The Legitimacy of Power and Power relations as a Multi-level Political and Legal Phenomenon: Approaches, Interpretation and Conceptualization

The article analyzes the legitimacy as a complex, many-sided and multi-level education, argues that the legitimation of power is carried out at different levels, and the process of legitimation involves both individuals and various groups and organizations. It is noted that the legitimacy is represented as a goal of the functioning of all institutions of public authority and as a result, which is meaningfully concretized with a series of interrelated phenomena (legitimization, legitimate regime and etc.). In its turn, the concept of "legitimacy" is interpreted by the authors as the estimated characteristics, applying to either specific political actors and their actions (personified legitimacy), or to existing institutions and public-authoritative activity (institutional, impersonal). The article also introduces the author's approach to the allocation of interconnected levels of legitimacy: 1) the types of internal (motivational) and external (institutional) legitimacy; 2) the types of legitimate domination defining the dominant strategies of substantiation of existing institutions and the ways of social processes managing; 3) the regimes of the legitimation; 4) the forms of substantiation of a state power as such, and its inherent institutional and legal structure. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n5s3p209