Rodney Barker, Legitimating Identities: The Self-Presentations of Rulers and Subjects

TLDR: The notion of self-legitimation was introduced by Rodney Barker as mentioned in this paper, who pointed out that the practice of politics is replete with non-utilitarian behaviours, such as symbolic rituals, ostentatious building projects, elite parties, and pomp and ceremony.

Abstract: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, 161 pp. It is over a decade since Rodney Barker, along with a few other authors, helped revive debates over political legitimacy, its proper conceptualization, and its role in political life. (1) Legitimacy is a central concept in political discourse, and there are perhaps too many ways to speak of it. Yet the corollary (some would say cause) of legitimacy, legitimation, has virtually escaped direct analysis. What is legitimation? What happens where we find this term? The fact that Legitimating Identities tackles such rare questions directly should be of interest to virtually all social and political thinkers. The book offers a thought provoking and genuinely enjoyable, if not entirely satisfactory approach to a theory of legitimation. Without a doubt its ideas warrant further examination. Barker introduces his thesis by enjoining us to recognize that the practice of politics is replete with non-utilitarian behaviours--symbolic rituals, ostentatious building projects, elite parties, "pomp and ceremony," of which he offers no shortage of historical examples--that are difficult to account for from a rationalist perspective. Moreover, much of this expenditure is evidently not for general consumption, but for a select audience of elites, and often mainly for rulers themselves. Barker refers to these characteristic activities of government as instances of "endogenous or self-legitimation." "What are governments doing," he asks, "when they spend time, resources and energy legitimating themselves?" (2). The broad answer is simple enough: "When rulers legitimate themselves, they claim that particular species of prestige which attaches to government" (4). The remainder of the book describes and explains how this claiming--which Barker sees as "a dimension of politics"--occurs. The central point of Barker's argument is that this complex of claims is constitutive of the ruler's identity as a special person, and that rulers themselves are thus the primary target of their own claims. Legitimation, that is, is first and foremost an activity undertaken by rulers to assure themselves of their special status, and hence (it seems) of their right to rule. It is a process by which they justify their privileges, powers, and decisions to themselves; only secondarily is it directed at underlings and subjects, for the ruler's self-conception is, in this view, the most important factor of successful governance. "When subjects lose faith in rulers, government becomes difficult. When rulers lose confidence in themselves, it becomes impossible" (68). Moreover, "since it is the difference from ordinary people that is being celebrated, cultivated, and confirmed, the participation, presence, or even awareness of ordinary people is not a central or even necessary part of the process" (76). Barker devotes a chapter to each of three levels of political relations in which legitimation can be seen to occur: rulers legitimate themselves to themselves; they legitimate themselves to their peers and close subordinates; and they legitimate themselves to their subjects. "At each stage out from the centre [legitimation] is likely to be carried out with less time, attention, energy and intensity, though at any stage the investment can be greater than a narrow utilitarian view would lead one to expect ... And, at each stage, the legitimation is reciprocal" (71). That is, successful legitimation requires the mutual confirmation of identity among rulers, peers, servants, and subjects; in confirming the special identity of the ruler, others confirm their own non-special status. It is thus not merely identity that is confirmed, but relationships among identities. And in terms of relevance, the ruler is invariably at the top. Clearly, Barker's argument does not fit neatly with contemporary "political theory"; his statements seem to offer a radical alternative to our traditional concerns over "popular" or "democratic" legitimacy. …