Kovalchuk V. The Legitimacy of State Power: Theoretical and Legal Aspects

This Dissertation undertakes the legal research on the problems of state power legitimacy as a category that determines the profound significance of notions such as "state" and "power". The research paper studies the evolution of the idea of legitimacy in European and national legal and political theories, and it analyses the basic approaches to the theoretical understanding of power legitimacy in the doctrines of natural law and legal positivism. A special attention is paid to the development of the author's approach to the understanding of legal essence of state power legitimacy, which legal nature is determined through human rights and democratic participation of citizens in political process. The mechanism of power legitimacy under the conditions of modern democratic and legal state functioning is researched to establish the value of constitution in that mechanism and to stress the special meaning of the principle of people sovereignty as a necessary condition for state power legitimacy; the research work establishes the position of the bodies of constitutional jurisdiction in the system to guaranty the legitimacy and state power legitimacy. This doctorate work also examines the questions concerning the interaction of civil society and state power in the context of legitimacy problems, and it formulates the institutionalized principles of civil society functioning, the legal status of political parties and non-government organizations, and mass media. The right for civil protest is particularly studied as one of the elements to prevent the delegitimacy of state power. The scientific findings, which are presented, intend to introduce the categories of legitimacy into state and legal theory as a fundamental property of state power and to stimulate the improvement of constitutional and legal mechanism of state power legitimacy in Ukraine.