We now ask whether legitimacy's effects include other values that might reinforce democracy, a counterpoint to the effects on negative political capital just discussed in Chapter 6. We ask this question because so far we have focused heavily on the impact of legitimacy on political participation as a result of our belief that citizen activism is the quintessential basis of all democratic rule. But, in this final substantive chapter, we wonder how deep is the commitment of citizens to democracy per se, and whether their legitimacy norms might undermine or strengthen a broad commitment to democracy. We saw in Chapter 5 that, for several forms of legitimacy, low levels contribute to higher participation rates. Do disgruntled activists pose a threat to democracy? Is their support for democracy as a system of government contingent upon how well they believe their rulers and institutions are performing? That is to say, we wonder, as did Huntington (1968), whether discontent with various aspects of the system could lead activist critics of a regime to participate in ways that could adversely affect democratic consolidation.

This book has explored the axiomatic assumption that legitimacy is a necessary (but clearly not sufficient) condition for the sustainability of democratic rule. We have accepted the literature's arguments that legitimacy is built, bit-by-bit, through effective regime performance, and that such support can erode over time.