Politics & Power Quote by Jeane Kirkpatrick

Legitimacy, Kirkpatrick reminds us, is not a bureaucratic birthright. The line is a rebuke to the lazy realism that treats power as its own moral alibi: if a regime controls territory and collects taxes, we’re tempted to call it “the government” and move on. She won’t let you. By separating existence from legitimacy, the quote smuggles in a demand for standards - consent, accountability, restraint, some recognizable contract between rulers and ruled. It’s a deceptively simple sentence that turns “stability” into a question rather than an answer.

The subtext is diplomatic, not abstract. Kirkpatrick came to prominence arguing that U.S. foreign policy should distinguish between authoritarian regimes that might liberalize and totalitarian ones that crush the possibility of pluralism altogether. In that Cold War frame, “illegitimate” is a weaponized adjective: it delegitimizes not just a particular leader but the claim that a regime deserves normal relations, deference, or permanence. The line also pushes back against the international habit of granting automatic recognition to whoever wins the palace struggle, as if the mere fact of control equals a mandate.

There’s a sharper implication, too: legitimacy is contingent and can be lost. That’s a warning to revolutionaries and incumbents alike. For diplomats, it’s an argument for moral discrimination in a world that often prefers procedural neutrality. For citizens, it’s permission to doubt the state even when it feels immovable.