Start of a series of blog posts on legitimacy of government and government authority.
The issues of what makes a government "legitimate" are controversial or at least strongly contested. Governments can sometime sustain huge controversies, disasters and failures but still keep going for years, decades or centuries. Citizens generally understand that there are problems, maybe even huge problems, but for many reasons decide to shrug them off. Some people will protest, some people will work for change, some people may plot or try revolution but generally the ship of state moves forward. This being so, some parties and factions believe that they can commit any crime and abuse any principle of government and get away with it. In spite of these abuses, the legitimacy of the government, though lessened perhaps, is still sufficient and everyone moves on.
But this is a dangerous game, this flouting of principles and the law, because sometimes a formerly stable yet imperfect government, after years of abuse, does one more thing or has one more disaster that is self-inflicted and then, suddenly and unexpectedly, the whole thing unravels. In at least three well-documented cases (the monarchy of France before the 1789 revolution, Imperial Russia under the Romanovs and the February Revolution, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1988-1991), none of the participants particularly expected the fall of the existing regime. It was a surprise and in each case for many people a catastrophe.
Therefore, do not be so proud, America. Things have been stewing beneath the surface for decades, and the trainwreck of the recent 5 years was not an accident and what happens next should not be a surprise. Lets review some recent case studies.
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