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Many Muslim jurists in the later Middle Ages conceived of money as carrying the moral consequences of its origins, whether as a result of unjust taxation or other forms of oppression. This posed a problem for a cash-strapped Ḥafṣid regime in Tunis around the year 1300. Facing the constant threat of civil war and unable to collect taxes effectively outside major cities, the Ḥafṣid government in Tunis became heavily reliant on income from foreign trade, including the wine trade. Ḥafṣid officials in this period sold the wine import tax farm to Italian Christian merchants, who bid against each other for the right to collect it; however, this also incentivized them to greatly increase the importation of wine, which led to tensions with the regime. In this article, I compare late medieval Ḥafṣid chronicles with Italian notarial and diplomatic evidence to show how the wine trade became a uniquely contentious issue, both in Christian-Muslim relations in late medieval Tunis and in the context of the struggle for religious and political legitimacy within Ifrīqīya itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile instant messaging is widely used in governing circles today. This article considers the implications for political legitimacy, examining how far the technology encourages those in authority to act consistently with the obligations that come with their roles. It looks at several recent political scandals in which officeholders are alleged to have transgressed public norms with their use of instant messaging. It goes on to argue that the concerns raised are well grounded, as the affordances of the technology point to personalized, informal, and untransparent modes of rule. As the final section argues, that figures in public authority embrace the technology despite the scandals it can yield tells us something important about their political priorities, in particular their willingness to prize output over procedural legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paradox of democratic sovereignty is that a democratic politician must both represent and lead the people. The tension between these two things is a version of the tension between democracy, government by the people, and liberalism, government according to fair rules. Lincoln negotiated the tension between the legitimate and the legal by engaging in shrewd strategic indirections, but these indirections have complicated how to interpret his aims and values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Last Revolutionaries: The Conspiracy Trial of Gracchus Babeuf and the Equals" by Laura Mason is a book that explores the life of Gracchus Babeuf, known as the first modern communist. The book delves into Babeuf's advocacy for democratic empowerment and economic equality, as well as his trial and the failure of France's post-Terror government. The author provides sharp insights and skillfully weaves together Babeuf's story with the history of the French Revolution. The book also analyzes the politics of the Directory and its erosion of popular support, ultimately leading to Napoleon's rise to power. [Extracted from the article]

The Chinese government's rhetoric and policies have become increasingly assertive in recent years, leading some observers abroad to see China as a threat to democracy and the international order. However, less attention has been devoted to the attitudes that Chinese people themselves hold toward democracy. How does the Chinese public view democracy in light of transformations occurring in both the domestic and international environments? This article examines a novel data set of Chinese social media posts published between 2009 and 2021 in order to investigate changes in popular attitudes toward democracy. Results show that while China's online sphere was once dominated by liberal voices, expressions of doubt about liberal democracy have become more pronounced since 2013. While tightened state control over online speech has been an important factor in this outcome, people's exposure to unsatisfactory political realities in Western democracies has also played a significant role. Chinese people's idealized expectations vis-à-vis the promises of liberal democracy have been challenged by perceptions that democratic regimes have delivered subpar performances and engage in "double standards" when dealing with China. This disillusionment with democracy has translated into popular support for the Chinese government, bringing about what the article identifies as the passive political legitimacy of the Chinese regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the roles of courts in state-building and aims to bring the state-building literature into deeper conversation with institutional approaches to the study of courts. Doing so highlights that courts can play important roles in state-building including extracting revenue, coercing subjects, and generating legitimacy for the state by justly adjudicating disputes. Of these, courts' extractive role has been especially understudied. Yet, courts can raise significant sums through fees, fines, and confiscating property, particularly in less-developed states. These three roles of courts in state-building are explored in two highly disparate cases: the medieval Welsh Marcher lordships