Conceptualization Of Legitimacy Research Articles

Three Levels of Authoritarian Legitimacy

Who does a personalist authoritarian ruler designate as their successor, and what makes the transition of presidency to them peaceful in the short term? This article argues that these questions can be fruitfully approached from the perspective of political legitimacy, thus contributing to the further conceptualization of legitimacy in autocracies. By analyzing the 2019 leadership succession in Kazakhstan, the article develops a model of multi-level legitimacy that differentiates between three interconnected levels of legitimacy enjoyed by political actors among the general population, the elite, and the international community. The article tracks the legitimation process and the estimated level of legitimacy of three key political actors (Nazarbaev, Tokaev, and Nazarbaeva) from the immediate pre-resignation period until the political crisis of January 2022, covering both phases of succession: Nazarbaev’s exit from and Tokaev’s entry to power. To estimate the actors’ level of legitimacy on the three analytical levels of the model, the article draws from a diverse dataset consisting of public opinion polls, expert commentary, and international actors’ statements. The article finds that in the initial transition process, the estimated level of legitimacy enjoyed by both Nazarbaev and Tokaev was relatively high in all three levels, in contrast to Nazarbaeva’s. It argues that Nazarbaev’s and Tokaev’s legitimacy contributed to the transition’s initial peaceful nature, but Nazarbaeva’s legitimacy deficit resulted in her marginalization in the succession process. The political turmoil of January 2022 demonstrates that a succession that is peaceful in the short term can paradoxically contain the seeds of a succession conflict erupting later.

A Structure/Process Approach to Legitimacy: A Local Official's Selection and Legitimation of a Tax Policy in Mid‐Late Ming Dynasty China

AbstractMost studies on the connection between the legitimacy of an authority and its policy selection and legitimation follow a structure approach to legitimacy, which recognises an authoritative actor's selection and legitimation of a policy as determined by the subjects' collective commitment to values. Consequently, it cannot empirically explain policy variation under collective commitment to values and changes in those values. Building on existing processual theories and following the conceptualisation of legitimacy as a social process, this study proposes an integral process approach to legitimacy whereby an authority selects and legitimises a perceived legitimate policy towards subjects. Drawing on findings from a negative case methodology applied to the selection and legitimation of a tax policy by an official in Ming China, this study offers substantive content for an integral process approach to legitimacy. It develops the state legitimacy concept and contributes to emerging theories on the legitimacy dimension of fiscal state formation. Empirically, this study illustrates how the data from the nationwide field survey in mid‐late Ming China were used in tax collection at the local level and illuminates the discrepancies between the survey data and that recorded in local official tax registers.

Exploring Legitimacy in Entrepreneurship Education: Towards a Theoretical Framework

Adopting Suchman’s (1995) conceptualisation of legitimacy within organisations, this study seeks to understand firstly, how entrepreneurship education itself has been legitimised, secondly, how entrepreneurship educators are legitimised, and lastly, how pedagogical approaches in EE are legitimised. The theoretical framework for the paper distinguishes between institutional legitimacy and strategic legitimacy. We seek to both understand how societal institutions (e.g. policy makers, industry) frame entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education, and how HE institutions in turn respond strategically to this framing. These legitimisation strategies can be framed as being ‘pragmatic’, ‘moral’ and ‘cognitive’ (Suchman, 1995). The study will draw on data drawn from the UK in the first instance.

Seeds of demand-side legitimacy: when do existing companies procure from B2B startups?

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate potential lenders of legitimacy for business-to-business (B2B) startups as reflected in the willingness of potential customers to do business with startup firms. This study theorizes the role of familiarity with B2B startups, their founding teams and their product offerings in influencing perceptions about legitimacy among potential customers. Design/methodology/approach Data are collected from key decision-makers involved in B2B procurements in large Indian companies and analyzed using conjoint analysis. Findings Results suggest that familiarity with product/service offerings from B2B startups is the most salient factor in forming favorable assessments for the venture, followed by the awareness of the startups and their founding teams, in that order. Practical implications The research makes several contributions to understanding the legitimacy of B2B startups from the customers’ perspective. The study provides a nuanced view of the factors impinging on legitimacy. The conceptualization of legitimacy as a reflection of willingness to buy (in other words, willingness to do business with) provides a useful lens with which to study the interactions between B2B startups and potential customers. Originality/value The strong empirical support the study finds for the predicted relationships in an international context, specifically India, enhances theory development, providing a solid foundation for future knowledge generation around the demand side legitimacy concept.

Legitimacy and public opinion: a five-step model

AbstractTo date, in Western jurisdictions, many criminal justice reforms are devised and implemented with a close eye on public opinion. These are typically intended to regain or foster legitimacy. However, within this context, there is no common understanding of this concept. This essay aims to provide such a conceptualisation of legitimacy, to enable a consistent and systematic evaluation of attempts to accommodate public opinion. To this end, five levels of legitimacy research are discussed that could structure evaluations of public-opinion-targeted reforms: (1) the normative dimension, (2) the ‘audiences’ addressed, (3) the purpose of the reforms, (4) trust and distrust, and (5) dialogic, or longitudinal effects. Furthermore, since research departing from these five levels of analysis is likely to result in observations that are, by nature, incommensurable, it is argued that an overall assessment of legitimacy always requires ajudgment, rather than mere measurement.

