Legitimacy Crisis: Again?

Abstract

Since the dawn of time, it seems, social critics have been warning of a “crisis of legitimacy” in the political world. Manuel Castells repeats this ageless battle-cry in his 2004 Ithiel de Sola Pool lecture ( PS , January 2005, 9–16), warning darkly of an “increasing alienation of citizens” that “threatens to undo the democratic system” (9). As proof, he offers an array of point-in-time survey results from Western countries in recent years, as well as anecdotal evidence of “the expression of political protest” in places like California and France (9). Yet, none of this shows anything except the fact that states are imperfect creations for the expression of political community and, as Isaiah Berlin might have added, the timeless costs of social life.