That last one often trips people up. People tend to hear “legitimacy” and think in terms of “valid” or “justified.” It conjures images of democratic validation—this or that government is “legitimate” because some community of people has endorsed it as their representative.
But that’s not at all what Weber meant. Weber used the term “legitimacy” to convey the idea of *conformity* rather than *justification.*
In his essay “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime,” Charles Tilly explained it like this:
“Legitimacy is the probability that other authorities will act to confirm the decisions of a given authority.”
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