Commentary No. 42, June 15, 2000
"The Decline of State Legitimacy"
Most people tolerate the state they live in, and try to stay out of the way of the government. They are seldom enthusiastic about it, but they are also seldom in open rebellion. They accept that the government passes laws, and taxes them, and polices them. The fact that they accept these things is what we mean by saying that the population legitimates the state.
But legitimation is not a constant. Sometimes the degree of legitimacy is relatively high, and sometimes it is relatively low. In point of fact, if we look at the history of the modern world-system over some 500 years, we see that the legitimation of national governments by their populations was for a very long time on the rise. This was partly because, as state structures grew stronger, they could do more things for people that people wanted. And it was partly because, as a result of the changes in government structure that permitted more people to participate in choosing the leadership, ordinary people were more likely to think that the government authorities responded to their interests, at least partially.
There are today, as there have often been, some states in which legitimacy seems to have broken down. Sometimes no one seems to legitimate the government. Perhaps Sierra Leone would be a good example at the moment, or Lebanon not so very long ago. Sometimes, a very large group contests actively the legitimacy of the government. We tend to call such situations one of civil war. A good example at the moment would be Sri Lanka or the Congo. It is clear that if a state has a relatively small budget because of its weak economic position, it is unlikely to have a government that can meet the needs of its population and therefore to be legitimated by them. This is exacerbated when there are some rich mineral resources to exploit, which can make it profitable for mafiosi to seize control of the state structure for their personal profit.
However, it would be a serious mistake to consider this a problem only of zones that are peripheral regions of the world-system. The problem is far more widespread and serious for the operation of the world-system. One can see a pattern of growing delegitimation of the states in the wealthy zones of the world-system as well. This can be seen in such diverse phenomena as the decline of voting participation, the increase in tax evasion, and the privatization of security systems, not to speak of the rise of groups who contest state legitimacy on general grounds, and not merely because of specific political discontents.
One has to look at this picture over a very longue durée. In the early days of the modern world-system, in the sixteenth century, states were generally very weak and generally not very legitimated. Absolute monarchs, in their various guises, sought to proclaim their authority over very recalcitrant local barons and subject populations. Some succeeded better than others. The states began to use the cement of nationalist sentiment to create a minimum level of legitimacy.
This kind of nationalist cement only began to take hold seriously in the period following the French Revolution. The crucial element that transformed the situation was the rise of the concept that sovereignty resided in the people. Once this idea became widespread, the people were defined as the nation, and the nations became the supporting structures of the states. Nations did not descend from the skies; they were created. States and intellectuals worked hard at creating nations. Two of the most effective mechanisms were primary education and military service. Slowly, one language or one variant of a linguistic family, tended to become dominant, in large part through state pressure. Patriotism now became a leitmotiv of national life.
There was however a big problem in the nineteenth century. The expansion of capitalist enterprise deepened a cleavage within the nation. Marx called this the "class struggle." Great Britain's Conservative Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, called it the "two nations." Whatever the formula, the reality threatened the entire project of legitimating the state structures. Curiously, both rightwing and leftwing forces worked not together but side by side to overcome this cleavage. The rightwing forces emphasized national unity again external enemies. This worked up to a point.
Leftwing forces had no truck with patriotic jingoism. Instead, they emphasized the importance of taking control of the state structures themselves by the popular forces. They promised that, if this happened, the popular forces in power could transform the world, or more specifically the nation. What this did was to offer long-term hope. The popular movements promised their followers fundamental change. The price was the work of political mobilization and struggle in the present, to be rewarded by a better world in the future. This had the effect that the followers of popular movements saw the state, once it was in their hands or about to be, as a positive force for fundamental change. They therefore legitimated the state, at least the state when their movements were in power.
So between rightwing pressures for patriotism and leftwing pressures to believe in the state that they would control, there was a growing faith in the states, throughout the world. And the states were thereby able to raise more money and provide more services. It was a cumulating process. The twentieth century undid what had been a long-term increase in legitimacy. The heavy loss of lives in the wars began to sour the attractions of patriotic jingoism. And the failures of popular movements, once they had obtained power, to transform the world as they had promised, began to sour the attractions of investing in the state as a mechanism of social transformation.
In the last thirty years, there has been a steady disinvestment in the states, everywhere. This can be done in rightwing language, in talk about limiting the intrusion of the state on individual activity. Or it can be done in leftwing language, in talk about the rights of the local against the rights of the nation, in skepticism that anything good can come from states beholden to powerful interests. Whatever the language, the result is a decline in the legitimacy of the states, all the states. And with this decline comes a lowered ability of the states to perform their tasks, which further justifies still further negative views about the state. Hence less voting, less tax-paying, less reliance on the police.
The result is an atmosphere of fear rather than confidence, and this gives rise to self-protection in the form of groups organizing against other groups. We see everywhere the rise of what be called the "barbed-wire complex," the construction of defenses around each household or group of households. It means a time of troubles, and not only in Sierra Leone.
[Copyright by Immanuel Wallerstein. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to download, forward electronically or e-mail to others and to post this text on non-commercial community Internet sites, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To translate this text, publish it in printed and/or other forms, including commercial Internet sites and excerpts, contact the author at iwaller@binghamton.edu; fax: 1-607-777-4315.
These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen
from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term.]
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