Legitimacy Of Order Research Articles

Claiming Legitimacy: Gender and Identity Among U.S. Federal Regulatory Agency Leaders

While equity is a core organizational value in the public sector, women continue to be underrepresented in the upper echelons of public sector organizations. Existing explanations for why more women do not advance to top leadership positions consider factors such as human and social capital, gender stereotypes and beliefs about effective leadership, familial expectations, and work-life conflict. Such studies, largely based on private-sector organizations, focus on why women do not reach top leadership positions rather than trying to understand how, or why, some do. By contrast, this study examines how men and women engage in identity work to attain a top leadership role. This paper presents a preliminary analysis of confirmation hearing transcripts for 67 women and men who held top-level leadership positions in 12 U.S. federal regulatory agencies between 1983 and 2013. We use a grounded theory and narrative inquiry approach to examine how these nominees express their identity and signal their legitimacy in order to claim these leadership positions. Our preliminary analysis finds that while both men and women assert personal and professional qualifications to legitimize their claims to top leadership positions, they do so in different, possibly gendered, ways.

Legitimacy for Sustainability: A Case of A Strategy Change for An Oil and Gas Company

This study introduces and validates a measure of a company’s institutional profile for sustainability. It uses institutional theory as a lens to understand the factors that legitimize the adoption of renewable energy activities in an oil and gas company. The three institutional dimensions used in this study are regulative, normative and cognitive, which aimed to measure legitimacy in an oil and gas company under a sustainable change. Survey-based research was carried out among employees to test this theory. Moreover, structural equation modeling was used to test the model fit, validate the measures, and test the four hypotheses. The results showed that regulative and normative pillars play the main role in legitimating renewable energy practices in our case company. The findings provide researchers and companies with a valuable resource for exploring legitimacy in order to understand what makes companies legitimize new sustainable activities that are outside the companies’ core business.

Book Commentary on “Financial Citizenship: Experts, Publics, and the Politics of Central Banking” by Anne-Lise Riles

Abstract Financial Citizenship addresses the new era of central banking by focusing on the conflicts over central banking legitimacy in order to ultimately provide “a new theory and practice of legitimacy” for central bankers. In this article, I summarize first how Riles accounts for the “culture clash” between central bankers and the public, and how she aims to solve these tensions with the concept of financial citizenship. Second, I argue that the book has missed one of the main problematic dimension of contemporary central banking, which is the rise of private financial power. I also contend that the analysis of the “populist backlash” lacks empirical underpinning and that the concept of “financial citizenship” is unlikely to restore central banks’ legitimacy.

Adam Ferguson on the Perils of Popular Factions and Demagogues in a Roman Mirror

ABSTRACTFor the Scottish Enlightenment thinker Adam Ferguson (1723–1816) and many of his time, the history of the Roman Republic furnished the best case study for discussions of internal threats to a mixed system of government. These included factionalism, popular discontent, and the rise of demagogues seeking to concentrate power in their own hands. Ferguson has sometimes been interpreted as a ‘Machiavellian’ who celebrated the legacy of Rome and in particular the value of civic discord. By contrast, this article argues that he is better understood as a disciple of Montesquieu, who viewed Rome as an anachronistic and dangerous ideal in the eighteenth century, the era of the civilized and commercial monarchy. The greatest fear of Ferguson was military despotism, which he believed was the likely outcome of democratic chaos produced by the levelling instincts of the ‘common’ people and demagogues prepared to harness their discontent. In such a scenario, a legitimate order in a mixed government would be turned into a faction putting the constitutional balance at risk, undermining intermediary powers, and ending liberty for all.