and the Union of Islamic Courts in twenty-first century Somalia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Authoritarian governments cultivate an image of popular support to legitimize their rule. One such strategy is to create the impression that their rule and policies are widely supported by the international community. In this study, I systematically explore how the Chinese Party-state uses foreign experts in its propaganda to provide extra legitimacy to Chinese government policies. I collected data on non-Chinese-national intellectuals cited in 31 major news outlets in China, from which I compiled a list of 723 foreign experts who were cited to provide positive evaluations of China. The experts were from 67 different countries but showed a clear US-centric focus. I identified five major issues that they most frequently were cited about and summarized their opinions. The findings of this study show a mixed picture of China's propaganda strategy: It is sophisticated but also stilted in conforming to existing power structures. It enriches our understanding of how an authoritarian regime like China's cultivates its image and shapes public opinion. It also draws attention to the social and ethical implications of the possible distortion and fabrication of expert opinions in the propaganda process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on empirical evidence from history and anthropology, we aim to demonstrate that there is room for genealogical ideology critique within normative political theory. The test case is some libertarians' use of folk notions of private property rights in defense of the legitimacy of capitalist states. Our genealogy of the notion of private property shows that asking whether a capitalist state can emerge without violations of self-ownership cannot help settling the question of its legitimacy, because the notion of private property presupposed by that question is a product of the entity it is supposed to help legitimize: the state. We anchor our genealogical critique in recent work on ideology in epistemology and philosophy of language and in current debates on the methodology of political theory. But, unlike more traditional approaches that aim to debunk whole concepts or even belief systems, we propose a more targeted, argument-specific form of ideology critique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is support for the US Supreme Court stable over time? Recent studies present conflicting evidence about the extent to which dissatisfaction with the Court's performance affects its public support. Drawing on a four-year panel study of Americans' support for the Supreme Court, we demonstrate that the Court's support has been remarkably stable in the aggregate, although there has been systematic change at the individual level. These individual-level changes are related to respondents' satisfaction with the Court's performance and their political orientations. The results both confirm and challenge conventional wisdom, emphasizing the importance of studying individual-level change in attitudes even in the face of aggregate stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ratification referendum is the most common and recommended means of concluding a constitution-making process. This paper questions its desirability by undercutting the procedure's most popular justification: to provide a means for the popular sovereign, the constituent power, to enter the constitution-making process and make the constitution its own. I argue that this justification fails because taking popular authorship seriously in the one-shot setting of constitution making requires that citizens be capable of understanding and evaluating the constitution, and we should expect voters, through no fault of their own, to lack the technical and complex information needed to do so. If there are good reasons to submit constitutions to referendums, these do not include those that hand wave toward the importance of popular sovereignty. Either the procedure should be dropped from constitution-making best practices, or a new more convincing justification needs to be given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay considers the variants of liberal education that have arisen outside of the United States, conceptualizing liberal education as a loosely transferred "ideal type" and the United States as a "reference society." The geopolitical framings (i.e., American style, European model, Asian approach) that differentiate global liberal education are explored, and I argue that these labels are revealing in terms of location and legitimacy but less useful with respect to understanding the educational transfer that has been occurring. I analyze the loose coupling asserted in theories of educational borrowing, calling attention to the possibilities and limits of the geopolitical framing, and responding to the spatial reconsideration being called for in the comparative education field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political theorists had vigorous debates about nuclear weapons in the 1980s but have been largely silent about them recently. This article seeks to reopen those discussions. It evaluates the main justifications for nuclear proliferation since 1945: arguments from consistency, nationalism, democratic legitimacy, self-defense, peaceful