The book examines the legitimation of power as an essential issue for social scientists to take into account, looking at both relationships between legitimacy and the variety of contemporary political systems.
It has been praised by David Held in the Times Higher Education Supplement as an "admirable text", "far reaching in its scope" and "extraordinary in the clarity with which it covers a wide range of material".
From the prescriptive point of view social scientists should be able to suggest when governance deserves to be described as legitimate.
From the descriptive point of view social scientists should be able to suggest why those subjected to governance agree to accept and support, or reject, it.
As for the first project, there is a well-established strand of normative research that discusses a prescriptive version of legitimacy.