Assessing the Legitimacy of Technological Innovation in the Public Sphere: Recovering Raw Materials from Waste Water

This paper researches legitimacy creation in a publicly-funded trajectory of innovative technological development. It develops a framework of input, throughput and output legitimacy. The framework is developed based on a review of the literature on the creation of legitimacy in innovative technological development. The framework assists in further exploring the potential of the integrated assessment of the legitimacy of technological innovation trajectories in the public sphere, in terms of (1) public accountability (ensuring input legitimacy); (2) science, technology and innovation policy (ensuring throughput legitimacy); and (3) the potential for the implementation of the technology itself in practical contexts (ensuring output legitimacy). The framework is used to analyze a case study about the publicly-funded development of innovative technology for the retrieval of raw materials from waste water. Theoretically, the value of a more processual approach to the conceptualization of legitimacy becomes apparent. Furthermore, the framework assists in the development of practical recommendations on the ways in which to optimize the legitimacy in an earlier stage in the innovation’s trajectory. However, due attention should also be paid to the role of regulatory arrangements in the optimization of the legitimacy of publicly-funded technological innovation. This is an avenue for further research.

How Shall We Judge Agri-Food Governance? Legitimacy Constructions in Food Democracy and Co-Regulation Discourses

The food democracy discourse has emerged as a normatively grounded critique of an increasingly transnational agri-food system and its dominant co-regulatory mode of governance, where private and public norms and standards interact with public policy and regulation in complex ways. Analyzing competing agri-food discourses through a legitimacy lens can contribute to understanding how authority is transferred from traditional, hierarchical and state-centered constellations to a range of novel agri-food governance arrangements. This article reconstructs and compares the legitimacy constructions articulated in the co-regulation and the food democracy discourses, generating three key findings: first, there are two distinct articulations of food democracy discourse, which we label liberal and strong food democracy; second, while conceptualizations of legitimacy in the liberal food democracy and the co-regulatory discourse share many commonalities, legitimacy in the co-regulatory discourse relies more heavily on output, while the liberal food democracy discourse is more sensitive to issues of input and throughput legitimacy; third, the strong food democracy discourse articulates a critical counter-model that emphasizes inclusive deliberation which in turn is expected to generate a shared orientation towards the common good and countervailing power.

Conceptualizing Rebel Legitimacy

Contemporary conflict studies frequently cite increased “legitimacy” as a key mechanism linking rebel actor to a variety of outcomes, including civilian targeting, recruitment practices, and war end. This article advances a conceptualization of legitimacy as a dynamic process of triangulation among rebels, their potential local constituents, and the international community. Rebels derive or lose legitimacy from the local population, but also from external audiences, which have played in increasing role in supporting peace processes. We explore conceptually a myriad of ways that rebels work to create and maintain legitimacy in the context of ongoing conflict, identifying the target audiences of these tactics. These are illustrated with a set of cases of rebel actor in Indonesia.

Legislative Efficiency and Political Inclusiveness: The Effect of Procedures on Interest Group Mobilization in the European Parliament

ABSTRACTThis paper contributes to discussions surrounding interest group representation in the European Parliament. Drawing from conceptualizations of legitimacy, and theoretical work on information-access we argue that different procedures bestow a different type of authority to parliamentary committees affecting their legitimacy orientation, in turn impacting the balance between private and public interests mobilised. We assess a population of 10,000 accredited lobbyists, and the procedural output across the 7th legislature’s committees (2009–2014). Our analysis indicates that committees with a higher ratio of Ordinary Legislative Procedures to Own Initiative Reports see greater private interest mobilisation. Conversely, in committees where the procedures’ ratios are inverse we observe greater public interest mobilisation. Theoretically, we provide a novel approach for framing the committee’s nature from a procedural perspective, bridging discussions on interest group mobilisation and the democratic deficit. Empirically, the results overturn the premise of business dominance across the institution’s committees through a unique dataset.

Sport policy analysis revisited: the sport policy process as an interlinked chain of legitimating acts

ABSTRACTBy providing an analytical framework that draws on a conceptualisation of legitimacy in organisation studies, this paper demonstrates that the sport policy process can be understood as an interlinked chain of legitimating acts. Based on recent suggestions in organisation theory literature on how to approach legitimacy and legitimation, we applied the framework on a small sample of published sport policy studies to demonstrate its utility. By applying the framework, six interweaved and interweaving elements of the legitimating act within sport policy processes were identified: legitimacy-seeking organisation, subject, source(s), strategy, bases and scenario. The analysis shows that each of the six elements works by intersecting within each phase of the policy process. The main conclusion is that consequences – often unintended – resulting from legitimating acts in one phase have legitimacy-related implications for the other phases of the policy process. As pressing as pinpointing the use of all elements of the framework is, it is equally important to distinguish each of the elements in order to fulfil the analytical potential of the proposed framework. Since sport policy processes in practice rely primarily on organisations and organisational action, future sport policy research would benefit from this type of framework connecting organisations and organising to policy processes.

