Legitimacy In Areas Research Articles

Virtuous or Vicious Circle? Governance Effectiveness and Legitimacy in Areas of Limited Statehood

ABSTRACTEffective and legitimate governance supposedly form a mutually reinforcing relationship, a virtuous circle of governance. We critically explore this argument in the context of limited statehood and underline why such areas challenge key assumptions underpinning the virtuous circle argument. In this special issue we ask: Does the effectiveness of governance affect the legitimacy of governance actors and institutions in areas of limited statehood, and vice versa? We develop a theoretical model of the virtuous circle and show that making such circles work is more complex, demanding and unlikely than often assumed. Empirical studies need to take these complexities into account, and policy makers are well-advised to adjust their policies accordingly.

Legitimacy in Areas of Limited Statehood

Empirical legitimacy, defined as social acceptance of the right to rule, constitutes a key condition for effective governance in areas of limited statehood. Most work on legitimacy, however, is state centric and has exclusively focused on the state as the governance actor of interest. We argue that understanding the legitimacy of external and nonstate actors is essential for analyzing governance in areas of limited statehood. Moreover, subnational variations in legitimacy matter. While most studies of the legitimacy of governance actors have focused on the macroregional and national levels, a governance actor may enjoy high legitimacy in one part of a country but be considered illegitimate in other parts. Finally, the multiple sources and consequences of empirical legitimacy in areas of limited statehood have to be analyzed in greater depth. There is no single source of legitimacy, nor is there a single guaranteed consequence of legitimacy.

Compliance vs. constraints: A theory of rebel targeting in civil war

This article offers a theory of rebel targeting in civil war. Rebels face two logics of targeting: the logic of compliance in areas where they are fighting for territory, and the logic of legitimacy in areas where they remain clandestine. The first boosts civilian targeting because rebels use it as a way to discipline local populations. The second moderates it because unqualified civilian killings could prompt rebels’ supporters to turn against the group and easily help bring down its clandestine structures. In order to avoid this backlash, rebels focus on attacking ‘legitimate’ targets such as security forces and authorities. This supporters’ constraint is mitigated when the state heavily represses the rebels’ constituency – which increases supporters’ appetite for indiscriminate retaliation – and when the rebels can rely on independent funding – which reduces rebels’ dependence on supporters’ help. I test the argument with detailed information about rebel presence and political violence in Peru from 1980 to 1995. The results support that civilian victimization is driven by rebel strength, since the more control the rebels hold, the more civilians are targeted. Thus, when Shining Path was forced to operate clandestinely on a permanent basis, it carried out more actions against hard targets, so as to remain a legitimate force within its urban support base.

Evaluating Governance: Effectiveness and Legitimacy in Areas of Limited Statehood

