What usually confers the right to rule in such countries is election by the people.
To say a ruler is legitimate is to say that he has a recognised right to rule.
But the limits of power is a topic for people who doubt themselves and their right to rule, not the self-anointed.
FORBES: How A Failed Commune Gave Us What Is Now Thanksgiving
For a political party that has long staked its right to rule on its record of economic competence, it's tricky place to be.
We come to obey leaders not simply because they are stronger than we are, but because their right to rule is widely recognised.
If critics of Mr Yakovlev do well in the election, they will redouble their campaign for more open government and restrictions on his right to rule by decree.
Belief in Pakistan's right to rule Kashmir is the marrow of Pakistani patriotism, and no one is less likely to question that than the chief of an army that exists to achieve it.
Confident in its right to rule, the Kremlin has banned opponents from television studios and electoral registers, put election commissions under its control and created political clowns and clones to create an appearance of democratic choice.
In a stunning victory for the courageous people of Nicaragua, the repressive Sandinista regime was soundly defeated in its effort to secure through elections the right to rule which it had only enjoyed previously by force of arms.
And I would simply refer you to what the President said and what the Attorney General said, that, of course, the Supreme Court and our federal courts have as their responsibility the right to rule on the constitutionality of laws passed by Congress.
While Indonesia's right to rule in Irian is not contested by the United Nations, as in the case of East Timor, the country's own political scientists have warned for some years of the risk of Balkanization should the imbalances between eastern and western Indonesia not be addressed.
Under the law, CADE has the right not to rule on the case until the end of the trial.
Under this reasoning, the calm, resolute Mr Abhisit was right to defy mob rule and the demand for the dissolution of parliament, and wait to unveil an orderly, slow electoral timetable.
Though winning their right to self-rule in the zone set up after the Gulf war of 1991, the Kurds had to compromise too.
Aceh enjoyed a long period as an independent sultanate until it was occupied by the Dutch in 1871, and even then it continued to fight against colonial rule right up to the second world war.
Nadal's not quite right to call the rule a disaster, at least not yet.
He said that the UK is the "only country in the world which uses this rule and prevents important prosecutions" and the IPCC is right to say that "this rule must go".
He prefers to do so with parties of the centre, or even the right, rather than try to rule with a minority leftist coalition dependent on the votes of the Arab parties.
Executive Director Anthony Romero said the legal exception applies only when there is a continued threat to public safety and is "not an open-ended exception" to the Miranda rule, which guarantees the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney.
It involves patient work on building-blocks such as free speech, the right to free assembly and the rule of law.
That does not just mean the right to vote, but the rule of law, free speech, freedom of religion and free markets, too.
Do you agree with such a proposal, and are you willing to rule out right here and now any prosecution of Bush administration officials?
The challenge, as Mara pointed out, is finding the right language to institute that kind of rule.
He has a firm grip on his empire right now, and he wants to rule it from the grave, too.
Most papers (recycling an exclusive in yesterday's Australian) note that China has stayed rhetorically hawkish and refuses to rule out its right to use force.
Nor is it to rule out the right of an individual artist to negotiate a resale agreement when he sells a painting: the royalties a publisher pays to an author are the product of just such a private contract, not a law.
In the old Soviet Union, a regime that did rule by fear right to the end, there would have been no question of the Red Army politely asking a Moscow television station to tone down its 24-part show about Janko Baurovitch torturing the captured CIA agent in order to locate the nerve gas capsule buried under Red Square.
应用推荐