Legitimation Strategies Research Articles

G-group legitimacy in global governance: rightful membership of rising powers?

The shift in global policymaking from the Group of Seven (G7) to the Group of Twenty (G20) is widely seen to reflect the rise to power of emerging markets in the South. It begs the question, though, whether the G20 has the right membership to legitimately govern the global economy. This paper applies a novel framework linking rightful membership to global governance institutions’ roles to address this question. A longitudinal analysis of (1) financial and economic indicators of G-group members; (2) their global ranking on these indicators; and (3) the position of G-group members in technical forums of financial governance demonstrates that the shift to the G20 was necessary to maintain rightful membership given the declining share of G7 members in the global economy. However, rightful membership as a source of legitimacy varies across G-group roles and diffuses across roles and across global governance institutions. These new insights demonstrate the added value of conceptualising rightful membership in relation to different roles of global governance institutions. The analytical framework proposed in this paper allows for better insights into the legitimation strategies and public legitimacy perceptions of global governance institutions, and points to interesting new hypotheses with respect to the legitimacy of global governance institutions.

Controlling the Opposition Abroad: Cambodia's Extraterritorial Activities in Long Beach, California

This article presents findings from research conducted in Long Beach, California on the history, motives, and functions of the Cambodian People's Party Youth Organization (CPPYO), a network of Cambodians outside the country who support Cambodia's long-time ruling party, the Cambodian People's Party (CPP). O cially, the CPPYO, headed by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen's son, Hun Manet, was created to promote the current government and to provide political options for Cambodians living abroad. However, many Cambodians in the Long Beach area see the CPP's presence in the US as invasive and as a threat to their autonomy. To understand how the CPPYO functions in Long Beach, we make use of Gerschewski's three pillars of authoritarian stability and Glasius' framework for identifying extraterritorial authoritarian practices. We conclude that the CPPYO is primarily a strategy for repressing opposition abroad, but that it also contributes to the ruling party's legitimacy through the participation of Long Beach Cambodian Americans, who accept the CPP's authoritarian control as a condition for participating in Cambodia's socioeconomic system. This study contributes to a growing body of research interested in identifying and interconnecting the various legitimation processes, strategies, and practices developed by autocracies to stabilize rule at home and abroad.

Situating Food Industry Influence: Governance Norms and Economic Order Comment on "'Part of the Solution': Food Corporation Strategies for Regulatory Capture and Legitimacy".

Lacy-Nichols and Williams provide important new insights into the ongoing contest over policy space and consumer behavior. I attempt to situate these insights in relation to government mandates and governance norms and situate these norms and mandates in the prevailing economic order. This approach is necessary to understand how corporate practices persist and why governments are receptive to the approaches outlined in the analysis conducted by Lacy-Nichols and Williams. This approach can help explain why governments are often receptive to corporations positioning themselves as 'part of the solution'. Governments want strong economies and big food positions itself as contributor to this end. The point I attempt to articulate is that we often conceive of corporate power as power over, while I suggest that corporate power is rather power within and through a system that is oriented towards profits and economic growth.

Pursuing sustainability development goals through adopting gender equality: Women representation in leadership positions of emerging market multinationals

AbstractThis study examines the competitive disadvantages rationale behind the pursuing of Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) by emerging market multinational corporations (EM‐MNCs) in foreign markets. We argue that EM‐MNCs may pursue gender equality goal in host markets as a legitimation strategy to offset their strategic disadvantages inherited from the home markets. Based on a sample of foreign subsidiaries from 10 major emerging countries from 2010 to 2020, this study finds strong evidence demonstrating that the institutional quality of home markets exerts a positive effect on the representation of women in leadership positions of EM‐MNCs. Additional analyses demonstrate that international experience and institutional ownership further magnify this effect.

