Légitimité, droit et action publique

Abstract

A definition of political power as both power over and power to leads to reconsider the registers of justification on which political legitimacy is built. Long, the ideal type of Weberian legal rational legitimacy characterized the mode of political domination proper to Western States. It is now the target of many critics who regard it as inadequate and unable to account for changes in the political regulation of our contemporary societies. In a period of erosion of state power, law and bureaucracy which were at the heart of the Weberian model have lost their centrality. Not only these criticisms do not take into account the Weberian analysis of political responsibility which shows that the legitimacy cannot be thought except the exercise of power, but empirical works do not give evidence either of the end of the bureaucratic mode of organization or irreparable decline of the place of law in the management of public affairs. A deepened reflection on the political legitimacy goes more through a renewal of the Weberian model than its simple renunciation.