Democratic legitimacy depends on citizens’ internalized commitment that imposed systems cannot replace

Evidence

Liberal democracy is such a demanding and fragile form of government because it can be realized only in and through the heads of its citizens. … Willingness to learn is already called for by the fact that the brutally violent history of Western imperialism has taught us that we must let our eyes be opened by other cultures concerning the blind spots in our interpretation and application of human rights not only in the past but also in the present. But even the presumptive universal validity of the principles now enshrined in the UN Charter does not mean that we may conduct crusades to disseminate liberal democracy. For the reasons you imply with your question, a democratic system imposed by paternalistic means cannot achieve long-term stability. — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 74

Categorization

• XREF: This positions Habermas’s universalist-but-non-crusading stance against both neoconservative democracy-export and Rawls’s ‘political’ accommodation — a mapping of the deliberative-terrain he stakes out in between. — connects to: Legitimacy arises from inclusion plus deliberation filtered through reasons — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 16; Majority rule depends on citizens committing to the common good over self-interest — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 24; Democratic legitimacy requires tacit constitutional consensus renewed each generation — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 66 (+18 more)
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: what exactly is the ‘willingness to learn’ mechanism that lets Westerners apply human rights claims without imperial universalism? Habermas states the condition but doesn’t operationalize it.

Related

• Power-legitimation must come from within democracy itself once unifying worldviews fade (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Coercive government power depends on voluntary cooperation from many #corroborates (0.88)
• Legitimate government conceives power as a mutually observed trust #corroborates (0.85) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1182
• Power cannot self-realize but depends on societal-structural conditions for legitimacy #corroborates (0.82)
• Active citizenship from below yields higher quality democracy than passive #corroborates (0.80) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 819
• Legitimate politics is cooperative interdependence among agents with unknowable futures #corroborates (0.78) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1186
• Democracies split between imposed dominance and emergent self-determination #expands (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 709
• Openly negotiated interdependence undermines trust that existing systems breed silently #complicates (0.74)
• Administrative standing substitutes for political legitimacy #complicates (0.72) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 873