Corpus-assisted analysis of legitimation strategies in government social media communication

When governments introduce controversial policies that many citizens disapprove of, officeholders increasingly use discursive legitimation strategies in their public communication to ward off blame. In this paper, we contribute to the study of blame avoidance in government social media communication by exploring how corpus-assisted discourse analysis helps to identify three types of common legitimations: self-defensive appeals to (1) personal authority of policymakers, (2) impersonal authority of rules or documents and (3) goals or effects of policies. We use a specialised corpus of tweets by the Brexit department of the British government (42,618 words) which we analyse both qualitatively and quantitatively. We demonstrate how the analysis of lexical bundles that characterise each type of legitimation might provide a new avenue for identifying the presence, characteristics and uses of these legitimations in larger datasets.

Do codes of conduct really mean a change in corporate practices with regard to human rights? Evidence from the largest garment companies worldwide

ABSTRACT Media coverage of abuse and human rights violations throughout global corporations’ value chains has focused stakeholders’ attention on these events leading global corporations to insert the human rights agenda into their social responsibility politics. Using media agenda setting theory and legitimacy theory, this paper focuses on the five largest garment companies worldwide (namely, Inditex, Primark, H&M, Gap Inc., and Fast Retailing) which between 2007 and 2018 were involved in scandals due to human rights violations in their supply factories in other countries and analyses how they have responded to the media coverage on these events to regain legitimacy. We examine the extent to which the selected companies’ codes of conduct address human rights issues and whether their adoption really meant a change in corporate practices. The analysis shows that almost all codes address all adverse human rights impacts that have been the subject of attention by the media. However, they were not reflected in the analysed companies’ actual behaviour. Therefore, the adoption of a code of conduct by such companies can be considered a legitimation strategy aimed at turning stakeholders’ perception and counteracting adverse media coverage.

Critical Cognitive Interpretation of The Time Machine from the Perspective of Proximization Theory

As a product of cognitive linguistics and critical discourse analysis, proximization theory is one of the emerging research directions in the field of linguistics. Most of the current research using this theory focuses on political conflict topics, and there are fewer studies using it for analysis of literary works. The present study examines The Time Machine from the perspective of proximization theory (PT) to unveil the legitimation strategies of science fiction qualitatively and quantitatively. The objectives are to enrich the explanation power of this theory and analyze how it can avail the expression and description of the implicit theme of science fiction. We apply CLAWS to annotate the whole novel, search and calculate the frequency of each lexico-grammatical item through AntConc 3.5.9, and then analyze the novella through proximization theory in spatial, temporal, and axiological dimensions. Findings show that: spatially, the author subsumes the most salient Time Traveler to the camp of IDC, and with the first-person narrator and sense verbs, the whole picture of decay can make the readers horribly feel on the spot in person toward a dim human destiny; temporally, Wells prefers the past-present concept shift than the future-present. The former is to legitimize his critique of over-reliance on science and severe class exploitation, and the latter is to make predictions of a future society that may face decay. The use of contrasting construal makes the novel's plot more mysterious, stimulates the reader's interest, and paves the way for the revelation of the theme; axiologically, considering that England put science and industrial development on the pedestal at that time and that prevailing evolution theory puts people in a period of blind optimism, Wells cautions against the trap of utopia and the swamp of materialism with emphasis on negative ideologies and values of ODC. The analysis of literary works from the perspective of PT is conducive to the visualization of the implicit themes expressed in the novel, full of absurdity and exaggeration with data support, highlighting the author's humanistic concern and broadening the research object of proximization theory.

Legitimation Strategies in Political Rhetoric: Examples From Presidential Speeches on Covid-19

Heads of states are currently focusing on containing the spread of the coronavirus pandemic-commonly called Covid-19, and grappling with a series of strategies for addressing the pandemic. Political discourse concerning Covid-19 can be examined to better understand the ideology of the speaker and its impact on the audience. In this paper, we use Van Leeuwen’s (2007) and Van Leeuwen and Wodak’s (1999) legitimation strategies that social actors use to justify courses of action/political decisions in a critical discourse analysis approach. Drawing on presidential speeches specifically made by Donald Trump (USA) and Xi Jinping (China), this paper elucidates how legitimation strategies are linguistically constituted and fashioned to justify the leaders’ particular policy decisions and actions for controlling and containing the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, thus achieving their political goals.

