Conceptualizing Politics

performances that the citizens cannot do without, right-wing or left-wing that the 
regime and their beliefs may be:
• 
internal and external minimum security: not to be robbed as soon as one leaves 
home, not to be invaded by whatever neighbouring country.
•  minimum wellbeing, not only as non-starvation, but related to the average 
amount of basic wealth that a socio-economic system can bring about (politi-
cal power must create the framework conditions under which the society can 
do so). The avoidance of striking, destabilising inequalities also has to do with 
this performance.
•  minimum legality, avoidance of arbitrariness on the side of the rulers, other-
wise the society cannot work and feed its members.
This is not the end of the story. A fourth condition, or rather a meta-condition, is 
also necessary and crucial for legitimation: political identity – it will come up in 
the next section. Only if these three plus one conditions are present can a regime 
or a policy suggesting conformity to a chosen model of governance be actually 
legitimised by the ruled, thus attaining the stability a leader or a government needs 
in order to implement their projects. Legitimacy as a requirement is a permanent 
thorn into an existing regime, not only as normative request not to belie its own 
principles and promises, but also as a stimulus to readapt itself to changing con-
ditions (new technologies, demographic change, upcoming or declining foreign 
powers), while still sticking to its own standards.
In all of this, it is important not to blur the distinction between Weberian legiti-
macy and the substantive conditions (3+1) for legitimation: they are not on the 
same level and cannot be traded for one another. This is the mistake contained in the 
widespread (in political science) formula ‘input and output legitimacy’, which was 
first introduced some twenty years ago by the distinguished German scholar Fritz 
Scharpf with regard to the European Union (Scharpf 1999). In the case of input 
legitimacy policy decisions are legitimate if and in as much as they reflect the will 
of the people, thus realising ‘government of the people’; while output legitimacy 
is measured by the degree in which they further common welfare. The trouble for 
the European Union (a second-order polity not supported by the direct will of the 
people and – so Scharpf – primarily relying on output legitimacy) began since it 
struggled to further generate prosperity for the member countries, the performance 
that in Scharpf ’s view used to replace its thin input legitimacy. Leaving aside the 
unprecedented case of the EU, my point is that good socio-economic performances 
cannot be assumed to substitute – except for brief periods – a lacking citizens’ belief 
that the polity embodies their image of good governance, even less so for a weak 
political identity. Over the long haul, ‘government for the people’, paternalism or an 
efficient colonial administration have not proven able to replace self-rule; using the 
same word – legitimacy – for legitimacy proper and for what are only its substantive 
conditions is what is misleading in the input/output legitimacy formula.

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28  What is politics?
It is perhaps now the time to be more explicit about the function or, in com-
mon language, the use of legitimacy and legitimation. It is not a nice and lofty, but 
optional addition to the features of political power we have seen in Chapter 1, not 
something that we require from power in order to satisfy our ethical needs. This 
book rejects the old realist tenet, according to which the power that holds the 
monopoly of force is as such legitimate. Political philosophy is interested in what 
makes a regime capable of lasting over time, thus leaving its mark over a country 
and building or reforming its institutions (see the next chapter) with a view on 
their effects in a medium-long term period. Being legitimate and also in a position 
to preserve its legitimation is an essential element in order for a regime to be stable 
and provide effective government to a polity. It is what makes political power really 
universal and different from a rule relying on force and intimidation. This varies 
according to the culture and the history of the polity in case, which rules out that 
only full democratic regimes are legitimate, because legitimacy is a category as old 
as the polity, born well before democracy was – though in our days democratic 
power has the highest chance to be felt as legitimate.