effects, and supreme emergency. Most of these arguments are badly flawed, as are the arguments for retaining the nuclear arsenals of many of the established nuclear powers. Instead, this article proposes a first cut at a stringent standard for judging the acquisition of strategic nuclear weapons, drawing on jus ad bellum and jus in bello principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution to the symposium examines tensions holding back the development of securitization theory and proposed potential avenues to transcend and resolve them. Specifically, it argues that the evolution of securitization has been shaped by two main debates: one between those who hold that securitization is decided by the elite and those who hold that it is co-constructed by the elite and target audiences; and a second debate between scholars who treat securitization as de-politicization and researchers who argue that securitization cannot be severed from politics. While these debates have been acknowledged in the literature, they are seldom if ever addressed. This article examines the roots of these tensions, showing how they have undermined the coherence of the theory. It then introduces the concept of a regime of practices as a promising solution, arguing that it better accounts for how security issues emerge and acquire their legitimacy, which provides them with a social stickiness. Further, the article shows that both moments of creation and transformation of regimes of practices involve a specific kind of politics (the politics of the extraordinary), wherein ideas, principles, and aims of the community are said to be vitally at stake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does decentralization affect how voters attribute blame for poor economic performance? This question is particularly important in authoritarian regimes, where economic performance legitimacy is a key source of regime stability. Using political and economic data from large Russian cities for 2003–12, we investigate how replacing direct mayoral elections with appointments affects the way voters attribute blame for economic outcomes. We find that the ruling party is more likely to be punished for poor economic performance in cities with centrally appointed mayors than it is in cities with elected mayors. This research suggests that having locally elected officials may help electoral authoritarian regimes deflect responsibility for some unfavorable outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Insurgent organizations have become major players in criminal enterprises around the world. However, research examining why some participate in crime while others do not remains underdeveloped. Analyzing newly collected annual data on 140 insurgent groups from 1998 to 2012, we examine the conditions driving insurgents' participation in drug crimes, extortion, smuggling, kidnapping for ransom, and robbery. We find that control of territory positively affects involvement in all types of crime. However, we also find notable differences in the conditions driving participation in episodic crimes versus crimes that require institutional investments. Institutional crimes are, with the exception of smuggling, more likely to occur as insurgent groups age, whereas efforts to cultivate legitimacy—as indicated by the ongoing provision of social services—substantially reduces the probability of involvement in episodic crimes. We discuss how this latter effect is reflective of a legitimacy trade-off that emerges for groups pursuing both social support and material resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines Giambattista Vico’s philology as a contribution to democratic legitimacy. I outline three steps in Vico’s account of the historical and political development of philological knowledge: first, his merger of philosophy and philology, and the effects of that merger on the relative claims of reason and authority; second, his use of antiquarian knowledge to supersede historicist accounts of change in time and to position the plebian social class as the true arbiters of language; third, his understanding of philological knowledge as an instrument of political change, and a foundational element in the establishment of democracy. In its treatment of the philological imagination as a tool for bringing about political change, Vico’s plebian philology is radically democratic and a crucial instrument in the struggle against the elite from antiquity to the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How distrustful are people of government? Although large majorities of Americans express distrust in government, we propose that most of these same individuals also possess an implicit, gut-level trust in government. Using a common method to measure attitudes that people are either unwilling or unable to self-report, we found that most respondents implicitly trust government and that implicit trust is largely unrelated to explicit trust (as self-reported in surveys) and does not meaningfully vary by party identification or demographic characteristics. We also found that implicit trust is politically consequential, helping illuminate why a distrustful public nevertheless exhibits diffuse support and trust in the government to address crisis events, both foreign and domestic. We conclude that