Legitimate Discourse Research Articles

The power of old ideas newly expressed

Abstract This article tracks the legitimization practices deployed to change the discourse regarding coercive interventions to protect human lives which, at the end of the 1990s, became both acceptable practices discussed in multilateral settings and deeply controversial issues. It focuses on the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) and two important strategies. The first is the proposition to change the ways in which we talk about (military) intervention for human protection purposes, i.e. a passage from “humanitarian intervention” and the “right to intervene” towards R2P. The second is the practices that agents hoped would give legitimacy to their ideas, especially regarding postcolonial states, historically skeptical and critical of humanitarian intervention. I argue that the agents were able to reframe the debate using more legitimate discourse while adopting legitimization practices to raise the acceptability of R2P.

How churches make education policy: the churchification of Hungarian education and the social question under religious populism

ABSTRACT Since 2010, Hungary’s authoritarian populist government has radically redefined church-state relations, promoting the governance narrative of building an ‘old-style Christian democracy’. Public education has been reconceptualised within a religious framework and outsourced to religious actors. This article explores how key religious organisations engage with the government’s religious populism and govern their expanding school networks. Given the immanent tension between nativist Christian-conservative identity politics and Christian teachings about the church’s social mission, I focus on how Christian church elites have engaged with the education of underprivileged communities. Four characteristic types of strategic involvement are identified based on church education policies and their legitimacy discourses concerning their (lack of) engagement with the social question. Despite using different approaches to navigate political pressures, both the nativist illiberal and inclusive liberal visions of religion and their corresponding policies have reinforced the structures of segregated education and legitimised the government’s education policy.

“Saying Something Would Be Useless”: Reconsidering Relational Dialectics Theory by Examining How Chinese Women Entrepreneurs Negotiate Gendered Entrepreneurship and Family Harmony

ABSTRACT The identity of women entrepreneurs illuminates discursive struggles given the masculine norms of entrepreneurship. Applying relational dialectics theory (RDT), this study explored competing discourses surrounding understudied Chinese women entrepreneurs and the interplay of their identification and masculine discourses. I conducted narrative interviews with 34 Chinese women. Contrapuntal analysis of this non-Western data however identified that discursive struggles happened when voicing/speaking/expressing was not prioritized. Hence, I turned to new materialist perspectives to (re)work discourses as boundary-making practices producing local things/beings-in-relations and agents as anyone/anything participating in the dynamism. In two themes as competing discourses (discourses of misalignment vs. legitimacy), I focused on local movements and interferences when/where women in their entrepreneurial becoming encountered various human and nonhuman agents, and therefore demonstrated how discursive struggles involved various bodies/things, more than just talk/voices. Ultimately, this study diffracted RDT by engaging with new materialisms and proposing a new uttered-embodied dimension of discursive struggles.

Fertility apps, datafication and knowledge production in reproductive health.

Despite being the target of much criticism, commercialised digital technologies have proliferated in reproductive health arenas. Fertility applications (apps) are now some of the most popular and ubiquitous digital health tracking technologies, with millions of downloads. Previous scholarship has already underlined the problematic nature of their design and surveillance features. However, less attention has been paid to the wider effects of datafied knowledge availability. This research specifically asks: How does the proliferation of fertility apps shape knowledge (and associated practices) in reproductive health? Drawing on an analysis of key document sources, I here argue that fertility apps act as mediators between stakeholders, data and datafied outputs, thus facilitating: (1) the datafication of fertility awareness knowledge and the production of new datafied knowledge, (2) legitimation discourses and practices and (3) the remaking of private/public expertise and knowledge production networks in reproductive health. To effectively analyse the effects of commercialised reproductive health apps, this work argues for an understanding of data technologies that is informed by critical data studies.

« IS Stakeholders » Legitimation strategies in times of crisis

In recent years, both practitioners and researchers have noted multiple unexpected events disrupting information system (IS) projects. These events delayed many transformation initiatives across various sectors, highlighting the need for proactive responses from IS stakeholders involved in these projects. Such responses can significantly influence IS organizations, including project delays or employee layoffs. To justify these decisions, IS stakeholders must communicate their motivations and strategies effectively. This study examines legitimation discourse used by two key stakeholders—IS consultancy firms and international organizations—when faced with unexpected events. This research focuses on understanding the motivations and strategies behind their communications, offering management teams deeper insights into these messages. By considering both explicit content and underlying motivations, decision-makers can better navigate and respond to such communications. This study employs topic modeling to analyze a variety of communication documents, contributing to the understanding of how these IS stakeholders legitimize their actions during crises.

