Crisis Of Legitimacy Research Articles

Discrepancy between theory and practice: Democratic recession or a crisis of state legitimacy?

ABSTRACT The discrepancy between democratic theory and practice is common to all democratic and quasi-democratic governments. Democratic recession manifests where there is an extreme discrepancy between normative democratic values and their practice – for instance where the state has flouted democratic normative rules (theory) and rendered major democratic institutions dysfunctional. This article posits that democratic recession can be seen in the 21st century as a reaction to at least four factors: 1) shifts in global geopolitics, 2) a crisis of representative democracy, 3) democratic silence, and 4) the rise of populism and post-truth framing. Indices of democracy do not, however, reveal the extent of the state’s role in undermining democratic institutions (ie, political parties, election monitoring bodies, parliaments, the media, civil society), due to a bias of liberal individualism. The outcome has been a crisis of state legitimacy, where citizens lose trust in the state rather than in democratic governance.

From Community Governance to Customer Service and Back Again: Re-Examining Pre-Web Models of Online Governance to Address Platforms’ Crisis of Legitimacy

As online platforms grow, they find themselves increasingly trying to balance two competing priorities: individual rights and public health. This has coincided with the professionalization of platforms’ trust and safety operations—what we call the “customer service” model of online governance. As professional trust and safety teams attempt to balance individual rights and public health, platforms face a crisis of legitimacy, with decisions in the name of individual rights or public health scrutinized and criticized as corrupt, arbitrary, and irresponsible by stakeholders of all stripes. We review early accounts of online governance to consider whether the customer service model has obscured a promising earlier model where members of the affected community were significant, if not always primary, decision-makers. This community governance approach has deep roots in the academic computing community and has re-emerged in spaces like Reddit and special purpose social networks and in novel platform initiatives such as the Oversight Board and Community Notes. We argue that community governance could address persistent challenges of online governance, particularly online platforms’ crisis of legitimacy. In addition, we think community governance may offer valuable training in democratic participation for users.

Political Parties and Loser’s Consent in American Politics

Social science has established that political parties have been indispensable to American democracy and their most active members as keepers of the democratic flame. The aftermath of the 2020 presidential election raised questions about the role of the parties in protecting democracy, particularly the fundamental democratic norm of “loser’s consent.” We argue that recent political developments—close elections, ideological polarization, participatory party nominations, and changes in campaign finance and media—have worked to undermine the parties’ commitment to loser’s consent. We use recent survey data to show that party activists no longer demonstrate greater commitment than do ordinary citizens to democratic norms—especially to loser’s consent. We also examine how parties and voters responded to the post-2020 crisis of democratic legitimacy, finding that both parties prioritized their political interests over democratic health. However, a small number of voters did deviate from normal partisanship and helped to shore up American democracy in the 2022 elections.

THE CRISIS OF LEGITIMACY FROM THE POINT OF VIEW ОF THE FUNNEL OF CAUSALITY

The problem of legitimacy of political institutions and institutions of state power is considered. Various approaches to determining the legitimacy of government are analyzed, but the main emphasis is on the level of trust and what exactly reduces the level of trust in government institutions Emphasis is placed on the factors that affect the fall of trust and lead to crisis phenomena in the political environment and destabilize society in general. The points of view of M. Weber, R. Dworkin and A. Buchann on legitimacy are compared, which give rise to different views on political obligations and normative conditions. A crisis of legitimacy is a situation in which the legality of the existing social order is questioned and distrust of the existing government is openly expressed, which demonstrates the inability of the government to assure society of the necessity and optimal functioning of existing state institutions. The reasons for the delegitimization of power are determined (the lack of proper representation of the interests of social groups and sufficient vertical mobility in the political system in combination with social inequality), which ultimately lead to the radicalization of attitudes in society, the strengthening of the opposition and, in general, distrust of state institutions The methodology of the “Funnel of Causality allows to combine different levels of society and take into account the effects of the environment. First of all, the macro level (economic development, the influence of geopolitical actors, historical traditions,national mewntality etc.), radical economic changes, the development of civil society, the political activity of various social groups, the growth of crisis phenomena, as a result of radical transformation. Due to the fluctuating nature of the country's political development during the years of independence, revolutionary situations arose, and the very legitimacy of the government, even at the macro level, was called into question.

