On Legitimacy

I was recently reminded of the vitriol between humanitarian NGOs and DoD. The basic argument is that DoD's actions "in the humanitarian space" cause violence, danger to the humanitarian workers and are generally viewed as illegitimate.

This is too easy of an argument to make, and it mires the discussion in the patterns established after WWII where the military does defense, the Dept of State does diplomacy, and where USAID does development and somehow all of those actions are conducted in distinct "lanes". I find this thinking to be old-fashioned and perhaps no longer useful.

I am doing reading about 'legitimacy' in order to understand the word and the practice-implications. My thoughts are very much influenced by Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz's book "Culture Troubles; Politics and the Interpretation of Meaning." (Available on Amazon. com). They posit that culture is a system of meanings, and not of values. By taking this view, they assert that descriptions of culture no longer, therefore would require "an explicit definition, in terms of norms, beliefs and values." (p 23). They quote Geertz "Culture, here, is not cults and customs, but the structures of meaning through which men give shape to their experience; and politics is not coups and constitutions, but one of the principal arenas in which such structures publicly unfold." (p 25).

So, where am I going here? Well, legitimacy of governments is one of the fundamentals of "stability" and therefore a tenet of US National Security Strategy and DoD's counter insurgency doctrine. Ideas of legitimacy are most likely created by cultures as shared meanings and understandings about governance and the relationship between the government and the individual in that culture. So I am looking for an understanding of "legitimacy" of systems outside our own Western view. For example, Afghanistan is a clientelistic society-- what does that mean for governance? What does that mean for the health of their people? I doubt that the people of Afghanistan have the same understanding and ideation of governance as I and my neighbors. Their expectations are different, meaning that development must fit in to their schema, rather than mine. Do the people of Afghanistan expect the central government to supply a health system? I would suspect they do not. We, in America, have the same debate at this very time over the lack of coverage of nearly 50 million people and what should be done. Most people do not expect the government to provide health care to the population. Working with the Minister of Public Health in Afghanistan to build the health system is admirable work, but is it legitimizing the government? Does it de-ligitimize the coalition efforts to be involved? Should only NGOs do this work? All these questions depend upon the cultural ideation of legitimacy and health institutions, I think.

I have not found clear writing on this topic yet, but will keep looking. Meanwhile, there are several thoughts about legitimacy that I read in an essay by Robert Grafstein "The Legitimacy of Political Institutions", Polity, Vol 14, No 1, 1981 p 51-69.

1. "A legitimate regime is more likely to be the stable ceteris paribus than an illegitimate one." (p 51)

2. "Legitimacy, in effect, is a highly efficient way to secure obedience and thus is conducive to stability." (p 51)

3. Legitimacy involves the correspondence "between the overall state of the legitimate political system (for example, stability based on conformity) and the citizens' evaluation of the system (for example, belief in its legitimacy). " (p 57)

4. Compliance is a "necessary feature". (p 57) And compliance involves persuasion on a scale from coercion all the way to appealing to self-interest or tradition.

The essay is primarily focused on Western ways of governance, and discusses liberal democracies, which Afghanistan is not. Nonetheless, I found these few points clarifying. More to follow.