Legitimation Strategies Research Articles

Comparison of cultural and political legitimation strategies in Germany and Ukraine

Along with the economic and defence sectors, the cultural and political sphere is an indicator of the state's authority on the world stage. A country's success in this area depends on the population's understanding of the government's appropriate actions. Therefore, a balanced strategy of cultural and political legitimization of the state not only justifies the government's activities for citizens, but also solves a number of socio-economic problems. The study identified the main existing approaches to the classification of state policy models in the cultural and political sphere, as well as countries that are typical representatives of each model. The concept of legitimization is defined and its constituent elements are determined. The subjects and objects of legitimization in the cultural and political sphere were clarified, and the author's definition of the concept of cultural and political legitimization strategy was proposed. The main characteristics of cultural and political legitimization strategies are described with a view to the historical aspects of development and the current state. The strategies of these countries and the main directions of further development of culture and politics were compared.

(De)legitimation of COVID-19 vaccination narratives on Facebook comments in Romania: Beyond the co-occurrence patterns of discursive strategies.

The postmodern medical paradigm has empowered online users in the (de)legitimating process of health-related topics. By employing a co-occurrence analysis, this study identifies the thematic patterns used by Romanian online users in their multimodal comments to the #storiesfromvaccination Facebook campaign run by the Romanian government. The findings show that the commenters assessed source credibility through two thematic patterns: 'source exemplarity' and 'source distrust'. Health experts were more legitimized than laypersons and role models as sources in the COVID-19 vaccination campaign. Two thematic patterns emerged in the assessment of vaccination, namely: 'immunization - past and present challenges' and 'vaccination supporter versus opponent cleavage'. In the discussion on immunization, a polarization between a nostalgic longing for the past and a present corrupted medical and political system prevailed, whereas the important feature of discursive antagonism could be observed in the latter thematic pattern. The co-occurrences of (de)legitimation strategies are explained with reference to the political and medical context, along with the challenges of social media usage in online vaccination communication campaigns.

The Legitimation of International Organizations: Introducing a New Dataset

Abstract This article introduces a new dataset on how international organizations (IOs) justify their authority. For a long time, IOs were believed to derive legitimacy from member-state consent and technocratic problem-solving capacities. Over recent decades, the growing politicization of IOs, political polarization within Western democracies, and power shifts in the international system have spurred IOs’ efforts to justify their right to rule, using a variety of legitimation practices. While research on the theory and practice of IO legitimation has grown considerably over the past decade, much of this work builds on case studies of prominent global and regional IOs. As a result, we lack data suitable for systematic comparative analyses across time, IOs, and world regions. The Legitimation Strategies of Regional Organizations (LegRO) dataset aims to narrow this gap, providing data on the standards, intensity, and modes of legitimation for twenty eight regional IOs from 1980 to 2019. These variables inform theoretical and policy-relevant research on contemporary global governance by providing the first systematic overview of IOs’ legitimation practices.

Towards Evidence-Based Legitimacy Interventions in EU Law: Challenges and Directions for Empirical Research

As EU institutions are increasingly being asked to address societal challenges, the legitimacy need of the EU becomes more evident. With the aim of complementing the already rich literature on normative EU legitimacy and ultimately enabling evidence-based legitimation strategies, this contribution identifies and addresses gaps in empirical research on perceived EU legitimacy, which pertain to conceptualization, operationalization and explanatory factors. To that end, we first of all define perceived EU legitimacy as the perception among EU citizens that the EU’s exercise of authority is appropriate. Drawing on the relational approach to legitimacy, these perceptions arise from socially held norms about how the EU should rightfully exercise authority, which are in turn influenced by the socio-political context. We then propose ways in which such a conception of legitimacy can be operationalized in empirical research. Finally, we lay the foundation for a theoretical model on the sources of EU legitimacy perceptions, arguing that such a model should consider social psychological processes related to identity and morality, because these factors influence how people process information about the EU, and are increasingly part of the environment in which norms about rightful rule arise. Once empirical research is better equipped to understand these processes underlying citizens’ legitimacy perceptions of the EU, opportunities arise to develop evidence-based interventions and inform legal practices in the EU with extra-legal insights. As EU legitimation through policies, legal reform and institutional design requires knowledge of legal feasibility, social scientists and lawyers should collaborate to embed empirical insights in EU law. Bridging the norm-fact divide in this manner is both normatively desirable and empirically necessary for the EU to strengthen its legitimacy and face societal challenges.

