Throughput Legitimacy Research Articles

Legitimating the Antarctic Treaty System: from rich nations club to planetary ecological democracy?

ABSTRACT Like other international institutions, the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) relies on the goodwill and self-binding commitment of its members. Legitimacy, understood as the belief in the ‘rightfulness’ of a governing arrangement by its stakeholders, lies at the heart of the ATS’ success as a multilateral institution. Global warming and geopolitical power shifts are poised to challenge established forms of Antarctic legitimacy and effectiveness, with external calls for Antarctic democratisation and reform increasing. Using the concepts of input, output, and throughput legitimacy, this paper explores how the ATS has been legitimated as the only authoritative decision-making context for Antarctic matters, internally amongst Treaty Partners as well as externally towards the rest of the international community. It argues that the increase of input legitimacy through the inclusion of more consultative parties led to a perceived lack of output legitimacy for some especially environmental critics which illustrates the importance but also the limits of maintaining consensus about throughput legitimacy: the agreed upon processes and rules of decision-making. Finally, the analysis problematises the inhibiting centrality of nation states and the logic of sovereignty during times of global ecological and geopolitical change and asks how an ambitiously democratic future of Antarctic governance in the Anthropocene might look like.

Advocacy Through Practices of Input and Throughput Legitimacy: Safe Spaces, Proximity, and Collectivizing Individual Needs

Advocacy Through Practices of Input and Throughput Legitimacy: Safe Spaces, Proximity, and Collectivizing Individual Needs

“Standardizing information security – a structurational analysis”

Given that there are an increasing number of information security breaches, organizations are being driven to adopt best practice for coping with attacks. Information security standards are designed to embody best practice and the legitimacy of these standards is a core issue for standardizing organizations. This study uncovers how structures at play in de jure standard development affect the input and throughput legitimacy of standards. We participated as members responsible for standards on information security and our analysis revealed two structures: consensus and warfare. A major implication of the combination of these structures is that legitimacy claims based on appeals to best practice are futile because it is difficult to know which the best practice is.

Adoption is not enough: Institutionalization of e-participation initiatives

This study investigates the institutionalization of e-participation initiatives in six European countries—Estonia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Scotland, and Spain—using a multiple case study. The following research questions are addressed: How have recently established e-participation initiatives been institutionalized in public administrations? What are the formal and informal aspects of their institutionalization? It is concluded that the adoption of a digital solution does not in itself trigger a change in the policy-making process because the institutionalization of e-participation is not a linear process. The formal institutionalization increases the sustainability, transparency, and throughput legitimacy of e-participation and allows citizen proposals to be handled in a standardized way. Although the formal institutionalization of e-participation is key for an institutional change towards deliberative democracy, it needs to be accompanied by informal institutionalization through the supporting ideas, values, and preferences of politicians and public officials who have the power to change public institutions.

The EU's New Economic Governance Framework and Budgetary Decision‐Making in the Member States: Boon or Bane for Throughput Legitimacy?*

AbstractThe euro crisis has sparked changes in the EU's economic governance framework and a crisis of legitimacy across the union. While the institutional repercussions of the crisis have been studied before, the democratic impact at the national level has received much less attention. This paper aims to fill this gap, focusing on the procedural changes that the EU's new economic governance (NEG) framework has brought to national budgetary decision‐making. Building upon the Varieties of Democracy framework, the paper adds empirical nuance and conceptual clarity to the notion of ‘throughput legitimacy’ and its components: openness, inclusiveness, transparency and accountability. Detailed case studies of post‐crisis Austria, Italy and Portugal show that the NEG improved access to national budgetary decision‐making and enhanced executive scrutiny, while excessive complexity remains the Achilles' heel of EU fiscal rules. We submit that these procedural changes are too meaningful to be overlooked in post‐crisis debates about EU democracy.

