Who Gets to Decide What Is Legitimate? The Dangerous Politics of Selective Sovereignty

There is a growing contradiction at the centre of Western political discourse about legitimacy, sovereignty and democracy. Governments and politicians routinely insist that elections, constitutional procedures and popular consent are the foundations of legitimate government, yet the language of legitimacy becomes considerably more complicated when it is applied to countries or political systems that fall outside the preferred geopolitical order. The argument is no longer simply about whether a government was elected, but increasingly about who has the authority to decide whether another government's election, territory, institutions or political leadership should be recognised at all.

The debate surrounding Russia, Ukraine and Britain illustrates the problem particularly clearly. In recent days, social-media users have contrasted Vladimir Putin's continued electoral mandate and reported domestic approval with the circumstances surrounding Britain's current prime minister, Andy Burnham. Burnham did not become prime minister through a nationwide direct election for that office. He became Labour leader on 16 July 2026 and became prime minister on 20 July after returning to Parliament as the MP for Makerfield. Under Britain's parliamentary system, the prime minister is the leader of the government who commands the necessary political support in Parliament, rather than a president directly elected by the entire British electorate.

That distinction does not, by itself, make Burnham's government illegitimate. It demonstrates something more important: legitimacy is not one universal mechanism. Parliamentary democracies, presidential democracies and other constitutional systems establish authority through different procedures. Britain does not claim that its prime minister must win a direct national presidential election. Russia's presidential system operates differently. Ukraine operates under yet another constitutional framework. The serious question is therefore not whether one system resembles another, but whether the rules governing each system are being described honestly and applied consistently.

This is where much of the current argument becomes intellectually dishonest. Western governments are perfectly entitled to criticise Russia's elections, political institutions and treatment of opposition figures. They are equally entitled to argue that Russia's elections do not meet particular democratic standards. But when Western officials describe another country's leader as illegitimate, the burden should be considerably higher than simply repeating the word until it becomes accepted diplomatic vocabulary. What specific constitutional rule was violated? What election was required? What institution has the legal authority to determine the violation? What evidence demonstrates the problem? And is the same standard being applied elsewhere?

The Ukraine question demonstrates why this matters. Ukraine has remained under martial law during the continuing war, and its government notified the United Nations in 2026 of a further extension of that martial-law regime. Ukrainian electoral law prohibits national elections while martial law is in force. This provides a concrete constitutional and legal explanation for why presidential elections have not been held, rather than establishing by itself that Ukraine's president has simply decided that he does not want an election.

There is also an important distinction between the question of elections and the question of territory. The United Nations General Assembly rejected the legality of Russia's attempted annexation of Crimea and the four Ukrainian regions subjected to the 2022 Russian-organised referendums. The UN position is that those votes cannot provide a legal basis for altering Ukraine's internationally recognised borders. Russia's government and supporters have presented a fundamentally different interpretation of the political will expressed in those territories. Those competing claims should not be confused with an established international legal consensus, because the international legal position is clear that the attempted annexations are not recognised.

Acknowledging that legal position does not end the broader political question. Millions of people live in territories where identity, language, historical affiliation, political loyalty and attitudes toward Kyiv and Moscow have been deeply contested for years. The existence of a disputed political preference does not automatically create a legal right to alter an internationally recognised border, just as an international legal position does not automatically eliminate the political grievances that produced the dispute. A serious analysis has to be capable of holding both facts in view simultaneously.

The same discipline should be applied to the argument that Putin's domestic approval or electoral support proves the legitimacy of his political system. Popularity and democratic legitimacy are related concepts, but they are not identical. A government can be popular without satisfying every democratic standard, just as a government can satisfy constitutional procedures while facing substantial public opposition. Approval ratings tell us something about public sentiment at a particular time. They do not, on their own, settle questions about electoral competitiveness, institutional independence, political freedoms or the treatment of opposition.

The opposite mistake is equally serious. A government should not automatically be considered illegitimate merely because Western governments disapprove of it. If that becomes the standard, then legitimacy ceases to be a legal or constitutional concept and becomes a geopolitical weapon.

