Power-legitimation must come from within democracy itself once unifying worldviews fade

Evidence

But this realist conception of power cannot explain the core element of modern democracies, namely, the fact that majority decisions are accepted on average. With the increasing individualism of the pluralistic societies of the West, unifying worldviews have lost their ability to legitimize power. Without recourse to such metasocial sources of legitimation, democratic constitutional states must draw upon their own resources to legitimize the exercise of ruling functions – namely, by means of the legally institutionalized procedure of democratic (possibly qualified) majority decision-making. — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 92

Categorization

• XREF: Links to the classic 1962 Public Sphere book which first tracked the erosion of a religious/metaphysical ground for legitimacy. — connects to: Secularization left a legitimation gap that only democratic procedure could fill — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 16; Democratic elections legitimize only as outcomes of prior public deliberation, not preference aggregation — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 94; Deliberative politics is constitutive of democracy, not a regulative ideal — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 54 (+4 more)
• DEFINE: Defines the empiricist/realist concept of power in sociology and marks its explanatory limit.

Related

• Secularization left a legitimation gap that only democratic procedure could fill (similarity 0.85)
• Democracy is power’s technical character normalized in moral terms (similarity 0.84)
• Deliberative politics is constitutive of democracy, not a regulative ideal (similarity 0.83)
• Democratic elections legitimize only as outcomes of prior public deliberation, not preference aggregation (similarity 0.82)
• Democratic legitimacy requires tacit constitutional consensus renewed each generation (similarity 0.81)
• Legitimacy requires a visible link between votes and policy, not just good results (similarity 0.81)
• Power must be theorized indirectly through society as its condition of possibility (similarity 0.81)
• Minorities accept majority rule only under a shared constitutional consensus. (similarity 0.80)
• Power cannot self-realize but depends on societal-structural conditions for legitimacy (similarity 0.79)
• Deliberative legitimacy requires considerations neutral across interest groups (similarity 0.79)
• Legitimacy arises from inclusion plus deliberation filtered through reasons (similarity 0.79)
• Democratic legitimacy depends on citizens’ internalized commitment that imposed systems cannot replace (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Power cannot self-realize but depends on societal-structural conditions for legitimacy #corroborates (0.85)
• Power must be theorized indirectly through society as its condition of possibility #corroborates (0.82) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 582
• Democracy is power’s technical character normalized in moral terms #expands (0.78) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 745