Contextualizing Entrepreneurial Legitimacy: The Interplay of Internal and External Social Representations

Entrepreneurial legitimacy has been described as a trigger of entrepreneurial career choice and motivation, meaning that the propensity of an individual to engage in an entrepreneurial career increases with the social legitimacy of the career. However, more than a predictor of entrepreneurial success, entrepreneurial legitimacy is a complex social construct that determines the diffusion of entrepreneurial culture in different countries. This article aims to contribute to contextualizing entrepreneurial legitimacy by acknowledging its social genesis and dynamics, and by showing the variety of social interactions that it encompasses. The article examines the discursive strategies that entrepreneurs use to gain legitimacy among their audiences, and studies the representations and expectations attached to the figure of the entrepreneur by current and aspiring students in a Master’s program in Entrepreneurship. We gather the views of three social groups that actively engage in the social construction of entrepreneurial legitimacy in order to identify their convergent and divergent social representations of what it means to “be an entrepreneur.” Based on a questionnaire survey of 529 French participants and on 30 qualitative interviews, we present and compare the social representations of French entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship held by SME entrepreneurs and current and potential students in a Master’s in entrepreneurship program. We found that entrepreneurial legitimacy is a collective outcome of various social representations circulating in the public space that affects entrepreneurs’ ability to develop their businesses and their identities, along with their willingness and capacity to promote the entrepreneurial spirit in society.

International Law and Governance by Armed Groups: Caught in the Legitimacy Trap?

ABSTRACTEmpirical research shows that armed groups may provide governance services to civilians where they have established some form of control over a territory or population. At the same time, armed groups often pursue policies designed to enhance legitimacy in order to strengthen their claim to power. This gives rise to the question: Does the virtuous governance circle, to which this special volume is dedicated, also apply to governance efforts on the part of armed groups and which conditions must be fulfilled in order for the virtuous circle to operate? The article highlights that the contradictory demands of the multiple audiences of legitimacy with which armed groups need to communicate, create a dilemma that may interrupt the virtuous circle. Bringing together international legal and political science discourses on armed group governance, the article argues that the state-centric fabric of the international legal framework contributes significantly to this process.

Status of Narcotic Drugs in Islamic Jurisprudence and Foundations of Islamic Laws

Narcotic drugs have been a problem for human communities for a long time. The problem has become even worse since its use has become broad and people can provide it manually and by industrial equipment. Regarding the depth of its teachings, Islam has focused its main attention on human and his/her well-being both in this and the other worlds. Islam has acknowledged and valued wisdom more than any other schools of thoughts and has never admitted inflicting harm on such a precious gold, including the harmful effects of the narcotic drugs that influences on the wisdom and psych of humans; therefore, Islam has seriously antagonized and prohibited this act and it has been certainly known as a forbidden act by the Islam. This article studied jurisprudential and legal foundations of prohibition of narcotic drugs, which are included in cases Islam has prohibited. All the following concepts approve the above claims and the authors of this article have studied them: Unjust enrichment, avoiding from unclearness and wickedness, abstaining from any evil acts and narcotic drugs use as a leader of all evil deeds, and destroying oneself. Furthermore, expanding, extending and presenting the foundation of the prohibition of narcotic drugs can help authorities with their mission in campaigning against such an evil phenomenon. The authorities will be able to prioritize fighting against drugs, and finally eradicate them with peace of mind and easefully with accessing to legitimate authorization and religious orders based on the prohibition of the narcotic drugs in Islam.

Consecrating video games as cultural artifacts: Intellectual legitimation as a source of industry renewal

The video games industry, one of the fastest growing creative industries and now engaging larger proportions of populations as smartphones and tablets achieve wider use, seeks to enhance its institutional legitimacy in order to further exploit the new economic possibilities provided by, for example, portable digital media and their market penetration. This strategy is based on a form of consecration, a portrayal of video games as cultural artifacts, i.e., objects carrying a wider cultural and aesthetic significance than merely being a form of entertainment. In order to consecrate the video game, the industry relies on video game reviewers and journalists. This strategy, rooted in market opportunity recognition, challenges some of the conventional wisdom of the industry, the gamer community, and the inherited mainstream media view. As a consequence, institutional legitimacy is not easily acquired or earned since historical conditions and path-dependencies also matter in high-pace industries such as the video game industry.

