Since James Carroll (1971) made a strong case for “participatory technology”, scientists, engineers, policy-makers and the public at large have seen quite a number of different approaches to design and implement participatory processes in technology assessment and technology policy. As these participatory experiments and practices spread over the last two decades, one could easily get the impression that participation turned from a theoretical normative claim to a working practice that goes without saying. Looking beyond the well-known forerunners and considering the (...) ambivalent experiences that have been made under different conditions in various places, however, the “if” and “how” of participation are still contested issues when questions of technology are on the agenda. Legitimation problems indicate that attempts to justify participation in a given case have not been entirely successful in the eyes of relevant groups among the sponsors, participants, organizers or observers. Legitimation problems of participatory processes in technology assessment and technology policy vary considerably, and they do so not only with the two domains and the ways of their interrelation or the specific features of the participatory processes. If we ask whether or not participation is seen as problematic in technology assessment and technology policy-making and in what sense it is being evaluated as problematic, then we find that the answer depends also on the approaches and criteria that have been used to legitimize or delegitimize the call for a specific design of participation. (shrink)

Legitimate expectations should be considered in the transition to a low-carbon society. After explaining under what conditions and circumstances expectations are legitimate, this paper shows that those expectations whose frustration undermines the ability to plan, infringes basic moral rights, or is extremely costly for its bearer might justify a deviation in the baseline of justice in favour of the expectation holder. People should be notified about the likely frustration of their expectations so that they can avoid the frustration of their (...) expectations, adapt their life plans and minimise costs. Since the frustration of legitimate expectations seems unavoidable in the transformation to a low-carbon society, priority should be given to the protection of the expectations of those who cannot be materially compensated. Still, if two groups are eligible for material compensation, we should give priority to protecting the expectation of those who cannot continue with the same life plan as before if their expectations are frustrated. (shrink)

Expectations play an important role in how people plan their lives and pursue their projects. People living in highly industrialized countries share a way of life that comes with high levels of emissions. Their expectations to be able to continue their projects imply their holding expectations to similarly high future levels of personal emissions. We argue that the frustration or undermining of these expectations would cause them significant harm. Further, the article investigates under what conditions people can be thought to (...) hold legitimate expectations, in particular about permissible levels of future emissions. We distinguish differing theories of understanding these conditions, namely authority-based and justice-based theories, that each allows us to systematically distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate expectations. Furthermore, with respect to individuals’ future permissible emissions we give several reasons for holding that such theories cannot identify a particular expectation to a specific level of personal emissions as the only legitimate one. Finally, we argue that the set of legitimate expectations that people hold with respect to a just and effective solution to climate change has normative significance in at least two ways: the differing but equally legitimate expectations ought to be taken into account when justifying what could count as such a solution and when determining the just way of arriving at and implementing such a solution. (shrink)

The just war-criterion of legitimate authority – as it is traditionally framed – restricts the right to wage war to state actors. However, agents engaged in violent conflicts are often sub-state or non-state actors. Former liberation movements and their leaders have in the past become internationally recognized as legitimate political forces and legitimate leaders. But what makes it appropriate to consider particular violent non-state actors to legitimate violent agents and others not? This article will examine four criteria, including ‘popular support (...) and representation of a people’; ‘monopoly of violence and effective control over a people’; ‘compliance with international legal and just war standards’; and ‘predisposition to strive for a lasting peace’. It will be shown that out of these four criteria only the first can be defended. Furthermore, it will be illustrated that non-state violent agents may perfectly well satisfy this criterion. In contrast, state actors may clearly fail in this regard. But, it will also become obvious that in exceptional circumstances violent agents do not require explicit approval from the people on whose behalf they act. Finally, the article will argue that – in principle – individuals should be entitled to employ violence for political objectives. (shrink)