Worldly Saviors and Imperial Authority in Medieval Chinese Buddhism by April D. Hughes

Reviewed by: Worldly Saviors and Imperial Authority in Medieval Chinese Buddhism by April D. Hughes Yu Xuan Tay April D. Hughes, Worldly Saviors and Imperial Authority in Medieval Chinese Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2021. xiii, 181 pp. US$148.00 (pdf). ISBN 978-0-824-88870-1 An essential aspect of imperial authority in premodern China was providing sufficient legitimation for its political rule over culturally and socially diverse regions. The essen-tialized understanding of such political legitimation revolves primarily around the concept of the “Mandate of Heaven.”1 However, scholars in the field for the past few decades have complicated this simplistic portrayal by analyzing a multitude of different legitimation strategies employed by various rulers according to their respective social milieu.2 April D. Hughes’s first book, revised from her doctoral dissertation, titled Worldly Saviors and Imperial Authority in Medieval Chinese Buddhism, delves into a distinct set of approaches to political legitimation during the Sui and early Tang periods. Her book analyzes the historical development and popularization of the image of “worldly saviors.” Emperor Wen (Wendi 文帝) of Sui and emperor Wu Zhao 武曌 (also known as Empress Wu Zetian 武則天) of Zhou both utilized this image to legitimize their rule.3 Hughes begins her book in the introductory chapter by surveying a few of the legitimization strategies undertaken by some Chinese rulers. This brief survey includes claiming the “Mandate of Heaven,” beckoning to the concept of “Great Peace,” or taip-ing 太平, or styling themselves together with their state as the successor to the previous unified Han empire (p. 4). Hughes then introduces the concept of “worldly saviors,” who are beings that appear in this current world, destined to save everyone by quelling chaos and dispensing proper rule over their territory (pp. 4–5). This concept had to be underlaid by a Buddhist soteriological understanding of how the Buddha’s teaching or dharma will inevitably deteriorate throughout time, also known as the age of the Final Dharma or mofa 末法. Therefore, one or many “worldly saviors” are expected to rise during such a [End Page 149] trying time and create a terrestrial utopia for the believers, protecting them from a general apocalypse and the wrath of the unfaithful. Hughes specifically notes that this concept of “worldly saviors” also heavily overlaps with canonical Buddhist concepts such as the far future arrival of the next Buddha, Maitreya, and the pious Buddhist universal king known as the “Wheel-Turning King” or cakravartin, the zhuanlun wang 轉輪王. The difference lies in the fact that these canonical concepts usually espouse a singular identity of either a Buddha or a sovereign, whereas a “worldly savior” is both a Buddha and a sovereign simultaneously (pp. 8–7). It is, however, important to note that some of these “worldly saviors” were not strictly limited to a “Buddhist” portrayal, but were also characterized as a “Daoist” savior such as a “True Lord” or zhenjun 真君. Hughes thus argues that such a concept of “worldly saviors” primarily derived from apocalyptic extracanonical scriptures, and served as a political legitimation for Chinese rulers. The first chapter of the book is a general survey of the scriptures that contain figures that satisfy the concept of a “worldly savior.” Some of these saviors, such as Maitreya Buddha 彌勒佛 and Prince Moonlight 月光童子, commanded supernatural, moral, and political power, capable of saving the faithful from apocalypses and politically ruling these faithful in utopias that could one day exist in this material world. A pertinent feature of these utopias is that they imagine an idealized society that affirms proper social hierarchy and gender roles, one that would have been unfamiliar to readers who lived during the fifth and sixth centuries CE (p. 32). The utopias preached by these scriptures must have resonated with contemporary readers. Thus in the second chapter, Hughes further asserts that numerous monastic rebellions within that same period drew their justification and mass support from similar apocalyptic scriptures. Some rebel leaders styled their names in an apparent reference to the “worldly saviors” in these apocalyptic scriptures, such as “Luminous King of Dharma” or mingfawang 明法王 (pp. 46–47). At the same time, some rebel leaders used the expected imminent arrival of Maitreya Buddha as a...

