ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses issue related to the legitimacy of the political regime. Legitimacy is a basic concept, used not only by social scientists but by politicians and by the man in the street. One of the clearest, albeit simple, definitions of legitimacy was given by Seymour Martin Lipset: “the capacity of the system to engender and maintain the belief that the existing political institutions are the most appropriate ones for the society”. The differences within nations appear greater than the differences among nations. There are more similarities in the beliefs of a French and a German social democrat than between a French socialist and a French conservative or between a German social democrat and a German Christian democrat. Both the development of universal suffrage and the crisis of traditional legitimacy have led to new vertical cleavages within society.