most Americans are of two minds about government, possessing both a positive, implicit trust and negative, explicit trust, and that each type matters in explaining orientations toward government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common denominator of recent proposals suggested by political realists has been a rather pessimistic view of what we may rightfully demand of political authorities in terms of legitimacy. In our analysis, three main justificatory strategies are utilized by realists, each supposedly generating normative premises for this "low bar conclusion." These strategies make use of the concept of politics, the constitutive features of politics and feasibility constraints, respectively. In this article, we make three claims: first, that the two justificatory strategies of utilizing the concept of politics and the constitutive features of politics fail, since they rely on implausible normative premises; second, that while the feasibility strategy relies on reasonable premises, the low bar conclusion does not follow from them; third, that relativist premises fit better with the low bar conclusion, but that this also makes the realist position less attractive and casts doubt on several of its basic assumptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foreign aid donors make themselves visible as the funders of development projects to improve citizen attitudes abroad. Do target populations receive these political communications in the intended fashion, and does the information succeed in changing attitudes? Despite the widespread use of various mechanisms to communicate information about foreign funding, little evidence exists about their effectiveness. We embed an informational experiment about a US-funded health project in a nationwide survey in Bangladesh. Although we find only limited recognition of the USAID brand, explicit information about US funding slightly improves general perceptions of the United States; it does not, however, change respondent's opinions on substantive foreign policy issues. We also find that information increases confidence in local authorities. While our results suggest that information about foreign donors can effect attitudinal change, they also suggest that current mechanisms for information transmission might not be sufficient to do so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International relations researchers study the interactions of states in the international system. Excluded from almost all such analyses is any consideration of how those states became members of the international system in the first place. State making researchers, in contrast, focus on the formation experiences of states. Drawing on insights from both approaches, we argue that states with positive birth legacies should be more successful at state making and achieve more favorable outcomes than states without positive birth legacies. As fighting and winning wars are a common pathway to political development, states with positive birth legacies should be more likely to participate in and win interstate and civil wars. Statistical analyses of all states in the international system from 1816 to 2002 support our expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates how political theorists and philosophers should understand egalitarian political demands in light of the increasingly important realist critique of much of contemporary political theory and philosophy. It suggests, first, that what Martin O'Neill has called non-intrinsic egalitarianism is, in one form at least, a potentially realistic egalitarian political project and, second, that realists may be compelled to impose an egalitarian threshold on state claims to legitimacy under certain circumstances. Non-intrinsic egalitarianism can meet realism's methodological requirements because it does not have to assume an unavailable moral consensus since it can focus on widely acknowledged bads rather than contentious claims about the good. Further, an appropriately formulated non-intrinsic egalitarianism may be a minimum requirement of an appropriately realistic claim by a political order to authoritatively structure some of its members' lives. Without at least a threshold set of egalitarian commitments, a political order seems unable to be transparent to many of its worse-off members under a plausible construal of contemporary conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The chiefly system in Fiji is a hierarchical one that sanctifies the status of hereditary high chiefs, but this sanctification does not render high chiefs sacrosanct. Although hierarchy in the chiefly system presumes reverence and forms of service to chiefs from the untitled, that same reverence, service, and support for chiefs can be equivocal. This follows from the reciprocal dimension of the social and moral contract that binds Fijian chiefs and the Fijian masses. What will be shown is that the discourse that sanctifies chiefs includes an idealization that sets parameters for assessing the legitimacy of chiefly authority. As this article will illustrate, even as chiefly status has been transformed and institutionalized through colonial and state structures, chiefs have been precluded from straying from certain moral imperatives- namely, their redistributive functions and their role as