International records / OpenAlex research

On Democracy, Legitimacy and Accountability: Lessons for Nigeria

The paper explores the theoretical underpinnings to the questions of democracy, legitimacy and accountability. It is generally assumed that democracy and legitimacy are symbiotic, and that political accountability further enhances system’s legitimacy which in turn ensures survival of democracy. This paper simply assumes that political legitimacy connotes a relationship between rulers and the ruled which refers to the moral condition of individuals in modern political communities. Therefore, to say that citizens are loyal to the state implies that legal and political requirements of the state a…