‘Battleship at the port of Europe’: Italy's closed-port policy and its legitimizing narratives

From March 2018 to August 2019, during Matteo Salvini's mandate as Minister of the Interior, Italy implemented the so-called ‘closed-port policy’, the closure of Italy's ports to migrant-rescue ships. This policy was initially pursued by Salvini's direct will through circulars before being justified ex-post by a legislative act. This paper analyses the lively parliamentary debates around rescue at sea in order to illustrate the majority's discursive rationales in support of the closed-port policy and its transformation into law. Theoretically, this work adopts a multidisciplinary perspective which combines the works on critique and justification (Boltanski, Thévenot 2006; Boltanski, 2011) with those on legitimacy (Schulze, 2015) to speak to the political geography debate concerning border and migration regimes. These literatures enable the paper to innovatively approach the crucial role of parliaments as conflictual arenas which require governing majorities to enact specific legitimation strategies. By adopting this perspective, this work sheds light on the disputed rationale of migration policies while exploring how legitimation practices worked within the Italian Parliament. My argument unfolds in three main stages: first, the article examines the genealogy of the closed-port policy; second, it explores the legitimation strategies put in place by the majority in order to justify its policy and law; and last, it looks at how specific geographical imaginaries underpin the main narratives constructed through these different legitimation strategies.

ASEAN, Chinese and US legitimation strategies over the Indo-Pacific security architecture

Abstract As growing Sino-US tensions have led to increasingly contested architecture in the Asia–Pacific, rival actors have become more vocal in legitimizing their preferred structures. Yet supplanting existing, accepted structures requires legitimation, and raises questions this article seeks to address: how do competing actors legitimize their preferred architectures and what influences their legitimation strategies? This article looks at US-, China- and ASEAN-led legitimation strategies through Lenz and Söderbaum's three analytical perspectives (agent-, audience-, or environment-based approaches). The article argues that legitimation strategies will correlate with relative power in that established, rising and weak powers will source their strategies from agent, audience and environment bases respectively. The empirical basis is explored through three questions concerning the regional security architecture: the dispute over regional demarcation (‘Indo-Pacific’), the relevant structures of security provision and the idea of a ‘rules-based order.’ Assessing these issues against domestic sources of influence, adjustment for international audience demands and attempts to reconcile other actors' preferences, the article finds that actors' legitimation strategies correlate with their relational power: the US relied on agent-based legitimation, China usually pursued audience-based strategies and ASEAN used environment-based legitimation. These present distinct policy constraints for their respective goals.

The origins of legitimation strategies in international organizations: agents, audiences and environments

Abstract How do international organizations (IOs) claim legitimacy, and why do they do so in different ways? Confronted with contestation and critique, IOs seek to enhance audiences' beliefs in their legitimacy by justifying their governance competence through public communication and the change of institutions and behaviour. This article serves as an introduction to a special section on ‘Legitimizing international organizations’. It theorizes the origins of IOs' legitimation strategies and outlines the analytical framework for the special section. We propose the agents-audiences-environment (AAE) framework, which synthesizes diverse literatures on organizational legitimation. While existing literature focuses on audiencesapos; normative demands as a key source of legitimation strategies, we supplement this perspective with ones that consider IO agents' normative beliefs and the norms institutionalized in peer organizations. In this introduction, we first clarify what is at stake in the debate over IO legitimation. We then explain the benefits of shifting perspective from audience beliefs to the origins of IO legitimation. Thereafter, we define the main concepts and develop our AAE-framework. We conclude by summarizing how our contributors use the AAE-framework to advance our understanding of IO legitimation.

