Compromising Consent: A Peer-led Ethnographic Exploration of Sexual Assault on a Small College Campus

Since the social sciences first began considering the concept of political legitimacy, or people’s acceptance and support of authority, the field has struggled to effectively define the concept in terms it can operationalize. This paper uses Talcott Parsons’ model of societal subsystems to advance a theorization of political legitimacy as the integration of the polity and culture subsystems. For society to function, all four subsystems (economy, societal community, culture, polity) must integrate. This research demonstrates that legitimacy is a process of politico-cultural integration by examining legal compliance. I argue that formal norms (laws) must be translated into informal norms, representing politico-cultural integration, which has the same effect as legitimacy. This paper offers a conceptual definition of political legitimacy and explains how the process of legitimization affects the field of political development.