Political Power and Legitimacy: Theories and Concepts
ITEM 10:
1 – What is meant by the law of power? And what of legitimacy?
The power means the possibility of working towards an end.
Political power is as specific feature then the existence of an end compartido.El political power of social authority, ie the recognition of an order allowing the taking of decisions by individuals and institutions that comprise it. In democratic societies today, such recognition is based on the idea of popular sovereignty (or citizen sovereignty) and the defense of the values, principles and rights that make posible.La legality of political power refers to the effective enforcement of laws and institutions which require the social life and the character set to the right of the powers and actions taken by the various Powers. Any existing legal and political system is legal definición.Un political power based on actual or existing laws is a power of attorney. One can conceive of an illegitimate political power in the sense that: “no recognition of the value of laws and institutions that sustain it, those in power take action contrary to what the law provides the legitimacy of political power refers to the justification of this power, the source from which emanates from the right, and involves an ethical component. For example, democratic rule is justified in the belief that all citizens should be equal before the law, enjoy the same rights and obligations, etc. Political power is legitimate as long as it respects these fundamental principles, which in turn form the legal basis of the system.
2 – According to Max Weber, what consist of the three possible forms of legitimation of power?
Max Weber developed an interesting classification ideal types of authority.
It was based on the possible forms of legitimation of power, concentrated in the following three:
Political power of charismatic authority
It is based on belief in the extraordinary personal qualities of leadership. It originates from the admiration and recognition of the exceptional values of a person (courage, integrity, wisdom, holiness, etc..) And the model of social authority and has advocated such an individual.
It is the authority of a person who is obeyed by his qualities, that is, by his personal charisma. The charismatic leadership involves varied conceptions and patterns of authority: Julius Caesar, Joan of Arc, Napoleon, Gandhi, Hitler, Che Guevara.
Political power of traditional authority
It is based on established and accepted belief that certain norms, customs, laws and institutions must be respected immemorial for its excellence, as well as the legitimacy of those who represent them. Absolute monarchies and authoritarian are a clear example of this type of authority.
Power of rational-legal authority
It is based on belief in the legality of certain forms of politics based solely on law, whose rules should be formulated explicitly. This type of authority responds to a rationalist conception of political power and serves the dual assumption that “the law is the expression of popular sovereignty, considered the only source of political legitimacy, civil society must undergo universally the rule of law 3 – What is the political conception of Plato?
For Plato (427-347 BC) justice is the virtue that life must order both individual and collective life of men. From a political point of view, justice is that each play the social tasks incumbent upon it, those that are specific in terms of their abilities and merits. The Platonic division of the company (composed of producers, guardians, auxiliaries and rulers) is parallel to the Platonic idea of the soul, divided into three parts: concupiscible, irascible, and rational. Political power is legitimate when it is right, that is, when the rulers serve the interest of the community. According to the characterization of the ideal polis holds that Plato in his dialogue Republic, the government is just and legitimate when it falls to the wise, as only they know what justice is and are able therefore to legislate good and fair to suit everyone. Ethics and politics are, therefore, as the two sides of same coin: each one must act cautiously, moderating their passions and appetites, and generally follow the dictates of reason, embodied in the government of the wise.
Plato in Relating to political thought has a tendency idealistic.
4 – What is the political conception of Aristotle?
For Aristotle (384-322 BC), social life responds to the need of human beings to meet jointly their needs. This is the historical origin of society and political power that organized. For Aristotle it is important that the source is already included in some way the end. Thus, the origin of society is prefigured the human need to live in a fair political system, which enables the realization of a good life and, ultimately, a happy life. Therefore, in case of conflict between the interests of the individual and the good of the community, the latter shall prevail, implying the primacy of politics over ethics.
Aristotle developed a theory of governance.
The monarchy, aristocracy and democracy are good forms of government, since political criterion adopted as the common interest and not the particular interest of the ruler.
Tyranny, oligarchy, demagogy be deviant or degenerate forms compared to the first. In these bad forms of government-interest premium of one, a few or of the crowd, unable to take a reasoned and común.Aristóteles political perspective with regard to political thought has a tendency stick to the facts and in this sense , realistically pay greater attention to ways of organizing their own time.
5 – Explain summarizes the political views during the Middle Ages
During the Middle Ages, the relationship between ethics and politics will be addressed from the subordination of both the theology. Positive laws get their legitimacy from the natural moral law, ie the precepts are deducted from the unchanging nature of man as a creature made in the image and likeness of Dios.La relationship between church and state will be designed so than by Christian writers. Include three major figures:San Augustine (354-430), who assert the primacy of the city of God (expression that refers to the community of believers, united in the love they profess to God) on the earthly city (dominated selfishness, love men have for themselves), thus ensuring the primacy of the Church over the State.
St. Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274), who granted a relative autonomy to the state.
