What happens when more people see a regime as illegitimate than legitimate? From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:
The top monkeys are doing very well indeed, while the troop is feeling that the Monkey Gods have signaled their displeasure with the failure of the top monkeys.
The consent of the governed and the Mandate of Heaven have an interesting relationship. In the ancient cosmology of ruler and ruled, the right to rule was viewed as a metaphysical construct: the gods (or God) granted individuals or blood lines the Divine Right to Rule, with the understanding that this right was contingent and could be withdrawn.
The Chinese called this metaphysical approval the Mandate of Heaven, and a series of natural disasters (floods, earthquakes, etc.) were interpreted as the withdrawal of the rulers’ right to rule due to their failure to properly comport Heaven and Earth.
(Failures of leadership such as losing wars and exacerbating famines didn’t help.)
Once the ruled concluded the Mandate of Heaven had been withdrawn, that was the metaphysical green light to overthrow the existing ruling elite and replace it with another regime.
All nation-states have some version of the consent of the governed, which is based on the idea that rulers are granted authority because they have unique powers that benefit the commoners.
This power might be supernatural, as in a priest-class which claimed that its rituals insured bountiful harvests, or a natural superiority such as being a successful general and compelling leader.
