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199 Legitimation Problems in the Modern State

Otherwise the ‘pursuit of happiness’ might one day mean
something different—for example, not accumulating material ob-
jects of which one disposes privately, but bringing about social
relations in which mutuality predominates and satisfaction does
not mean the triumph of one over the repressed needs of the
other. In this connection it is important whether the educational
systems can again be coupled to the occupational system, and
whether discursive desolidification of the (largely externally con-
trolled or traditionally fixed) interpretations of our needs in
homes, schools, churches, parliaments, planning administrations,
bureaucracies, in culture production generally, can be avoided.

Vv
In closing I would like to return to the conceptual-analytic
starting point of our reflections. What is the significance of the
reconstructive concept I am using in analyzing legitimation prob-
lems?
The treatment of legitimation problems by social scientists,
including Marxist theoreticians,*? today moves in Max Weber's
“sphere of influence.” The legitimacy of an order of domination
is measured against the belzef in its legitimacy on the part of
those subject to the domination. This is a question of the “‘belief
that the structures, procedures, actions, decisions, policies, officials,
or political leaders of a state possess the quality of rightness, of
appropriateness, of the morally good, and ought to be recognized
in virtue of this quality.’’ ** For systems theory (Parsons, Easton,
Luhmann) this poses the question: With the help of which
mechanisms can an adequate supply of legitimation be created,
or through which functional equivalents can missing legitimation
be replaced? *° Learning theorists accommodate the question of the
sociopsychological conditions under which a belief in legitimacy
arises in a theory of the motivation for obedience.*® Thus the
empiricist replacement of legitimacy with what is held to be such
allows for meaningful sociological investigations (the value of
which will be decided by the success of the systems-theoretic and
behaviorist approaches generally).
But we may well want to ask what price the empiricist must