In any case, the legitimacy of political power depend on its adaptation to the natural law from God.
William of Ockham (1298-1349 approx.), Who openly defend the independence of the State (Empire) for the Church, perhaps more in order to preserve the Christian spirituality as opposed to worldly excesses of the papacy, with the intention of promoting the interests of the emperor.
6 – Machiavelli What makes the difference between ethics and politics?
Machiavelli (1469-1527) is the thinker that most clearly marks the difference between ethics and politics, between particular conceptions of right and reason of state.
Calls for political realism, a doctrine that gives priority to the general interests of States over the judgments of conscience moral.Tales abstract judgments are abstract because they are not based on what things really are, but of imaginary representations that people humans tend to make us of things. Although humans are evil by nature and without fear of punishment would be capable of? According to Machiavelli? Of committing the worst outrages, we tend to assume in man qualities that make it, imaginatively, in a morally respetable.En consistent with this pessimistic conception of human nature, for the author Florentine citizens must act with a view to either the homeland, an asset that is only assured by increasing state power.
The power of a state increases as it decreases the power of others. That is the rule that governs relations and policies, according to Machiavelli, must meet the good ruler.
7 – How do you reconcile Kant’s policy interests with the interests of morality?
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) says it is possible to reconcile the interests of policy with the aims of morality. This uses the distinction between moral and moralistic political político.El moral politician tries to reconcile the principles of political skill with morality. Kant and projected the image of a politician for whom the end, when it comes to human beings, does not justify the means. The political moralist, in contrast, is forging a moral useful conveniences of a statesman. Only political morality could hold, according to Kant, a policy founded on law, procedures and standards which serve as limit on what can or can not be done and are therefore binding on the Kantian view Estado.La offers a compromise between political realism, only complied with the reasons of state, and that vision, which aims to replace the truth of things, what things are, and immovable imaginary representations of how things should be. To that political power does not become a mere morality devoid of art and is not reduced to a respectable but banal statement of good intentions, it is necessary to establish a middle ground between the political and moral. TheLaw is the place that makes it possible, indeed necessary, the coexistence between ethics and politics.
8 – What is the naturalistic theory about society and the State?
Since classical antiquity has raised the idea that man is a social and political in nature. Aristotle is the main supporter of this idea that man acquires its special humanity as living in society, because only within a social community can man develop their skills and talents. It is not just that society allows an individual to satisfy their needs, but that life in society belongs to human beings by virtue of its specific nature and with a view to achieving its ultimate goals: the ideal of a just and happy life.
9 – What is organismic theory about society and the State?
Society is like a large biological organism going through some stages: formation, growth, maturity and decline. In the metaphor of the body, cells and individuals would be the organ or system would be functional social institutions. The individual is part of the social organism, which is integrated with ongoing completamentesubordinado. The individual is later, ethically and politically, to the community. These theories emerged in parallel and under the influence of evolutionary theory applied to society. Organismic theories had a considerable influence on totalitarian conceptions of the state, both fascists and communists. Void totalitarianism and the separation between public and private spheres of life in society, so the thinking and actions of individuals will be subject to absolute control of the State.
10 – What is contractarian theory about society and the State?
Some thinkers have assumed that society is the result of a covenant or contract, an agreement by which civil society rests on an artificially. The social contract theories are based on the initial assumption of a state of nature. The difficulties that characterize life in the state forced the men to establish a collective agreement under certain conditions, giving rise to civil society and the State. This theory has its origins in Renaissance individualism, which makes man the fundamental reality and sees the corporation as a mere superposition of individuals, which is followed by the recognition of equal rights to all members of a community; rights shall be exercised through contractual arrangements. Contractualism laid the foundations of modern absolutist state (Hobbes) and served as variously philosophical and ideological foundation to later versions of the rule of law, both liberal (Locke) and the social and democratic (Rousseau).
11 – Expose contractarian theory of Hobbes
The starting point of Hobbes’s political thought is human nature, whose analysis shows the existence of a ius (right) and a lex (law) which describes the natural law naturales.Para Hobbes describes aspirations and desires of a particular individual in a single moment. Hobbes refers to an individual and subjective, no other limit than the natural law, defined as the dictates of reason about the actions that must be done or omitted in order to preserve the life or physical integrity as long as possible. Thestate of nature is characterized by physical insecurity and continuing violence from the time it is inevitable collision of the various individual rights, to necessarily match the wishes and interests of two or more individuos.Esta conflict leads men to sign a social pact origin of the state. Through the pact, each individual transfers the right to govern, which until then had, the sovereign, whose will, which alone remains in a state of nature, becomes objective standard of conduct that others are forced to obedecer.Los rights sovereign are absolute and include the entire state political organization, which Hobbes described in his Leviathan (1651). The theory of Hobbes social contract leads to the philosophical justification of monarchical absolutism and the rationalization of the modern state.
