The strength of weak legitimacy: a cultural analysis of legitimacy in capitalist, liberal, democratic nation-states

Abstract

Adapting Granovetter’s idea of the ‘strength of weak ties’ (1973), this article argues that capitalist, liberal democratic nation-states (‘liberal societies’) distribute both power and processes of legitimation widely across society. Against the view that such societies are only weakly legitimate, relying primarily on ideological hegemony, I argue that they enjoy real, but highly systemically diffused legitimacy. To advance this argument I consider some of the inherent problems in studying legitimacy in liberal contexts, and offer a preliminary outline of a cultural analysis of liberal legitimacy, exploring how legitimation processes are embedded in state-economy relations, civil society structures, public-private distinctions, and competition as a ubiquitous social form. In this way I aim to encourage a more sociocultural, and less state-centric understanding of power and its legitimation in liberal society.

Keywords:

• legitimacy
• hegemony
• liberal society
• state-economy interdependence
• civil society
• public/private dichotomy
• competition
• cultural analysis

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this article were presented at the British Sociological Association’s Annual Conference at Glasgow Caledonian University, and the Conference on Nationalism and Legitimacy at Nancy-Université, France, both in 2010. The author would like to thank various commentators and event organizers, including John Breuilly, Rachel Hutchins, John Hutchinson, David McCrone, Gordana Uzelac, and Sylvia Walby.

Notes

1. Throughout this article I will use the shorthand term ‘liberal society’ to succinctly indicate the variable but clear connections between capitalist economic organization, democratic political institutions, and a liberal ideology placing high value on individual autonomy and rights. It is this historically emergent complex of economy, politics and ideology that I seek to better understand. The term is used descriptively and analytically, not normatively, to identify a complex historical form of society, not simply a ‘layer’ of ideology or values within that form.

2. Since the mid-1990s there has been a salutary trend of renewed interest in questions of legitimation processes throughout society, beyond the state per se, in ways that are complementary to the present argument. Jost and Major (2001) bring together an array of scholars, primarily in social psychology, and to a lesser degree sociology and organization studies, focusing, inter alia, on how ideologies, social stereotypes, and notions of just distribution get legitimated and delegitimated. More recent work in social psychology explores how micro-level perceptions of legitimacy affect cognition and behavior. Lammers et al. (2008) found in experimental studies that the perception of illegitimacy of a power relationship tended to inhibit the powerful from initiating action, and to increase the readiness of the powerless to initiate action (see also Lammers and Stapel 2009; and Lammers and Galinski 2009). Conceptualizing legitimacy in the broad Weberian sense outlined above, Johnson et al. (2006) review a range of social psychological and organizational studies to identify processes by which ‘new social objects’, i.e. innovations in either power roles for individuals, or organizational forms, gain local legitimacy and then diffuse and replicate in other local settings, finally achieving more widespread consensual acceptance. These studies suggest new ways of investigating legitimacy below the state, in the complex organizational infrastructures of society. However, they are dominated by social psychology, with a much weaker contribution from sociology. Correspondingly, they do not hypothesize the larger, historical and systemic interrelation of legitimation in state, economy and society, the kind of cultural analysis, which I am advocating here.

3. ‘Science’ provides another mode of legitimation (cf. Habermas 1970), but this is generally true for modern society, and not specific to liberal society, so I have left it aside.

4. Cf. Habermas’s idea of the ‘public sphere’ (1989) and its critical reception, e.g. Calhoun (1992), Fraser (1990).

5. As indicated by recurrent poll results showing that most Scots would like to see the powers of their parliament increased (Curtice et al. 2009, p. 62), even while they may have some reservations about its actions.