 Politics is the process through which a group of people make collectively binding agreements. A political system is a set of social institutions through which this process is conducted. Governments make collective decisions that bind members of their community into agreements. In so doing, they exercise power over people. A primary factor to consider in the analysis of any political system is then to ask on what is the exercise of this power over people based. A government's power is in its capacity to define people's choices for them. People then have to in some way give over their individual choices and agency to the collective organization and thus embody it with the power to make decisions and act on behalf of the community. We can then ask why do the individuals do this? Why do individuals submit to the will of the combined organization and give over their individual agency to it? On what basis is the political systems authority seen to be legitimate by the people? As the legitimacy of a political system is foundational to its construction, it will shape its most basic overall structure and workings. Legitimacy is commonly defined in political science and sociology as the belief that a rule, institution or leader has the right to govern. It is a judgment by the individual about the rightfulness of a hierarchy between rule or rulers and the subjects and about the subordinate's obligations to the political system. Legitimacy is a value whereby something or someone is recognized and accepted as right and proper. Three types of political legitimacy have been identified by the German sociologist Max Weber which she described as being traditional, charismatic or rational legal. Traditional legitimacy derives from societal custom and habit that emphasizes the history of the authority or tradition. Traditionalists understand this form of rule as historically accepted hence its continuity because it is the way society has always been. Charismatic legitimacy derives from the ideas and personal charisma of the leader, an individual whose authoritative personality charms and psychologically dominates the people of the society to agree with the government's regime and rule. Rational legal legitimacy derives from a system of institutional procedures wherein government institutions establish and enforce law and order believed to be in the public interest. On the most basic level, a political system can maintain power through the exercise of forceful coercion. Through the exercise of physical force or the threat of it, they can get people to give over their agency and choices to the political organization. In such a case, the term might makes right defines the authority of the organization although this will likely be masqueraded in various forms. Such a political system may be defined as being autocratic which is government by the few who are strong enough to seize power through forceful means. The term autocratic means of or relating to a ruler who has absolute power and takes little account of other people's wishes or opinions. Autocracy is often termed the oldest form of governments and it can be seen to be inherited from our closest ancestors in the primate group where social order is often maintained through what is called a dominance hierarchy. A dominance hierarchy arises when members of a social group interact often aggressively to create a ranking system. In animal and human social systems, members are likely to compete for access to limited resources. Animal decisions regarding involvement in conflict are defined by the interplay between the costs and benefits of agonistic behavior. Rather than fighting each time they meet, relative relationships are formed between members. Based upon repetitive interactions, a social order is created that is subject to change every time a dominant member is challenged by a subordinate member. Quite simply, the dominance hierarchy that defines autocratic systems means that those who are the strongest will rule others and have the power to determine their actions. In such a political system, power ultimately rests on the fear of the individuals being ruled. The subordinates follow the actions decided by the rulers because of the fear they have of the consequences of not doing so. Thus the system ultimately rests on the capacity of the rulers to induce fear in the subordinates and thus control their actions towards the ends of the ruling members. Without this capacity, the subjects would not do what the rulers command and the political system would lose its control and power. Achieving power over people through the capacity to induce fear in them can come in many different forms and be mediated through many different channels. For example, many authoritarian political regimes maintain power by creating some threat that is external to the group and posit their maintenance of power as the only means of avoiding that threat. For example, contemporary North Korea inculcates a sense of imminent threat from external aggressive nations in its people, thus validating the maintenance of a strong military rule by the regime, which again is ultimately based on the fear of the subjects. Autocracy is characterized by the concentration of power in a centralized organization, be it in an individual dictator or a group of power holders such as a committee or party leadership. This center relies on force to suppress opposition and to limit social developments that might eventuate in its opposition. The power of the center is not subject to effective controls or limits by genuine sanctions, it is often an absolute form of power. Most autocracies in the world today attempt to borrow legitimacy by adopting the language of the constitutions of non-autocratic regimes or by establishing similar institutions. It is a common practice, for example, in many modern totalitarian states to establish institutions such as parliaments, courts, legal codes, elections, etc. that appear to have the institutional structures of democratic republics. Similarly, the language of totalitarian constitutions is often couched in terms of the doctrines of popular rule of democracy. The difference is that in totalitarian regimes, neither the institutions nor the constitutional provisions act as effective checks on the power of those at the top of the political hierarchy. Those who have power want to be free of those constraints. The first form of political system that may be thought of as being legitimate in the sense identified by Max Weber is that of legitimacy based on tradition. Traditional legitimacy derives from societal custom and habit that emphasizes the history of the authority of tradition. In many pre-modern societies, some religion, social or political order that was laid down in the past comes to be accepted without question. And in a conservative system, it is the function of the present organization to uphold and perpetuate that order. This can be seen to come from both some veneration of the past, a desire for continuity and a recognition that what has stood the test of time must in some sense work. The institutions of traditional government usually are historically continuous as in monarchy and tribalism where the system is typically organized to perpetuate the rule of a particular family that ruled in the past. In a political context, this may be called conservatism. Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes retaining traditional social institutions. Conservatism emphasizes stability and continuity in the sociopolitical order. There is no single set of policies that are universally regarded as conservative because the meaning of conservatism depends on what is considered traditional in any given place and time. Thus, conservatives from different parts of the world, each holding their respective traditions, may disagree on a wide range of specific issues. However, at the heart of conservatism is the philosophy of communitarianism. Conservatism aims to preserve the unity and integrity of a given community and to resist change that may threaten, destabilize or disintegrate the existing institutions that constitute the sense of community and shared heritage of a group of people. Communitarianism is a philosophy that emphasizes the connection between the individual and the community. Its overriding philosophy is based upon the belief that a person's social identity and personality are largely molded by community relations with a smaller degree of development being placed on individualism. A quartenant of conservatism is the rejection of the application of abstract reasoning towards remaking society based upon theoretical principles. Instead, asserting that political reality is an embodied phenomenon, embodied within existing social, cultural and political institutions that conservatism desires to retain. From this perspective, politics should be about using existing institutions to respond to current challenges whilst retaining them. Conservatism is distinctly non-theoretical in nature. It can only be understood from within the context of the community whose integrity it wishes to preserve. From a conservative perspective, reason is not a basis for the judging of authority. Traditional practices, actions and ways of being should not be open to reason-based inquiry in order to determine their validity. Their validity is determined within the context of upholding and maintaining the integrity of the existing community and it can't be abstracted from that. That reason is fundamentally limited in scope and a relatively untested innovation compared to the tried and tested historical, religious and social arrangements. Conservatism would posit that authority in the form of tradition and power and people's unquestioned respect and fear of them are required to maintain social stability in order. Traditionalist conservatism is a political philosophy emphasizing organic unity based on common territory often coupled with one dominant-based system. This combination creates a sphere of loyalties and responsibilities that the individual is bound into. A modern expression of this is often found in nationalism where the nation is the identified community. Political conservatism emphasizes the need for the principles of natural law. Natural law begins with the premise that all of our rights come from God or nature and are inherent to our being. It is sometimes defined as the law above the law. Natural law is a vital part of the conservative intellectual heritage where it is generally assumed to be the proper basis for legislation. Above that of positive law that is constructed through the application of abstract reasoning alone. Instead of appealing to reason as a foundation to political organization, conservatism is more inclined to search for its foundation in what we might call human nature. According to Quentin Hogg, a former chairperson of the British Conservative Party, conservatism is not so much a philosophy as an attitude, a constant force performing a timeless function in the development of a free society and corresponding to a deep and permanent requirement of human nature itself. Conservatism in general defends the idea of social and economic inequality which can be seen to derive from the conception of human nature as in some way akin to that of the construct of man in the state of nature, where there is seen to be a natural struggle for resources between communities and people, where the strongest survive and this gives us the formation of natural and organic hierarchical structures to society. Such a hierarchy is seen to be both natural and the correct order of things and thus interventions by the state based on theories of equality between people are seen as detrimental and at times deeply offensive to those who hold a conservative philosophy. Conservatism today often takes the form of a desire for limited state intervention. In a contemporary context, the market system can be seen to replace the more traditional domains within which peoples and groups competed and prove their merit within the hierarchy. As such, both economic, political and social inequality are seen to follow naturally from this premise of human nature. The third form of legitimacy for government that Max Weber outlined was that of rational legal legitimacy. This form of legitimacy is derived from the rational self-interest the members of the community. That is to say, the people do what the government tells them to do because ultimately it is in their individual and collective interests. This idea is formalized in the construct of the social contract. The basic intuition of social contract theory is that people have rights and they give over these rights to a single governing organization in exchange for the protection of their life, liberty and property. In such a formulation of government, power is seen to come from the individual members of the community. They then give over some of their freedom and invest it in the centralized authority, ultimately because they see it as in their best interests. Government is then formalized in terms of contracts wherein freely consenting individuals give over their choices and actions and submit to follow a centralized authority out of their own interests. There are a number of key elements to this model for us to note. Firstly, the power is seen to derive from the people. It derives from the inalienable rights of the individual. Secondly, the system is one based on reason and rationality as encoded in contracts and laws. Thirdly, that the ultimate aim of the system is that of personal fulfillment and the greatest benefit to the greatest number of people. In this formulation of political systems, power is seen to derive from the people. A political organization wherein ultimate power is seen to rest not in some governing organization but instead with the people is called a republic. A republic is a state in which supreme power is held by the people but is typically exercised by some set of elected representatives. The term republic is the broad term meaning ruled by the people which must include some democratic elements within it. Theoretically, power and freedom reside with the individual citizen but they freely consent to give over this to form governing institutions. Government institutions are then designed to establish to enforce law and order in the public interest. If the government fails to act in the common interest then the people have the right to replace that government with a new one. The theoretical construct of the social contract and republics is expressed in constitutions which often start with the implicit or explicit statement that the constitution is an expression of the people's will and rights. In