Reflections on the ‘Administrative, Not Constitutional’ Character of EU Law in Times of Crisis

Abstract As is broadly recognized, the realm of administrative power greatly expanded over the course the twentieth century (particularly after 1945). This essay argues that this expansion, along with differential conceptions of legitimacy deeply bound up with it, are crucial to understanding not just the modern administrative state but also the nature of EU governance and the law governing its operation. Despite a dominant paradigm that seeks to understand EU governance in autonomously democratic and constitutional terms, the legitimacy of integration as a whole has remained primarily ‘administrative, not constitutional’. The EU’s normative power, like all power of an ultimately administrative character, finds its legitimacy primarily in legal, technocratic and functional claims. This is not to deny that European integration involves ‘politics’ or has profound ‘constitutional’ implications for its member states or citizens. The ‘administrative, not constitutional’ paradigm is meant only to stress that the ultimate grounding of EU rulemaking, enforcement, and adjudication comes closer to the sort of administrative legitimacy that is mediated through national executives, national courts, and national parliaments to a much greater extent than the dominant paradigm supposes. This is the reality that the ‘administrative, not constitutional’ paradigm on EU law has always sought to emphasize, and it is one that is particularly pertinent to the integration process in times of crisis. It is unsurprising, in these circumstances, that the public law of European integration has continually resorted to mechanisms of nationally mediated legitimacy in order to ‘borrow’ legitimacy from the national level. Unless and until Europeans begin to experience democracy and constitutionalism in supranational terms, the ‘administrative, not constitutional’ paradigm suggests that the EU’s judicial doctrines must be adjusted. The purpose should be to address the persistent disconnect between supranational regulatory power and its robust sources of democratic and constitutional legitimacy on the national level.

Reveal or Conceal? Signaling Strategies for Building Legitimacy in Cleantech Firms

New entrants in technology-intense industries are in a race to build legitimacy in order to compete with established players. Legitimacy has been identified as a driver of venture survival and growth; it helps mitigate third-party uncertainty and so facilitates access to resources, engagement with customers and other stakeholders. Nevertheless, we know little about how legitimacy is built and how new entrants build legitimacy in complex technology-intensive industries. In this research we explore how Norwegian cleantech firms use signaling and strategic actions to build legitimacy. We analyze five cases while investigating their actions in different phases of the venture’s evolution. The results suggest that, contrary to signaling theory expectations, young clean-tech firms do not always build legitimacy by conveying information on their strengths. Instead, we observe that they use signaling strategies to address the specific concerns of different stakeholders. This is very much contingent upon the evolutionary stage of the venture and the firm’s current weaknesses.

UN's Interventions on the Constitution-Making Process in Political Transition States: The Role of the UN in the Rescue of the Democratic Order (Introduction)

The present work aimed at verifying the institutional ability of United Nations (UN) to contribute to the generation of a legitimate order in those countries passing through stages of redemocratization from the perspective how it undertakes the constitution-making process. The research was made from a path, wich comprises the democracy, the democratization, the analysis of transitional constitutionalism, transformative constitutionalism and democratic constitutionalism, and the theoretical and empirical framework in the field of consolidating democracy and creation of a constitution by UN view. Determined these assumptions, the theoretical dimension in the constitution-making process that the UN can promote is, in theory, a unique building architecture, with capability to social and human development support. This dimension aligns itself with theoretical and abstract concepts of the democratic, transformative and transitional constitutionalisms, once it invests in the potential of modifying a policy of segregation status for the implementation of an evolutionary social reality scenario in which it occurs. It is noticed that the displacement of the concepts, created by the UN to a country that is going through a political transition process, requires primarily a tune with the reality in which they focus, once that the research revealed a high potential to generate a illegitimate constitutional charter. Finally, transition constitutionalism and transformative constitutionalism are able to find answers to the forging of a legitimate and democratic constitution, because they are enablers of the formation of the collective will. Additionally, it points out for legitimization of further prognosis of fundamental charter for a finely tuned constitutional practice with the concept of democratic constitutionalism of Post and Siegel.

Bureaucratic governance, family economies and the 1930s NSW teachers’ marriage bar, Australia

ABSTRACTThis paper reports the findings of an analysis of a collection of Statutory Declaration forms completed by teachers seeking exemption from dismissal under the NSW Married Women (Lecturers and Teachers) Act (1932–1947). Most sought exemption on hardship grounds, recording details of their husbands’ inability or unwillingness to provide them with ‘adequate’ support. The collection offers insight into the gendered finances of a particular group during the 1930s Depression, revealing some complex interdependencies—such as the need to support extended kin—and offering insights into the role of the state in the making of the family as a social and economic unit. The bureaucratic apparatus of regulation and standardised paperwork operated materially and discursively to distinguish the exceptional (salaried married women) from the more desirable or legitimate order of gendered responsibilities (financially dependent wives). Finally, the forms are strikingly silent about the professional teaching work of the women.

