DEMOCRACY AND POLITICAL LEGITIMACY: IS DEMOCRACY A NECESSARY CONDITION FOR POLITICAL LEGITIMACY?

The article argues that democracy is not a necessary condition for political legitimacy. Principle of equal-consideration does not provide a solid foundation of having a democratic decision-making procedure for political determinative projects. The paper suggests we evaluate the political instruments in terms of their exclusionary effect so that a more meaningful discussion could be held. The result of that evaluation shows that the notion of political legitimacy may be relativistic to a particular historical point of time, and thus, whether a political entity is legitimate or not is not depended on the form of the entity in question itself.