What’s with people calling governments they don’t like illegitimate? People do the same with North Korea all the time.
Those governments may be distasteful and do things you don’t like, but they’re very real and have been for nearly a century now.
Those governments may be distasteful and do things you don’t like, but they’re very real and have been for nearly a century now.
i.e. they weren't voted in; they ceased power by violence.
You can't vote them out.
No one has freedom of association to form an alternative political party that strongly opposes the status quo.
Without those things one party governments can't say they are legitimate, only vanguard dictatorships.
It's 2021. People claim governments are illegitimate for any number of selfish reasons, usually disconnected from reality.
Royalty existed for much longer than that in many countries, and it was never ever legitimate unless you believed in god-given power bullshit.
(Which is not to say CCP or monarchies are good, just that that's not the pillar I'd attack them on)
Just saying you don't like a form of government makes it illegitimate is a silly proposition. You get people every election in democratic countries saying the government is illegitimate. Usually they're considered crazy. Should "tyranny of the majority", as they'd say, be considered legitimate? What about tyranny of the minority, since in many countries, most people don't even vote?
You can recognize that a dictator is the legitimate ruler of a country, while also acknowledging that he's not working in favor of the people. If someone has an entire territory's military at their command and they can write and enforce laws, that's usually a sign that they have a legitimate government.
Legitimacy based on force is not legitimacy. It's just tyranny: if you never ask people how to want to govern themselves how can you meet the criteria of legitimacy, like EVER? Holding the biggest guns does not replace agreement and contractual acceptance of how things are run.
> Should "tyranny of the majority", as they'd say, be considered legitimate
It's a hell lot more legitimate since you can actually expect to change the rulers/people in power at some point through popular action. Under royalty/tyranny, you are forced to accept whoever is at the top and you have no recourse until they die.
That's kind of a huge difference.
I think it’s more like this: Governments the US doesn’t like very much are 'illegitimate' because 'not liberal democracies'; regimes the US does like are 'important allies' or otherwise not talked about.
The whole 'not democratic' thing is more like a type of post-hoc justification for what, to many, looks like blatant imperialism. It would appear it is successful at least some of the time.
As governments get more oppressive and arbitrary in their exercise of power, it becomes harder for them to make credible claims of legitimacy. I'm not saying the Saudi government is legitimate, but it is possible for it to do things that increase or decrease it's relative legitimacy. Increase consultation and individual freedoms? More legitimate. Crack down on peaceful protests or oppress minorities? Less legitimate.
Saudi Arabia does not get called illegitimate, but Cuba does.
Pinochet was 'legitimate'.
It stays in power by a combination of active repression, murder of potential opposition (great leap, but not forward), and bread & circuses (we provide economic progress, you keep quiet), and disinformation via controlled media.
To me and many others, legitimacy requires some mechanism for the people to consent to the rule.
There’s no reason for people outside of politics to pretend otherwise. It always comes off as childish, really.
Then I guess John Cena can retract his apology...
Same with South Korea. Both countries started as US-backed dictatorships, and US backed them mainly for its self-interest of halting communism (a threat to American invested political ideals).
Like it or not the majority of Chinese people fought for and aided the communists, and continue to legitimize the communist party government by engaging in orderly civil participation.
Like it or not, anything bad the Chinese government does the Chinese citizenry are culpable because they are not agent-less slaves of the party.
People in China can participate in government. Believe it or not a government which has no finger on the pulse of their constituency or acting outside of their interests can and will be overthrown. You eventually run out of bullets—and people, if you point a gun to their heads.
Sure because they weren't US backed but they still were a dictatorship...
Truman publicly signaled the US had no intention of defending Taiwan or SK, but public sentiment changed in the US after Kim il-sung invaded.
> One can easily say that China traded Taiwan (which it surely would have been able to take back without USA backing) for North Korea (which probably would have been folded into the ROK without Chinese intervention).
Korea was also the Japanese invasion point into China in WW2, which made it sensitive for the US to mobilize in.
Definitely. A lot of sentiment against mainlanders in Taiwan was created by the KMT’s rule as much as by the communists.
Truman’s hand was called as soon as North Korea invaded South Korea while UN troops were still stationed there. There would have been no way that the USA was going to stay out of that conflict.