Framing the Localization of the Global Agendas: Orchestrating the Political Agency of Cities Within the Local-Global Nexus

The article delves into the legitimation strategies enacted by city networks to raise their profile within the state-centric global governance architecture, contributing to the body of literature on the rising transnational dynamism of cities from the unexplored angle of legitimacy. It offers a case study on the largest of these networks, United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG). Building on interpretive policy analysis, the article identifies in the social construction of the frame of the localization of the UN global agendas a narrative that organizes the networked orchestration of the political agency of cities in the global urban age. Through a trans-scalar storyline that connects the local and global scale, UCLG frames the international consensus and common language underpinning the multilateral global agendas as a political opportunity to the benefit of its members.

The Foundations of Corporate Strategies Comment on "'Part of the Solution': Food Corporation Strategies for Regulatory Capture and Legitimacy".

The "Part of the Solution" article describes how the food industry has evolved its strategies to respond to critics and government regulation by co-option and appeasement to create a less hostile environment. Rather than focusing research on single industries it would be more efficient and productive to focus on corporate political activities (CPAs) that directly influence democratic institutions and processes having authority over laws, policy, rules and regulations that govern industry. The most influential and direct CPA are election campaign donations, lobbying, and the reverse revolving door (RRD). In the United States those CPA flow from rights of corporations that underlie all industry strategies. The US history of how corporations obtained their rights is described, and research about the affirmative effects of those three CPA is summarized. Health research is needed about those CPA and their effects on health law, policy and regulation in the United States and other nations.

Critical Cognitive Interpretation of The Time Machine from the Perspective of Proximization Theory

As a product of cognitive linguistics and critical discourse analysis, proximization theory is one of the emerging research directions in the field of linguistics. Most of the current research using this theory focuses on political conflict topics, and there are fewer studies using it for analysis of literary works. The present study examines The Time Machine from the perspective of proximization theory (PT) to unveil the legitimation strategies of science fiction qualitatively and quantitatively. The objectives are to enrich the explanation power of this theory and analyze how can it avail the expression and description of the implicit theme of science fisction. We apply CLAWS to annotate the whole novel, search and calculate the frequency of each lexico-grammatical item through AntConc 3.5.9, and then analyze the novella through proximization theory in spatial, temporal and axiological dimensions. Findings show that: spatially, the author subsumes the most salient Time Traveler to the camp of IDC, and with the first-person narrator and sense verbs, the whole picture of decay can make the readers horribly feel on the spot in person toward a dim human destiny; temporally, Wells prefers the past-present concept shift than the future-present. The former is to legitimize his critique of over-reliance on science and severe class exploitation, and the latter is to make predictions of a future society that may face decay. The use of contrasting construal makes the novel’s plot more mysterious, stimulates the reader’s interest, and paves the way for the revelation of the theme; axiologically, considering that England put science and industrial development on the pedestal at that time and that prevailing evolution theory puts people in a period of blind optimism, Wells cautions against the trap of utopia and the swamp of materialism with emphasis on negative ideologies and values of ODC. The analysis of literary works from the perspective of PT is conducive to the visualization of the implicit themes expressed in the novel, full of absurdity and exaggeration with data support, highlighting the author’s humanistic concern and broadening the research object of proximization theory.

Using Mixed Methods Integration to Evaluate the Structure of Help-Seeking Barriers Scale: A Survivor-Centered Approach.