representatives of the collective honor and prestige of their constituencies. The prominence of these imperatives in Fijian notions of the proper roles of chiefs has impeded chiefs from becoming a ruling political and economic class in Fiji. In short, both the political power and the economic status of chiefs have been encumbered by the assessments of the untitled Fijian masses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A widespread-yet for the most part untested-proposition about nationalism is that it promotes political legitimacy, and thereby undergirds people's allegiance to their state and their willingness to support and comply with government policies. This article reconsiders the general proposition through an examination of survey data from Ukraine. Using multivariate statistical analysis, the study isolates four dimensions of nationhood and explores how they might affect three dimensions of citizen loyalty. The study shows that all three types of citizen loyalty are influenced by one or more dimension of nationhood. Moreover, all four aspects of nationhood have an impact on citizen loyalty, though only particular types of nationhood are associated with particular dimensions of such loyalty. The empirical analysis thus reveals strengths and limitations to the notion that nationalism promotes political obligation and political obedience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes Rousseau's political theory of private property, fills a lacuna in the literature, and develops a novel interpretation of Rousseau's apparently contradictory remarks. Although Rousseau was critical of private property, he did not advocate a clear and easy solution to the problems he discerned. Instead, he put forth a highly differentiated perspective that was principled and pragmatic. He rooted the legitimacy of private ownership in an ideal theory of republican property rights, which refers primarily to the normative principle of reciprocity. In his opinion, a balance of private property rights is indispensable to a well-ordered society and a just republic not only because it binds the state, society, and citizen together, and not only because it secures the independence of individual citizens from each other, but also because it enhances political legitimacy and reciprocity. On these principled grounds, Rousseau's theory rules out 'collectivist' solutions as much as vast differences in wealth and 'absolutist' theories of more or less unlimited private property rights. Instead, his theory builds on the republican idea of private property as a public political institution. Within this ideal framework, Rousseau allows for certain non-ideal deviations in particular circumstances on prudential grounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarship on the political thought of James Madison has long been divided between adherents of the "liberal" and "republican" views, with a fusion between them recently emerging as the dominant understanding. Yet one element of Madison's thought cannot be neatly elided: the question of which value prevails when balancing mechanisms fail and a choice between majority rule and minority rights is unavoidable. This essay argues that Madison sided emphatically with majority rule, even when the majority in question was factious. His criticism of majorities is never tantamount to questioning their entitlement to rule: on the contrary, the analysis of Federalist 10, his clearest indictment of majority factions, is completely compatible with their democratic legitimacy. This vindication of majority factions when, however rarely, they formed is most evident in Madison's defense of the legitimacy of the 1820 Missouri Compromise, despite what he believed to be its factious nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Republican thinkers normally have considered prerogative powers natural and necessary to a state's survival. Yet Americans are suspicious of these powers, despite their frequent use. This paper draws a consequential distinction between the legitimacy of prerogative as such and the dangers of its use. Employing the Roman dictatorship to illustrate the stakes, I demonstrate that, while the Romans were cautious with the Dictatorship, they embraced its legitimacy in a broader context of a self-consciously flexible government and a tradition of innovation. This serves as a vivid contrast with contemporary American perceptions of the sources of constitutional stability. I argue that unwarranted suspicion of flexible government plays an important role in misperceptions about the legitimacy of prerogative power in constitutional regimes. The inevitable dangers of prerogative in action do not suffice to demonstrate its illegitimacy as an institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses legitimacy to rule in the Umayyad Dynasty, with a particular focus on the Umayyad caliph al-Walīd b. Yazīd II in the 8th century. An overview of Umayyad caliphs' establishing their right to rule through claiming to be the Islamic God's deputy on earth, or "God's caliph" (walī al-ʿahd), is provided. The Umayyad Caliph Hishām b. ʿAbd al-Malik's attacking the moral character of al-Walīd b. Yazīd is discussed. The role that the Umayyad Arab elite played in establishing what they considered legitimate heirs to the caliphate is also discussed.