Marine restoration governance arrangements: Issues of legitimacy

AbstractA new motivation for marine restoration has been observed, associated with the dissatisfaction with current marine restoration governance arrangements (MRGAs). An MRGA consists of alliances of public and private actors (coalitions) who, through their common conceptualisation of the problem (discourses), try to influence and design marine restoration activities while considering the rules of decision‐making, and the management of limited resources. Emerging MRGAs rise in parallel to existing ones and aim to contribute to the same goals or show another way of reaching those goals. This phenomenon raises questions of legitimacy both for the emerging and the existing arrangement. Building on existing literature, this paper proposes an analytical framework to simultaneously explore input, throughput and output legitimacy as three essential pre‐conditions of legitimacy for MRGAs. The framework is tested in three European cases of MRGAs that were part of the European Union MERCES project (http://www.merces-project.eu/). Analysis showed that actors who are influential in achieving restoration goals, and also those who are impacted by restoration actions, should be involved in the MRGAs (input legitimacy); actors within MRGAs should establish and follow procedures for decision‐making that are both transparent and clear (throughput legitimacy); and actors within MRGAs need to establish a common understanding of restoration, of the goal to reach and of the related uncertainties (output legitimacy). Awareness of these pre‐conditions allows actors internal and external to MRGAs to address aspects that give legitimacy to restoration actions. It also creates a language that allows actors to engage in discussion on legitimacy that goes beyond the mere application of the rule of law.

From impact assessments towards proactive citizen engagement in EU cohesion policy

AbstractEuropean Union (EU) policymakers and academics regard impact assessments as the primary mechanism for communicating the added value of EU Cohesion Policy to citizens. There is a need to look beyond impact evaluations and towards active citizen engagement in policymaking to increase support for EU cohesion policies. This article examines the benefits and different types of legitimacy that citizen involvement confers upon policymaking, before outlining recommendations for proactively engaging citizens within existing EU cohesion policymaking structures. It is argued that citizen engagement fosters greater input and throughput legitimacy into the process, which supplements the output legitimacy bestowed by impact assessments.

Parliamentary Scrutiny of the European Semester: The Case of Poland

The European Semester became an essential part of the revised governance architecture of the Europe 2020 reform strategy for the Single European Market under the conditions of the global financial crisis and the emerging eurozone crisis a decade ago. The article examines to what extent the European Semester offers channels to establish <em>throughput legitimacy </em>by granting national parliaments the ability to effectively scrutinise executive decision-making in the annual policy cycle. Poland is chosen as the case study for parliamentary scrutiny of the EU’s system of multi-level governance in the East-Central European region. The analysis adopts a liberal intergovernmentalist two-level approach. On the domestic level it concentrates on the involvement of the Sejm, the lower house of parliament, on the drafting of the Polish National Reform Plans for the annual Semester policy cycle between 2015 and 2020. The basis for the analysis are official transcripts from the plenary debates in the relevant committees, the European Affairs Committee and the Public Finance and the Economic Committee. The Polish case study illustrates that the European Semester represents a predominantly elite-driven process of policy coordination, which is strongly geared towards EU-level executive bargaining processes between national governments and the European Commission at the expense of domestic parliamentary scrutiny.

Stuck in ENP purgatory? An assessment of the EU's external legitimacy mechanisms

The EU is developing closer ties with some of its neighbours, creating various forms of external differentiated integration (EDI). Since these relations are continuously asymmetrical in terms of power, scholars raise the issue of how power and dominance feature in such structures. The main aim of this research paper is to investigate how, in the context of EDI, the EU creates structures in the framework of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), and specifically the Eastern Partnership (EaP), that allow more participation and increasing input and throughput legitimacy for partner countries and their societies. Secondly, the paper shows how political actors from partner countries perceive these structures and tools and what improvements they propose. This is done through analysis of the mechanisms and practices which the EU is employing to improve participation and external legitimacy within the ENP. The research paper consists of a theoretical section, in which we examine the EU’s interdependence and EDI structures in the neighbourhood as well as using the concept of dominance to unpack its characteristics. This is followed by an analysis of external EU legitimacy and its indicators treated as a means to improve relations with the neighbours. In the empirical section, we identify and analyse selected mechanisms through which the EU is trying to improve its external legitimacy in the neighbourhood. We mainly look at two institutional tools: (1) consultations on the ENP reform and (2) the ENP Interparliamentary Assemblies (EuroNEST).