THE CLARITY OF BUSINESS MODELS IN INTEGRATED ACCOUNTING REPORTS

In this study, 664 students enrolled in accounting theory courses at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels at the University of New England were tasked with the assignment of critically assessing the decision usefulness and understandability of 2 to 4 integrated accounting reports. A key aspect of their analysis involved a critical examination of how the accounting reports conveyed the business models employed by the respective companies. In the case of consolidated reports, students were expected to observe distinct business models for each segment of the group or identify a robust rationale if only one model was presented. A team comprising both students and faculty examined all submitted reports, coding the embedded models for their complexity and understandability. The ensuing analysis revealed three distinct clusters of models, categorized as simple, orthogonal, or spread. The decision usefulness of these models exhibited significant variation and demonstrated a clear association with their understandability. Given that South Africa is the sole country mandating integrated accounting, a distinctive expectation was formed. Reports from South African corporations were anticipated to exhibit a degree of isomorphism or clustering around a specific model to a notably greater extent than reports from other countries. However, contrary to expectations, no such clustering was identified. Furthermore, it was anticipated that students would more accurately code simple business models, given their inherent simplicity and ease of comprehension. This expectation found substantial support in the results. Finally, the study hypothesized that spread models would be more prone to being cluttered by extravagant claims, messianic declarations, and legitimation discourses compared to simple models. This hypothesis received confirmation through the study's findings.

WOMEN’S ATTENDANCE AT MOSQUES AND THEIR NON-ATTENDANCE IN PAKISTAN, AN APPLIED OVERVIEW

Islam has given the Muslim woman a high status. Honor her as a mother, honor her as a daughter, honor her as a wife, and honor her as a sister .This research deals with the jurisprudential rulings related to women in worship, especially prayer, which is the second pillar of the pillars of Islam, through which the Muslim draws close to his Lord. Women are half of society. She performs the role as a man does in percentage. I presented in this research the definition of the terms related to the subject and the statement that the legitimate discourse is directed to both women and men. Then I dealt with the rulings on women's prayer in mosques with an explanation of the opinions of the jurists in this section, then I mentioned that what should women do in Pakistani society and should they participate in group prayer or not? Should they be involved in matters related to the mosque? And finally the results and recommendations were presented with references and sources.

조직 일탈에 미치는 조직 성과와 국지적 경쟁의 영향: 대한민국 호텔 산업을 중심으로

Organizational deviation that does not conform to institutional norms has
 long been discussed as necessary in organization studies. Discourses such
 as the neo-institutional legitimacy discourse and organizational learning theory's
 imitative learning discuss why organizations become similar and conformity.
 On the other hand, it describes variation and deviation behavior from the
 perspective of organizational and evolutionary theory. Based on the theoretical
 discourse on organizational status and organizational ecology, this study explores
 differentiated behaviors according to organizational status and the ecological
 factors that regulate them. To this end, the Korean hotel industry
 data from 2012 to 2021 was used to empirically analyze the effects of factors
 such as position in the organizational group and local competition on organizational
 deviance. The times series logistic regression analysis non-request for
 hotel rating review, that is, deviation from regulations as a dependent variable,
 resulted in the nonlinear effect of status within the organization group and
 the control of local competition based on accessibility. It was confirmed that
 all hypotheses predicting the effect were significantly supported. The results
 of this study provide theoretical implications that market status and localized
 competition may affect conformity to and deviation from institutional norms
 such as government laws, in addition to internal characteristics of organizations
 suggested by previous studies. In addition, we paid attention to the differentiated
 motivation, behavior, and differentiated impact of ‘middleness’ level organizational
 characteristics, which have not been discussed much theoretically or
 empirically, and explored the non-linear impact of middle-level characteristics.
 It has practical implications in that it reminds policymakers and practitioners
 of organizations that compete based on region and accessibility to the importance
 of localized competition.