Recent scholarly attention to ‘legitimate expectations’ and their role in legal transitions has yielded widely varying principles for distinguishing between legitimate and non-legitimate expectations. This article suggests that methodological reflection may facilitate substantive progress in the debate. Specifically, it proposes and defends the use of a wide reflective equilibrium methodology for constructing, justifying and critiquing theories of legitimate expectations and other kinds of normative theories about legal transitions. The methodology involves three levels of analysis — normative principles, their theoretical antecedents, (...) and considered judgements about their implications in specific cases — and iteration between these three levels in an effort to ensure coherence. The payoffs from applying this methodology to the legitimate expectations debate are illustrated through a discussion of examples from the existing literature. Some proposed innovations to the methodology, including the incorporation of insights from the ideal/non-ideal theory debate, are likely to be of wider interest to political theorists. (shrink)

The article sets out a framework for analysing the way discourses construct legitimation for social practices in public communication as well as in everyday interaction. Four key categories of legitimation are distinguished: 1) ‘authorization’, legitimation by reference to the authority of tradition, custom and law, and of persons in whom institutional authority is vested; 2) ‘moral evaluation’, legitimation by reference to discourses of value; 3) rationalization, legitimation by reference to the goals and uses of institutionalized social action, and to the (...) social knowledges that endow them with cognitive validity; and 4) mythopoesis, legitimation conveyed through narratives whose outcomes reward legitimate actions and punish non-legitimate actions. Examples are drawn from texts legitimating or de-legitimating compulsory education, including children’s books, brochures for parents, teacher training texts, and media texts. (shrink)

This paper argues that the choice of backing to certify the authority of a warrant requires a legitimation inference. When brought into question, such an inference becomes a claim defended by showing sound reasons for the selection of backing pertinent to a shared context. Legitimation controversies ensue when an attributed consensus meets objection. It is argued that attention to legitimation controversies renders the Toulmin model a more useful critical paradigm for investigating the development and risks of communicative reasoning in a (...) public forum. The nomination of John Tower as Secretary of Defense is employed to illustrate how critical analysis of legitimation controversies reflexively expands the domain of inquiry for informal reasoning. (shrink)

_Legitimate Differences_ challenges the usual portrayal of current debates over thorny social issues including abortion, pornography, affirmative action, and surrogate mothering as _moral_ debates. How can it be said that our debates oppose principles of life to those of liberty, principles of liberty to those of equality, principles of equality to those of fairness, and principles of fairness to those of integrity, when we as Americans share all these principles? Debates over such issues are not, Georgia Warnke argues, moral debates (...) over which principles we should adopt. Rather, they are interpretive debates over the meanings of principles we already possess. Warnke traces the structure of these debates with reference to the work of Jane Austen, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jürgen Habermas, and Bernard Williams. In separate chapters on surrogate mothering, affirmative action, abortion, and pornography she articulates new understandings of the meanings of some of our principles and shows the equal legitimacy of some different interpretations of the meanings of others. Finally, she suggests that the orientation of American public policy ought to be directed less at finding single canonical interpretations of our principles than at accommodating different legitimate understandings of them. The perspective offered by _Legitimate Differences_ should have a significantly beneficial effect on public discussions. (shrink)

In order to rebuild a useful theory that can aid in producing a profound change from the bottom up, it is fundamental to return to some of Habermas' greatest texts from his first thirty year of research and teaching, written by the Habermas who neo-reactionary and opportunitst Karl Marx considers dangerous because his ideas are too extreme and left-wing"--Page 4 of cover.

This article argues against privileging the expectations of settlers over those of dispossessed peoples. I assume in this article that historical rights to occupancy do not persist through all changes in circumstances, but a theory of justice should reduce perverse incentives to unjustly settle on land in hopes of legitimating occupancy. Margaret Moore, in her 2015 book, A Political Theory of Territory, tries to balance these intuitions through an argument based on legitimate expectations. I argue that Moore’s attempt to reduce (...) perverse incentives (through expectation-altering institutional design) fails. Moore unduly privileges settler expectations, especially over those of indigenous peoples. I criticize United States court decisions resurrecting the expectations of past settlers in the allotment era (which share structural features with Moore’s arguments). Lastly, distinguishing between ‘final’ supersession of historical injustice through changing circumstances, and ‘dormant’ supersession, shows how indigenous claims to land and jurisdiction may revive. (shrink)

