Practice question · True or false
A law can be entirely legal and widely regarded as illegitimate at the same time.
Hints
- Legality is settled by looking up the rules; legitimacy is about acceptance.
- Apartheid-era legislation is the standard example.
Show the answer
True
Why
True, and keeping the two apart is essential. Legality is conformity with the rules in force and is checked by reading them; legitimacy is whether authority is accepted as rightful, and is a fact about people. A regime can have flawless legal form and no legitimacy at all.
Practise Power, Legitimacy and Legality
The app has 5 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Political Science I is free to start.
More questions on Power, Legitimacy and Legality
- Dahl concluded that New Haven was pluralist. Why did his critics say the conclusion followed from where he…
- Complete the vocabulary of power.
- Which are true of Lukes's third face of power?
- How many faces of power does the Dahl–Bachrach and Baratz–Lukes sequence identify in total?
- Match each type of legitimate domination to its ground.
- Legitimacy describes a shared belief in rightful authority rather than moral validity. What follows from this…
- No durable regime rests on coercion alone.
- Of the three faces of power, how many can a study that observes only decisions taken detect?