s sense that is the most interesting, for while moral philosophers will call just about any institution legitimate or illegitimate contingent on some chain of abstract reasoning, the crisis of institutions that we are experiencing today has nothing to do with the philosophers’ writ.
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