This paper focuses on land as a domain in which legitimate expectations can give rise to entitlements. The central argument is that people are connected to other people and to projects, which are symbolically and materially rooted in particular places. This gives rise to an interest – an interest that is sufficiently weighty that it imposes obligations on other people – to protect stability of place. There are two ways in which legitimate expectations structure argument about land. It justifies liberty (...) rights to remain in a place, and not be removed or expelled from it, independently of the coercion that often accompanies forcible expulsion, and argue for rights of return as a second-order right when this right has been violated. I also argue that passage of time in a changed context can affect people’s legitimate expectations, and so their entitlements. (shrink)

Some libertarians tend to advocate the wide availability of cognition-enhancing drugs beyond their current prescription-only status. They suggest that certain kinds of drugs can be a component of a prudential conception of the ‘good life’—they enhance our opportunities and preferences; and therefore, if a person freely chooses to use them, then there is no justification for the kind of prejudicial, authoritative restrictions that are currently deployed in public policy. In particular, this libertarian idea signifies that if enhancements are a prudential (...) ‘good’ for the user, then this can also be construed as a moral good for all rational agents. If this argument is successful, there can be no substantial distinction between the categorical benefits of enhancement, and what is labeled as an enhancement technology. In this paper, I argue that the exclusivity of egotistical choice, and an uncritical deployment of enhancement as a prudential good, underplays the role of a social and political community when creating a procedurally just and effective public policy. Principally, the argument is devoid of any ethical system to permit the external—and therefore public–appreciation of the social context of moral decisions. In effect, libertarian arguments of this sort must disregard any ideas of public ethics, because the liberty to use whatever means available to gain a socio-economic advantage actually extinguishes any professed legitimation strategy. Escaping the procedural aspects of public policy, which are considered integral to authoritative coherence, results in the erosion of any moral obligations. Thus, in a libertarian society, disenfranchised individuals—such as those harmed through addiction—are the unlucky or superfluous product of a liberal and ‘progressive’ society. (shrink)

Corporate sustainability reports are supposed to provide a complete and balanced picture of corporate sustainability performance. They are, however, usually voluntary and thus prone to interpretation and even greenwashing tendencies. To overcome this problem, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) provides standardized reporting guidelines challenging companies to report positive and negative aspects of an organization’s sustainability performance. However, the reporting of “negative aspects” in particular can endanger corporate legitimacy if perceived by the stakeholders as not being in line with societal norms (...) and values. Starting from the theoretical lenses of economics-based disclosure theories and socio-political theories of disclosure, the focus of this study therefore was to analyze the communicative legitimation strategies companies use to report “negative aspects,” i.e., negative ecological and social impact caused by corporate activity. Using qualitative content analysis of GRI-oriented sustainability reports from companies listed on the US Dow Jones Industrial Average Index and on the German DAX Index, we identified six legitimation strategies. We discuss these strategies regarding to symbolic and substantial management of legitimacy. We show that symbolic legitimation strategies aiming at modifying the perception of legitimizing stakeholders dominate in the reports at hand. Such persuasion, however, does not meet the requirement of impartiality as postulated by the GRI guidelines. Building upon this conclusion we propose a concise characterization of “negative aspects” and develop a GRI-compliant schema of reporting about them. In doing so, we offer a way to improve the overall “balance” of sustainability reporting contributing to a true and fair view in sustainability disclosure. (shrink)

