Comment les gouvernants justifient leur légitimité

Governments in representative democracies are under stress: surveys show that citizens are increasingly critical of political representatives and tend to have less confidence in the ability of elections to translate the aspirations of the population into public decisions. However, those in power remain attached to a classical conception of legitimacy, without often questioning it. Four registers of legitimacy emerge from our analysis. In other words, to the question of how rulers justify their legitimacy in a context of citizen mistrust, we show that rulers respond by (1) their respect for institutional and representative processes, (2) their personal qualities, (3) their inclusive working method, and (4) their pursuit of the general interest.