The pandemic and police use of force: an analysis of disaggregated metrics, concentrated disadvantage, and COVID-19 mitigation efforts in Chicago

ABSTRACT The study examines the effects of COVID−19 on the use of police force in Chicago, IL. It utilizes various measures of police use of force, disaggregated by levels of severity, and explores how those metrics changed in high versus low concentrated disadvantage police districts in the city. The interrupted time series analysis found that low and intermediate uses of police force decreased significantly during the pandemic, although those results were conditioned by the stage of mitigation efforts and the level of concentrated disadvantage. The pandemic, however, did not significantly affect the use of police force involving firearms. From a public policy perspective, the results demonstrate the imperative to maintain consistent scrutiny on police uses of force, the policy that guides those actions, and how both have been affected by the pandemic, which has transpired during an ongoing crisis of police legitimacy in the United States.

Malaysia’s crisis of political legitimacy: Understanding the 2020 power transition and ‘Sheraton Move’ polemics through the ‘eyes’ of Malaysian political science graduates

Malaysia’s crisis of political legitimacy: Understanding the 2020 power transition and ‘Sheraton Move’ polemics through the ‘eyes’ of Malaysian political science graduates

From State Warfare to State Welfare: Family Values in Leonard Freed'sPolice Work(1980)

This article examines Leonard Freed's 1980Police Work, a photobook that documents the activities of the New York City Police Department from 1973 to 1979. It contextualizes the photobook within this liminal decade after the fullness of the civil rights movement and before the rise of austerity politics. The photobook, I argue, produces a visual repertoire of policing that resolves the crisis of legitimacy faced by the NYPD during this decade, remaking the meaning of the police in the public imaginary from an agent of state warfare into an institution of state welfare. Far from simply creating photographs of policing as community care,Police Workengages in a process by which police violence is visually recoded as police benevolence. The visual politics of the family are central to this process by which we are made not to see police brutality, even when it is placed vividly on display. Ultimately, I show how, even as the camera moves between public and private,Police Workproduces an ideology of separate spheres in which the expansion of policing can find its rationalization. Ultimately, this article revealsPolice Workas a site through which to examine the intimate, yet often disavowed, entanglements between the domestic and the carceral.

The European Pillar of Social Rights: A Dangerous Distraction?

The European Pillar of Social Rights set out to reaffirm a European promise of universal welfare and prosperity as a remedy for a perceived crisis of legitimacy of the EU. This paper argues that the Pillar does not actually state legally binding rights and that ist name is therefore misleading. However, case-law of the European Court of Justice indicates that the Pillar could be used as a tool for the interpretation, in particular, of the – legally binding – Charta of Fundamental Rights, potentially widening the scope of application of the latter. This in turn, the article argues, might undermine the very objective the Pillar set out to reach – improving the EU‘s appeal to and acceptance by its citizens – by way of gradually increasing democratic deficits of the European Union while insufficiently targeting social ones. crisis of legitimacy, source of interpretation, democratic deficit, social deficit

The paradox of global constitutionalism: Between sectoral integration and legitimacy

Abstract The liberal international legal order faces a legitimacy crisis today that becomes visible with the recent anti-internationalist turn, the rise of populism and the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine. Either its authority or legitimacy has been tested many times over the last three decades. The article argues that this anti-internationalist trend may be read as a reaction against the neoliberal form taken by international law, not least over the last three decades. In uncovering the intricacies of international law’s legitimacy crisis, the article uncovers the paradox of global constitutionalism: that its need to adopt a sectoral form of integration may cause a legitimacy gap/deficit because international authorities, resting their legitimacy primarily on instrumental grounds, may face problems in compensating for the legitimacy deficit caused by the erosion of domestic sovereignty and extending their legitimacy to non-instrumental grounds. This paradox has one necessary structural and two contingent content-related implications for domestic democracies: (1) it necessarily narrows down the regulatory space of nation-states; and this may in turn (2) impair democratic stability and solidarity, and (3) provide a fertile ground for populism. Drawing on Raz’s service conception, the article focuses on the interaction between international and domestic authorities and highlights the problematic aspects of the neoliberal constitutionalization of international law.

