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Legitimacy is "a value whereby something or someone is recognized and accepted as right and proper". [6] In political science, legitimacy has traditionally been understood as the popular acceptance and recognition by the public of the authority of a governing régime, whereby authority has political power through consent and mutual understandings, not coercion.
"Consent of the governed" is a phrase found in the 1776 United States Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson.. Using thinking similar to that of John Locke, the founders of the United States believed in a state built upon the consent of "free and equal" citizens; a state otherwise conceived would lack legitimacy and rational-legal authority.
Popular sovereignty is the principle that the leaders of a state and its government are created and sustained by the consent of its people, who are the source of all political legitimacy. Citizens may unite and offer to delegate a portion of their sovereign powers and duties to those who wish to serve as officers of the state, contingent on the ...
Locke advanced the principle of consent of the governed in his Two Treatises of Government. Government's duty under a social contract among the sovereign people was to serve the people by protecting their rights. These basic rights were life, liberty, and property. [91]
Popular sovereignty is the principle that the leaders of a state and its government are created and sustained by the consent of its people, who are the source of all political legitimacy. Popular sovereignty, being a principle, does not imply any particular political implementation.
A directorial republic is a government system with power divided among a college of several people who jointly exercise the powers of a head of state and/or a head of government. Merchant republic: In the early Renaissance, a number of small, wealthy, trade-based city-states embraced republican ideals, notably across Italy and the Baltic.
Moreover, whether reflecting a descriptive or prescriptive focus, treatments of the concept of constitutionalism all deal with the legitimacy of government. One recent assessment of American constitutionalism, for example, notes that the idea of constitutionalism serves to define what it is that "grants and guides the legitimate exercise of ...
The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) [a] is the common government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, comprising 50 states, five major self-governing territories, several island possessions, and the federal district (national capital) of Washington, D.C ...