Quote:
Originally Posted by marct
Still and all, Hamas was democratically elected, the current Iranian government was democratically elected as were Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin and Pol Pot.
Rex
Well no, they weren't (with the exception of Hamas, and the only partial exception of Iran). It is true that they all tried to claim democratic legitimacy (which is I think your point), but I think that only highlights the (potential) power of expressed popular consent.
The question of ‘legitimacy’ is a bit of a slippery concept these days. In the post WWII period, the legitimacy of a state, and more particularly its gov’t, was not a function of the population of that state, rather it was conferred by the international community. That is, other states would accept the gov’t, whatever form it was, as being legitimate and opened diplomatic relations, and so on and so forth, up to offering a new gov’t/state a seat in the UN (if it was a new independent state – ie decolonized) or allowing the new gov’t to assume their state's seat in the UN. The UN Charter reflects a state centric, or what is often referred to as a Westphalian perspective, in which states are sovereign. The UN Charter pretty much says that what a gov’t does internally, even to its own people, is none of any other states business. In world we live in today, the international system tends to distinguish between 'good' states (democratic) and 'bad' (non democratic and/or gov’t that violate international norms), so gov’t will, as Rex importantly noted, ‘claim’ to be democratic. And states have made such claims going back essentially to WWII - the USSR went thru the motions of democratic elections while other states went further and named themselves ‘democratic’ (ie the German Democratic Republic aka East Germany).

Of course, subject populations, ignored in the state centric approach, have a very different perspective on ‘legitimacy’ and always have. Hence revolutions. In short, if the population of a state or segments of a population do not accept the legitimacy of their gov’t, then they may very well ignore its policies and carry on doing what they have been doing (and thinking). As an example, think of the cartels in Columbia that operated/operate by providing their local area with clean and repaired streets, medical clinics, low crime, etc, when the central gov’t will not or can not provide such. What do the cartels get for this largesse? The receiving population perceives the cartel as more legitimate as a governing body and hence will offer a form of protection or cover for the cartels from the efforts of the central gov’t. Worth noting, of course, is that if a state gov’t was willing to use brutal force against its own population, it could enforce at least superficial agreement/compliance from its population (think of those subversive Russian writers). But if the state is not willing (eg. Britain and Ghandi) or not able to enforce compliance, well……

In today's, much more transparent world, we are able to better estimate the degree of, as Rex says, popular consent - we no longer believe that states (gov'ts) can do as they please within their sovereign borders. That we are increasingly attuned to and pay attention to populations at the expense of their state, because our values are evolving to the point where the population is more important than the 'state' (we are willing to contemplate violating sovereignty for humanitarian purposes, up to using force to do so) is a significant shift in international affairs. The confering of legitimacy not longer lies just with the international, it also increasingly lies with the local population in the eyes of the international. This shift, however, is in early days, and may not go anywhere (Burma and Zimbabwe). And of course, the down side of the attendent erosion of state sovereignty (or state legitimacy) are 'the ugly' - non state actors such as al Qaeda.

TT