Political Legitimacy beyond Weber

Based upon thesedifferent conceptualisations of politics andby critically evaluating some of the most leading sociologies, Netelenbospresents four analytical perspectives of political legitimacy.

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Legitimacy is an essential concept
in politics. But what is it? This book seeks to answer this question through
adopting Weber’s sociological approach to legitimacy. Weber argues that we
should not only understand legitimacy from the perspective of the political
order, but that we should also look at its subjective meaning. If this approach
seems to have fallen into discredit since Weber formulated it almost a century
ago, Netelenbos argues that we need to bring back the subjective into political
sociology and theory.



Political Legitimacy beyond
Weber argues that contemporary politics in
late-modern society cannot merely be understood in terms of legitimate
domination or formal bureaucratic organisation. Politics is also about
strategic conflict, coordination and argumentation. Based upon these
different conceptualisations of politics and
by critically evaluating some of the most leading sociologies, Netelenbos
presents four analytical perspectives of political legitimacy. Providing
crucial insights into the multiple dimensions of political legitimacy, this
will be an essential tool for both empirical and normative research.