Democratic legitimacy in global platform governance

The goal of this paper is to propose a democratic legitimacy framework for evaluating platform-goverance proposals, and in doing so clarify terms of debate in this area, allowing for more nuanced policy assessments. It applies a democratic legitimacy framework originally created to assess the European Union's democratic bona fides – Vivian Schmidt's (2013) modification of Scharpf's (1999) well-known taxonomy of forms of democratic legitimacy – to various representative platform governance proposals and policies. The first section discusses briefly the issue of legitimacy in internet and platform governance, while the second outlines our analytical framework. The second section describes the three forms of legitimacy that, according to this framework, are necessary for democratic legitimation: input, throughput and output legitimacy. The third section demonstrates our framework's utility by applying it to four paradigmatic proposals/regimes: Facebook's Oversight Board (self-governance regimes); adjudication-focused proposals such as the Manila Principles for Intermediary Liability (rule-of-law-focused regimes); the human-rights-focused framework proposed by then-UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression; and the United Kingdom's Online Harms White Paper (domestic regime). Section four describes our four main findings regarding the case studies: non-state proposals seem to focus on throughput legitimacy; input legitimacy requirements are frequently under examined; state regulation is usually side-lined as a policy option; and output legitimacy is a limited standard to be adopted in supranational contexts. We conclude that only by considering legitimacy as a multifaceted phenomenon based in democratic accountability will it be possible to design platform-governance models that will not only stand the test of time, but will also be accepted by the people whose lives they affect.

How to Produce and Measure Throughput Legitimacy? Lessons from a Systematic Literature Review

After two decades of research on throughput legitimacy, making sense of the stock of accumulated knowledge remains a challenge. How can relevant publications on throughput legitimacy be collected and analysed? How can the level of throughput legitimacy be measured? Which policy activities contribute to the production of throughput legitimacy? To answer these questions, we designed and implemented an original systematic literature review. We find that the measurement of the level of throughput legitimacy introduces a number of problems that call for the systematic and rigorous use of a more complete set of precise, specific indicators to advance the theory of throughput legitimacy. A number of participatory decision-making activities contribute to the production of throughput legitimacy. Engaging in these activities is not without risk, as variations in throughput legitimacy affect input and output legitimacy. To prevent vicious circles, lessons can be drawn from the literature on collaborative governance and decision-makers’ strategies to support effective collaboration between stakeholders.

Assessing the Legitimacy of Technological Innovation in the Public Sphere: Recovering Raw Materials from Waste Water

This paper researches legitimacy creation in a publicly-funded trajectory of innovative technological development. It develops a framework of input, throughput and output legitimacy. The framework is developed based on a review of the literature on the creation of legitimacy in innovative technological development. The framework assists in further exploring the potential of the integrated assessment of the legitimacy of technological innovation trajectories in the public sphere, in terms of (1) public accountability (ensuring input legitimacy); (2) science, technology and innovation policy (ensuring throughput legitimacy); and (3) the potential for the implementation of the technology itself in practical contexts (ensuring output legitimacy). The framework is used to analyze a case study about the publicly-funded development of innovative technology for the retrieval of raw materials from waste water. Theoretically, the value of a more processual approach to the conceptualization of legitimacy becomes apparent. Furthermore, the framework assists in the development of practical recommendations on the ways in which to optimize the legitimacy in an earlier stage in the innovation’s trajectory. However, due attention should also be paid to the role of regulatory arrangements in the optimization of the legitimacy of publicly-funded technological innovation. This is an avenue for further research.

Decision-Making in Collaborative Governance Networks: Pathways to Input and Throughput Legitimacy

AbstractParticipants may lose faith in collaborative governance processes if they do not perceive internal decision-making processes to be legitimate. Yet, understanding how to assess internal legitimacy and what network characteristics are associated with it has been an enduring challenge. In this article, we propose conceptualizing internal legitimacy as multi-vectored, contrasting input legitimacy—the degree of openness and access that participants experience in their attempt to offer voice—with throughput legitimacy—the quality of the decision-making process itself. Using data from a comparative case study of 18 different US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)-mandated Continuums of Care, we assess this framework with a mixed-methods approach, combining thematic analysis of interview data (n = 145) with Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) to show (1) differences in how participants experience input and throughput legitimacy, (2) the nature of the relationship between input and throughput legitimacy, and (3) what specific network characteristics are associated with positive assessments of each. Our findings indicate that input and throughput legitimacy are distinct but related—throughput legitimacy is harder to achieve and dependent on positive assessments of input legitimacy. Some network characteristics, particularly large size and commissioner-style network management, pose challenges, but a focus on in-person engagement can help ameliorate them. We conclude that distinguishing between input and throughput legitimacy can help managers identify where and how to intervene in order to improve the legitimacy of decision-making processes in collaborative governance networks.

