Reflections on International Legitimacy

In this essay, presented at a Sussex history seminar in 1971, Wight set out reflections on international legitimacy—supported by historical examples—in addition to those included in his two essays entitled ‘International Legitimacy’, one published as an article in 1972 in the journal International Relations, and the other as a chapter in his 1977 posthumous book Systems of States. Wight pointed out in this essay that governments on some occasions have set aside established principles of legitimacy in order to serve other purposes—maintaining a preferred balance of power, gaining territory, promoting commercial relations, or pursuing state-consolidation, sometimes with a ‘lack of scruple’. Wight observed that rules regarding legitimacy have furnished grounds ‘for argument, controversy, conflict, even war’. He nonetheless concluded that ‘the influence of principles of legitimacy upon international politics has generally been overestimated’ and ‘has declined rather than grown, with the transition from the dynastic to the popular age’. Prevailing concepts of legality and legitimacy have correspondingly enjoyed less ‘moral ascendancy’.