GÁBOR KOVÁCS CAN POWER BE HUMANIZED? The Notions of Elite and Legitimation in István Bibó’s Political Philosophy 1 ABSTRACT. Istvan Bibó was the clandestine politological authority during the late Kadar period, and was rediscovered after the fall of communism. The essay examines and reconstructs the notions of elite and legitimation in Bibó’s political philosophy. As a young thinker he confronted the value crisis between the two world wars. He was influenced by Oswald Spengler’s and Ortega y Gasset’s theories of elites. The essay analyses the similarities and differences in their views. In Bibó’s conceptual world, the theory of elites is connected with the issue of legitimation, because in his opinion the crisis of elites always results in a crisis of legitimation. Bibó’s analysis of elites, their social responsibilities as well as the types of legitimization are highly instructive for us since they help us rethink our conceptions of the social roles of elites and political legitimation under conditions of globalisation. KEY WORDS: Istvan Bibó, value crisis, elites, sense of social responsibilities, types of legitimation, humanization of power István Bibó (1911–1979) was one of Central Europe’s most profound thinkers in recent history. It is not an easy task to define his field of interest. Was he a historian or a legal scientist, a polit- ical thinker, maybe a politician? He was all and none. In his early works, he was interested mostly in legal sciences. Between 1935 and 1944, he wrote a series of essays concerned with jurispru- dence. They predicted the direction in which he was to turn after the Second World War. In 1935 he published an essay entitled Coer- cion, Law and Liberty [Kényszer, jog, szabadság]. 2 In this work, the young legal scientist investigated the relation between the three factors listed in the title. In his interpretation, coercion and liberty do not exclude one another. Moreover, they exist in a complementary relationship: coercion cannot eliminate or destroy liberty because someone under very strict pressure or coerced to do something is not deprived totally of a modicum of liberty. However, liberty is an inner Studies in East European Thought 51: 307–327, 1999. © 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.