The Quadrilemma: Appointing Adjudicators in Future Investor–State Dispute Settlement

ABSTRACT Concern with the selection and appointment of arbitrators has been central in the ‘legitimacy crisis’ surrounding investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS). The regime has been criticized for the outsized role of litigating parties in appointment, absence of transparency in the appointment procedure, potential for conflicts of interests, lack of diversity, and little emphasis on public international law competence. However, attempts to reform the selection and appointment of adjudicators involve confronting dilemmas, requiring trade-offs between different normative values. We therefore introduce a quadrilemma that captures the underlying values of independence, accountability, diversity, and procedural fairness that actors often seek to realize through adjudicatory design. We then set out seven idealized selection and appointment reform options under discussion in the ISDS reform process at UN Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) (from incremental reform through to new permanent mechanisms and removal of ISDS). The quadrilemma is employed to analyse their advantages and disadvantages of each model. In light of empirical and doctrinal evidence, it is clear that some reform options are more likely than others to optimize the quadrilemma. However, the effects are often conditional and sometimes there is a need for accompanying mechanisms.

From Partnership to Rivalry: China and the USA in the Early Twenty-First Century

Two unconnected crises in the 1970s, a crisis of profitability of global capitalism and a deep crisis of political legitimacy in China, led to creation of a formidable alliance between corporate/financial-led US capital and the Chinese state that sought to resolve both crises by opening China for corporate exploitation. The solution, however, masked different objectives. Transnational corporations moved to China in search of cheap labour to counter falling profits and Beijing sought to use foreign capital to develop the Chinese economy and gain access to technology. Over time China’s interests and those of the USA diverged, as US deindustrialisation became the obverse of China’s dynamic industrialisation. Factions within the US elite began to promote a different approach towards China than that of alliance and accommodation and were able to grab the upper hand during Donald Trump’s presidency, advocating an aggressive approach towards China. This posture consolidated under the Biden administration. These developments set up a struggle for hegemony to which China and the USA bring differing advantages and disadvantages. While a hegemonic transition is one possible outcome of this conflict, the possibility of a hegemonic stalemate or hegemonic vacuum cannot be discounted.

Global Norm-Maker as China’s New Brand? An Analysis of the Responsible Cobalt Initiative

Abstract China’s influence in extractive industry sectors worldwide has expanded in tandem with the rising global demand for the natural resources integral to producing such low carbon products as electric vehicles. Many Chinese-operated mining projects overseas have hence generated broad concern on the ground about their negative environmental and social impacts. Chinese actors, meanwhile, have begun to engage with transnational extractive governance initiatives entailing a transparency norm that requires disclosure of environmental and social risks. China, however, appears to be reshaping this transparency norm through its establishment of the Responsible Cobalt Initiative (RCI)—a China-led “transnational” governance initiative facilitating a Chinese version of that norm, known as “thin” transparency. Based on process-tracing and semi-structured interviews, in applying Acharya’s (2018) norm-circulation model, this paper examines what type of Chinese domestic actors act as norm-makers and under what conditions. The study thus refines certain core analytical concepts of the model. The RCI case stands alone in highlighting China’s growingly normative role in contesting the transparency norm through transnational interactions among Chinese and international actors in global extractives governance. The result shows China’s norm-making as a strategic choice of a local idea-shifter to cope with China’s internal and external legitimacy crises and to strengthen its emerging identity as a responsible great power. This study rejects the notion of China as a monolithic actor, rather suggesting a multi-agency and multilevel approach to understanding the complex realities of China’s normative leadership in global governance.