YASALLIK VE MEŞRUİYET İKİLEMİ AÇISINDAN RUSYA’NIN UKRAYNA MÜDAHALESİ

On 24 February 2022, Vladimir Putin, the President of the Russian Federation, announced to the world that a "military operation" would be carried out against Ukraine upon the call of the Donbas republics, which he had decided to recognise on 21 February officially. The military operation that started afterwards has created great debates not only in terms of international politics but also in terms of international law. In his speech, Putin referred to the legality and legitimacy discourses that Western States, particularly the United States, have been using in various military operations since the end of the Cold War and used them for Russia's operations. In this Article, regarding Putin's statements, Russia's justifications for the military operation are analysed in the context of the relationship between legality and legitimacy, which is one of the ancient issues of legal philosophy. The main argument of the study is that due to the non-objective nature of international law, each sovereign can find the legal arguments that will suit its interests among the sources of international law and legitimise its actions within this legal discourse. The result is that international law will favour political power among equal rights.

Muʿāwiya, ʿAbd al-Malik, and the Falcon of Quraysh

Abstract This study explores the potential of using one of the less-studied textual sources for the caliphal period in al-Andalus, namely, the ʿIqd al-farīd by Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih (d. 940), for an investigation of the Western Umayyad discourse of legitimacy. It focuses therein the narrative portrayals of the Eastern caliphs Muʿāwiya and ʿAbd al-Malik, generally seen as models of strong and successful Umayyad leadership, and analyzes which qualities are highlighted and downsized, of them and their opponents. A close reading of selected passages shows that the result is of high complexity and ambivalence. In literalized anecdotes peppered with sayings, poems, and foreboding dreams, the narratives feature dramatic, violent scenes and tragic plots, which emphasize the human tragedy of the protagonists in their fight for power and authority in the Islamic community. The study proposes to interpret them in the framework of a particular Andalusī anxiety (“sentiment of precarity”), which saw the Umayyad dynasty and its caliphal credentials as central warrants of unity and Muslim permanence on the peninsula.

Between East and West: The Spoils of the Conquest as “Triggers of Memory” in Umayyad al-Andalus

Abstract This paper addresses literary evidence on the spoils of al-Andalus, their origin and final fate once transported to the East. These objects, identified as the Table of Solomon, the crowns of the Visigothic kings, a gemstone (yāqūt) that belonged to Ḏū l-Qarnayn, and a jug of pearls (qulayla), were not only associated with pre-Islamic and Islamic characters but also with objects displayed in major Islamic shrines in the East, such as the pearl Yatīma and a gemstone called Qulayla, displayed in the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and in the Great Mosque of Damascus, respectively. It is my contention that the accounts provided by Andalusi scholars such as Ibn Ḥabīb (d. 853) and Aḥmad al-Rāzī (d. 955) stressed the symbolic value of these spoils of conquest as signs of sovereignty and relics of the past and articulated an Umayyad discourse of legitimacy that highlighted their claim as rightful and pious caliphs, establishing a link between Past and Present and East and West.

Triangulating the Legitimacy of International Organizations: Beliefs, Discourses, and Actions

Abstract It is commonplace to say that international organizations (IOs) face a legitimacy crisis because they are perceived as undemocratic, unaccountable, and inefficient. Plausible as it may seem, this still must count as a conjecture. In this article, I review the rapidly growing literature that has explored this connection empirically. I follow three strands of research that approach the legitimacy of IOs from different angles. The first strand explores individual beliefs through observational and experimental surveys. The second strand analyzes public discourses, mapping arguments deployed to (de-)legitimize IOs. The third strand studies political action related to legitimacy, such as protest voting, street demonstrations, and withdrawal of member states from IOs. The empirical evidence shows that citizens expect fair procedures and balanced outcomes also in international politics; that legitimation discourses revolve around democratic standards and not only performance; and that institutions respond to protests. It is less clear, however, how the three dimensions of (de-)legitimation interact. I argue that we need to triangulate them more systematically to see the connections between beliefs, arguments, and political action at work. I suggest in-depth case studies, sensitive to the context and content of legitimation debates, that cover these three dimensions and their interactions simultaneously.

