Legitimacy always rests on successful power, not pure rationality.

Evidence

Democracy requires, therefore, that the purely constructed nature of social relations finds its complement in the purely pragmatic grounds of the claims to power legitimacy. This implies that there is no unbridgeable gap between power and legitimacy - not obviously in the sense that all power is automatically legitimate, but in the sense that: (a) if any power has been able to impose itself, it is because it has been recognized as legitimate in some quarters: and (b) if legitimacy is not based in an aprioristic ground, it is because it is based in some form of successful power. This link between legitimacy and power and the hegemonic ordering that this entails is precisely what the deliberative approach forecloses by positing the possibility of a type of rational argumentation where power has been eliminated and where legitimacy is grounded on pure rationality. — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 453

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the legitimating linkage that distinguishes hegemonic from deliberative democratic theory.
• XREF: connects to: Power cannot self-realize but depends on societal-structural conditions for legitimacy; Legitimacy of state power rests on contestability, not actual consent — Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and…, 325; Legitimacy and physical force are symbolically interlinked, not opposites — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 717 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Legal validity derives from normative authority, not from physical power alone. #contradicts (0.85) — Ronald M. Dworkin, The Model of Rules, 48
• Power cannot self-realize but depends on societal-structural conditions for legitimacy #qualifies (0.82)
• Legitimacy and physical force are symbolically interlinked, not opposites #corroborates (0.80) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 717
• Tyranny governs without any pretense to legitimacy #complicates (0.80) — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 88
• Legitimacy of state power rests on contestability, not actual consent #qualifies (0.78) — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 325
• Technical rationality serves those in power rather than being genuinely rational. #corroborates (0.76)
• Power is always negotiated, suspended and resisted rather than absolute. #complicates (0.75) — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1667
• Not every authoritative formula can make itself true; only viable ones become performative. #expands (0.72) — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 96