The Legitimacy of Identification with Generality

This chapter turns to an approach that was at once more modest and more effective in countering the dysfunctions of the electoral-representative system and its unrequited need for legitimacy than the concept of unanimity—the bureaucracy. The idea of the bureaucracy was to create an institution capable of embodying the general interest. Thus, the chapter traces the development of the government bureaucracy through the emergence of a corporatism of the universal and through the constitution of an objective administrative power not subject to any particular influence and absolutely identified with its task. The chapter studies both to reveal how precisely they can be useful instruments for legitimation and for serving the general interest.

Bureaucracy · Constitution · Economics · Generality · Identification (biology) · Institution · Law and economics · Legitimacy · Legitimation · Management · Political science · Politics · Positive economics · Power (physics) · Sociology · Unanimity · Law · Political Systems and Governance · Public Administration