That is the greater danger. For decades, international politics has operated with a distinction between sovereignty as a legal principle and recognition as a political practice. States recognise governments, impose sanctions, withdraw recognition, establish diplomatic relations and refuse to accept territorial changes. These actions have consequences. But when powerful governments increasingly present their own political judgments as universal determinations of legitimacy, they risk creating a world in which sovereignty depends less upon law than upon proximity to power.

The argument becomes even more uncomfortable when foreign military forces enter the discussion. Europe contains substantial American military infrastructure and American forces, including bases and facilities connected to NATO's collective defence arrangements. NATO itself confirms that American forces contribute to the Alliance's military posture and that several European countries host US-linked military facilities and capabilities. Germany hosts the NATO ballistic missile defence command centre at Ramstein, Türkiye hosts a US missile-defence radar at Kürecik, Romania and Poland host Aegis Ashore sites, and Spain hosts US Aegis ships at Rota. NATO also describes its eastern-flank forces as multinational forces operating with the participation and consent of the relevant alliance members, while stressing that NATO itself does not possess a standing army independent of its member states.

Does that make Europe occupied by the United States? Not automatically. Occupation has a specific meaning in international humanitarian law. The mere presence of foreign troops on the territory of an allied country does not, by itself, establish occupation. The circumstances under which troops are present, the authority exercised by the foreign power, and the relationship between the foreign forces and the territorial government matter. American troops stationed in Germany or Italy under agreements with those governments therefore cannot simply be labelled an occupation in the same legal sense as a territory seized and administered by a hostile foreign army.

The question is still politically legitimate. A sovereign European state should be able to decide whether foreign troops remain on its territory, under what conditions they operate and what strategic obligations accompany their presence. Military alliances should not become permanent substitutes for independent foreign policy. The fact that a government has consented to a foreign military presence does not make every consequence of that arrangement beyond political scrutiny. Sovereignty is not merely the absence of an invading army. It is also the practical capacity of a state to determine its own security, economic, and foreign-policy choices.

This is precisely why the language used in international politics matters. If Russia's military presence in Ukrainian territory is condemned because sovereignty matters, then sovereignty should matter consistently. If foreign interference is objectionable because it compromises national self-determination, that principle should not become applicable only when the interfering power is an adversary. If democratic legitimacy is the basis for recognising political authority, then the criteria used to assess elections should be transparent and capable of being applied beyond geopolitical friendships.

The world does not need one bloc of powerful states deciding which governments are legitimate and which are not. It needs institutions and principles capable of surviving changes in alliances. Otherwise, today's principle becomes tomorrow's exception, and tomorrow's exception becomes the next justification for intervention.

There is also a broader lesson for countries outside the major power centres, particularly in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Smaller and middle-sized states have historically had to navigate an international system in which their sovereignty is formally recognised but their strategic choices can carry enormous external consequences. They are frequently told that sovereignty is sacred, democracy is indispensable and international law must be respected. Those principles are valuable precisely because weaker states need them. But they lose credibility when their application appears dependent upon which side of a geopolitical divide a country occupies.

The answer is not to replace Western dominance with Russian dominance, Chinese dominance or any other form of great-power dominance. That merely changes the name of the problem. The objective should be a genuinely sovereign international order in which powerful states are constrained by the same fundamental principles they demand from everyone else.

That means refusing the lazy assumption that a government is legitimate simply because it is friendly to us, or illegitimate simply because it is hostile to us. It means recognising the difference between electoral popularity and democratic quality, between constitutional legitimacy and political approval, between disputed territory and legally recognised sovereignty, and between foreign military presence and military occupation.

The world is already too dangerous for legitimacy to become another instrument of geopolitical warfare. If democracy is a principle, it must be treated as a principle. If sovereignty is a principle, it must be treated as a principle. If international law is a principle, it must apply when it is inconvenient as well as when it is useful.

The alternative is a world in which a handful of powerful capitals effectively reserve the right to decide who is legitimate, whose elections count, whose borders matter, and whose sovereignty deserves protection. That is not a stable international order. It is simply power wearing the language of principle.