Legitimation: Positive or Negative

That set of media discourses, ideological and educational systems, and legislated arsenal of laws, which endeavours to justify the domination of a particular governmental regime and political system — through consent and legitimacy.

Positive legitimation designates a discourse in which the dominant system justifies itself through its positive acts, through its successes, and through the prosperity and civil peace it ensures. This sort of positive legitimation is no longer possible today: faced with unemployment, growing poverty, the effects of mass immigration, the explosion of insecurity, and the general imperiousness of the political class to finding workable solutions, the system now depends on negative legitimation. This sort of legitimation rests on the precept that ‘without us, things will get worse, they’d be fascist’. Power here no longer legitimises itself on the basis of its achievements, but in a virtualist manner, by invoking the spectre of the Great Threat — the spectre of racism, anti-democracy, dictatorship, etc.

After a period of failed promises comes thus the blackmail — in the form of protecting the population from evil phantoms. A political system resting on this sort of negative legitimation hasn’t long to live.

(see democracy)