While it is widely acknowledged that effectiveness and legitimacy both play an important role in the evaluation of governance, the causal relationship between these two concepts is far from clear. While some theorists hold that there is an inevitable trade-off between the demands of effectiveness and legitimacy, others argue that both qualities are mutually reinforcing. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the relationship between these two standards under conditions of limited statehood. The paper is organized into three sections: In the first section I will define the central concepts of effectiveness and legitimacy. While the main features of the concept of effectiveness are straightforward, the concept of legitimacy is notoriously opaque. In the second section, I will argue that the causal relationship between effectiveness and legitimacy is far more complex than usually assumed. Most scholars describe the connection as a virtuous circle: The more effective a political order or institution is, the more legitimate it is, and the more legitimate it is, the more effective it becomes. While the causal pathway from legitimacy to effectiveness is well understood, this does not hold true for the reverse connection from effectiveness to legitimacy. I will therefore identify four necessary conditions which have to be met in order to make the virtuous circle argument compelling. These are the conditions of (1.) “instrumental legitimacy belief,” (2.) “shared social goals,” (3.) “transparency,” and (4.) “generalization”. Finally, I will argue that these conditions are serious challenges to effective and legitimate governance in areas of limited statehood. In der Governance-Literatur ist es nahezu unumstritten, dass der Erfolg oder Misserfolg eines Governance-Regimes an seiner Effektivitat und Legitimitat gemessen werden kann. Weit weniger klar ist hingegen ob, und wenn ja, in welcher Hinsicht beide Kriterien kausal miteinander verbunden sind. Wahrend einige Autoren argumentieren, dass ein unaufloslicher Zielkonflikt zwischen Effektivitat und Legitimitat besteht, vertreten andere die Ansicht, dass sich beide Qualitaten gegenseitig zu einem Tugendzirkel verstarken. Ziel dieses Papiers ist es, ein neues Modell dieser Kausalbeziehung zu entwickeln und die Konsequenzen dieses Modells im Kontext von Governance in Raumen begrenzter Staatlichkeit naher zu bestimmen. Das Papier ist dabei in drei Schritte gegliedert: Im ersten Abschnitt werde ich die zentralen Begriffe der Effektivitat und Legitimitat fur die Zwecke dieses Beitrags definieren. Anschliesend werde ich im zweiten Abschnitt ein komplexes Modell der kausalen Beziehung zwischen Effektivitat und Legitimitat entwickeln, das auf der Idee des Tugendzirkels beruht, jedoch diese um vier notwendige Bedingungen fur eine wechselseitige Verstarkung der Merkmale erweitert. Im abschliesenden dritten Abschnitt wird schlieslich gepruft, wie sich diese Bedingungen auf die Erbringung von Governance-Leistungen in Raumen begrenzter Staatlichkeit auswirken.

Deliberative democracy for the future: the case of nuclear waste management in Canada

In today's world, public policies are increasingly associated with social and environmental risk and scientific uncertainty. Given such potential impacts on the moral freedom and equality for existing and future generations, policies should reflect decision-making standards beyond those of economic efficiency and technical safety. They should reflect the imperatives of social justice and democratic legitimacy now and into the future. Deliberative Democracy for the Future identifies an approach to ethical policy analysis that promises to serve the ends of justice and legitimacy in areas of public policy such as hazardous waste management, energy generation and regulation, climate change control, and genomics research and commercialization. Based on a wide reading of ethical approaches to policy analysis found in contemporary political theory, moral philosophy, and public policy literatures, it evaluates these three central approaches to ethical policy analysis in light of moral dilemmas arising in a particularly timely case: Canadian nuclear waste management policy. The volume's central argument is that the most desirable approach to ethical policy analysis contains the philosophical tools necessary to address problems of understanding risk and safety, identifying obligations to both existing and future generations, and conceptualizing legitimacy-conferring decision-making processes. Genevieve Fuji Johnson argues that neither welfare utilitarianism nor modern deontology is sufficiently equipped for these tasks. She proposes that only deliberative democracy contains convincing conceptions of the good, justice, and legitimacy that provide for the justifiable resolution of debates about the moral foundations of public policy. Responding to challenges in nuclear waste management in ways more comprehensive and more tenable than both utilitarianism and deontology, deliberative policy analysis promises to be an effective approach to other cases associated with risk, uncertainty, and futurity.

Political Legitimacy and Democracy

The term ‘political legitimacy’ is unfortunately ambiguous. One serious source of confusion is the failure to distinguish clearly between political legitimacy and political authority and to conflate political authority with authoritativeness. I will distinguish between (1) political legitimacy, (2) political authority, and (3) authoritativeness. I will also articulate two importantly different variants of the notion of political authority. Having drawn these distinctions, I will argue first that political legitimacy, rather than political authority, is the more central notion for a theory of the morality of political power. My second main conclusion will be that where democratic authorization of the exercise of political power is possible, only a democratic government can be legitimate. Another ambiguity is also a source of confusion. Sometimes it is unclear whether ‘legitimacy’ is being used in a descriptive or a normative sense. In this article I am concerned exclusively with legitimacy in the normative sense, not with the conditions under which an entity is believed to be legitimate. However, a normative account of legitimacy is essential for a descriptive account. Unless one distinguishes carefully between political legitimacy, political authority, and authoritativeness, one will not be clear about what beliefs in legitimacy are beliefs about.