Legitimacy of Power: the View of French Liberalism in the second half of the XIX century

Abstract

The problem of the legitimacy of power is of great interest, both in domestic and in French legal science. In France over the past two centuries, there have been five republics, two empires, and various transitional regimes and forms of government. The end of the XVIII - first half of the XIX centuries in France is characterized by the most frequent changes in the state and legal sphere, which caused increased attention of researchers to the legitimacy or legitimacy of power. The contribution of representatives of the French liberal school of the second half of the XIX century is noted in the article in the development of the concept of legitimacy of power. The main approaches to this problem of the most prominent representatives of the French liberal school have been analyzed, whose work was significantly inf luenced by the conceptual formation of the concepts of legitimacy, in particular, and the legitimacy of power in general. It is noted that representatives of French liberalism of the second half of the nineteenth century considered the legitimacy of power in the discourse of the idea of justice, emphasizing the three elements that should be embodied in the state, which in turn should ensure the legitimization of power.