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Just curious: do you think that any government where the leader is not above the law is legitimate?

• IIAOPSW 4y ago
  Legitimacy is more often a spectrum than a binary thing. Rule of law, by which I mean the law itself is the ruler and not the person enforcing it, is a necessary but not sufficient condition. The essence of what we are calling legitimacy is that the government derives its authority from something other than physical force. In a situation like you described, where the ruler themselves isn't personally above the law, the law itself might still derive from "because some authority said so". For example, you could have a case like China which up until recently had rulers that stepped down every 5 years. I'd call that a textbook example of the rulers themselves being subject to the rules, and indeed regular peaceful transfers of power is something rarely ever seen outside of Democracies. In spite of having some amount of rule of law, China doesn't quite match the way I've defined legitimacy, because the laws of China themselves are ultimately derived from "because the party said so". So the legitimacy of the laws rest on the legitimacy of the communist party. Where does that legitimacy come from? The short answer is "Chinese standard of living better keep trending upwards forever."