Legitimacy in Liberal Democracies - by Benjamin M Studebaker (Paperback)

About the Book

Explores how legitimacy should be treated in countries where authoritarian alternatives to democracy lack credibility.

Book Synopsis

In this book, Studebaker develops a theory of legitimacy to explain the crisis of liberal democracy in established democracies, like the United Kingdom and the United States. In these countries there is deep dissatisfaction with political procedures, yet no credible alternatives have emerged. Without alternatives, the crisis cannot produce revolution. Instead, Studebaker suggests that the disagreements that ordinarily lead to political violence instead proliferate throughout the state and society. As the distinction between legitimacy and ideology blurs, efforts to generate legitimacy instead generate greater inequality, pluralism, and gridlock. As different factions try to save democracy in radically different ways, diverse advocates of democracy get in each other's way and even begin to appear authoritarian to one another. In Legitimacy in Liberal Democracies, Studebaker depicts a legitimacy crisis rife with state capacity problems, in which citizens tell each other many conflicting legitimation stories as they search for ways to live with a dissatisfying political system they cannot replace. The result is a legitimation hydra - a state that is burdened by an excess of narratives, that struggles to take any action at all.

Review Quotes

In Legitimacy in Liberal Democracies, Benjamin Studebaker ignites a necessary conversation about the intertwined nature of legitimacy and ideology. For those concerned with the future of embedded liberal democracies, this timely and insightful book serves as a warning against complacency.--Enzo Rossi, University of Amsterdam

Studebaker's innovative and lucid book makes an important and timely contribution to contemporary political theory. His syncretic approach boldly faces the challenge of finding a new theory of legitimacy that can account for deep conflict over values and entrenched inequality in the aging "embedded" democracies of the USA and UK.--Ruth Scurr, University of Cambridge