Political Legitimacy

Abstract This chapter introduces the key themes of the book. First, it addresses the question of what makes political decisions legitimate. Is it respect for the political will? Or are there other sources of political legitimacy? It then explains why political legitimacy is an important normative concern, distinct from other normative concerns. The final section of this chapter discusses the differences between a normative and a meta-normative approach to the study of political legitimacy. A normative approach focuses on the relation between the legitimacy of political decisions and other normative properties that a decision might have. For example, what is the relationship between justice and legitimacy? A meta-normative approach focuses on the sources of the normativity of legitimacy—the grounds of legitimacy.