In an attempt to mold itself into a "learning Party", the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has recently borrowed the theory of the "learning organization", a concept derived from Western management. This article argues that, in the process of molding the CCP into a "learning Party", President Hu Jintao has employed two functions of learning inherited from Party history--thought unification and regime adaptation--to reinforce his own political legitimacy and, accordingly, that of the entire CCP regime. In effect, Hu has created a "learning system": from collective study by the Politburo, down to study sessions at every level of the Party, Hu is able to disseminate his personal concepts of governance and lay out doctrine for the entire Party. Although Hu Jintao's personal prestige is limited, and not all inner Party policies are guided by the "learning system", this structure still smoothes the way for the implementation of many of Hu's policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historians are generally hostile to the idea of "American exceptionalism." The history of American exceptionalist discourse, however, illuminates an ongoing process of identity formation as Americans have sought to determine the place of their nation in the larger world. This article focuses on the provincial Anglo-American sources of exceptionalist discourse and emphasizes Britain's continuing centrality to national identity through the nineteenth century. Although the debate over who "we" are will never be definitively resolved, the debate itself is vitally important in sustaining the legitimacy and capacity of the regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates citizen perceptions of the impartiality and legitimacy of courts, focusing on a state (West Virginia) that has recently been a battleground for conflict over campaign support, perceived conflicts of interest, and loss of impartiality. We employ an experimental vignette embedded within a representative sample to test hypotheses about factors affecting perceived judicial impartiality. Perhaps not surprising is our finding that campaign contributions threaten the legitimacy of courts. More unexpected is evidence that contributions offered but rejected by the candidate have similar effects to contributions offered and accepted. And, although recusal can rehabilitate a court/judge to some degree, the effect of recusal is far from the complete restoration of the institution’s impartiality and legitimacy. The processes by which citizens form and update their opinions of judges and courts seem to involve preexisting attitudes, normative expectations of judges, and perceptions of contextual factors associated with judicial decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The institution of kingship is such an important component of ancient societies as to be considered nearly universal by many scholars. In spite of this, discussions of kingship, especially in the ancient Near East, are surprisingly rare in the scholarly literature. Furthermore, the nature of the data pertaining to the Neo- Assyrian Empire, which includes a vast textual corpus and rich archaeological remains, means that this data set is oflen d~fJlcult for non-specialists to access. The goal ofthis paper is to reexamine and synthesize some well-known arguments, combine them with a number of new ideas about how kingship was constructed and performed in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, and present the resulting analysis to a wider, anthropologically oriented audience. To do so, I step back from the philological minutiae that so often hinder the cross-cultural or interregional integration of Near Eastern data to examine three easily comparable structural components of kingship: ideology, legitimacy, and implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an examination into the authoritarian regime characteristics of China since 1989, analyzing its "inclusive institutions" in order to demonstrate the organizational structure of the Party and its ruling practices. Particular attention is given to the question of why the Communist Party in China has been so resilient in the face of opposition and logistical difficulties. An in-depth exploration of the internal documents of Z County in Hebei Province is given in order to illustrate the Communist Party's daily operations and governing ideologies.

In his recent book, David Estlund argues that democratic states can be legitimate while epistocracy cannot be legitimate. His argument rests on his "Qualified Acceptability Requirement," according to which a state is legitimate only if its coercive enforcement of law can be justified on a basis that is acceptable to all possible qualified points of view. This principle may seem to express a Rawlsian liberal ideal, but I claim it is undermined by Rawlsian arguments. I argue that Estlund's position faces a dilemma. I discuss objections grounded in the notions of truth, consent, and reasonableness. I conclude that Estlund's Requirement is untenable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past two decades, numerous studies have tested empirically the normative theory of descriptive race representation. Here, we focus specifically on one aspect of descriptive representation—the relationship between increased racial representation and institutional legitimacy. Does greater racial diversity within a political institution increase its reservoir of good will? Using a novel experimental design centered on the federal courts, we find that greater descriptive representation for blacks causes increased legitimacy for the institution among African Americans. However, we also find that white support declines under the same experimental condition. In probing our data further, we discover that increased diversity does not impact blacks and whites in the same manner across the ideological spectrum. Rather, a person's ideology mediates how he or she assesses racial diversity on the bench. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democratic consolidation depends on common perceptions of institutional legitimacy among citizens aligned with governing and opposition parties. Elections always result in winners and losers, but if they also create subservient insiders and aggrieved outsiders, the future of the democratic system will be uncertain. This article theorizes about why certain electoral qualities (elections that produce turnovers, are peaceful, accepted by opposition parties, and free and fair) should reduce winner-loser gaps in perceived institutional legitimacy. The hypotheses are tested using a hierarchical two-step statistical procedure to analyze three rounds of Afrobarometer microlevel data combined with national-level data on African elections between 1989 and 2006. The analyses indicate that electoral turnovers (and only turnovers) have a significant moderating effect on the citizenry. Following alternations of power, winners and losers converge in their attitudes about their institutions, thus furthering the consolidation of democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Samuel Daniel's historical poem "The Civil Wars" has traditionally been regarded as a conservative text, committed in presentation and in practice to upholding the principle of hereditary right in monarchy. Such a view overlooks Daniel's many complex revisions to the poem between its first appearance in print in 1595 and the final—though still unfinished—version published in 1609. Comparative analysis of the different printed editions of the poem shows that between 1595 and 1609 Daniel's political priorities changed significantly, especially on the question of the role and legitimacy of kingship. Whereas the 1595 "Civil Wars" does indeed adopt a broadly conservative attitude to the rights of hereditary monarchs, the 1609 text of the poem no longer automatically endorses kingly authority but instead consistently privileges the monarch's commitment to the "publique good" and the just execution of the laws. This subtle but radical pattern of change culminates in Daniel's vignette of Elizabeth Grey and Edward IV (1609, Book VIII), which departs from the poet's sources in representing Grey's resistance to Edward's attempted seduction in explicitly politicized terms. This observable shift in Daniel's political values also foreshadows later aspects of his historiography in the prose "Collection of the Historie of England" (1618). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes the Viking concept of Valhalla and notes that modern states lack a similar motivating factor for citizens to go to war. Valhalla is described as the resting place for those slain gloriously in battle and the home of the god Odim. The author explains how the concept of Valhalla connected the Viking state to an intrinsically valuable goal other than itself and how the willingness of citizens to sacrifice themselves for that goal legitimized the state's claim to sovereignty.

The article describes the Viking concept of Valhalla and notes that modern states lack a similar motivating factor for citizens to go to war. Valhalla is described as the resting place for those slain gloriously in battle and the home of the god Odim. The author explains how the concept of Valhalla connected the Viking state to an intrinsically valuable goal other than itself and how the willingness of citizens to sacrifice themselves for that goal legitimized the state's claim to sovereignty.

The essay presents an argument for the legitimacy of civil disobedience in a liberal-democratic state. The author seeks to present a solution to the seeming incongruence between the moral adherence and loyalty to a rightly established civil law and individual disobedience. The stance is rooted in the arguments of political philosopher Joseph Raz and the moral duty of political demonstration.

Theorists of democracy assert that government is held accountable and responsive to citizens through the electoral process. Elections can offer citizens representative government, but only when certain conditions are met. I provide evidence that when elections become uncompetitive for long periods of time and political coalitions establish dominant regimes the distribution of government benefits changes. Examining twentieth-century political patterns in nine of the United States' largest cities, I find that dominant regimes establish electoral control, then target core supporters and powerful interests at the expense of the larger community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the relationship between justification of the state and state legitimacy. Analysis on the ideas of justification and legitimacy; Basic ways of thinking about its relation; Examination on the views of John Locke and Immanuel Kant; Assertion on the utility of Locke's views in understanding the relation between justification and legitimacy.

Explores the governance and legitimacy in the law of class actions in the United States. Uncertainty between the efficiency mandates of aggregate dispute resolution and fairness concerns of the absent class member; Necessity of class treatment to overcome collective action barriers; Re-emergence of the due process inquiry.

Contends that the failure of Max Weber's conception of legitimacy stems from his interpretation of the Lebenswelt concepts of meaning, belief and intention. Criticism on Weber's concept of legitimacy; Ideal type of legitimate domination; Features of the Weberian treatment of psychological states.

Examines the strategy used by the post-Mao leadership of China which turned to a strategy of eudamonic legitimacy during the Cultural Revolution. Definition of eudaemonic legitimation; Legitimacy crisis in the early years of post-Mao leadership; China's practice of eudaemonic legitimation; Examination of the political consequences of the failure in eudaemonic legitimacy.