<Li> Democracy: In a democracy, government legitimacy derives from the popular perception that the elected government abides by democratic principles in governing, and thus is legally accountable to its people . </Li> <Li> Fascism: In the 1920s and the 1930s, fascism based its political legitimacy upon the arguments of traditional authority; respectively, the German National Socialists and the Italian Fascists claimed that the political legitimacy of their right to rule derived from philosophically denying the (popular) political legitimacy of elected liberal democratic governments . During the Weimar Republic (1918--33), the political philosopher Carl Schmitt (1888--1985)--whose legal work as the "Crown Jurist of the Third Reich" promoted fascism and deconstructed liberal democracy--addressed the matter in Legalität und Legitimität (Legality and Legitimacy, 1932), an anti-democratic polemic treatise that asked: How can parliamentary government make for law and legality, when a 49 per cent minority accepts as politically legitimate the political will of a 51 per cent majority? </Li> <Li> Monarchy: In a monarchy, the divine right of kings establishes the political legitimacy of the rule of the monarch (king or queen); legitimacy also derives from the popular perception (tradition and custom) and acceptance of the monarch as the rightful ruler of nation and country . Contemporarily, such divine - right legitimacy is manifest in the absolute monarchy of the House of Saud (est. 1744), a royal family who have ruled and governed Saudi Arabia since the 18th century . Moreover, constitutional monarchy is a variant form of monarchic political legitimacy which combines traditional authority and legal--rational authority, by which means the monarch maintains nationalist unity (one people) and democratic administration (a political constitution). </Li>

When is a government said to be legitimate