What makes a government legitimate? Why do people voluntarily comply with laws, even when no one is watching? The idea of political legitimacy captures the fact that people obey when they think governments' actions accord with valid principles. For some, what matters most is the government's performance on security and the economy. For others, only a government that follows democratic principles can be legitimate. Political legitimacy is therefore a two-sided reality that scholars studying the acceptance of governments need to take into account. The diversity and backgrounds of East Asian nations provides a particular challenge when trying to determine the level of political legitimacy of individual governments. This book brings together both political philosophers and political scientists to examine the distinctive forms of political legitimacy that exist in contemporary East Asia. It is essential reading for all academic researchers of East Asian government, politics and comparative politics.

Joseph Chan is Professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at The University of Hong Kong. His scholarship spans analytic political philosophy, Confucian political thought, the history of Western political thought, and contemporary Chinese and Hong Kong politics. He is the author of Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times (2014) and has been published in numerous leading journals such as Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs, History of Political Thought, the Journal of Democracy, Philosophy East and West, and China Quarterly.

Doh Chull Shin is a Jack W. Peltason Scholar in Residence at the Center for the Study of Democracy at the University of California, Irvine, and Professor Emeritus, Korea Foundation Chair, and Middlebush Chair at the University of Columbia, Missouri. His research interests include democratisation and political socialisation throughout East Asia. His has published, co-authored and co-edited many books in this field including Confucianism and Democratization in East Asia (2012), The Quality of Life in Confucian Asia (2009) and How East Asians View Democracy (2008).

Melissa S. Williams is Professor of Political Science, and was the founding Director of the Centre of Ethics, at the University of Toronto. Her research is predominantly in contemporary democratic theory, core concepts in political philosophy through the lens of group-structured inequality, social and political marginalization, and cultural and religious diversity. She is the author of Voice, Trust, and Memory: Marginalized Groups and the Failings of Liberal Representation (1998), has co-edited numerous volumes as editor of NOMOS: Yearbook of the American Society of Political and Legal Philosophy, and has published many articles in journals such as the Canadian Journal of Political Science and Political Theory.