“Inter-National” Habermas: Contestation and Understanding under Conditions of Diversity

“Inter-National” Habermas: Contestation and Understanding under Conditions of Diversity

Um Sentido para a Legitimidade do Direito: consciência, ação e interação

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/2177-7055.2016v37n73p113O presente artigo pretende fazer uma releitura dos pressupostos de validade do direito tomando como campo de pesquisa o mundo da vida interpretado como esfera em que suscitam os discursos, os diálogos interpelativos e, em última instância, a esfera do exercício democrático. Diante das questões fenomenológicas de conteúdo político e econômico, que de algum modo atingem os direitos fundamentais, a validade do direito assume relevância quando as discussões ligadas aos direitos fundamentais do homem, sua dignidade e reconhecimento e sua compreensão do Estado Democrático de Direito, são rediscutidas, considerando, sobretudo, situações paradoxais que apontam pessoas, grupos e etnias que se encontram esquecidas pela sociedade. Este esboço é suficiente para levantar uma típica questão das sociedades modernas: como estabilizar, na perspectiva própria dos atores, a validade de uma ordem social legítima do ponto de vista do direito diante do multiculturalismo nacional e global?

Communication strategies employed by rare disease patient organizations in Spain.

The current study focuses on communication strategies employed by rare disease patient organizations. The aims of these organizations are: educate and inform the public about rare diseases, raise awareness of the problems related to rare diseases, and achieve social legitimacy in order give visibility to their demands. We analyzed the portrayal of rare disease and patient organizations by Spain's major media organizations in terms of circulation and viewership - the press (El País, El Mundo, La Vanguardia,ABC and El Periódico), radio (CadenaSer, Onda Cero, Cope and RNE), and television (Telecinco, Antena 3, La 1, La Sexta, Cuatro) -between 2012 and 2014.We then carried out a descriptive analysis of communication activities performed via the World Wide Web and social networks by 143 national organizations. Finally, we conducted a telephone questionnaire of a representative sample of 90 organizations in order to explore the association between media presence and funding and public image. The triangulation of quantitative and qualitative methods allowed us to meet the study's objectives. Increased visibility of the organizations afforded by an increase in the coverage of the topic by the medialed to an increase in membership - but not in donations - and increased awareness of these diseases.

Book Review: Climate Change, Capitalism, and Corporations. Processes of Creative Self-Destruction by Christopher Wright and Daniel Nyberg

Christopher Wright and Daniel Nyberg Climate Change, Capitalism, and Corporations. Processes of Creative Self-Destruction, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2015; 254 pp. 9781107435131, 21.99 [pounds sterling] (pbk). In December 2015 world leaders gathered to proclaim climate change was a threat that they were (finally) going to do something about. After two weeks of speeches and haggling, the deal was done, the world saved. Never mind that the text was silent on fossil fuels, and that in the following week the UK government expanded fracking, the US rescinded a forty year old ban on oil exports and Australia gave new permits for coal mines. Those are minor pesky details; corporate capitalism has the best interests of everyone--rich, poor, black, white, the unborn generations to come, other species--at heart. I jest, of course. Gallows humour is all one can muster after reading this excellent and alarming book, which clearly lays out the processes of creative self-destruction and the myths we choose to believe and propagate. The authors start as they mean to continue --on page one they state We are destroying ourselves. It is as simple as that. Economic growth and the exploitation of nature have long gone hand--in-hand, but they now constitute the most ill-fated of bedfellows. In line with the work of Naomi Klein (2014) (whom Wright interviewed on her recent Australian tour) they argue that 'the particular neoliberal variant of late capitalism that now dominates the global economy places humanity at a strategic disadvantage in responding to the threat of climate change' (p. 4), given its demand for ever-higher levels consumption. Wright and Nyberg are not however, misty-eyed hippies dreaming for a return to social democracy of the post-war period, but rather business professors with many years of research into the corporate world under their belts. Through nine chapters they set out their case, which involves 'revoking Schumpeter's concept of 'creative destruction' as a source of economic and social dynamism' and instead characterising 'the link between economic growth, corporate innovation, and environmental destruction as a process of 'creative self-destruction' in which economic expansion relies on the continued exploitation of natural resources' (p. 6). They give clear descriptions of climate change, corporate capitalism, the successful incorporation of mainstream environmental critique in the 80s and 90s via the win-win rhetoric of 'ecological modernisation' through the success of corporate political activity (coalition-building and doubt-mongering), to the present impasse. The book has many strengths. Its third chapter, on 'Climate change and the corporate construction of risk' would be a useful reading for undergraduates, as would the fifth chapter on 'justification, compromise and corruption, which uses the work of Boltanski and Thevenot (2006) on 'legitimate orders of worth' around to great effect. The same could be said of the eighth chapter, which skewers three myths--corporate environmentalism, corporate citizenship and corporate omnipotence. The empirical meat of the book, based on extensive interviews with 'sustainability managers' in large Australian corporations, is fascinating. The authors illustrate their main theoretical points, while also letting people speak for themselves. …

