by BI Yantao, China
According to Alan R. Kluver, “Political legitimacy is the perceived convergence of legal and moral authority to rule a nation.” It is “the extent to which the populace views the rulers as deserving of that authority.” Methodologically, it is necessary to classify legitimacy into two types: internal legitimacy (IL) and external legitimacy (EL). In some cases, IL and EL are not consistent to each other. Take China for example. Many Westerners hold firmly the belief that the Chinese government is suffering from such a legitimacy crisis that it will collapse sooner or later. To a great extent, this perception justifies D. McGregor’s approach to the factor of the wishful thinking in the making of prediction: “Unguided by objective evidence, most people will make their prediction in accordance with their subjective preference”. Although the legitimacy of the Chinese government has been eroding these years, it has not declined to such an extent as many Westerners estimated. This essay tries to identify the major variables that contribute to the discrepancy between IL and EL of the Chinese government, mainly by questionnaires and in-depth interviews. My speculation is that the Chinese people residing in the Chinese mainland base their judgments on firstly, social interaction, secondly, personal experiences, and thirdly, new media, while people outside China make their judgments based on firstly, mass media, secondly, social interaction, and thirdly, personal experiences. This essay also discusses the interaction between IL and EL.
(This abstract was submitted to an European conference on China.)
