Legitimacy In Leadership Research Paper

Legitimacy is the belief in someone’s right to rule or right to exercise power. Without legitimacy, other powers would have to be deployed (persuasion or coercion) in order to get others to obey you. According to Max Weber, there are three main types of legitimacy: rational-legal, traditional, and charismatic. Performance legitimacy is a way to keep legitimacy. To lose legitimacy, however, is the notion that somehow implicitly, any leader has to do things for the reasons indented (at least protect and provide opportunities for the public; the ‘basics’ if you will), and if they fail to do so in any way – like leave their public unprotected and vulnerable to the economic instability – then their people might lose their belief in the ruler’s right …show more content…
People and governments can gain legitimacy through rational-legal processes, traditional processes, and individual charisma. Legitimacy can be kept through performance legitimacy, where people may believe in your right to rule if you rule well; have economic growth, increase nationalism, and to be politically stable. However, it’s easy for a leader to lose legitimacy. Failure to protect the public from the economic instability, unable to provide opportunities for the people, and overall general disproval of the leadership might cause social unrest and their loss in the belief in the government’s right to rule. Tunisia is a prime example of a government that was – or seemed like – it was doing well politically, as well as socially, and the people believed in the government’s leadership. However, when the public noticed that the economy was becoming unstable, wages were lowered, etc., their disproval increased. They no longer believed in the government’s right to rule because they weren’t being protected or provided with basic opportunities (like having a job to make money in order to feed the family); causing mass social unrest and eventually the government’s loss of