Legitimation Strategies Research Articles

Superior Women: Medieval Female Authority in Poitiers’ Abbey of Sainte-Croix

Superior Women: Medieval Female Authority in Poitiers’ Abbey of Sainte-Croix

Materia Medica and the History of the Book in Seventeenth-Century Portugal

Abstract This article provides an analysis of the most successful books on materia medica printed in Portugal in the seventeenth century and their influence on subsequent works. The study is informed by methodologies and concerns from the field of the history of the book and pays particular attention to paratexts, genres as well as to physical formats. It shows that these elements were fundamental in defining intended audiences and in constructing strategies of legitimation for their authors. In addition, it assesses issues of readership by considering the marginalia preserved in some copies of these books. The investigation has also into account a significant number of manuscripts on the subject. In spite of their limited circulation, this article shows the advantage of manuscript culture in the dissemination of knowledge on materia medica. Since they could circumvent censorship, particularly in the case of chemical remedies, they reveal a more open approach towards therapeutic innovations and the integration of new ideas and practices.

Bifurcated Legitimacy Strategies for Stakeholder Support

Bifurcated Legitimacy Strategies for Stakeholder Support

Collaboration and competition in cultural fields: non-core high-end cuisines in global cities

ABSTRACT This paper examines global flows of culinary cultural knowledge, expertise and practitioners from previously culturally peripheral countries/cultures to two global cities in core countries – London and New York. Our paper finds that, contrary to Bourdieu’s claims, “struggle in the field” is not an invariable attribute of cultural fields. Instead, the high-end culinary field shows substantial evidence of collaboration between chefs. We explain this finding by showing the special characteristics of the culinary field in the last odd decade, and by undertaking an in-depth examination of chefs’ habitus and strategies of entry and legitimation.

The Оrigin of the Modern State: Imagination, Violence, Institutions

The main idea of the article is to define the role of imagination, violence and institutions in the formation of the modern state as well as to show that the important dimension of the state building is the image of the self, creative capacity of the individual to symbolic self-made activity and self-made reproduction. The symbolic world of the imaginary state is the product of the communities united symbolically, contingency and simultaneously the part of the social orders. The Nort conception of the social orders as the structures that limit and control the violence takes the privilege place in the article. The first model of the social organization is defined as the “order of limited access”, and the second one as the “order of free access”. Thus the different state establishments are formed: “the natural state” that is formed in the natural way according to the violence restrain logic by means of limited access, and “the artificial state” by means of free access to the political and economic resources. In particular the impossibility of the automatic transition from the self-sufficient type of the natural state to the modern democratic state is emphasized. Nort conception is extrapolated on the experience of the Ukrainian independent state state-building after the abortive coup d’etat in 1991. The authors develop the tenet about the conservation of the institutional matrix of the soviet empire in the post-communist Ukraine. It deals with the institutional features: such as the authoritarian management, the secondary role of the law regulations, the supervisory instance uncontrolled by society. The transformation crises, accordingly to the authors approach, determined the conditions and the price of transitional countries entering not only the civilizational space of the contemporary Europe but also the system of global economic, political and social interrelations. This crises conditioned also the changes in the network of the international institutions. It determined the distinctive features of the national identity formation, legitimation strategies in the contemporary Nation-State, and primarily in the newest Ukrainian state-building.

Legitimation in post‐revolutionary Egypt: Al‐Sisi and the renewal of authoritarianism

AbstractDrawing from scholarship on authoritarian adaptation and on insight from legitimacy theory, we seek to examine to what degree the renewal of authoritarianism under ‘Abd al‐Fattah al‐Sisi in post‐revolutionary Egypt can be understood as the establishment of a new political order with its own patterns of legitimation. The main focus of the discussion is al‐Sisi's adaptation of legitimization strategies designed to justify his rule and ensure stability under severe repression and economic reforms. We discuss al‐Sisi claims of personal legitimacy as a substitute for institutional legitimacy, his missionary role as a substitute for ideology, and his reshaped eudaemonic legitimacy. All these strategies of legitimation are formulated while rejecting the 2011 revolutionary legitimation and its promises for democracy. Such analysis, which goes beyond coercion or institutional explanations for authoritarian adaptation, scrutinizes the conceptual reconstruction of authoritarianism as a tool to ensure the consent of the citizens and their legitimacy to the renewal of authoritarianism.

Post-global and post-digital children’s literature: some users’ legitimation strategies on the Net

Our starting point is the hypothesis that we live in a post-digital and post-global era, even a post-data one. In this current time, our objects of study have become transmedial and the different media versions of a product cannot be separated one from the other, but rather should be taken as one single object. These transmedial cultural objects are subject to readings, discussions, and appropriation in social networks such as Goodreads, Tumblr, or Reddit, which in turn exist in a “permanent now,” ephemeral by its very nature. In this context, we ask ourselves what is the role and the function of the literary. We search for testimonies in social networks for three products of children’s literature: My Little Pony, Caillou and Manolito Gafotas, in order to observe what is being said in social networks about. Working with Goodreads, Babelio, Reddit and Tumblr that function as platforms for reviews and fan expression, we will carry out an analysis of our corpus by means of some digital tools. We show how literature still acts as a legitimizing instance and how social networks function as a vector for globalization/localisation in the current post-digital, post-global and transmedial context.

