The essence of democracy, according to the etymology of the word and to classics of democratic theory, is citizen participation in the rule of a political community (Dahl 1956; Mill 1958; Aristotle 1962; Pateman 1970; Cohen 1973; Dahl 1998; Held 2001). Albeit central to the definition of democracy, political participation and its possible effects long have presented political scientists with what we might label the Goldilocks conundrum – the question of how much and what kinds of participation are too much, too little, or just right. On the one hand, many observers in the “too much” camp have expressed fears that excessive participation might overtax the capacity of states to manage it or respond effectively and thereby undermine political stability or produce bad policy (Schumpeter 1943; Almond and Verba 1963; Huntington 1968; Crozier, Huntington, and Watanuki 1975). Those in the “too little” camp worry that low legitimacy might generate either too little system-reinforcing participation, too much protest, or too little supportive social and political capital for the health of democracies (Nye et al. 1997; Van Deth 1997; Pharr and Putnam 2000a; Putnam 2000; Putnam 2002).

These contending worries about participation and democracy – fears of both too much and too little participation for the good of democracy – focus attention directly on legitimacy. They force us to ask: Does legitimacy matter for political participation and for democracy, and if so, how does it matter?