ABSTRACT
The topic of legitimacy and legitimation is inseparable from legality and every legitimation eventually looks for its transformation into legal legitimacy. Legitimacy is irreducible to legal procedures because it can also mean resistance to and denial of positive law. The anti-communist dissent is evidence of this difference between legitimacy and legality. The contemporary relationship between legality and legitimacy is a relationship of homogeneity and heterogeneity. Legality seeks to establish a common political space and perform the function of social integration. The scientific legitimacy expressed by legal theory and philosophy is to be founded on the sources of rationality internal to modern law. Legitimacy as a general belief that the existing political institutions are right cannot be coherently established within the framework of the social contract or any other fiction. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
