The concept of political legitimacy has been regularly appearing in discourses of different legal civilizations. This work is focused on comparison between the concepts of political legitimacy in Confucian-dominated traditions of East Asia and the most essential Western notions concerning the origin and nature of political power. Special emphasis is given to the importance of mechanisms aimed at preventing arbitrary conducts. Lack of these instruments was often indicated as the cause of overall prevalence of arbitrary rule in traditional political systems of the Far East. Primary legitimation of those regimes should therefore be based on the pure coercion. This thesis attempts to counter the simplified Orientalist conceptions of the allegedly despotic political traditions of East Asia, and provide insight into traditional principles of legitimacy which continued to play an important role inside fairly diverse political systems of respective region. These principles do not reinforce only the legitimacy of the regime, but also tend to stimulate the pursuit of the long-term sustainability of political system trough the constant improvements in relation to changing circumstances.
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