Does Legality Produce Political Legitimacy? An Experimental Approach
Yiqin Fu et al.
What the paper says
This article studies whether pure legality, stripped of normative components that are central to the rule of law, can convey perceived legitimacy to governmental institutions and activity. Through a survey experiment conducted among urban Chinese residents, it examines whether such conveyance is possible under current sociopolitical conditions in which the party-state continues to invest in pure legality without imposing legal checks on the party leadership’s political power and without corresponding investment in substantive rights or freedoms. Among survey respondents, government investment in professional and consistent law enforcement conveys meaningful amounts of political legitimacy. In fact, it does so even when it supports government activity, such as censorship of online speech, that is freedom depriving and socially controversial and even when such investment does not necessarily enhance the external predictability of state behavior. However, the legitimacy-enhancing effects of pure legality are likely weaker than those of state investment in procedural justice.
2 citations
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.25 × 0.4 = 0.10 |
| M · momentum | 0.55 × 0.15 = 0.08 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.