Legitmacy and Maslow's Hierarchy
Attached you will find a rough draft of a paper I have been working on dealing with the connection between political legitimacy and human needs. This may seem far afield from small wars but the point was to demonstrate where political legitimacy comes from and why it is not malleable. If the foundations are correct than you can no more change a target populations choice of legitimacy by bribing them with schools and hospitals than you can kill it out of them. Neither approach is going to 'win', although killing it out of them can force it underground for a long time.
It goes fairly deep into sociological and psychological ideas. There are no direct references to any current operations so it is dull reading. It is not for the faint at heart. Also my grammar sucks.
If anyone wants to peruse it and provide some feedback as to whether this is something than can be adopted for the field, might be handy for strategists to know, or could be shoved down the throat of an idealistic policy guru who is advocating intervention in a place we probably should not go, I would appreciate their your feedback.
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