The Crisis of Legitimacy and the Appropriation of Resistance in Capitalism

Capitalism has become so naturalised in recent decades that there seems to exist little to no alternative to it. Common acceptance of this social formation begs the basic question of how particular systems are legitimised. In this paper, I look at some legitimation mechanisms at play by focusing on the capitalist tendency to ideologically appropriate criticism emerging from social struggles. I draw on the study The New Spirit of Capitalism by Boltanski and Chiapello and the cool capitalism thesis put forward by McGuigan. Both provide a basis for a case study of two advertising campaigns by Slovenia’s biggest mobile network operators. During the period of mass uprisings following the 2008/09 economic crisis, the two operators harnessed the symbolism of resistance in their advertising targeted at young people. In each case, the messages of the protests in the ads were deradicalised and largely stripped of any meaningful political content. While it is clear the advertising industry plays an important systemic role in capitalism, the two case studies hint at another way that advertisements can help perpetuate the system: by reinterpreting the critical messages emerging from within society, they become neutralised, with the critical voices thereby becoming more easily integrated into the capitalist social structure.

India’s Oligarchic State Capitalism

Almost nine years into Narendra Modi’s premiership, there is little sign of an ideological commitment to the free market at the apex of the Indian state. Instead, this article characterizes India’s developmental model as a form of state capitalism, structured by the government’s direct influence on economic relationships. The Modi government took office in the midst of a legitimacy crisis generated by the state-dominated financial system. In response, it has fostered an increasingly oligarchic state capitalism, aiming to mobilize private resources through a narrow alliance of state and business interests. This strategy entails serious economic distortions and political risks.

The Legitimacy of Science

The ongoing pandemic and quickening climate crisis make it difficult to overstate the significance of science and science policy to our world. These global catastrophes have laid bare the fragility of science's legitimacy and its dependence on broader cultural understandings and institutional norms. Challenges to science's legitimacy are numerous and daunting in the early twenty-first century but also nothing new. This review interrogates science as culture in our highly fragmented and polarized social environment, and the idea that scientific knowledge and expertise are experiencing a profound and accelerating legitimacy crisis. The challenges are internal and external to the production of scientific knowledge, emphasizing the publicly financed sector in colleges and universities worldwide. Internal threats include fraud, replicability, knowledge diffusion and equability, disciplinary fragmentation, and overproduction. Equally important are the external threats, such as polarization, authoritarianism, religious beliefs, information technology, and economic capital—commanding financial flows to organized science. While sociology is uniquely situated to study these composite issues, it faces sobering challenges and its own scientific legitimacy crisis.

CSR, monitoring cost and firm performance during COVID-19: balancing organizational legitimacy and agency cost

PurposeCOVID-19 induced uncertainty in the firms’ business transactions, financial markets and product-market competition, causing a severe organizational legitimacy crisis. Using the organizational legitimacy perspective and agency theory, this paper aims to study the relationship between prior corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, monitoring cost (MC) and firm performance.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses a quarterly panel (16,924 firm-quarter observations from 61 countries for CSR and 53,345 firm-quarter observations from 55 countries for MC) for 14 quarters from January 2018 to June 2021. This study uses panel fixed-effect regression models to estimate the effect of CSR activities and MC (measured as audit fees) on firm performance during the COVID-19 period.FindingsThis study finds a U-shaped relationship between CSR and firm performance. This relationship is strengthened during COVID-19. In contrast, this study finds an inverted U-shaped relationship between firm MC and firm performance. However, this relationship is weakened during the pandemic.Originality/valueThis study contributes to theory and practice on maintaining organizational legitimacy and reducing agency costs during the pandemic. This study shows that firms’ prior legitimacy-gaining practices, such as CSR activities and MC, provide an opportunity to increase firm value. To balance agency costs and legitimacy benefits, firm managers also need to identify the optimal level of CSR activities and MC.

