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.

I would imagine that people are calling these governments illegitimate because they lack a democratic mandate to rule and independent opposition to that rule.

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.

No, that's obviously not it. Read the comments.

It's 2021. People claim governments are illegitimate for any number of selfish reasons, usually disconnected from reality.

You’re just using two different definitions of “legitimate” which is as common as two people using different boundaries for “blue” vs “green.” You’re talking about legitimacy as having effective control of the country, as the North Korean government does and the Somalian government does not. The person you’re arguing with uses “legitimate” to mean something like “with the just consent of the governed” which a government can have even without de facto control of its territory.

It's not about liking or not liking. Legitimacy in this sense is about whether those governments genuinely represent the people they rule. There exist governments that I strongly disagree with and dislike, but which do legitimately represent their people.

> but they’re very real and have been for nearly a century now.

Royalty existed for much longer than that in many countries, and it was never ever legitimate unless you believed in god-given power bullshit.

The government is most certainly legitimate if they're able to hold a country together for centuries. Whether or not the claims of being blessed by their god is legitimate is a different matter entirely.

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.

> The government is most certainly legitimate if they're able to hold a country together for centuries.

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.

That legitimacy is only granted via democracy is a very new concept. Even the coining ancient Greeks had trouble with it, and it definitely did not emerge quickly during the Neolithic revolution when governments were created at all.

It seems that Saudi Arabia or Bahrain’s regimes tend not to get called 'illegitimate', so 'not democratic' would not imply 'illegitimate'.

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.

Legitimacy is more about representing the people and ruling with consent. It's a spectrum, not a binary. The Saudi royal family have a patronage system in place that funnels money down to the regions and the tribes in return for loyalty. The country has no democratic traditions or expectations. For all they're a horrible dynasty of murderous autocrats, it's actually not that simple to argue that they don't rule with consent.

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.

The strongest signal here is US ally vs adversary. Everything else is fluff in comparison.

Saudi Arabia does not get called illegitimate, but Cuba does.

Pinochet was 'legitimate'.

All governments are based on some kind of belief.

(Which is not to say CCP or monarchies are good, just that that's not the pillar I'd attack them on)

OK, fine, the CCP is as legitimate as any warlord who came to power by armed conquest and performs some governmental functions.

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.

The legitimate government of China is in Taipei. If Vichy France had existed for 40 years, rather than 4, it still wouldn't have been the legitimate government of France. Other examples abound.

They’re entirely separate governments ruling over different countries.

There’s no reason for people outside of politics to pretend otherwise. It always comes off as childish, really.

Legitimate government? A warlord the US liked was over thrown by a warlord the US didn't like. Taiwan was under martial law for almost 40 years! It only recently became a democracy, what is the claim?

The government seated in Taipei would gladly disagree with you if it didn't imply missiles would be incoming.

>> There’s no reason for people outside of politics to pretend otherwise

Then I guess John Cena can retract his apology...

Taiwan wasn’t always a democracy, so if that is the standard for “legitimate” then Taiwan fails on that measure too.

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.

Taiwan didn’t start as a US backed dictatorship. Truman had pretty much given up n Chiang Kai Shek until China crossed over to side with the North Koreans during the Korean War, making the USA much more interested in supporting the ROC again. 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).

> Taiwan didn’t start as a US backed dictatorship.

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.

> Sure because they weren't US backed but they still were a dictatorship...

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.

And of course they’re called racist by the CCP propaganda machine.

Current version of the CCP seems worse than more recent versions. It depends quite a lot on who is at the top and how much authority they wield.

they have already brought so much pain to this world and yet we continue to pump up their economy .. make them even more powerful by continuing to make and buy millions of products made in China.

The CCP (not it's people) are scourge to this world and should be dealt with by all countries it has brought pain too!

The Chinese people, even if not all, support their own government, at least more so than a foreign government. Trying to separate the two is misguided. Chinese people shape the CCP, make up its ranks, and for the most part tolerate it and grant it legitimacy by the act of not rebelling.

If that were true the CCP would have nothing to fear from democratic elections or free media.

Not rebelling against the heavily armed PLA is a pretty low bar for legitimacy.

They fear democracy for the same reason the US used to fear communism: because it is an incompatible system and political party. Are Democrats and Republicans truly that much different besides some differences in policy platforms? They are two separate factions vying for the role of who can govern better, but people these days aren't really looking too closely at results and just voting based on factionalism. China's system is more top-down control, and thus risks failure if the top is corrupted. I think it's probably less tenable long term, but I also don't believe it needs a finger to tip it over the edge.

You've probably been fed propaganda that legitimacy comes from democracy, but it does not. Democracy has long been seen as the least worst of any system for Americans. It is only as legitimate as those of use who fight to defend it, because freedom isn't free, and neither is our system: democracy.

Ultimately legitimacy comes from whether people fight for their government and defend their way of life, regardless of however wrong you may think it is. What is the legitimate government of Vietnam, Afghanistan? Clearly the the US-backed democratic government in Afghanistan is now going the way of illegitimacy (because no one cares enough to support it), despite being fully democratic. It's illegitimate because neither the US aid, weaponry, training, was able to get its democratic supporters to care enough to fight for their way of life. If people had to fight for what government they wanted (democracy, dictatorship, monarchy, oligarchy), and a foreign nation comes in and props one of these up with advanced weaponry and military force, and still fails, is it still legitimate just because it was a Democratic government?