Norms can sustain regimes only while elites can plausibly invoke shared commitments

Evidence

Yet normative ideas are of the first importance in political life. For it is only possible for politicians and public officials to gain support for the policies they pursue to the extent that they can represent them as legitimate: to the extent that they can represent them as policies that are motivated by this or that agreed, or more or less agreed, commitment. Even the secret police of Eastern European societies couldn’t keep communist regimes in place once it became a matter of common recognition that the ideals associated with those regimes were not well conceived, or at least not well targeted, and that few continued to believe in them. — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 47

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the solidarity-by-shared-values question: legitimacy rests on genuinely shared commitments, not just coercion or enemy-framing, tying to Weber/Milgram-type authority legitimation literature. — connects to: Coordination, not normative commitment, sustains social order in many regimes. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 713; Norms work mainly through external sanctions, not internalized motivation — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 168; Successful regimes suppress factional self-interest through inclusive aspiration and ethics — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 109 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Successful regimes suppress factional self-interest through inclusive aspiration and ethics #corroborates (0.80) — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 109
• Universalistic norms lose force without status-group exclusionary sanctions behind them. #qualifies (0.80) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 271
• Coordination, not normative commitment, sustains social order in many regimes. #contradicts (0.75) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 713
• Norms work mainly through external sanctions, not internalized motivation #qualifies (0.75) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 168
• Political elites hold ideologically organized beliefs while the mass public shows little constraint #complicates (0.72) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1921