Authority and Legitimacy: The State and the Citizen

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Authority and Legitimacy The State and the
Citizen

• Authority is power based on a general agreement
• that a person or group has the right to issue
  certain sorts of commands and
• that those commands should be obeyed.

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Sources of legitimacy

• legitimacy by results
• legitimacy by habit
• legitimacy by historical, religious or ethnic
  identity
• legitimacy by procedures

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Constitutionalism

• The doctrine that states should be faithful to
  their constitutions.

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The importance of constitutionalism is rooted in
the protection of citizens from arbitrary
decisions by powerful people
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Typically, a constitutional document denotes

• How politicians are to be chosen
• The ways the document itself can be changed
• Who is to carry out the major functions of
  politics

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StrictvsFlexible ???
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The democratic citizen

• Tolerance
• Active Participation
• High level of interest and information
• Support for the state

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PUBLIC OPINION AND POLITICAL SOCIALIZATION

• How American democracy works depends largely on
  who participates and how.

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POLITICAL SOCIALIZATION

• The process in which individuals acquire the
  information, beliefs, attitudes and values that
  help them comprehend the workings of a political
  system and orient themselves within it.

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Political Socialization and Other Factors That
Influence Opinion Formation

• Political attitudes are grounded in values. We
  learn our values by a process known as political
  socialization.
• Many factors influence opinion formation.
• The Family
• The Mass Media
• School and Peers
• The Impact of Events

• Social/economic groups
• Religion, Race,
• Education, Income,
• Gender, Region

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What is Public Opinion?

• Public opinion is 'what the people think about an
  issue or set of issues at any given point in
  time' and opinions are normally measured by
  opinion polls.

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Opinion Polls

• Polls are interviews or surveys of a sample of
  citizens used to estimate how the public feels
  about an issue or set of issues.

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Qualities of Public Opinion

• Intensity - the strength of a position for or
  against a public policy or an issue
• Fluidity - the extent to which public opinion
  changes over time
• Stability - the extent to which public opinion
  remains constant over a period of time
• Relevance - the extent to which an issue is of
  concern at a particular time
• Political Knowledge

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How We Form Political Opinions
Political Opinions
Personal Beliefs
Political Knowledge
Cues From Leaders
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How We Measure Public Opinion

• In order for a poll to be reliable, it must have
• Proper question wording
• An accurate sample random selection, sample
  size

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How We Measure Public Opinion

• In general, do not trust a poll that does not
  tell you the question wording, the sampling
  method, and the ways in which respondents were
  contacted.
• Reputable pollsters will also tell you the number
  of respondents (the 'n') and the error rate ( or
  - 5).
• Any poll that tells you to call 555-5554 for yes
  and 555-5555 for no is unscientific and
  unreliable. This is not a random sample at all!

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Judge the reliability (dangers)

• Who sponsored the poll?
• Who did the polling?
• Was was interviewed? How many?
• What questions were asked?
• How/when were the interviews conducted?
• Are all the results based o the entire sample?

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Types of Polls

• Tracking polls--continuous surveys that enable a
  campaign to chart its daily rise and fall in
  popularity. These may be a decent measure of
  trends.
• Exit polls--polls conducted at polling places on
  election day.
• Deliberative polls--a new kind of poll first
  tried in 1996. A relatively large scientific
  sample of Americans (600) were selected for
  intensive briefings, discussions, and
  presentations about issue clusters including
  foreign affairs, the family, and the economy.
• A deliberative poll attempts to measure what the
  public would think if they had better
  opportunities to thoughtfully consider the issues
  first.

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Unitary State

• A state in which no other governmental body but
  the central government has any areas of policy
  that are exclusively under its control.

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Federal State

• A state in which two governments, local and
  central, control the same group of people but
  with regard to different political questions