Browsing by Author "Kruger, Petrus Jacobus"

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    The problem of political legitimacy : a comparative analysis of the theories of John Rawls and Seyla Benhabib
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2016-03) Kruger, Petrus Jacobus; Roodt, Vasti; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Philosophy.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The purpose of this thesis is twofold: In the first place, I aim to define the main features of the problem of political legitimacy – understood as the normative justification of a governing regime – together with the criteria which a convincing theory of political legitimacy must fulfil. In the second place, I evaluate two influential theories of political legitimacy in light of these criteria: John Rawls’s liberal principle of legitimacy and Seyla Benhabib’s theory of deliberative democracy. My conclusion is that the latter provides us with a better standard for evaluating and justifying political rule than the liberal model developed by Rawls. In order to reach this conclusion, I begin by interrogating the concept of political legitimacy generally. I argue for a normative rather than a purely descriptive understanding of political legitimacy, give a brief overview of the historical development of the question of legitimacy and then turn my attention to the current state of the debate about the normative justification of political authority. From the preceding investigation, I extrapolate five criteria that a convincing account of political legitimacy must fulfil. Such an account must: 1) provide a coherent method for evaluating – as opposed to merely describing citizens’ beliefs about – any particular government; 2) address the problem of plurality; 3) provide normative grounds for the authority of a governing regime; 4) account of the relationship between such authority and citizens’ duties/obligations; and lastly 5) incorporate the pursuit of stability. With these five criteria in hand, I move on to the evaluation of Rawls’s and Benhabib’s theories of political legitimacy. Chapter Two is devoted to Rawls’s position. After explaining the main tenets of this position, I evaluate his theory in light of the five specified criteria, and conclude that his account of political legitimacy ultimately fails to account for genuine plurality in so far as he seeks to limit political conflict to a very small and tightly defined public sphere. Chapter Three is devoted to Benhabib’s theory of deliberative democracy, and follows much the same structure as the previous chapter. I first set out the main tenets of Benhabib’s theory, and then evaluate this theory in light of the specified criteria. I conclude that the theory of deliberative democracy provides us with a more convincing theory of political legitimacy than the liberal model espoused by Rawls, for three reasons: 1) contrary to Rawls’s attempt to minimize, contain and ultimately remove fundamental disagreement within our political lives, Benhabib takes the deep and dividing disagreements among citizens seriously, and develops a theory of political legitimacy that is able to incorporate these disagreements within a more expansive public sphere; 2) as a direct result of the previous feature, the theory of deliberative democracy is better able to account for the relationship between political authority and citizens’ duties and obligations, and hence 3) resolves the problem of stability in a way that Rawls’s liberal model of political legitimacy is unable to do.