Diversification's legitimation challenges: ASEAN and its Myanmar predicament

Abstract International organizations (IOs) confront complex legitimation challenges with the diversification of audiences and actors asserting judgment and input. Drawing on Lenz and Söderbaum's agents-audience-environment (AAE) conceptualization of legitimation strategies, this discussion advances understandings of how diversification affects IO legitimation and legitimation strategies. Particular attention is given to their special sensitivity to internal IO diversification processes whose constitutive changes affect both the agent and audience ends of strategy. It especially highlights three commonly found sources of internal IO diversification: domestic change, new membership and new purposes. Providing illustration is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its 30+ year-long efforts to defend and legitimate the organization's choices vis-à-vis its most internationally criticized member, Myanmar, and to manage the delegitimating effects of association. The discussion highlights three periods of contrasting internal diversification and effects on ASEAN's legitimation strategies: the first characterized by the least diversification and defiant affirmation of internal founding norms; the second by membership-, purpose- and audience-diversification, and strategies of reconciliation; and the third by diversification's accentuation of member-states' dual roles as agents and audiences of legitimation with growing reliance on informal workarounds, strategic ambiguation and defensive depoliticization as especially illustrated by ASEAN's responses to Myanmar's 2021 coup.

Two-sided legitimation strategies: informal groups at the World Trade Organization

Abstract Who engages in legitimation strategies in global governance and why and how do they do it? This article studies the legitimation strategies and legitimacy-generating capacity of low-authority institutions, specifically informal groups within formal international organizations (IOs). It argues that informal groups seek legitimation and they can also be a source of legitimation for formal IOs. In doing so, the article makes three contributions to recent legitimation literature: 1) contra recent arguments, it shows why not only high-authority, but also low-authority institutions have special incentives to engage in legitimation; 2) it expands our understanding of the reasons why institutions engage in legitimation, showing why authority-deficits can motivate legitimation; 3) it studies legitimation strategies to show when they are likely to be audience- or agent-driven. A case-study of informal groups at the World Trade Organization yields three policy implications. First, developing countries could invest greater resources in legitimizing informal groups in order to boost their representation and voice opportunities within IOs. Second, formal IOs can increase their own legitimacy by supporting informal groups that enhance the representation of marginalized members. Third, however, to the extent that these strategies deflect pressure for formal rule changes, increasing investments in informal groups may be a long-term liability for developing countries.

Mercosur at 30: political ideologies and (de)legitimation strategies

Abstract Mercosur celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2021 in a situation of severe stress, in which the idea of rolling it back from a customs union towards a free trade area was discussed in polarized terms, raising the question about its legitimacy. This article analyses the legitimation strategies pursued by Mercosur member states' presidents and regional bureaucrats to build, maintain, defend and enhance the belief among relevant audiences that the regional organization is legitimate. It focuses on three critical moments in which Mercosur was the object of public debate, namely, the Brazilian currency devaluation in 1999, the accession of Venezuela in 2012, and the current proposal of ‘flexibilization’, and, drawing on secondary literature and qualitative content analysis, argues that the origins of Mercosur agents' discursive legitimation strategies are their political ideologies. Given the strong role of presidents and lack of stronger regional institutions and leadership, Mercosur is left hostage to domestic electoral cycles and vulnerableto undemocratic trends of governments in power.

The politics of legitimation in combined sanction regimes: the case of Venezuela

Abstract Regional international organizations (RIOs) and states are increasingly sanctioning governments, firms and individuals they consider to have violated international norms. How do different RIOs legitimize the decision to impose (or not impose) sanctions? And how do they react to the legitimation strategies of other RIOs and states? This article addresses these questions by analysing the legitimation strategies of the United States and four RIOs involved in the combined sanction regimes against Venezuela between 2014 and 2019: the Organization of American States, the Union of South American Nations, the Common Market of the South and the European Union. Refining the environment-based perspective on legitimation, the article proposes that combined sanction regimes work as environments that shape the legitimation strategies of senders not only by providing templates to emulate but also by triggering processes of differentiation. The article shows how Latin American RIOs adapted their legitimation strategies dynamically in reaction to changes in the strategies of Washington and Brussels. This process, however, was not unidirectional. When Latin American RIOs managed to articulate coherent strategies, they forced Washington and Brussels to recalibrate their own positions and engage in discursive legitimation processes as well.

