1.9 - Sustaining Legitimacy
Governments have to actively work to keep their legitimacy over time. The sources that gave them legitimacy in the first place can erode without ongoing maintenance through effective governance and responsive policy.
What Maintains Legitimacy
Policy effectiveness: when policies actually achieve their goals and solve real problems, citizens believe the government deserves to keep governing. China's poverty alleviation programs, which lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, reinforced Communist Party legitimacy by visibly improving people's lives.
Political efficacy: citizens believing they can actually influence government sustains legitimacy, even when specific outcomes disappoint them. In the UK, citizens can contact their MPs, organize campaigns, and vote in elections with real consequences, and that sense that "my voice matters" keeps legitimacy intact across changes in government.
Tradition: long-standing institutions and customary procedures build ongoing belief in governmental authority through familiarity and respect for what's endured. The British monarchy's ceremonial role, even without real political power, sustains broader regime legitimacy by connecting current governance to centuries of tradition.
Charismatic leadership: popular, compelling leaders can sustain legitimacy through personal appeal, articulating a vision, embodying national values, or just demonstrating exceptional qualities that inspire loyalty. Nelson Mandela's leadership after apartheid sustained South Africa's new democratic regime through his personal moral authority and message of reconciliation. Putin, similarly, cultivates a strong personal image in Russia that sustains legitimacy somewhat independent of democratic procedure.
Institutionalized laws: when laws are applied predictably and fairly over time, citizens trust that government runs on rules rather than arbitrary power. Mexico's Federal Electoral Tribunal resolving election disputes through legal procedure sustains legitimacy by showing that rules, not force, determine outcomes.
Actions That Reinforce Legitimacy
Peaceful resolution of conflicts: when governments mediate disputes and prevent escalation to violence, citizens gain confidence in the system. The UK's Good Friday Agreement in 1998 ended violent conflict in Northern Ireland through negotiation, reinforcing legitimacy by showing the system could resolve even deep divisions peacefully.
Peaceful transfer of power: smooth transitions between leaders or parties, without violence or chaos, show citizens the system works and outlasts any one leader. Nigeria's 2015 election, where President Jonathan conceded to Buhari, was the first democratic transfer of power between parties there and significantly reinforced the Fourth Republic's legitimacy.
Reduced governmental corruption: prosecuting corrupt officials, improving transparency, and demonstrating accountability builds trust that the system serves the public rather than private interests. After the UK's 2009 MPs' expenses scandal, several MPs were prosecuted and jailed, and Parliament created an independent body to set and police MPs' expenses, which helped rebuild trust by showing that even lawmakers face consequences. Mexico's former security chief Genaro García Luna was also held accountable, but by a US court: he was arrested in Texas in 2019, convicted in 2023, and sentenced in 2024 to more than 38 years for taking cartel bribes. Because a US court did it, the case also showed how rarely top officials face consequences inside Mexico itself.
Economic development: broad-based economic growth gives citizens tangible proof that government policy works. China's sustained development since its reform and opening in 1978 has continuously reinforced Communist Party legitimacy through unprecedented gains in prosperity.
Actions That Undermine Legitimacy
Increased corruption: when officials abuse power for personal gain without consequences, citizens lose faith that government serves the public interest. Nigeria's massive corruption scandals involving stolen oil revenue have badly undermined legitimacy, especially when leaders enrich themselves while public services fail.
Reduced electoral competition: when ruling parties manipulate elections, ban opponents, or eliminate real choice, citizens start questioning whether government truly represents them. Russia's increasingly restricted competition, with viable opposition candidates barred or imprisoned, has undermined the credibility of United Russia's victories.
Poor economy: falling living standards, rising unemployment, or inflation eating into purchasing power leads citizens to blame the government and doubt its competence. Iran's struggling economy, hurt by sanctions, mismanagement, and falling oil revenue, has undermined the Islamic Republic's legitimacy as citizens face unemployment and inflation.
This came to a head in late December 2025, when the rial crashed to record lows and shopkeepers in Tehran's bazaar went on strike. Protests spread to all 31 provinces, and in January 2026 the regime cut off the internet nationwide and cracked down so hard that thousands of people were killed (human rights groups and even Iranian officials gave death tolls in the thousands). Turnout had already hit record lows in the 2024 parliamentary and presidential elections, another sign of weakening legitimacy.
Social conflicts: when governments fail to manage ethnic, religious, or regional tensions, violence and instability erode confidence in the regime. Nigeria's ongoing conflicts between herders and farmers, the Boko Haram insurgency, and ethnic tensions have undermined federal legitimacy by showing an inability to maintain security.
Devolution and Delegation of Power
Transferring authority to regional governments can either help or hurt legitimacy depending on how it plays out in practice.
How it helps: it allows policy innovation, since regions can experiment and find what works, local responsiveness, since policy can match regional needs, policy competition, since regions compete to deliver better services, more participation, since there are more levels of government to engage with, a check on central power, and better representation for religious, ethnic, and minority groups who can govern themselves regionally. The UK's devolution to Scotland let it set policies on education and healthcare that reflect Scottish preferences, reinforcing legitimacy by showing the system can accommodate national differences.
How it hurts: it can create contradictory policies across regions, complicate implementation by adding coordination problems, create unfair regional inequality when wealthier regions provide better services, spark competition over resources and budgets, and exacerbate local and ethnic tensions when territorial boundaries become more politically important. Russia's federal structure weakened central legitimacy when regions like Chechnya pursued independence, and Nigeria's resource distribution conflicts between oil-producing states and the federal government have exacerbated regional and ethnic divisions rather than resolving them.
Electoral Integrity and Legitimacy
Doubts about election integrity weaken both legitimacy and democratization. When citizens question whether results actually reflect the votes cast, legitimacy erodes even if the government technically won.
Disputed elections often spark protests that challenge the government's claim to represent the popular will, expose weaknesses in electoral institutions, mobilize opposition and civil society, force regime responses that can further undermine legitimacy, and potentially reverse democratization altogether.
Iran's 2009 presidential election triggered the massive Green Movement protests over alleged fraud, and the regime's violent crackdown undermined its legitimacy and exposed the limits of participation within the Islamic Republic. Mexico's 1988 presidential election saw the vote-counting system mysteriously crash, with results favoring the PRI announced later amid fraud allegations, delegitimizing the regime and accelerating pressure for the electoral reforms that eventually enabled real competition. Russia's elections regularly face accusations of ballot stuffing and falsified results, and even though the regime holds onto power, these integrity questions undermine legitimacy both at home and abroad.
More course country examples: Russia's December 2011 Duma election, marked by videos of ballot stuffing, set off the biggest protests since the 1990s, with tens of thousands rallying in Moscow through Putin's return to the presidency in May 2012. In Nigeria's 2023 presidential election, INEC failed to upload many polling-unit results to its public website in real time, and runners-up Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi challenged Bola Tinubu's win in court until the Supreme Court upheld it in October 2023. In Mexico, after the 2006 presidential election, which Felipe Calderón won by about half a percentage point, López Obrador's supporters occupied central Mexico City for weeks demanding a full recount.
The Bottom Line
Governments have to actively maintain legitimacy through effective governance, transparent processes, strong economic performance, and responsive institutions. Legitimacy isn't permanent, it needs continuous renewal through actions that show the government actually deserves its authority. When multiple legitimacy-undermining factors hit at once, corruption rising, the economy failing, elections looking fraudulent, regimes face serious threats to their stability.