Despite the high prevalence of adverse health and trauma-related outcomes associated with intimate partner violence (IPV), help-seeking and service utilization among survivors is low. This study is part of a larger mixed-methods and survivor-centered validation study on the Icelandic Barriers to Help-Seeking for Trauma (BHS-TR) scale, a new barriers measure focused on trauma recovery. A mixed-methods legitimation strategy of integration was employed to evaluate the BHS-TR structure in samples of IPV survivors. The merging of qualitative (n = 17) and quantitative (n = 137) data through a joint display analysis revealed mainly complementarity findings, strengthening the scale’s overall trustworthiness and validity evidence. Divergent findings involved items about mistrust, perceived rejection, stigmatization, fearing vulnerability, and safeguarding efforts that were significant help-seeking barriers in the survivors’ narratives, whereas factor analysis indicated their removal. These BHS-TR items were critically evaluated in an iterative spiraling process that supported the barriers’ influence, illuminated core issues, and guided potential refinements. This work contributes to the growing field of mixed methods instrument validation placing equal status on qualitative and quantitative methods and emphasizing integration to provide more complete insights. Moreover, the study’s findings highlight the added value of further exploring divergence between two sets of data and the importance of giving attention to the voices of the target population throughout the validation process.

Legitimation in government social media communication: the case of the Brexit department

ABSTRACT When governments introduce controversial policies or face a risk of policy failure, officeholders try to avoid blame and justify their decisions by using various legitimation strategies. This paper focuses on the ways in which legitimations are expressed in government social media communication, using the Twitter posts of the British government’s Brexit department as an example. We show how governments may seek legitimacy by appealing to (1) the personal authority of individual policymakers, (2) the collective authority of (political) organisations, (3) the impersonal authority of rules or documents, (4) the goals or effects of government policy, (5) ‘the will of the people’, and (6) time pressure. The results suggest that official legitimations in social media posts tend to rely more on references to authority and shared values rather than presentation of evidence and sound arguments.

Social value of bird conservation on private forest lands in Pennsylvania, USA

Global biodiversity is in decline due to factors such as land-use change, pollution, and climate change. Birds contribute to biodiversity in several ways; one way, in particular, is by cultivating public support for habitat conservation by being a socially desirable category of wildlife. To understand the social value of bird conservation on private forest lands in Pennsylvania, a statewide web survey was used containing psychometric scales and choice experiment questions (n = 690). The data collected was used to identify important attitudinal positions and estimate statewide demand for bird conservation programs on private lands under different policy options. Mean household WTP was estimated to be $11.83 annually, and statewide demand was estimated to exceed $47 million annually. Nonuse and cultural values underpinned much of the utility associated with the proposed habitat conservation programs. Findings suggest investment in both public education and bird conservation on private lands is a legitimate strategy for mitigating biodiversity loss and enhancing social welfare.

Profiles of Community Violence Exposure, Moral Disengagement, and Bullying Perpetration: Evidence from a Sample of Italian Adolescents.

According to the Pathologic Adaptation Model of community violence exposure, repeated experiences of violence within the community lead youth to accept violence as a normative and legitimate strategy to cope with conflict, thus increasing their involvement in aggressive behaviors. This hypothesis has been under-investigated with reference to bullying at school. Using a person-centered analytical approach (latent profile analysis), this study examines the mediating role of moral disengagement as a type of normalizing cognition about violence, in the relationship between profiles of community violence exposure and perpetration of bullying. Eight hundred and two adolescents (11-18years; 43.4% girls) from two different urban and societal contexts in Italy (Milan vs. Naples) participated in the study. Four profiles of exposure to community violence emerged. Context site and age influenced belonging to the four profiles. Being moderately exposed to violence, both as a victim and as a witness, was significantly associated with higher levels of moral disengagement and bullying perpetration. Being exposed as a witness and as a victim, and being exposed only as a witness were associated with bullying perpetration via the increase of moral disengagement. These findings support the Pathologic Adaptation Model and indicate that adolescents who experience higher levels of community violence, as a witness or both as a witness and a victim, are more likely to develop morally disengaged beliefs about violence, which in turn would increase the likelihood to perpetrate bullying. Results are also discussed in the context of social diversity.