What Portuguese as a Foreign Language tells us about forms of address: an analysis of discourses of legitimation

This study examines how didactic materials of Portuguese as a Foreign Language (textbooks, grammars) describe forms of address in European Portuguese and the discourses they postulate to legitimise verbal addressive behaviour, in particular when it comes to the pronoun você. The main findings are: textbooks and grammars legitimise the usage of você whilst excluding vós, despite the fact that some acknowledge the ambiguous status of você as neither a T nor a V form; the complexity and instability of the system of forms of address means that they are present in textbooks primarily apropos of other linguistic content (grammatical items such as verb conjugations, speech acts such as requests, introductions, greeting), usually precluding the field of Portuguese as a Foreign Language from postulating clear, transparent explanations guiding foreign learners in how to address others.

Settler Colonialism, Illiberal Memory, and German-Canadian Hate Networks in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries

AbstractThis article is part of the collaborative research project Populist Publics. Housed at Carleton University (www.carleton.ca/populistpublics), it applies a data-driven analysis of online hate networks to trace how false framings of the historical past, what we call historical misinformation, circulates across platforms, shaping the politics of the center alongside the fringes. We cull large datasets from social media platforms and run them through a variety of different programs to help visualize how harmful speech and civilizational rhetoric about race, ethnicity, immigration, multiculturalism, gender equality, and LGBTQ+ rights are circulated by far-right groups across borders, noting specifically when and how they are taken up in the mainstream as legitimate discourse. Our interest is in how the distortion of the historical record is used to build alternative collective memories of the past so as to undermine minority rights and cultures in the present. We began with a basic question: To what extent is this actually new? As much as the atomized publics of our current day create ideal conditions for radical ideas to fester and circulate, it was obvious to us that we needed to look for linkages across time, drawing on interdisciplinary methods from the fields of history, media and communication, and data science to identify the tactics, strategies, and repertoires among such groups and individuals. By analyzing German-Canadian relations in particular, what follows is a first attempt to piece together some of these connections, with a focus on far-right hate groups—homegrown and imported—in the settler colonial project that is today's Canada.

Agents, audiences and peers: why international organizations diversify their legitimation discourse

Abstract In the face of public contestation, international organizations (IOs) invoke norms in their public communication to enhance relevant audiences' legitimacy beliefs. This article offers the first comprehensive analysis of what we term normative diversity in IOs' discursive legitimation by drawing on a novel dataset on norm-based justifications in more than 32,000 paragraphs of text published by 28 regional IOs between 1980 and 2019. We show that IOs vary strikingly in this respect: whereas some IOs invoke a narrow set of norms, often focused on economic welfare and functional capability, others engage a wide variety that includes security, national sovereignty, democracy or human rights. To explain this variance, we specify and test an explanatory framework that emphasizes IO audiences, agents and peer organizations as distinct origins. Our statistical analysis reveals that IOs diversify their discursive legitimation to 1) address heterogeneous audiences, 2) reconcile competing beliefs amongst agents themselves, and 3) integrate the legitimation of peer IOs. These findings indicate that IOs respond to the growing complexity of international cooperation in their discursive legitimation and may raise policy-makers' awareness of the difficulties in contemporary legitimation efforts.

Tracing the legitimacy of Artificial Intelligence: A longitudinal analysis of media discourse

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the most relevant technologies of our time. During the last decade, AI has made major technological breakthroughs most recently in the space of generative AI. This development is enabled by an increase in computing power, a decrease in its price, and the emergence of ubiquitous computing, resulting in vast amounts of storable and processable data. However, the diffusion of AI depends on its legitimacy in society, whereby legitimacy is understood as the congruence between organizational activities and their cultural environment. This study aims at understanding the process whereby AI is being (de)legitimated across key industries and over time. To capture and trace the process of legitimation, we rely on media coverage as a form of societal discourse reflecting the legitimation process of AI. We find that the legitimation process gathers momentum in the mid-2010s and the legitimacy of AI increases over time. Furthermore, we identify four types of legitimacy discourse, which integrate sentiment, specific media frames, and appeals of persuasion. Uncovering the four types of legitimacy discourse, we aim at supporting organizations seeking to understand the legitimacy of specific AI applications and how these legitimacy judgments can shift.

