 Political realists also lend support to those who have questioned any sharp distinction between descriptive and normative concepts of legitimacy (e.g. Habermas 1979; Beetham 1991; Horton 2012). The objection to a strictly normative concept of legitimacy is that it is of only limited use in understanding actual processes of legitimation. The charge is that philosophers tend to focus too much on the general conditions necessary for the justification of political institutions, but neglect the historical actualization of the justificatory process. In Jürgen Habermas’ words (Habermas 1979: 205): “Every general theory of justification remains peculiarly abstract in relation to the historical forms of legitimate domination. … Is there an alternative to this historical injustice of general theories, on the one hand, and the standardlessness of mere historical understanding, on the other?” The objection to a purely descriptive concept such as Weber’s is that it neglects people’s second order beliefs about legitimacy—their beliefs, not just about the actual legitimacy of a particular political institution, but about the justifiability of this institution, i.e. about what is necessary for legitimacy. According to Beetham, a “power relationship is not legitimate because people believe in its legitimacy, but because it can be justified in terms of their beliefs” (Beetham 1991: 11).