The Search is on for Coherent Performance Measurement in Healthcare Organizations. Has Quebec Reached a Crossroads?

This research looks back at a 10-year period (2004-2014) to understand the development and outlook for healthcare organization performance measurement in the Quebec healthcare system, in an attempt to objectivize relationships within the configuration of its principal institutional actors. This is a qualitative study combining the use of official publications and fieldwork based on 13 semi-directed interviews, conducted in 2014, with informers in key performance measurement positions within the Quebec healthcare system. Performance measurement has generated tensions, both internally between different branches of the Department of Health and externally against a strong coalition of external institutional actors, which were defending a shared homogeneous vision of performance. Four major types of political power plays, owing to the power struggles around performance models and indicators, converged around the same implicit issue of the need to attain greater legitimacy in order to impose an authoritative frame of reference.

STATE DILEMMAS IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD ORDER

The problems of the world order is often seen through the interaction of the leading centers of power. Nevertheless there is another approach, locating actorhood in the state, which forms the world order. State acts in international affairs, it has the right of legitimate violence, it also has the ability to concentrate the economic and human resources. Obviously, the nature of the state as part of the international system has an effect on the system itself, defining its key parameters. From that point of view, some questions arise: what happens to the state? What is the effect of its transformation on the contemporary world order? Why the state is changing? What hierarchy of states exists in the contemporary world order? The author proceed from the following theses. First, the nation state is no longer a universal formula of nation building. However, there is no balance between two key foundations of a legitimate order - fairness and efficiency. Second, the current world order is a mosaic of fundamentally different states. Each state is trying to find a formula for the combination of a fairness and efficiency. These formulas do not always coincide with each other, and it underlays the stability in international relations. Third, a small group of major powers still play the key role in the world order. The issue of sovereignty of many countries remains open. World order, as well as a state, is characterized by imbalance between equity and efficiency. The awaited harmony of these two principles may be spoofed again the triumph of efficiency oover justice -maintenance of order through the balance of power and a rigid hierarchy.

Toward thick legitimacy: Creating a web of legitimacy for agroecology

AbstractLegitimacy is at the heart of knowledge politics surrounding agriculture and food. When people accept industrial food practices as credible and authoritative, they are consenting to their use and existence. With their thick legitimacy, industrial food systems paralyze the growth of alternative agricultures, including agroecology. Questions of how alternative agricultures can attain their own thick legitimacy in order to compete with, and displace, that of industrial food have not yet attracted much scrutiny. We show that both agroecological and scientific legitimacy grow out of a web of legitimation processes in the scientific, policy, political, legal, practice, and civic arenas. Crucially, legitimation often comes through meeting what we call ‘credibility tests’. Agroecologists can learn to navigate these co-constituted, multiple bases of legitimacy by paying attention to how credibility tests are currently being set in each arena, and beginning to recalibrate these tests to open more room for agroecology. Using a schematic of three non-exclusive pathways, we explore some possible practical interventions that agroecologists and other advocates of alternative agricultures could take. These pathways include: leveraging, while also reshaping, the existing standards and practices of science; extending influence into policy, legal, practical, and civic arenas; and centering attention on the ethical legitimacy of food systems. We conclude that agroecologists can benefit from considering how to build legitimacy for their work.

