What Makes a Government Legitimate?
Keith Farrell
The “People’s Government of Dengzhou” was shut down this past Tuesday and its founders charged with forging government documents. Founded in 2013, the fraudulent entity had bogus city seals which they used to issue fabricated documents after they had announced the annulment of the existing city government.
Soon the faux government was making policy: Issuing land use rights to over 200 people and baring all new construction in Dengzhou. A city developer who had received a suspension notice and was levied fines for construction. Believing the notices to be suspicious, he soon discovered the “People’s Government of Dengzhou” to be illegitimate and reported it to police. The founders of the fraudulent government, Zhang Haixin, Ma Xianglan and Wang Liangshuang, now face criminal charges.
What constitutes a government? Zhang, Ma, and Wang had one thing right: the issuance of fines or taxes is certainly a distinguishing feature of government. Beyond that, a government is any entity which maintains the power, either through popular choice or force, to institute rules. As with any system of rules, enforcement through coercion for those who break the rules is necessary. The “People’s Government of Dengzhou” certainly understood how government functions. The problem was they neither had the force nor the popular support to assume such authority.
A system of government is seen as legitimate only if it has sovereignty over an area. Sovereignty can only be achieved by popular demand or brute force. If the people of Dengzhou had wanted and supported the new government, or if the new government had an army to challenge the existing city government, things may have ended differently for the “People’s Government of Dengzhou.” Absent either of those, they were nothing more than fraudsters trying to extort money from developers with bogus documents.
About the Author: Keith Farrell is a frequent contributor to The Libertarian Republic, an Advocate for Young Voices, Founder and President of Spirits of ’76 National Nonprofit Organization, and a substitute teacher. He is a graduate of the University of Connecticut.
