The Role of Elections in Securing Legitimacy of the Government

Abstract

Legitimacy is the most important property of state power, and the lack of uniformity of the terminology in modern science used significantly complicates the study of this phenomenon. The article considers the concepts of “legitimacy of state power”, “grounds of legitimacy”, “mechanism of legitimization”, “means of legitimization”. On the basis of an analysis of the views existing in science, it is concluded that these concepts have different meaning. In addition, the author explores the importance of elections as a mechanism for legitimizing power and concludes that authoritarian regimes are unable to justify their own legitimacy by this means.