The path of least resistance: why international institutions maintain dialogue forums

Abstract Dialogue forums have been mushrooming in international economic institutions as a strategy to enhance their legitimacy. Promoted as deliberative spaces allowing for an open, direct exchange with civil society actors, forums have since been criticized as mere talking shops or public relations events. The article analyses why the forums are still maintained despite widespread criticism, with a particular focus on audiences, legitimation agents and the organizational field as sources and driving forces of legitimation strategies. Our findings on the Civil Society Policy Forum, organized by the IMF and the World Bank, and the Civil 20, one of the G20 engagement groups, highlight strong interactive effects between these sources: civil society actors have been pressing for the maintenance of forums as deliberative spaces. Additional pressure on institutions arise from the organizational field, with the inclusion of non-state actors increasingly becoming a norm. International economic institutions react strategically to these external demands by choosing the path of least resistance: maintaining dialogue forums helps showcasing their openness without granting much influence to civil society actors.

Habitus Reshaping through the Search for Entrepreneurial Legitimacy in the High Velocity Field

Using the conceptual peculiarity of Bourdieu's theory, in this paper we aim to provide a new theoretical contribution to the understanding of the relational dynamics of legitimation in entrepreneurship. In-depth, contextual examination of entrepreneurs in 70 companies in the computer programming industry was carried out to determine how legitimation practices are shaped in relation to the dynamics of the relationship between entrepreneurs and the social structure. We base the methodological strength of the research on the rigour of the grounded theory method, using multiple data sources and data collection techniques (in-depth interviews, observations, and qualitative and quantitative secondary data). Our results reveal that susceptibility to hysteresis of habitus is what strongly defines the directions of the search for legitimation. By elucidating them, we show the natural coexistence of entrepreneur profiles of conflicting legitimation strategies, while also contributing to the understanding of shaping the entrepreneurial habitus in the high velocity field.

Playing in the Camps: Performative Practices in the Migrant Camps of Southern Italy

The article addresses the role of performative practices in the informal camps and shantytowns in southern Italy, where many sub-Saharan migrants live. In these settlements, creation and performative expressions take various forms: an organic and unplanned one, which gives shape to multiple improvised languages; one supported, sustained, and often directed and managed by associations; and finally, one produced by non-migrant artists who see the camps as a challenging field of research to situate their works. These three forms (of/with/on) bring several critical issues concerning the role played by migrants, the dynamics of appropriation and agency, and the power relations with local associations, professional artists, and political activists, which intersect in complex ways. The article addresses these different artistic experiences, considering strategies of self-representation, artistic legitimacy, and authorship. Finally, it analyses how performative practices become a primary political tool for facing spatial segregation and racial discrimination.

Industrial Designers in UX Practice: Motivations, Professionalization, and the Construction of Designer Identity

Abstract Our article discusses the insights from original research conducted with design practitioners to better understand the experiences of industrial design graduates as they are adopting new professional roles in user experience (UX) affiliated positions. We utilize narrative identity work as the theoretical frame to interpret the legitimation strategies of industrial designers while grounding their motivations, perceived competence, and fitness to a UX position. Such narratives support our arguments on the conscious efforts of designers toward the construction of a professional designer identity, which is stimulated by this role change.

Language of Legitimization in Political Discourse on Kashmir Issue

This study concerns the discursive strategies used in political discourse to legitimize conflicting positions on the Kashmir issue, a major issue between Pakistan and India. More specifically, the study has attempted to address the question of legitimization strategies and their linguistic realizations feature in the Pakistani and the Indian Prime Minister’s speeches after the abrogation of Article 370 about the Kashmir issue. The data consists of the speeches the Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered after the abrogation of Article 370 on Kashmir. The whole research has been framed under the scope of Critical Discourse Analysis, and the speeches have been analyzed in terms of Reyes’ (2011) strategies of legitimization, and Halliday’s (2014) Transitivity Model. The data analysis reveals that both prime ministers use the strategies of emotion, hypothetical future, rationality, the voice of expertise, and altruism to justify their respective positions and to attack their opponents. Yet, they differ in the linguistic realizations of these strategies mainly due to their different mental models of the communicative event rooted in their differing ideological perspectives. The findings establish the significance of language as an analytical tool that can help understand the nature of discursive practices underlying certain ideologies.

