The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (149 page)

 
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Leftism can be defined as the holding of views, or the advocacy of policies which, on the political spectrum of the particular organization or system, tend towards the pursuit of more rapid, drastic, or radical change than is desired by the majority of members of the organization, or of its controlling leaders, or is compatible with the operational theory by which the organization justifies its actions.
In Marxist theory, it is undesirable and impractical to attempt to force the pace of revolutionary change beyond what is justified by the basic condition of the economy as expressed in its production forces, and by the level of class consciousness of the relevant social classes which arise from the relations of production. Therefore, most typically, those accused of leftism are the advocates of rapid changes in the relations of production without regard to the state of the forces of production, such as untimely collectivization of agriculture or attempts to advance towards the communist principle of ‘to each according to his needs’ at a period when material incentives are still socially necessary.
However, as the definition of leftism is frequently in the hands of party leaders, this reasonable idea has often been used unscrupulously to condemn opponents whose point of view was by no means clearly leftist, as the word has been defined here. Most notably,
Bukharin
was accused by Stalin of leftism although he advocated that Soviet agriculture should not be collectivized at that time, an opinion which would have been more appropriately described as rightist; however, Bukharin's reluctance to accept collectivization was related to his advocacy of the democratization of all social activities, which Stalin chose to condemn as premature and therefore an expression of leftism.
JG 

 
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A law-making assembly of elected members in a formally equal relationship to one another. Legislatures evolved from medieval bodies periodically assembled by kings in order to agree to levies of taxation to bodies which sat more or less continuously, or at least claimed the right to do so as did seventeenth-century English parliaments. The legislature therefore took its modern form in the work of
Locke
and the parliaments he had in mind. For specific legislatures see
parliament
; Congress (US). For division of powers by function see
parliamentary sovereignty
; separation of powers. For division of powers by territory see
central-local relations
; federalism. For the number of chambers, see
bicameralism
;
unicameralism
.

 
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The property that a regime's procedures for making and enforcing laws are acceptable to its subjects. The term is derived from Weberian sociology. As Weber emphasized, legitimacy constituted the basis of very real differences in the way in which power was exercised. There was a generally observable need for any power to justify itself. There were three broad grounds for exercising authority, based on: tradition; charisma; and rational legal authority, resting on a belief in the legality of enacted rules and the right of those in positions of authority to issue commands. Obedience is owed not to a traditionally sanctioned person or a charismatically qualified leader, but to the legally established impersonal order. It extends to the persons occupying a public office by virtue of the legality of their commands. Their authority is confined to the scope of the office and cannot be used in a capricious or self-interested way.
In his classic study,
Political Man
, S. M. Lipset argued that: ‘Legitimacy involves the capacity of the [political] system to engender and maintain the belief that the existing political institutions are the most appropriate ones for the society.’ Lipset argues that Western nations have had to face three difficult and potentially destabilizing issues:

(1) the place of the church or of various religions within the nation;
(2) the admission of the working class to full economic and political rights; and
(3) the continuing struggle over the distribution of the national income.

Some of the greatest challenges to the legitimacy of nation-states in the 1980s and 1990s have come from groups which do not accept the legitimacy of the territorial boundaries of the nation-state, for example many Québecois within Canada. In extreme cases, this has led to the dissolution of the former nation-state, for example in Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and the former Soviet Union. The difficulty of maintaining government in the face of a challenge from a minority population which does not accept the legitimacy of existing territorial boundaries is shown by the case of Northern Ireland. As well as being a crucial problem in divided societies, the issue of legitimacy also arises in relation to new types of political formation such as the European Union. Because of the perceived problem of the democratic deficit, the European Union is often regarded as lacking adequate means of legitimation from the citizens of the Union, but transferring greater powers to the European Parliament poses a challenge to the authority of the member states. The ability to issue commands which are seen as binding because they are legitimate is one of the central pillars of a stable political order.
WG 

 
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A theory developed in the mid-1970s by the German Marxist Jürgen Habermas , a leading member of the
Frankfurt school
. He suggests that people expect governments to intervene successfully in the economy to try and ensure economic prosperity. Failure to succeed can cause the validity of the capitalist system to be questioned, thus undermining its legitimacy.
IF 

 
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