Legitimacy

All governments rely, at least in part, on the co-operation of the governed. The power of a simple despotism, exclusively dependent on the terror it evoked, would be restricted to activities that it could supervise in every detail. Even in rather primitive conditions, such a regime would be a feeble thing, so much so one would hesitate to say that it was governing its people; in more advanced societies, with complex divisions of labour among experts, it would be certain to collapse in days. Though hated alien conquerors have sometimes governed such societies, they have invariably had to work through