What makes political power legitimate? Without legitimation, subjects will not accept power, and, since religion permeated medieval society, religion became foundational to philosophical legitimations of political power. In 2013, the XIX Annual Colloquium of the International Society for the Study of Medieval Philosophy took place in Alcalá de Henares, one of the medieval centers of political debate within and between Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities. The members of these communities all shared the common belief that God constitutes the remote or (...) proximate cause of legitimation. Yet, beyond this common belief, they differed significantly in their points of departure and how their arguments evolved. For instance, the debate among Western Christians in the conflict between secular power and Papal authority sowed the seeds for a secular basis of legitimacy. The volume reflects the results of the colloquium. Many contributions focus on key Christian thinkers such as Marsilius of Padua, Thomas Aquinas, John Quidort of Paris, Giles of Rome, Dante, and William of Ockham; other studies focus on major authors from the Jewish and Muslim traditions, such as Maimonides and Alfarabi. Finally, several papers focus on lesser-known but no less important figures for the history of political thought: Manegold of Lautenbach, Ptolemy of Lucca, Guido Terrena, John of Viterbo, Pierre de Ceffons, John Wyclif and Pierre de Plaoul. The contributions rely on original texts, giving the readers a fresh insight into these issues. (shrink)

It is practically inevitable that even the best-intentioned public officials occasionally inflict unjust harm on people who should not have to suffer it. They mistakenly arrest innocent suspects, and convict innocent defendants. They erroneously adopt and enforce criminal laws that unduly restrict our freedom. They vote for, implement, and enforce tax laws that unfairly burden some citizens. And yet it is widely assumed that, as long as such officials act in good faith, and follow certain institutional rules, we aren’t permitted (...) to protect the innocent victims of their mistakes by inflicting defensive harm on the officials. As a result, those victims may have to suffer injustices that we could, in principle, prevent. This is so even though, if a private person imposed similarly unjust harm, and did so on the basis of mistaken judgments that were equally in good faith, and just as reliable as the institutional judgments guiding the official, we could permissibly harm that person to defend the victim. This essay considers whether, and how, this asymmetric treatment can be justified. After some ground-clearing that sharpens the question, it briefly considers the dominant explanation offered by political philosophers, which focuses on how resisting official mistakes would impact innocent third parties (most obviously, one’s fellow citizens). Finding these explanations wanting, the essay turns to a less frequently considered alternative: under certain conditions, defending the innocent victim against the official’s mistake is unfair to the official who would be harmed in the process. In particular, if officials act for their subjects (in a quite specific sense), then we may, as a matter of fairness, be barred from harming the officials to protect those subjects from (some of) the unjust harms that officials erroneously inflict. This account chimes with familiar views in the history of political thought that take legitimate political power to be held in trust for the people, and legitimate governments to stand in fiduciary relations to their subjects. It explains why officials may in principle have special moral protection that private persons usually lack, and why we may have to put up with officials’ mistakes even if they inflict injustice on innocent persons. But it also reveals how demanding the conditions are under which officials have such protection, and why many existing legal and political institutions lack the legitimacy, and their officials the special moral protection against defensive harm, that they purport to have. (shrink)

The article offers a reconstruction of John Rawls views on political legitimacy, from A Theory of Justice to his late writings on political liberalism. It argues that Rawls had three conceptions of legitimacy, not two as one might expect based on the distinction between his two major works. Its argument is that the most radical change in Rawls’ thinking about legitimacy occurs in ‘Introduction to the Paperback Edition’ and ‘The Idea of Public Reason Revisited’. Here Rawls assumes that there can (...) be a reasonable pluralism not only of comprehensive doctrines, but also of political liberal conceptions of justice. As a consequence, the standard of political legitimacy is no longer specified as sufficient justice relative to justice as fairness, but instead as sufficient justice relative to a family of political conceptions of justice – a family which in turn is animated by an ideal of public reasoning about constitutional matters and matters of basic justice. The article also shows how Rawls’ late ideal of public reason is grounded in the need for legitimate constitutional government. (shrink)

