No copies of this work may be distributed electronically outside of the subscribed institution, in whole or in part, without express written permission from the JHU Press . This revolutionary publishing model depends on mutual trust between user and publisher . The Quest for Moral Authority. Edited by Muthiah Alagappa. Stanford University Press, 1995.
Political legitimacy is a subject that has received too little scholarly attention for too long.
Democratization has begun to attract substantial attention over the last five years or so, but even within this growing body of literature the slippery topic of legitimacy suffers from relative neglect. Muthiah Alagappa and his collaborators have made an important contribution to reflection on legitimacy and democratization as well as to the study of Southeast Asian politics. Alagappa, who wrote four of the ten chapters and organized the project from which the volume originated, applies unusually strong and effective editorial direction. He sets the tone for the book with three initial chapters reviewing the literature on political legitimacy and constructing an analytical framework for the following seven country-based chapters. But as he emphasizes, in many developing countries political systems are still weak, core normative goals subject to contestation, and institutions not strongly rooted.