The emperor, the lion and the peacock: Monuments and contested state sovereignty in contemporary Ethiopia

As a first project launched after his nomination as Ethiopia’s new prime minister in 2018, Abiy Ahmed renovated the Imperial Palace in Ethiopia’s political center, Addis Ababa to turn it into a heritage site of significance for nation-state building. This project was widely interpreted as a sign for the end of authoritarian rule and political tensions in the country. In this paper, we scrutinize the monumentalization inside the palace as an assemblage of of mythical figures – political rulers and animals. In our focus are different statues, which we interpret in the context of Ethiopia’s political history of authoritarian rule, the politics of history, and ongoing ethno-nationalist contestations. On that basis, we demonstrate the strategic significance for Abiy Ahmed of articulating these mythical figures in his attempt to substantiate his sovereignclaim—especially in the context of his regime’s sever legitimacy crisis. Our analysis reveals the palace as a site of cultural and political significance in the broader context of ongoing ethno-nationalist struggles about nation-state authority, representation, legitimacy and history. It contributes to an inherently political understanding of developments of monuments and their significance for state sovereignty, hegemony, and authoritarian rule in Africa and beyond.

Public Trust in the Time of Pandemic: An Analysis of Social Networks in the Discourse of Large-Scale Social Restrictions in Indonesia

This article discusses public trust in the Indonesian government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, explicitly focusing on the discourse surrounding large-scale social restrictions (LSSR). In a time of uncertainty, the public requires timely and actual information, most of which is gathered through online media, with Twitter being one such medium. This article applies social network analysis to examine how information about the restrictions is shared and discussed on social media platforms and how this discourse may impact public trust in government institutions in the first phase of pandemic handling. Although LSSR is the government’s policy, this study shows that the interpersonal network plays a more significant part in distributing information, indicating a legitimacy crisis of formal and authoritative sources of information. The negative sentiment voiced by critics did not show public rejection of the implementation of LSSR. On the contrary, what was implied by those critics was public doubt against the consistency and firmness of LSSR implementation—because of this, restoring public trust requires planned information management to communicate risks to those who are affected by LSSR implementation, as well as managing negative sentiments that arise as a response.

Opposites But Similar? Technocracy and Populism in Contemporary European Democracies

The purpose of this paper is to examine the characteristics of two political phenomena: populism and technocracy. Often seen as opposites, the two factors are linked by some elements: both are described by their proponents as remedies to the legitimacy crisis that modern representative democracies are going through; both tend to define certain practices and principles of constitutional democracy that are insufficient to ensure effective governance of society; both see as their main remedy a restriction of the classical functions of representation and of the institutions of mediation (parties and parliament among all). Nevertheless, the two phenomena seem to follow the dynamics of opposite extremes: in the phases when the democratic order is increasingly identified with technocracy, the populist democratic eschatology gains confidence on the basis of the promise to return to citizens the power stolen from them by non-elective institutions. We will attempt to identify some key features that unite the two phenomena and we will highlight the differences in principle, the possible relationships as part of a more general democratic vulnus and the different types of impact they have on democracy and its principles.

The role of co-production in a conflictual planning process: the case of Haga station in Gothenburg, Sweden

This paper draws on the intersection of the themes of co-production, knowledge use, and planning that are relevant for urban transformation debate. In theory, co-production is seen to have the potential to facilitate conflict resolution, and thereby contribute to inclusive governance and transformative change. However, critical voices argue that these theoretical aspirations have limited effects in practice. Here we analyze the role of co-production in urban planning to better understand its role in conflict resolution and its potential to contribute to urban transformation. We provide a knowledge-based analysis of the possibilities and limitations of institutional and participatory co-production as it is conceived, designed, and applied in a specific conflictual strategic planning process in a case of Haga station which is a part of complex infrastructure development project, the West Link, in Gothenburg, Sweden. Through conducting an in-depth qualitative empirical analysis of the knowledge use practices in the planning of Haga station, we bring the discussion of co-production from theory to practice and take a critical look at its limitations. The results show that co-production worked well within and among the participating governmental organizations, even across distinct organizational boundaries. However, it was more limited between the public organizations and informal opposition actors, despite formal structures and processes aimed specifically at these types of participation. The analysis of knowledge use practices shows how the conflict was exacerbated due to the conflation of incommensurable knowledge claims by the institutional and oppositional actors, leading to a crisis of legitimacy for the involved public agencies.