Legitimacy: Theory, Benefits, and Antecedents

Legitimacy theory is complicated and complex; hence, adequate time is taken to revisit the literature and disentangle the theoretical relationships that emerge. This chapter explores the political science literature, acknowledging and dissecting the original contributions of Max Weber (Economy and society: An outline of interpretative sociology, 2 vols. G. Roth & C. Wittich (Eds.). University of California Press, 1978), and it then moves to describe the transition of legitimacy theory into policing, the associated benefits, and the prominent role of procedural justice as one of the key antecedents. The inclusion of this comprehensive ‘bottom-up’ exploration of legitimacy theory and its journey into criminology and policing is deliberate. The substantial synthesis of the literature reaffirms that the primary orientation of the legitimacy lens within criminology remains on the normative effect on the citizenry or the audience dimension. This definition is the largely accepted theoretical and research convention. A detailed and lengthy review of the theoretical underpinnings of legitimacy theory within the political science literature reveals an acknowledgement and acceptance of the unnecessarily narrow and selective view that has been adopted within criminological research. This one dimension only partially captures Weber’s (Economy and society: An outline of interpretative sociology, 2 vols. G. Roth & C. Wittich (Eds.). University of California Press, 1978) original intentions and offers further support to the view that the ‘bottom-up’ perspective is an incomplete and ‘partly obscured’ theoretical stance (Barker, Legitimating identities: The self-presentation of rulers and subjects. Cambridge University Press, 2001:5) that neglects appropriate recognition of the different audiences for claims to legitimacy: the ruled and rulers.