This study illuminates how a cross-sector social partnership legitimizes itself toward multiple internal and external stakeholders. Within a single-case study design, we collected retrospective and real time data on the partnership between Deutsche Post DHL and The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Within this partnership, Deutsche Post DHL provides corporate volunteers that support disaster response after natural disasters on a pro bono basis. The main objects that needed legitimacy as well as the audiences from which legitimacy (...) was mainly sought changed over time. In addition, we identified legitimation work as occurring across objects, audiences, and time. Thus, we introduce legitimation work as the purposeful effort of the legitimacy seeker to avoid certain issues while ensuring other issues that are of importance to the conferrer of legitimacy. These findings contribute to micro-level considerations within institutional theory which view legitimacy as socially constructed between legitimacy seeker and conferrer. Hence, we add another perspective on legitimation to the previously existing conceptualizations of legitimacy as a deterministic consequence of institutionalization. (shrink)

Critical-care decision making is highly complex, given the need for health care providers and organizations to consider, and constructively respond to, the diverse interests and perspectives of a variety of legitimate stakeholders. Insights derived from an identified set of ethics-related considerations have the potential to meaningfully inform inclusive and deliberative policy development that aims to optimally balance the competing obligations that arise in this challenging, clinical decision-making domain. A potential, constructive outcome of such policy engagement is the collaborative development of (...) an as-fair-as-possible dispute resolution process that incorporates an appropriated-justified, defensible critical-care obligation threshold. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article addresses the identity of the legitimate actors of international law-making from the perspective of democratic theory. It argues that both states or state-based international organisations, and civil society actors should be considered complementary legitimate actors of international law-making. Unlike previous accounts, our proposed model of representation, the Multiple Representation Model, is based on an expanded, democratic understanding of the principle of state participation: it is specifically designed to palliate the democratic deficits of more common versions of the Principle (...) of State Consent. Second, it endorses a qualified version of the Principle of Civil Society Participation, one that is much more restrictive and more critical of the democratic defects of civil society actors than most of its current supporters. Finally, it reveals how the democratic strengths and deficits of both models are best approached as mirroring one another and need to be combined in a complex ac... (shrink)

This article combines a pragma-dialectical conception of argumentation, a sociological conception of legitimacy and a sociological theory of the political field. In particular, it draws on the theorization of the political field developed by Pierre Bourdieu and tries to determine what new insights into the concept of strategic maneuvering might be offered by a sociological analysis of the political field. I analyze a speech made by the President of Romania, Traian Băsescu, following his suspension by Parliament in April 2007. I (...) suggest that the argument developed in this speech can be regarded as an example of adjudication and I discuss its specificity as an adjudication in the political field in an electoral campaign. I also try to relate legitimation as political strategy to strategic maneuvering oriented to meeting the contradictory demands of the political field, which I see—following Bourdieu—as involving a double political game, a game of democratic representation and a game of power. (shrink)

Some of the barriers to the realisation of equality reflect the value of respecting prerogatives people have to favour themselves. Even G.A. Cohen, whose egalitarianism is especially pervasive and demanding, says that.