A value of civic voices for smart city: A big data analysis of civic queries posed by Seoul citizens

Since urban problems are increasingly becoming complex and multifaceted due to the rapid urbanization, interest in the development of smart cities as an efficient solution to such problems is growing. The significance of smart cities lies in not having technology itself but using technology with a novel approach to solve urban problems, enhance the quality of life for urban residents, and optimize government performance. Such an approach includes scientifically processing civic query (including complaints, suggestions, and inquiry) data about a city and planning the city such that its policies reflect its residents' voices to ensure “throughput legitimacy.” This study introduces a novel approach to analyze diverse informal civic query data for a city and plan the city in a way that its residents want. By analyzing 160,000 civic queries accumulated over 10 years from 2006 to 2017 from the “Oasis of 10 Million Imagination,” which is a civic participation platform of Seoul, this study aims to contribute to the sustainable development of Seoul so that it can plan a citizen-centric and smart city that satisfies the demands of its residents. By applying Dynamic Topic Model, the authors intend to specify civic demands and forecast the demands of citizens.

Throughput Legitimacy and the Duty to Consult: The Limits of the Law to Produce Quality Interactions in British Columbia's EA Process

AbstractThe duty to consult mandates that the Crown must consult affected Indigenous parties when Crown action may negatively impact Aboriginal rights or title claims. The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) has emphasized that the duty should be characterized by honourable dealings and good faith negotiations. This article argues that the concept of throughput legitimacy can help evaluate the Crown's conduct in consultation. By analyzing 131 British Columbia Environmental Assessments (BC EAs), this article finds that the Crown struggles to uphold throughput legitimacy from the perspective of Indigenous peoples, particularly in the areas of transparency, accountability and effectiveness.

Legitimacy in International Tax Law-Making: Can the OECD Remain the Guardian of Open Tax Norms?

The fight against tax avoidance and tax evasion has become a policy priority of many states. Unilateral action is, however, not an appropriate solution. Global problems of tax avoidance and evasion can only be successfully addressed through international cooperation. In this context, the efforts of the OECD for enhancing cooperation in international taxation have been impressive over the last decade. Reference can, for example, be made to the various initiatives relating to information sharing and the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) Project. Although these initiatives seem legitimate, the role of the OECD in international tax law-making has been criticized. The more influential the OECD’s initiatives are and the more the decision-making authority in relation to taxation shifts from the national to the international level, the more its legitimacy is questioned. The purpose of this article is to examine whether the OECD indeed lacks legitimacy and, if so, what could be done to overcome such a legitimacy deficit. The article starts by analysing in more detail the role that the OECD has played (and is still playing) in international tax law-making and what legal value should be attached to the instruments that have been developed by the OECD. The authors then proceed to assess the legitimacy of the OECD during the BEPS Project. A conceptual framework is needed to assess an international institution’s legitimacy. In this respect, the political science-oriented angle of input, output and throughput legitimacy was taken as a basis. The research shows that the OECD lacked input and output during the BEPS Project, but the authors also identified many flaws in the decision-making process itself. The authors argue that whatever international (rule-making) body is developed to take on a role in international tax law-making, legitimacy issues will remain in the absence of appropriate decision-making procedures. Whilst turning the OECD into a sounding board under the auspices of another organization may therefore not be very helpful, the organization should acknowledge that it needs to monitor its decision-making procedures if it wants to remain the guardian of open tax norms in international taxation. More transparent and equal participation by states, other stakeholders and the public at large, as well as more robust accountability mechanisms, may restore the OECD’s legitimacy.