12 – Exhibit contractarian theory of Locke
Locke, in his Two Treatises of Civil Government (1690), part of the initial situation the man in a state of nature. Locke has an optimistic view of the state of nature. The rights of man in the state of nature are the right to life, liberty and property, discover the reason and universal.
Property law is the result of the implementation of individual work to goods that were common until then. The property exists without an express agreement among men, as it is a natural right of the individual, which becomes the property the results of the effort and the state of nature trabajo.En the individual also has the right to punish anyone attempt to deprive him of them. Therefore, it requires the existence of justice dispensed impartially and an effective coercive force to impose compliance with the decisions to achieve this impartiality judiciales.Para natural man waived his right to judge and punish, becoming at that very moment civil society or politics.
Civil society is not opposed to the state of nature but perfects it. Civil society arises the state, which can only be justified to ensure strict adherence to natural rights, rights that the State should be the first to comply. The individual who becomes part of civil society is suspicious of the state remains within agreed limits, so that to prevent any overshoot that goes against their natural rights, constitute a balanced division of powers or impedes completa.La practice sovereignty theory of the division of powers,
Locke distinguishes between the legislature, which includes the judiciary and the executive branch, including federal power in relation to other States. Locke policy gives priority to the legislature, composed of representatives elected directly by citizens.
13 – Exhibit contractarian theory of Rousseau
The Genevan thinker formulated his theory of democracy in his work Discourse on Inequality (1753), and especially in The Social Contract (1762). In the state of nature, man is a happy gross: gross, as no language and rationality; happy when their individual needs are easily satisfied. Rousseau presents the state of nature as a pre-social and pre-political situation. In the state of nature there is no law but the survival instinct, tempered by a second natural tendency, compassion, feeling that leads him to avoid the unnecessary suffering of others and that is the basis of sociability (the man is good in nature). TheHappy Gross left his native state because of some fortuitous discovery, manufacture of weapons or control over the fire, which gave some individuals an occasional superiority allowed them to become a center of attention and collective appeal, thus giving rise group life. This is the time when the crude oil becomes a human being and there is the patriarchal family based on the natural relations of cooperation (appearance of reason) and communication (the emergence of language). The patriarchal regime Golden Age can not finally maintained by the emergence of social inequalities, the result of private property, ie the ability of some to take over natural resources and reducing others to a situation of economic dependence. The new situation of inequality between men resulted in a permanent state of mistrust, violence and recourse to force or Age of Hierro.En this point, the owners are convinced and convince others of the inescapable need to create a political society based on the current streamlining of the property, although it is also because of the inequality is inherent in group life. This is the origin of civil society, based on the principle of self-interest, private property, inequality and injustice, all of which has corrupted the original nature of man. But the corruption of society (civilian) that can be rectified is reached, returning to where you took the incorrect address. It is, therefore, to establish a genuine social contract to integrate harmoniously the inalienable freedom of the individual with the obligations arising from their inclusion in society civil.El problem of harmonizing the absolute freedom and total social dependency, it resolves by Rousseau’s theory of general will or common I (Moi commun), in which everyone participates freely and recognizes itself in its full freedom, while established, it is submitted to obey itself. The formula agreed contract involves both a simultaneous situation of free participation and total reliance on the general will. By the social contract is beyond the contradiction between individual and society, reaching the so-called freedom civil.La general will becomes the sole principle of morality (goodness or badness) of the shares, to the point that virtue is nothing but conformity of the individual will to the general (social contract), given the requirement of full integration of the individual in civil society. Faced with the general will, the individual has no rights except the right to participate in their determination through the vote, the general will is intrinsically ethical objective standard, existing political principle of the community outside and above the individuals who the form. Moreover, although the general will is discovered through the free exercise of voting is not created solely by the choice in line with the majority that is determined; reason that the general will of the majority is all that has discovered how of the minority who mistakenly voted against it.
14 – What is a closed society?
In closed societies, legitimacy comes from an immemorial past (tradition) but also for the future, in a preset mode, which should subordinate actions of individuals.
Utopian thought these ideas appeal to past and future, whether to restore the lost political order, in relation to an indigenous community, whether to build a political order from the idea of a perfect society and even non-existent. According to Popper, thePlato’s ideal polis would be a clear case of closed society, the seed of totalitarian ethics the individual sacrifices for the sake of collective utility. A society in which individuals, according to this view organismic, are reduced to mere parts of the system.
15 – What is an open society?
Open societies recognize the uncertainty of the story and consider architects and responsible individuals thereof. Open societies affirm the pluralism, the various possible perspectives on the same event, and I criticize its own principles and reglas.La separation between the public sphere and private sphere (against interference by the state) and the recognition of the rights and freedoms that assist individuals, constituted as citizens, become the basis of legitimation of political power in open societies.