The state of green energy transition in regional industrial centres—The case study of Székesfehérvár

Abstract Industrial parks may be high pollutants of the local environment, but also engines of regional development, employment, and economic value added. To make them more sustainable, regional planning often purports to promote a transition to a greener approach, but in reality, many green measures oppose business logic and profitability, while those companies that do invest in sustainable solutions do so without having a clear strategy. This complicated setup is to be explored and modelled in this article which is focused on a remarkable area, the urban region of Székesfehérvár, an industrial city in Hungary having an impressive economic development and hosting significant domestic and international companies. The disharmony between greening policies, intentions and actions is observable in Székesfehérvár, despite the considerable local and regional potentials of renewable energy resources. Findings indicate that systemic thinking and future-oriented decision making will be necessary to achieve true sustainability, which also requires a mutually proactive attitude and the cooperation of different sectors. A legitimate strategy aiming at greening the local and regional economy (with renewable energy concerns), implemented by both public and business actors can be the key element of a successful transition. This strategy needs to be stimulated by local governance.

Capital city boosterism as policy legitimation: A discursive perspective of Egypt's New Administrative Capital

This article examines the legitimation of capital city relocation from a discursive perspective. It specifically focuses on how policymakers in developing countries often use boosters' language to legitimize the relocation of capital city functions. Drawing on critical discourse analysis as a theoretical frame and Egypt as a case, this article examines the ways in which government and property developers have succeeded in weaving the logics of the New Administrative Capital (NAC) into Greater Cairo's broader development discourse. The study highlights policy actors' legitimation strategies, locating them within the broader urban boosterism and south-south policy transfer literature. By emphasizing on policy actors' use of texts and imagery at the local level, the article demonstrates how discourse, as an instrument of power and control, is used by policy entrepreneurs to perpetuate non-participation in Global South urban policy-making. • Policy makers in developing countries often use discourse to legitimize mega projects. • Discourse can be an instrument of power and control where the interest of the public in urban projects are concerned. • Through discourse, non-participation of citizens may be perpetuated. • In Egypt, government has successfully used discourse to legitimize the New Administrative Capital despite the lack of real citizen participation.

Stories you cannot defeat! political myths as cultural integration and legitimation strategies of autocratic regimes

Given the worldwide stagnation or even regression of democratization processes, autocratic regimes continue to pose a challenge for political science. In this regard, the merit of an original research on autocracies primarily results from the fact that it has drawn attention to the core elements, modes, and logics of operation, as well as the manifold types of regimes. In explaining autocratic regime persistence and legitimation, however, the dominance of institutionalist and economic approaches has led to a shortening of a complex phenomenon. Especially the lack of cultural variables still represents an open flank, which can be partly attributed to systematic limits of knowledge and implementation problems of quantitative approaches in non-democratic contexts. To address this issue, the article proposes the analysis of political myths as an integration and legitimation strategy of autocratic regimes, which will be formulated conceptually as a qualitative approach to political culture research. As transcultural phenomena, political myths narratively articulate the otherwise abstract ideological foundations of the political community, the regime, and the authorities. Thus, in addition to examining myth as a political science phenomenon, a post-behaviorist reading of David Easton’s concept of political support is offered to relate the ideological aspects of narration to different regime types, power structures, and cultural contexts.

Appropriating media coverage of protests: A framing analysis of the ‘Save Akamas’ campaign in national news

News coverage of protests typically employs a protest paradigm: framing strategies for marginalizing protest actors and reducing the significance of protest issues and aims. However, recent studies are detecting less prototypical media responses, indicating the need to identify the extent of application of the protest paradigm and the underlying determinants for variations within media politics of dissent. This analysis of the framing of a Cypriot environmental campaign ‘Save Akamas’ by three national newspapers indicated that the coverage deviated from the protest paradigm. The results showed little emphasis on social deviance but validation of the protests in varying magnitudes through frames articulating governmental responsibility, environmental conservation, and ambivalence towards economic grievances. Finally, supplemented with interviews with two protest organizers and journalists, respectively, this article examines the conditions under which citizen protests mitigate media spectacles through appropriating legitimation strategies.