If consent of the governed is the newcomer, what did legitimacy rest on before it?

Question

I teach at a Māori-language school, and my students are learning about government this term. I showed them a comparative table of answers to the question "how should we be governed?" across many traditions: Greek, Chinese, Indian, Islamic, European. The thing that surprised them most was that only the modern European row grounds authority in the consent of the governed. Every other row grounds it in something else.
My students found that strange because they've grown up assuming consent is the obvious basis. One of them asked, "So before that, why did anyone obey?" I gave a weak answer.
Could someone explain, simply, what the other bases of legitimacy were, and whether "consent is recent" really means older systems ignored what people thought? I'd also like to understand how the idea fits with tikanga, where a leader's standing has always depended on the people. That might be my students' best way in.

Javier Morales · Accepted Answer

Aroha, a good way in is to see legitimacy as an answer to "why should I obey?", and the table as a list of different answers.
Knowledge (Plato): obey those who know what is good, as you'd obey a doctor.Balance and stability (Aristotle): a mixed constitution with a broad middle class is the one least likely to collapse into faction.Virtue and ritual (Confucius): the ruler's example draws people to goodness.Effectiveness (Legalists): obey because the law is clear, uniform and enforced.Aggregate welfare (Mohists): rule is justified by measurable benefit to the people.Order and dharma (Indian traditions): the ruler upholds an order he is himself bound by.Divine law (Islamic and scholastic traditions): authority is legitimate when it serves a law above the ruler.Consent (modern Europe): authority comes from the governed.
Your question about whether older systems ignored people: no. Many had consent-like elements, like the people's welfare as a test, a ruler bound by a higher law, or the community's acceptance. What's new in modern consent theory is making the people's will itself the source of authority, rather than evidence that authority is being exercised well.

Khalid Mahmood Awan · Answer

To add to Javier's list from my own tradition: classical Islamic theory of the caliphate, in jurists like al-Māwardī, includes the bayʿa, the pledge of allegiance, and the duty of consultation, shūrā. Those look like consent, and modern Muslim thinkers have built on them. But for al-Māwardī the pledge confirmed an authority whose purpose was given by sharia. The people could recognise a ruler; they could not decide what rule was for.

Deepa Nair · Answer

And consent alone isn't the end of the story even in modern constitutions. Ambedkar warned in the Constituent Assembly that constitutional morality isn't natural; it has to be cultivated, and democracy in India was only a top dressing on a soil that was essentially undemocratic. Consent can elect majorities that trample minorities. That's why our Constitution rests on rights and on dignity as well as on votes.

Lin Pei-shan · Answer

For the Mencius connection: he quotes an older text saying that Heaven sees as the people see and hears as the people hear. The Mandate of Heaven could be lost by a ruler who made the people suffer. That's not consent, but it's the people's condition as the evidence of Heaven's verdict, which is close to what your students might recognise in tikanga.

Aroha Tipene · Answer

This gives me a lesson plan. In tikanga, a rangatira's mana was never only inherited; it had to be upheld through care for the people, and people could withdraw support. My students will see it as close to Mencius and to the bayʿa: the people's response as the test, not the source. Then we can ask whether that difference matters.

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