State Theory and Andean Politics: New Approaches to the Study of Rule eds. by Christopher Krupa and David Nugent

Reviewed by: State Theory and Andean Politics: New Approaches to the Study of Rule eds. by Christopher Krupa and David Nugent Bret Gustafson Christopher Krupa and David Nugent, eds. State Theory and Andean Politics: New Approaches to the Study of Rule. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. 336 pp. State Theory and Andean Politics is a welcome contribution to the ethnography of historical and contemporary processes of state formation in the Andes. Cast as a critique of the “state realism” that “affords the state the status of an objective, empirical fact” (9), the editors offer three central points: 1) returning to Abrams (1988), that the “state” effect does not reflect a unified thing, but should be studied critically as an assemblage of self-naturalizing representational practices aimed at “legitimating the illegitimate” (12); 2) that these practices unfold through specific projects and processes of aggregation (that connect and unify otherwise unconnected actors and objects) and projection (through which everyday encounters are conjured into domains of power that transcend the immediate); and 3) that state affects play a key role in the state effect, through the “affective relationships” that people maintain with the state (15). Following prior anthropologies of the state and state formation, the authors deploy ethnographic and historical method to explore these themes in “off-centered” sites. Section 1, with chapters by María Clemencia Ramírez, Nicole Fabricant, and Lesley Gill, offers rich ethnographic engagement with the (un)making of the state in contexts of political conflict. Here we see that the critique of state realism does not imply the dismissal of empirical facts, but rather entails an empirical unpacking of modalities of violence and the exercise of economic power that underlie the façade of state-ness in Colombia and Bolivia. In Colombia, as Gill and Ramírez detail, paramilitaries, oil companies, unions, and grassroots movements vie—on unequal terrain usually dominated by men with guns—for the definition and maintenance of (il) [End Page 607] legitimate order. In Bolivia, the collapse of the neoliberal state paved the way for new affect-laden hopes for a more progressive state order. Against this hopefulness, regional elites, backed by local and transnational capital, nurtured their own affective urges. These state affects combined a racist disgust with Indianness and a desire for a whiter political order. In both countries, state effects unfolded through regional particularities situated in quite real contests waged by bodies, money, and bullets. Section 2 explores “off-centered” morphologies of the Ecuadoran state. Chris Krupa examines how the attempt to tax is a core modality of state-making, an “outreach” device that is a key “performative technology of rule” (99). Taxation confronts varied modes of resistance and distinctly positioned sentiments and understandings of the state. Outcomes of taxation practices reveal the durability of the state idea as a shared terrain of ongoing struggle between differently positioned actors. Equally durable are underlying relations of power rooted in colonial hierarchies of race, property, and class. Kim Clark and Mercedes Prieto follow more historical tacks. Clark examines the deployment of public health initiatives in highland Ecuador, arguing that new administrative practices served to constitute a state “effect” even as these were contested and negotiated on the ground. Prieto uses a similar method to explore how state functionaries imagined rural “problems” through their own imaginaries about the nature of indigenous women. In turn, functionaries deployed policies built on these illusions, making the imagined Indian woman and family into a vehicle for “public incursion” into indigenous communities. Prieto does a compelling job of examining the intersections of race and sexuality—and the delusions and imaginaries that these categories mobilize in mestizo and criollo functionaries—that are at the heart of historical and contemporary modalities of rule in the Andes. Section 3 offers an examination of the role of affect and emotion, or, as it were, delusion and suspicion, in state-making practice. David Nugent, also taking a historical turn, details core contradictions at the heart of statecraft in mid-20th century Peru. State efforts at labor conscription failed because of empirical demographic realities of labor shortage. Yet these failures were explained away through largely imaginary stories about Indians, corruption, and APRA terrorism. A...