Reforming Administration and Control to Restore Legitimacy: The Case ofMonte di Pietàof Perugia, Italy (1462–1468)

ABSTRACTThis paper analyzes the legitimacy strategies of Monte di Pietà of Perugia—the first ever Italian Monte di Pietà—in its early years of activity. It represents an innovative case of the development of a financial institution, change resulting from Franciscan preaching against usury and established to aid poor people while respecting the Catholic ban on any remuneration for loaned capital. To survive, Monte di Pietà needed to request interest, introducing problems of legitimacy. Starting from Suchman's (1995) approach, the paper offers a new plausible interpretation of past events, reporting how the changes in the administrative and control systems constituted actions to successfully restore legitimacy, and shedding light on one significant piece of the history of banking in the Western world. Moreover, the study reveals the interaction among different levels of legitimacy strategies, and concludes that organizational restructuration can be used to strengthen moral justification and explanation to regain legitimacy.

Analysing Legitimation Strategies in Relationship Advice Articles of Women’s Magazines

This study explores the strategies used to legitimate relationship advice articles in locally produced English language women’s magazines from three different contexts, which are, Malaysia, the US, and two Middle Eastern countries (UAE and Egypt). Six women’s magazines, two from each context, were chosen for this study. Sixty articles, ten from each magazine, from the relationship advice sections of each magazine were analysed using content analysis. We focused on the strategies used to legitimise these advice articles based on similar studies on the legitimisation of advice through the use of intertextuality and voices appearing in these texts. In addition, we also investigated if there are differences in the strategies of legitimation used in these articles due to differences in the cultural norms in the three contexts. Our findings revealed four legitimation strategies which were employed to construct advice in the texts we analysed, namely, ‘Cross-Section of Real-Life’, ‘Appealing to Authorities’, ‘Celebrity Endorsement’, and ‘Popular Culture References’. Our findings also revealed that the writers of sex and relationship articles in all three contexts have to carefully craft their texts in order to produce advice that is considered legitimate and can be accepted by their readers. Finally, our study showed that there appears to be a clear connection between the legitimation strategies used and the socio-cultural aspects of each society.

A Mexican Autodefensa Facebook Group’s use of binarity, legitimization strategies, and topoi of religion, family and struggle

In recent years, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) has expanded from its earlier focus on right-wing discourse to also examining discourses of resistance in grassroots political movements around the world. At the same time, CDA has begun to explore the role of social media in these alternative discourses. In this study, I combine a CDA framework with a social media focus to investigate the online discourse of the Mexican Autodefensa (self-defense) movement (2013 to present), an armed grassroots movement formed by citizens to fight against drug cartel control. I analyze one Autodefensa’s Facebook page discourse, showing how their collective identity and ideology emerge in opposition to a cartel via the construction of binarity, which is developed through their increasingly explicit nomination and predication of themselves and the cartel. Also crucial to this ideology and identity construction is the use of topoi (argumentative shortcuts) regarding religion, family, and struggle, along with legitimization strategies of rationalization, altruism, reference to a hypothetical future, and appeal to emotions. This CDA study shows how an Autodefensa discursively constructs collective identity and ideology on Facebook as a righteous family-like unit with religious backing united in struggle to save their region from unjust cartel control.

Self-legitimation and other-delegitimation in the internet radio speeches of the supreme leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra

ABSTRACT This study examines self-legitimation and other-delegitimation in the online radio broadcasts of Nnamdi Kanu, the Supreme Leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). Using Theo van Leeuwen’s (2008) legitimation approach, the paper analyses four speeches he delivered in Israel following his ‘reappearance’ in 2018. The analysis reveals that Kanu uses three legitimation strategies, namely authorisation, moralisation and rationalisation to justify his sudden escape from Nigeria, call for Biafra’s self-rule and boycott of elections and to discredit alleged cloning of the president, electoral malpractices, marginalisation of the Igbo and corruption and brutality among security agents. These strategies are linguistically realised by self-glorification, exclusive and inclusive pronominalisations (us-them dichotomy), polarisation, derogatory nomination (labelling), and hyperbolic expressions. They are aimed at presenting Nnamdi Kanu and IPOB positively as fighting a legitimate cause.

