Can an organization such as Daesh (aka ISIS, ISIL) actually be legitimate? If you subscribe to the school of thought on legitimacy that says it is a subjective social phenomena (in the eyes of the beholder) versus a normative concept, then yes it is possible. Some otherwise nasty and brutish regimes have legitimated their power to their followers and risen to rule for lengthy periods of time and withstood powerful rivals to do so. The importance for a political actor (i.e., a state or non-state actor like Daesh) is that legitimation of its power produces resilience of the regime. Legitimated powers can ‘take a licking and keep on ticking’ at a relatively lower cost in resources. But legitimating one’s power takes positive and costly actions in what you say, what you do and what you produce for the polity. Positive actions are the words, actions or outcomes that the actor says, does or delivers. Costly positive actions are ultimately about limiting the dominant actor’s power in some meaningful and lasting way – the subordinate party wants to be sure the dominant party isn’t a tyrant-in-waiting.

Earning the right to rule versus seizing it and maintaining it via coercion or payoffs for cooperation takes a relatively longer time to execute but is a more economic form of rule and a more stable form of rule. There are three basic conditions that need to be present for an organization to legitimate its power and, as a result, earn the right to rule. The acquisition, exercise and transfer of power is legitimated when it is conforms to society’s body of rules for governing social interaction; that these rules are justified by the shared beliefs of that society; and, finally, that these are subject to some form of consent of the governed. None of these conditions requires Jeffersonian democracy to be true. Tribal laws and customs, for example, have also served as the basis for justifying the rules of society for certain complex societies.

Legitimating power is a conscious and strategic set of actions by the political actor. It takes more substantive actions and it takes time. Some otherwise thoughtful writers have tended to conflate the notion of private outcomes (e.g., victory in combat), good marketing (e.g., appearing to govern) or the oppressive acts of a rival organization or state (Maliki in Iraq and Assad in Syria) with the positive and costly actions of an organization that is legitimating its power. Daesh is not legitimated because the Iraqi state is oppressing Sunnis. Daesh is not legitimated because it ‘appears to govern’ in Mosul and Raqqa. Daesh is not legitimated because it captured Mosul and continues to harass many cities in northern Iraq. Daesh is not legitimated because it has announced affiliates in the Sinai, Libya or Yemen.

Daesh seized control of territory in northern Iraq and eastern Syria through a combination of deception (in Syria while recovering from the US/Iraqi counter force actions in 2008-2011), brutal coercive force (2013 in Syria vs. al Nusra and other rebel forces and Iraq in 2014-2015) and, self-interested exchanges with local tribal forces in Iraq (2014-2015). None of this – including any military competencies that they exhibit – constitutes a legitimated power. If recent assessments about the ultimate goals of Daesh are directionally accurate, the organization has little or no intention of seeking to legitimate its power to any constituents other than those that are already committed to the apocalyptic vision it has for the future of the world.

Daesh has provoked the majority of the Middle Eastern region to bring counterforce against it. It is still hard to imagine Iran cooperating with the US and local Sunni-dominated regimes to defeat this organization (even if there are coalition members who continue to undermine the ultimate purpose of this coalition). Even Iraqi Sunnis who may have harbored the notion that Daesh was a lesser evil than the post-2003 era of Shia ascendance, now seem to be concluding that was a bad decision. Daesh is an illegitimate power and will fail because it has not made the positive and costly actions to produce the organizational resilience that is the product of power legitimation.