the modern world, constitutional democracy is the primary type of non-autocratic government. The minimal definition in institutional terms of a constitutional democracy is that it should provide for a regular system of periodic elections with a free choice of candidates, the opportunity to organize competing political parties, adult suffrage, decisions by majority vote, with protection for minority rights, an independent judiciary, constitutional safeguards for basic civil liberties and the opportunity to change any aspect of the government system through agreed procedures. The move towards republican political organization that is taking place during the modern era has been underpinned by the underlying cultural transformation from a religious-based culture to a reason-based form of culture. The rise of reason and rational social institutions throughout the modern era has, within the political realm, been translated into a huge rise in liberal republicanism which in many ways has been the defining characteristic of the modern era's political transformation. Pre-modern conceptions of government are invariably based upon some conception of natural law. Natural law is a philosophy asserting that certain rights are inherent in virtue of human nature and are typically seen to be given by some religious tradition or transcendental source. Good governance is then largely equated to what the moral code deems to be correct, good or right. Traditional political philosophy believed the political society required virtuous rulers. However, in the modern era, social institutions came to be designed around rational self-interest and the role of natural law, human nature and virtue are diminished. This break from tradition was most famously expressed in the work of Nicholas Machiavelli who was one of the first political theorists to decouple ideas of human virtue from practical matters of exercising political power. After Machiavelli, modern political philosophy tried to design procedures that would lead to a just outcome without presuming the presence of virtue in the system which is a very modern idea. Political society was to be based on rational self-interest as was found expressed in the work of Adam Smith who tried to illustrate how overall beneficial outcomes for society were achieved even when people followed only their self-interested ends. A key feature in the development of the modern era has been the decoupling of social institutions from the spiritual dimension of the community. The spiritual dimension became increasingly seen as something personal while the realm of the public comes to be seen as the realm of the rational. Politics becomes increasingly decoupled from ethics as political institutions become decoupled from religious narrative and organization. Positive law attempts to create a rule-based framework for governance through the application of reason where all are equal before the legal system. Since the Enlightenment, the cosmopolitan ideal attached to liberal republicanism and capitalism has been that individuals from different races, ethnicities, cultures and civilizations can adopt a set of culturally neutral practices allowing them to interact to one another's advantage being equal before the impersonal apparatus of the law. Part of the legitimacy of rational forms of political organization derives from their equal application to all the constraints of political processes to logic and the transparency of that logic to all. As Tom Tyler writes in his book The Psychology of Legitimacy the roots of legitimacy lie in people's assessment of the fairness of the decision-making process used by the authorities and institutions. The third major dimension to the legitimacy of rational political institutions is that of utility. Utilitarianism became a highly influential philosophy during the formation of the modern political system. Simply put, it sees the legitimacy of rational institutions to lie in their capacity to provide the greatest good to the greatest number of people. Within the rational formalization to the legitimacy of authority the government is seen to derive its legitimacy from its utility to the people. The government is a rational instrument designed to express the community's interest and provide certain services in the most efficient manner possible. Its capacity to fulfill this function and provide the desired services is a basis for its reason for being and a primary metric for an assessment of its validity. Instrumental legitimacy rests on the rational assessment of the usefulness of an authority and describing to what extent that authority responds to shared needs. Instrumental legitimacy is very much based on the perceived effectiveness of the service delivered thus governments become rule-bound bureaucratic systems similar to other forms of rational institutions such as the corporation which are measured according to their efficiency in delivering the desired results. Finally, we can identify one last source of legitimacy to the foundations of political systems as that of normative values. Political order and the foundations to political action can be created through the use of forceful coercion through reference to tradition and continuity to self-interest within rational institutions but people can also be moved into action by normative motives. Normative organizations are those organizations in which membership is voluntary and which are joined in order for members to pursue a common interest. A normative organization is one that shows a strong commitment towards supporting a particular cause. People voluntarily join a normative organization because they identify with the organization's goals and view these goals as socially or morally worthwhile. A normative organization differs from other forms of organization in that the individual is not coerced nor are they bound by tradition to take the action nor is there any immediate tangible reward for joining such organization. They do it out of their own volition to fulfill some normative value that they believe in. People join normative organizations to pursue goals they consider morally worthwhile. The interests of such organizations can be for example community services, social action or environmental protection. They are typically concerned with specific environmental or social issues. Examples of voluntary normative political organizations would be Greenpeace or Amnesty International. In both organizations members combine their political resources towards a common end that is not given by tradition, enforced or gives immediate remuneration but they do it because they believe in the value of the environment or that of human freedom. These voluntary organizations typically strive for participatory democracy in which all members have an equal opportunity to discuss and decide important questions affecting the organization. Of course virtually all political systems will be a combination of all these bases for legitimacy. Virtually all forms of government will use forceful coercion in some way. They will base their legitimacy on some cultural and social heritage that they purport to maintain and develop. Virtually all governments today employ rational institutions and the language of reason based government and through nationalism they will often appeal to normative aspects in their citizens.