Ratings and Regulation: A Case of an Irreversible Marriage?

What are the rationales for policymakers to rely on putatively disinterested actors such as credit rating agencies (CRAs) for financial regulatory input? This paper draws on perspectives from International Political Economy and Comparative Legal Studies to analyze the reasons behind the use and retention of external ratings as an indirect instrument of financial regulation. We find that allowing market practice to determine the relationship between ratings and regulation creates tautological justifications of the CRAs' authority, and raises compelling questions in terms of legitimacy. The purpose of this paper is to uncover the constitutive elements of the tacit acquiescence underlying the subordination to CRA ratings in regulatory matters. The examination of possible conceptualizations of legitimacy may help conduct further inquiries into the politics of technocracy.

Legitimate Healthcare Limit Setting in a Real-World Setting: Integrating Accountability for Reasonableness and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis

The overall aim of this article is to discuss the organization of limit setting in healthcare in terms of legitimacy. We argue there is a strong ethical demand that such processes should be arranged to provide adversely affected people well-justified reasons to confer legitimacy to the processes despite favouring a different decision-making outcome. Two increasingly popular approaches, Accountability for Reasonableness (A4R) and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), can both be applied to support legitimate decision-making processes. However, the role played by `fair-minded people' in the A4R framework can be shown to undermine an adequate conceptualization of legitimacy according to the ethical demand. We discuss and specify conditions enabling A4R to meet this ethical demand when being implemented in a real-world setting without having to renounce the aim of striving for `reasonableness' and impartiality. The methodological approach MCDA describes how to arrange for transparent resource allocation. This approach does not encompass any normative guidance on how to shape limit settings in terms of `reasonableness'; it basically promotes `rational' decisions. We discuss how this practical methodology can be integrated with the theoretical A4R framework to meet the ethical demand while at the same time promoting politically required impartiality of healthcare limit setting.

Toward a metatheory of board evolution: Changing roles and composition across the firm's life cycle

This paper examines how the exogenous pressures on firms to gain and maintain legitimacy inform our understanding of boards of directors’ changing roles and composition across the firm’s life cycle. Whereas prior research has applied various theories of the firm to the study of governance, in this paper, we propose to capture these multi-theoretic views in an overarching theory of board evolution anchored on a firm’s quest for legitimacy. Building on Scott’s (2003) conceptualization of legitimacy as founded on cognitive, regulative and normative pillars, we complement the institutional view of organizations with insights from resource dependence, agency and signaling theory in order to describe how a given pillar of legitimacy poses a dominant challenge for the firm at a certain stage of its life cycle. Second, we explore the effect of these exogenous pressures to maintain legitimacy on the board of directors’ changing roles and composition. Because the board of directors represents the central governance structure linking the firm to its institutional environment, we expect the board to be particularly receptive and integrative of these institutional pressures. Implications of this new framework for envisioning the evolving role of the board complete this paper.

Business to the rescue: private sector actors and global environmental regimes’ legitimacy

In 2006, Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) adopted decision VIII/17 to further involve the private sector in the activities of the Convention. This initiative mainly aims at improving the current regime’s legitimacy. By increasing business involvement, decision VIII/17 can be viewed within the context of the current academic debate on the ‘privatisation’ of environmental governance, which refers to the growing importance of private actors in the formulation of environmental policies. Against this background, this article aims at: (1) assessing the extent to which decision VIII/17 might reverse the CBD’s legitimacy crisis and (2) analysing the issues at stake when private sector actors are involved in environmental regimes. In order to do so, the article analyses the consequences of decision VIII/17 in terms of internal—representation and transparency—and external—institutional efficiency and implementation—legitimacy. The study is based on an extended empirical scrutiny of the negotiations linked to decision VIII/17. While adopting a general conceptualisation of legitimacy, the value added by the study is to broaden the usual understanding of business strategies towards environmental issues. In particular, this article shows how decision VIII/17 has generated several reactions—defensive as well as proactive—among the business community. At the practical level, the article proposes several recommendations to secure a constructive participation of all categories of business actors in biodiversity governance. At the theoretical level, it calls for a change in deterministic visions of economic actors’ interests.

Max Weber and the Legitimacy of the Modern State

Abstract Max Weber’s typology of legitimate ‘Herrschaft’ has provided the basis for the treatment of legitimacy in twentieth century sociology and political science. The thesis of the article is that this typology is a misleading tool for the analysis of the modern state, and especially for the comparative analysis of political systems. This is because of basic flaws in Weber’s conceptualisation of legitimacy itself, and in his account of the normative basis of authority. The article offers an alternative, multi-dimensional, account of political legitimacy, and suggests how it might be used to develop a typology of forms of ‘Herrschaft’ more appropriate to the analysis of the modern state.