Can Some Practices Be Morally Legitimate - Coursework Example

For quite some time, Western states have been manufacturing, producing, and selling their goods in developing countries. As such, at some times, they end up employing sweatshop labour, dump garbage in populated areas, and bribe government officials. Therefore, in this paper, I will seek to derive an argument highlighting whether these actions are morally legitimate or not. A closer definition points at these actions as corruption cases. Lately, the main agendas of all policymakers including politicians comprise of causes, effects, and ways of combating corruption in a national and international scope.

When these government officials accept bribery from the Western companies, they abuse their public given mandate for their private gains. This is a paradigmatic corruption (Benjamin 3-4). However, when western companies bribe government in the developing countries and dump garbage in populated areas, these actions do not involve abuse of power but rather corrupt justice. Bribing, dumping garbage, and employing sweatshop labor for self-gains can never be morally legitimate no matter what kind of just one may accord these actions.

That is why attempts to find an identification for corruption as a legal or moral offence do not stand a chance to succeed. To many, bribery is a quintessential model of corruption and perhaps one of the most plausible candidates of corruption. Before 1997, for instance, it was not against the law for companies to bribe in order to secure a contract from other countries. This means that corruption is not necessarily an aspect of law. This is because of the point that corruption is rather a fundamental matter of morality (4-6).

Hence, even though different sociologists may suggest ways to legitimize bribery, dumping of garbage in populated areas, and employ sweatshop labor, these actions cannot be morally legitimate. Accordingly, if an action done by a person one hand deems to cause harm on another on the other end is an act of corruption. Dumping garbage in populated areas indeed action is done by the Western countries and must cause damage or harm to the populated areas in the developing countries. Cognitively, the motives of corruption are variable.

Thus, the actions that include bribery involve motives and desires of corruption. Motives of corruption include a desire for power, status, and wealth. Apparently, there is one cause of corruption where people might think of it as associated with corruption, namely, acting on behalf of good, are, however, morally illegitimate actions (8-10). In this vein, much care is imperative. This is simply because a putative act of corruption such as western countries dumping garbage in populated areas within developing countries can never be a noble cause of corruption thus not morally legitimate.

Since it describes a particular phenomenon in its deepest sense, legitimacy is inherently social. Following its concept, once a person says it is right to act or rule, he or she says something with a deeper meaning rather than the capacity of the actor. People ordain rights socially whereby, an actor has a right to act and governor rule only if it is right. Hence, this procedure of following the right channels makes the act morally right. In the case of the western countries, it is understandable that their actions are not morally legitimate simply because, instead of following the correct procedure for selling most of their goods in the developing countries, they opt to give bribes (13).

In this context, it is also imperative to set forth that, since they manipulate officials of the developing countries in order to access dumping areas, their processes do not adhere to rules and governing policies of these countries, hence morally illegitimate. Constantly, political actors seek legitimacy for their preferred institutions or for their personal gains (16-18). In so doing, they are engaging in practices of legitimating. Seeking ways to justify their interests, practices, and identities characterizes political actors’ institutional designs since legitimating is a normative process.

Note that, claims of legitimacy denote legitimating politics, but not necessarily legitimacy. With regard to this explanation, something can only be morally legitimate if the actor does not denote actions that will have negative effects on the recipient. Just because someone may describe his or her actions as legitimate with the response to a certain body of legal doctrines does not necessarily mean his actions are morally legitimate (20). Thus, there is no way western countries can claim their actions towards the developing countries by any means morally legitimate.

People should not think of logic, legality, rationality, and justice among other sociological or ethical words as synonyms for moral legitimacy.