Conceptualizing Politics

Further readings
Alternative conceptions of political philosophy are illustrated in the several articles of: 
Klosko, George, ed. (2011) The Oxford Handbook of the History of Political Philosophy, Oxford: 
Oxford University Press, Part I, Approaches, 11–74.

---

2
THE SUBJECTIVE SIDE OF POLITICS
Legitimacy, identity, obligation
What is the subjective side of politics?
In coining this expression, I want to highlight that politics is not only what it some-
times appears to be to the reader of newspapers or political science  analyses – a certain 
amount of commands issued by the authority (of which laws are but a particular type), 
policies, statements, parliamentary or administrative procedures and the like. We are 
interested here in what binds actors, individuals and groups to this ‘objective’ side of 
politics, and will work out the fundamental categories of the subjective side.
We will start with legitimacy, seeing in it the resource that represents the essential 
complement to power, and have a look at how this resource can become actual legit-
imation of polities and policies – a process in which political identity plays an impor-
tant role. In this process, legitimacy as a claim raised by a ruling instance (Weber’s 
Legitimitätsanspruch) turns out to only exist as a belief heeded by the ruled (Legitim-
itätsglauben). Lastly, the legitimacy granted to institutions and policies provides the 
matter by which the obligation of the ruled to obey is nourished. Once again, the 
international arena will require a specific discussion of the question of legitimacy.
Before we start, a warning to the reader: legitimacy and its family of related 
notions are even more complicated a matter than power. S/he who desires notions 
with one stable and unequivocal meaning will be disappointed. Philosophy is the 
mental activity that can provide clearly differentiated definitions of the same word, 
thus reproducing but also conceptualizing a complex reality. Studying legitimacy 
is, from the outset, marked by ambivalence, as we can follow an analytical as well 
as a normative path: on the first path we want to learn under what conditions a 
regime can effectively be seen as legitimate by the ruled, on the second we debate 
what a regime should look like in order to be seen as legitimate. In this chapter, 
we will go down the first path, while the second will be visited in the normative 
chapters (8–10) at the end of the volume.

---

The subjective side of politics  25