The State and The Citizen

           When authority gains power and control over its people by using the military or forces this is a terrible image, instead governments prefer to achieve power by legitimacy. The way in which a State may function adequately shifts around by the efficiency of a State’s authority to conduct and lead the ways in which people live there lives. When governments fail, it’s possible that is the governments organize efficiently its followers using coercion and persuasion methods. Although this would mean at a high cost that there seeking for control would not be sustainable over a long period of time. When you have a case in which you encounter tyranny, in which there is no level of authority but totalitarian one this is predictable to happen over a certain time course depending on the efficiency of a tyrant and most likely I would not last long. It’s important for a government that its people believe that the government has authority, without this power it would simply no function correctly, due to the simple fact that a government consists on the propaganda that they retain authority. Legitimacy must be a government’s main focus to guarantee its consistency. Achieving a consistency can be achieved by a government in many ways. Legitimacy by habits, by results, by procedure, or by historical reasons, all of these becomes possible resources to achieve legitimacy.

We believe this

            The one most important relation between a democratic state and its citizens is that democracy needs citizens who will do more than obey and follow the government. Some nondemocratic state take a step further and try to generate enthusiastic support for the government. Hitler tried to generate enthusiastic support for Nazism that would help him build a powerful German military force more rapidly. Democracy goes yet a step further than this. In a democracy, it is hoped not only that people will obey the laws and be enthusiastic citizens but that they will also and at the same time be critical citizens. Democratic citizens are expected to be sufficiently enthusiastic but at the same time critical enough of those leaders that they might readily vote them out of office at the next election.

            Robert Putman and his co-authors, in a study of what makes democratic government effective in Italy, concluded that the necessary ingredient is what they called “social capital”, voluntary involvement in organizations that bind people together and give them the political resources and mutual trust that are needed to make any form of government work. “Social capital” is a pattern of community interaction that produces desirable attitudes of efficacy and trust, and that gives people practical experience in persuasion.

            Political culture, a name given by political scientists consists of all attitudes and beliefs held communally by people, which form the basis for their political behavior. It is clear that political culture varies a good deal from one state to another and that it is responsible for major differences in how politics is conducted. Differences in culture are easily detected by looking as popular behaviors and sayings.        

The values and assumptions people hold about politics are acquired in a process called political socialization, which simply means the learning of political values and factual assumptions about politics. The importance of political socialization is evident, the fact that without it any political culture would disappear after one generation. All the cultural political values are learned by children and other new citizens through political socialization. It is political socialization that allowed the United States to absorb so many people and yet maintain political continuity.

Many governments get power by force, a clear example are dictatorship. During a dictatorship it becomes a totalitarian power. The people beneath the dictator are forced to do whatever they are ordered to do, if not consequences will be applied to the ones who rebel. Although a dictatorship is not an example of government that achieves legitimacy, dictatorships lose reputation and are not wanted anywhere in the world due to the terrific measures they take against their own people. Authority is vague illusion; authority only exists because we the people believe it exists. Perfect authority is achieved through the art of dialogue, through persuasion, propaganda, and well-focused goal. I’m not telling you to go and start a rebellion against your government but to realize that in somewhat level we are capable of choosing some ways to live.

 Authority