Scaling just transitions: Legitimation strategies in coal phase-out commissions in Canada and Germany

Climate change mitigation triggers both spatial and moral complexities, as demonstrated by the contentious issue of phasing out coal power. The success of the Paris Agreement depends on, among other things, the acceptability of climate policy measures and thus, from a moral perspective, on the ability to organize transition processes in ways that do not damage the livelihoods of workers, communities, and entire regions. Spatially, the unequal distributions of burdens and advantages of both climate change and respective mitigation measures provoke struggles over their legitimacy in contexts ranging from local to global. Phasing out coal mining and the respective power generation capacity thus triggers processes of structural transformation that cut across geographic scales, vertical levels of policy and politics, as well as sectoral boundaries.In light of the urgency of the climate crisis, countries such as Canada and Germany have established stakeholder-driven commissions to develop proposals for just transition pathways for phasing out coal production and consumption. We argue that these commissions are arenas in which spatial, moral, and sectoral (re-)negotiations materialize. Comparing the Canadian and German stakeholder commissions through expert interviews with their members, the article traces how governments use commissions to legitimize their transition policies. Expectations at different levels and from different actors in turn place commission members under pressure to justify their involvement and the outputs of the commissions. We find that the Canadian task force showed greater commitment to collecting and reflecting the needs of communities in its coal regions, and to communicating these to the federal government. In the German coal commission, legitimation strategies focused mainly on a broad representation of interests, and on government spending for affected regions, workers, and industries. In that case, a compromise was reached that satisfied most, but not all, of the diverse requirements.

Client Professionalization, a Resource for Heterogeneous Professionals: For a Pluralistic Account of Corporate Professions

Drawing on the corporate professionalization model, the notion of client professionalization denotes new, client-oriented strategies of legitimization and claims relating to expertise, differentiation, regulation and dissemination. Based on the case of executive coaching in France and its professionalization process, the paper shows how these strategies enable heterogeneous categories of actors to become recognized as professionals. These strategies act as resources because they are grounded on principles other than exclusion and monopoly, such as extension and co-production, which give new value to heterogeneous socialization experiences and multiple activities. The emphasis on client-relationship skills affords atypical professionals’ access to rewarding positions that would otherwise have been unattainable for them. These strategies are important for occupations such as coaching that are practiced by self-employed individuals, who have been overlooked in the literature. They also tend to constitute an appealing access to professionalization, in a context where the power of the market is increasing.

Duterte’s Violent Populism: Mass Murder, Political Legitimacy and the “Death of Development” in the Philippines

ABSTRACT Among contemporary illiberal populist leaders, only Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has instigated mass murder under the guise of a “war on drugs.” Attributed to “penal populism,” it must be explained why Duterte won the presidency despite limited concerns about crime, why he organised extra-judicial killings and why this continued despite domestic and international criticism. As president, Duterte nationalised the violent populism he had first developed locally which wooed rather than intimidated voters with promises to protect “good people” against drug-induced evil. His appeals resonated given the failures of liberal reformism and with a proletarian populist alternative undermined. Using nationalism to respond to global criticism, he put opponents on the defensive. Breaking with the left, he has not undertaken major socio-economic reforms and his anti-oligarchy rhetoric benefitted his cronies. Despite killing tens of thousands and revelations of police corruption, as a legitimation strategy Duterte’s drug war has successfully diverted attention from the “death of development” with poverty levels high despite rapid growth. The Philippine case shows extreme dichotomisation of “good people” and criminalised “others” can legitimate mass killings with a populist breakthrough in a weak state with a poor record of human development.

CSR disclosure as a legitimation strategy: evidence from the football industry

PurposeThe latest developments in the football industry, the commodification of sport, the excessive focus on profitability and the limited attention to social and environmental aspects have caused a legitimation crisis for football clubs. According to the legitimacy theory, the corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure represents a tool capable of allowing the construction or repair of legitimacy. This study, in line with this theory, aims to analyse the amount of CSR disclosure provided by football clubs and the determinants, related to visibility, of the level of information provided.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses a manual content analysis on the corporate websites of the 80 football clubs that qualified for the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League group stages for the 2019–2020 year to measure the level of CSR disclosure and subsequently a regression analysis to examine the impact of visibility on the amount of information provided.FindingsResults reveal that football clubs still disclose relatively little information about sustainability issues, and that sports performance visibility, human capital visibility and social media visibility positively affect the amount of information that football clubs disclose.Originality/valueThis study extends the horizons of CSR disclosure to the football industry which is still little explored in the academic literature. Furthermore, it extends the scope of legitimacy theory, showing how CSR disclosure can be a means for football clubs to obtain or repair legitimacy. Furthermore, this study extends the list of determinants of the level of CSR disclosure, showing that visibility can influence the amount of CSR information.

