What is political legitimacy? Under what conditions can one speak of a politically legitimate situation? Though simple in their formulation, these questions are nevertheless complicated. Providing satisfactory responses to them presupposes that one is able to surmount a certain number of problems, one of the foremost being the notion of political judgement.

Facing up to such a notion boils down, in effect, to appealing to a ‘faculty of judgement’ in the political domain. That faculty consists in evaluating the decisions and actions of rulers and institutions who are charged with ensuring that society runs well. It presupposes that the question of the criteria for political judgement has been elucidated – that is to say, that the conditions for the validity of those elements that allow for an evaluation of the just character of political relations have been established. Now, in what, precisely, do those conditions consist? Where are they to be found? How is one to assure oneself of their reliability?

Because of its complexity, the theme of legitimacy occupies a paradoxical position in contemporary political thought. On the one hand, it is granted that legitimacy is essential to the operation of political life. Legitimacy is therefore taken into account in analyses whose objective is to describe and to explain its mechanisms. And if one were to rank the terms to which political observers have recourse in their work, the word legitimacy would arrive in the top grouping.