A decentred assessment of the impact of ‘informal governance’ on democratic legitimacy

The aim of this article is to examine the impact of informal governance on democratic legitimacy. It draws on the literatures on informal governance and decentred theory to examine how governance mechanisms that are un-written, un-codified and non-institutional impact on democratic legitimacy in governance networks. Drawing on a case study of English devolution in the United Kingdom, this article explores how informal governance impacts on different dimensions of legitimacy – input, throughout and output. It does so by drawing on the narratives and stories of central government officials directly involved in English devolution between 2015 and 2018. Findings reveal that even when formal structures are weak, democratic legitimacy can be secured, especially in promoting effective decision making and problem solving – throughput legitimacy. Nonetheless, a decentred analysis has shown a high level of selectivity and differentiation in central-local relationships that undermine legitimation based on input (inclusiveness) and outcome (results) legitimacy. This assessment provides important new insights into how governance networks characterized by high levels of informality can promote democratic legitimacy in ways that reflect the nuances of political decision making in highly complex environments. The challenge for politicians and policy makers moving forward is to actively manage the inevitable trade-offs generated through the use of informality if accusations of a democratic deficit are to be averted.

Artificial intelligence for political decision-making in the European Union: Effects on citizens’ perceptions of input, throughput, and output legitimacy

AbstractA lack of political legitimacy undermines the ability of the European Union (EU) to resolve major crises and threatens the stability of the system as a whole. By integrating digital data into political processes, the EU seeks to base decision-making increasingly on sound empirical evidence. In particular, artificial intelligence (AI) systems have the potential to increase political legitimacy by identifying pressing societal issues, forecasting potential policy outcomes, and evaluating policy effectiveness. This paper investigates how citizens’ perceptions of EU input, throughput, and output legitimacy are influenced by three distinct decision-making arrangements: (a) independent human decision-making by EU politicians; (b) independent algorithmic decision-making (ADM) by AI-based systems; and (c) hybrid decision-making (HyDM) by EU politicians and AI-based systems together. The results of a preregistered online experiment (n = 572) suggest that existing EU decision-making arrangements are still perceived as the most participatory and accessible for citizens (input legitimacy). However, regarding the decision-making process itself (throughput legitimacy) and its policy outcomes (output legitimacy), no difference was observed between the status quo and HyDM. Respondents tend to perceive ADM systems as the sole decision-maker to be illegitimate. The paper discusses the implications of these findings for (a) EU legitimacy and (b) data-driven policy-making and outlines (c) avenues for future research.

How Shall We Judge Agri-Food Governance? Legitimacy Constructions in Food Democracy and Co-Regulation Discourses

The food democracy discourse has emerged as a normatively grounded critique of an increasingly transnational agri-food system and its dominant co-regulatory mode of governance, where private and public norms and standards interact with public policy and regulation in complex ways. Analyzing competing agri-food discourses through a legitimacy lens can contribute to understanding how authority is transferred from traditional, hierarchical and state-centered constellations to a range of novel agri-food governance arrangements. This article reconstructs and compares the legitimacy constructions articulated in the co-regulation and the food democracy discourses, generating three key findings: first, there are two distinct articulations of food democracy discourse, which we label liberal and strong food democracy; second, while conceptualizations of legitimacy in the liberal food democracy and the co-regulatory discourse share many commonalities, legitimacy in the co-regulatory discourse relies more heavily on output, while the liberal food democracy discourse is more sensitive to issues of input and throughput legitimacy; third, the strong food democracy discourse articulates a critical counter-model that emphasizes inclusive deliberation which in turn is expected to generate a shared orientation towards the common good and countervailing power.

Conceptualizing throughput legitimacy: Procedural mechanisms of accountability, transparency, inclusiveness and openness in EU governance

AbstractThis symposium demonstrates the potential for throughput legitimacy as a concept for shedding empirical light on the strengths and weaknesses of multi‐level governance, as well as challenging the concept theoretically. This article introduces the symposium by conceptualizing throughput legitimacy as an ‘umbrella concept’, encompassing a constellation of normative criteria not necessarily empirically interrelated. It argues that in order to interrogate multi‐level governance processes in all their complexity, it makes sense for us to develop normative standards that are not naïve about the empirical realities of how power is exercised within multi‐level governance, or how it may interact with legitimacy. We argue that while throughput legitimacy has its normative limits, it can be substantively useful for these purposes. While being no replacement for input and output legitimacy, throughput legitimacy offers distinctive normative criteria—accountability, transparency, inclusiveness and openness—and points towards substantive institutional reforms.