Legitimation strategies in discourse surrounding Sino-American trade friction: A case study of Chinese government white papers

This article reports a critical discourse analysis of the legitimation strategies used in two Chinese government white papers about trade frictions between China and the United States. Drawing on the legitimation framework advanced by van Leeuwen to political discourse, it shows how the white papers use four main legitimation strategies: authorization, moralization, rationalization, and integration. It argues that the Chinese government uses these strategies to legitimate its responses to US trade policy and delegitimate the US government’s motives for initiating/escalating tensions. This article also discusses how the use of these legitimation strategies draws from certain traditional Chinese cultural values, such as Confucianism, the culture of face, and collectivism. This article is a part of a larger research project studying discursive strategies in trade friction discourse and hopes to shed light on the attributes and functions of this type of discourse.

POLICY AND REGULATION:

Abstract: The Bolsa Família Programme is often discussed in Brazil. Its relevance, actuality and capacity to adapt to different party models and government regimes are systematically discussed. This article analyses the process of institutionalization of the Bolsa Família program (PBF) in Brazil during the governments of the Labour Party, but offers also insights in order to understand its continuity over the years despite the partisan shifts of the Brazilian regime. From a historical-materialist political analysis, I argue that the PBF is a hegemonic policy within the Brazilian social assistance that reinforces a paradigm of welfare based on access to basic services through the market and not as universal social right. Its hegemony has been consolidated through strategies of unification, centralization and agreements among federal entities. These strategies were elaborated within the process of agenda definition that led to the implementation of the program. The regulation model adopted is understood as a resource operated by managers in order to ensure hegemony by means of: (a) centralization of goals, (b) inter-sectorial conditionalities, (c) model of performance control linked to financial rewards to municipalities, (d) control of conditionalities and targeting counterbalanced by mechanisms of mass coverage and (e) strategies for social legitimation. The work offers a methodological approach for the analysis of researches conducted about the program, and establishes a dialogue with the field that focuses on the evaluation of social policies, especially with studies that examine the role of law within these policies, as well as with those dealing with the expansion of conditional cash transfer programs.

Russia’s 2020 Constitutional Reform: The Politics of Institutionalizing the Status-Quo

Abstract The articles in this issue explore the longer-term implications of Russia’s 2020 Constitutional Reform process. Assessing constitutional change from different theoretical and empirical approaches, these authors find that the constitution largely codified the status-quo as it had evolved over the past decade. The resulting institutional changes solidified the personalist political system that concentrates power in one leader. These reforms also created new mechanisms to preclude elite defection and generate societal quiescence. At the same time, the three-staged reform process that included formal adoption, national vote, and legal reconciliation, introduced new political risk by raising societal expectations, reinforcing cleavages through patriotic legitimization strategies, introducing new rigid structures, and relying on personalism and networks over institutional governance. These risks do not predict state failure but they suggest new challenges that will continue to shape Russian political development.

THE POLITICAL ANNEXATION OF THE SPORTS HERO IN CONTEMPORARY ROMANIA.THE CASE OF SIMONA HALEP

The present article aims to highlight the ways in which the sports hero in Romania is “annexed”, ie used and instrumentalized by the political power, represented by public institutions, political parties and / or politicians. The case study analyzes the ceremonies and awards bestowed upon the tennis player Simona Halep, the most prominent sports figure of Romania in the past decade, by a number of local authorities in the country (Buşteni, Constanţa, Călăraşi, Bucharest, Cluj) and by the Romanian Presidency, from late 2013 to the present day. We scrutinize the reasons behind such feats of public homage and the media coverage it entailed, while also trying to explain why sport, and tennis in particular, is courted assiduously by politicians in the country – and what this reveals about the standing of the sports hero in Romanian society and political legitimization strategies. We also explore the reasons why apparently similar political strategies of gaining political kudos through association with a sport hero work brilliantly for one Romanian politician and dramatically backfire for another. Last but not least, we take a look at the way the sports hero was instrumentalized during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Legacy and sustainability in the Olympic Movement’s new norm era: when reforms are not enough

ABSTRACT In times when cities around the world are withdrawing from consideration to host the Olympic Games, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has responded by enacting policy reforms. Entitled Olympic Agenda 2020: 20 + 20 Recommendations, we examine forty recommendations through the lens of critical policy analysis. Specifically, we use Strittmatter et al.’s framework of legitimation strategies in policy formulation and implementation to investigate the ways in which the use of sustainability and legacy terminology is employed in the process of legitimating the IOC today. Findings demonstrate two general legitimation strategies. One is the familiar framing of the Olympic Games in terms of sustainability and legacy with a new emphasis on the Games as an opportunity to integrate cities’ long-term planning needs into bidding and hosting the event. The second focus asserts the Olympic Movement’s global leadership role in sport in the context of sport itself being depicted as a leading social institution in making meaningful social change. In this paper, we detail these legitimation strategies and offer commentary related to the need for the IOC to use this policy reform process to move beyond rhetoric alone to embed meaningful and measurable accountability standards in the hosting process.