Legitimation and the Masses

Abstract: No state can do very well without perceived as legitimate. While the state’s efforts to legitimate its power is well covered in the literature, the ordinary people’s role in legitimacy is less investigated. This study is informed by the notion that legitimacy is a relational concept. Legitimacy is created in the interaction between ruler and ruled. The power structure is dependent on the people’s active legitimation. The early years of the Cultural Revolution serves as example how popular legitimation works in a context of Chinese socialism. By analysing the consumer culture that has arisen recently around the territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas, I argue that political consumerism has become a new mode for legitimating the Chinese political system for ordinary citizens.