Authors: Hermet, Badie, Birnbaum & Braud
Summary: In 500 words the authors propose a definition and then focus on the weberian interpretation of the term.
Legitimacy is defined as that quality of power whose acceptance is consensual rather than coercive.
It rests on symbolic nature principles which modify in time and space, such as divine, magical or hereditary authority or on natural law. Nowadays legitimacy is based on the constitution and hence in the free and conscious obedience.
Weber distinguishes three kinds of legitimate power: legal-rational, traditional and charismatic. The first requires the obedience to abstract norms and bounds both who rules and who obeys to impersonal rules and the bureaurocratic power is its purest manifestation. The traditional power bases its legitimacy on the respect of a, sometimes sacred, transmission of authority, while the charismatic one rests on the personal attribution of extraordinary qualities to the charismatic leader.
These have to be considered as ideal-types and, above all, out of any developmental or sequential logic.