Exploring biographical case reconstructions of women with housing instability experience in South Brazil

How do women who have faced housing instability interpret and set up strategies to access housing? This article reflects on biographical narrative interviews conducted with women who have experienced compulsory housing removal and with women who were living in squats organized by social movements in the city of Porto Alegre, Southern Brazil. These interviews were further analysed through the use of the biographical case reconstruction method. This method aims to comprehend the interviewees’ past and present perspectives on experiences of struggle related to housing, and its connection to individual and family stories and broader socio-historical processes. The two cases discussed in this article show that to access formal housing through social policy, not rarely women confront socially and politically legitimate discourses and practices by adopting strategies beyond legal or formal means. The selected cases have demonstrated distinct perspectives on similar conditions, revealing that women who have faced housing instability can interpret and experience the consequent processes of temporariness and of changing geographical and social ties in different ways.

Post-performance: Pandemic Breach Experiments, Big Theatre Data, and the Ends of Theory

All became data during the pandemic. Lockdowns made manifest what had developed for some time: that theatre has become inextricably entangled with digital cultures, the performing arts being increasingly encountered as a growing stock of multimodal fragments, textual discourses and networked communications. And, it is argued, it is precisely this appearance of theatre as (big) data that might prove to be the game-changer post-pandemic, and that this game-changer might be solely an epistemological one: what is known about theatre, how that knowledge is organized, and who is involved in organizing this knowledge, are rapidly changing. Based on an exemplary analysis of the discourses of legitimation that compensated for the loss of presence in German theatres, and the associated imperative to innovate production, this article estimates the epistemological consequences of theatre returns as data to advocate for a reconceptualization of theatre beyond performance.

The Importance of Fostering and Funding Scientific Research, and its Relevance to Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry.

What do environmental contaminants and climate change have in common with the virus SARS-CoV-2 and the disease COVID-19? We argue that one common element is the wealth of basic and applied scientific research that provides the knowledge and tools essential in developing effective programs for addressing threats to humans and social-ecological systems. Research on various chemicals, including dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, resulted in regulatory action to protect environmental and human health. Moreover, decades of research on coronaviruses, mRNA, and recently SARS-CoV-2 enabled the rapid development of vaccines to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. In the present study, we explore the common elements of basic and applied scientific research breakthroughs that link chemicals, climate change, and SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 and describe how scientific information was applied for protecting human health and, more broadly, socio-ecological systems. We also offer a cautionary note on the misuse and mistrust of science that is not new in human history, but unfortunately is surging in modern times. Our goal was to illustrate the critical role of scientific research to society, and we argue that research must be intentionally fostered, better funded, and applied appropriately. To that end, we offer evidence that supports the importance of investing in scientific research and, where needed, ways to counter the spread of misinformation and disinformation that undermines legitimate discourse. Environ Toxicol Chem 2023;42:581-593. © 2022 SETAC.

Comparing the United States and China’s Foreign Aid to Education in Southeast Asia

Since the Second World War, foreign aid has evolved from an initial focus on economics and technology to a comprehensive focus on broader areas, including education. The comparison between the aid measures of the United States and China to Southeast Asia and the motives behind them help to gain a deeper understanding of their political, economic, and cultural influence over the region. The paper first offers updated statistics and analyzes the specific measures of the U.S. and China’s educational aid in Southeast Asia, including implementing basic, higher, and vocational education programs and providing scholarships. The paper then summarizes their aiding characteristics that the U.S. enjoys a long aiding history and a relatively mature aiding system, while China, as an emerging force in the foreign aid system, needs more practical experience. The paper finally compares their educational aid from descriptive characteristics, material outcomes, and motivations and determinants. The paper concludes that though there are variations in aid funding and outcomes between the United States and China, the divergence in specific measures is less pronounced. Both countries actively utilize foreign aid to increase their influence on recipient countries in Southeast Asia; however, the fundamental difference in their aid modalities lies in the norms and legitimate discourses.