The Empirical Study of Legitimate Authority Normative Guidance for Positive Analysis

We employ key concepts in the normative study of legitimate authority to place the empirical analysis of legitimacy on firmer analytical foundations. Our critical review of empirical research on support for courts, regimes generally, and international organizations highlights the slippage between normative and positive approaches, while simultaneously drawing attention to problems of measurement and critical inferential problems rooted in limitations of research design. We then describe a simple theoretical model that formalizes these considerations. The model reveals conditions under which it is possible to isolate the effect of an authority’s legitimacy on citizen behavior net of extrinsic compliance motivations as well as environments in which examination of the antecedents of legitimate authority is most likely to be fruitful.