Subject and Concept of Legitimacy

This chapter develops the concept of legitimacy as the right to function. According to conventional concepts of state legitimacy, to regard an institution as legitimate means ascribing it a right to rule. This right is then usually spelled out as the privilege to exercise coercion or as a moral power to create moral obligations. However, these concepts of legitimacy cannot be meaningfully applied to many global governance institutions because these institutions do not exercise coercion or create moral obligations. Conventional concepts of legitimacy can thus not serve as a general concept applicable to all political institutions. According to legitimacy as the right to function, to regard an institution as legitimate means ascribing it the right to exercise its particular function in political practice. Since political institutions have different functions, the concrete Hohfeldian rights that are ascribed in legitimacy judgements differ from institution to institution. Legitimacy as the right to function is thus better able to account for the diversity of existing political institutions.