Can transparency strengthen the legitimacy of international institutions? Evidence from the UN Security Council

Can transparency enhance the legitimacy of international institutions? As transparency has become a widely applied procedural standard in international politics, a range of institutions have implemented transparency reforms under the presumption that increased transparency can elicit support among relevant audiences. This article evaluates whether increased transparency in the UN Security Council leads to enhanced legitimacy perceptions among UN member-states. The article first traces the history of Security Council reform since 1990 and draws on interviews with diplomats and observers to describe a transparency reform the Council enacted in 2006. Next, the article uses longitudinal content analysis to empirically probe the legitimation effects of that transparency reform. The empirical analysis is based on an original dataset of 4,303 legitimacy statements made by UN member-states in annual UN General Assembly debates over the periods 1990–2006 and 2006–18. The findings cast doubt over the potential of transparency reform to improve the Council’s legitimacy; instead they suggest that increasing the direct participation of the wider UN membership may be a more viable legitimation strategy. This article contributes to existing international legitimacy literature by providing empirical evidence on the relationship between transparency and legitimacy, and by demonstrating which institutional features that affect the perceived legitimacy of the Security Council.

The Construction of Legitimation in Romanian Public Authorities’ Discourses During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The global spread of COVID-19 in 2020 has created a wide range of responses from governments, like lockdowns, event prohibitions, social distancing rules, etc. Authorities tried to legitimize these restrictions (including limitations of individual rights) through different strategies in order to obtain people compliance. This paper aims to analyze the discourses of two most trusted Romanian public figures, according to IRES (April 2020), Klaus Iohannis, Romanian President, and Raed Arafat, Romanian State Secretary in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, both of whom played key roles in the communication around the COVID-19 health emergency state in our country in March-April 2020. Our goal is to identify how they legitimize their actions by exploring the power relationships between these two Romanian authorities, citizens and other social actors as reflected in their discourses. Our analysis combines van Leuween’s (2007) legitimation strategies with Brown’s (2020) risk features to understand how Romanian authorities managed to respond to COVID-19 crisis. Research showed the two public figures legitimize their actions by using personal authority and that warnings are the most addressed constructions in their discourses. Differences also showed that Arafat was more focused on battling fake news and its effects, while Iohannis was often using good hero’s narratives to explain the decisions implemented to combat the pandemic.

Governance in Crises: Ideologies, Political Systems, and Pandemic Responsiveness

Why are some governments more active in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic than others? Based on ample literature on the political determinants of pandemic responses, this paper seeks to understand the question with an interactive framework of ideology strategies and their political conditions. Resorting to a dataset of 155 countries and their COVID responses in the year of 2020 (before the world enters into the vaccination phase in 2021), we find that government COVID responsiveness is associated with the interactions between the specific character of ideological legitimation strategy (socialist or conservative) invoked by the government and the political system (democratic or decentralized) where it operates. Overall, this research contributes to a multifactor understanding of the political explanations for government responses to crises. It also provides insight for policy choices and designs that are more suitable for the leadership and political contexts.

City Governments as Political Actors of Global Governance

Abstract The transnational rise of city networks is increasingly associated with the emergence of hybrid configurations beyond the public sector that contribute to technocratic decisionmaking processes and the depoliticization of global governance. This article takes issue with this argument. By analyzing the legitimation strategy used by the global city network United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) vis-à-vis the UN system, the article contends that city networks can generate collective agency and frame political issues as a matter of public accountability. The cities gathered under UCLG, a “public membership” city network, are offering their political constitution to the multilateral system, thus complementing rather than replacing the political agency of state-centric processes. Yet the state-centric nature of the international system is also the main obstacle on the (winding) road of UCLG toward multilateral recognition.