How should international law’s role in determining international distributive outcomes, economic and otherwise, affect how we think about its legitimate authority? Domestic institutions’ legitimate authority in respect of distribution derives in large part from their concurrent roles in enabling security and coordination. Internationally, by contrast, functional disaggregation means that distribution must be legitimised in its own right. I begin by distinguishing the phenomenon of Distributive International Law, on which my argument focuses. I next introduce a number of wide instrumental accounts (...) of legitimate authority, including Rawls’ Natural Duty account, Buchanan’s metacoordination view, and Williams’ political realism, showing how each understands legitimacy as an institution-level characteristic, allowing an institution’s success in one area to support its legitimacy in another where it may be less successful. This poses the question of how we distinguish amongst distinct institutions, which I answer by reference to the causal and constitutive (in)dependence amongst activities. This approach explains why distributive legitimacy does not arise as a separate question domestically: we cannot distinguish the state’s security and coordination activities from its distributive activities, so if the former are legitimate then so, ipso facto, are the latter. Internationally, by contrast, these mutual dependencies are limited, requiring that the legitimacy of distribution be established independently of other roles that international law plays. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with how we ought to think about legitimate expectations in the non-ideal, ‘real’ world. In one (dominant) strand of contemporary theories of justice, justice requires not that each gets what she deserves, but that each gets that to which she is entitled in accordance with what Rawls calls ‘the public rules that specify the scheme of cooperation’. However, that is true only if those public rules are part of a fully just scheme and it is plausibly (...) the case that no such scheme obtains in the real world. Given that, and given the centrality of legitimate expectations to theories of justice, it is vital to think about the status of such expectations in non-ideal circumstances. Having explained the sense in which legitimate expectations have come to play a role often previously associated with desert, a brief argument in favour of an ‘expectations’ view of punishment is considered to show that the system to public rules that generates expectations must itself be (in some sense) just. This argument is illustrated by appeal to just punishment and the relevance of thinking about punishment and not merely distributive justice is defended. In the absence of justice, one possibility would be simply to declare that there are no legitimate expectations and so theories of justice provide no guidance as to who should get what in non-ideal conditions. However, this would be to render such theories more-or-less useless in practice. Through discussion of a series of vignettes, the paper offers an account of how we might think about the demands such expectations place on the systems that give rise to them even in cases where the system is unjust. (shrink)

Some authors have argued that legitimacy without authority is possible, though their work has not found much uptake in mainstream political philosophy. I provide an improved model how legitimate political institutions without authority are possible, the Transmission Model, which I couple with a thin substantive position, the Moral Value View. I defend the model against three common objections.

Theorizing about the legitimacy of international institutions usually begins with a framing assumption according to which the legitimacy of the state is understood solely in terms of the relationship between the state and its citizens, without reference to the effects of state power on others. In contrast, this article argues that whether a state is legitimate vis-a-vis its own citizens depends upon whether its exercise of power respects the human rights of people in other states. The other main conclusions are (...) as follows. First, a state’s participation in international institutions can contribute to its legitimacy in several ways. Second, when international institutions contribute to the legitimacy of states, their doing so can contribute to their own legitimacy. Third, a theory of international legitimacy ought to recognize reciprocal legitimation between states and international institutions. (shrink)

This essay critically assesses Anna Stilz's argument in Territorial Sovereignty: A Philosophical Exploration that legitimate states have a right to do wrong. I concede that individuals enjoy a claim against external interference when they commit suberogatory acts, but I deny that the right to do wrong extends to acts that would violate the rights of others. If this is correct, then one must do more than merely invoke an individual's right to do wrong if one hopes to vindicate a legitimate (...) state's right to commit injustices. Of course, there may be distinctive features of legitimate states that explain why they enjoy moral protections that individuals lack, but I argue that the value of collective self-determination is not up to this task. And even if these arguments fail, self-determination would at most explain why legitimate states enjoy a right to commit injustices against their own citizens; it would provide them no moral protection when they violate the rights of outsiders. (shrink)

The Iran depicted in the headlines is a rogue state ruled by ever-more-defiant Islamic fundamentalists. Yet inside the borders, an unheralded transformation of a wholly different political bent is occurring. A “liberal renaissance,” as one Iranian thinker terms it, is emerging in Iran, and in this pamphlet, Danny Postel charts the contours of the intellectual upheaval. _Reading "Legitimation Crisis" in Tehran_ examines the conflicted positions of the Left toward Iran since 1979, and, in particular, critically reconsiders Foucault’s connection to the (...) Iranian Revolution. Postel explores the various elements of the subtle liberal revolution and proposes a host of potential implications of this transformation for Western liberalism. He examines the appeal of Jürgen Habermas, Hannah Arendt, and Isaiah Berlin among Iranian intellectuals and ponders how their ideas appear back to us when refracted through a Persian prism. Postel closes with a thought-provoking conversation with eminent Iranian philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo. A provocative and incisive polemic highly relevant to our times, _Reading "Legitimation Crisis" in Tehran_ will be of interest to anyone who wants to get beyond alarmist rhetoric and truly understand contemporary Iran. (shrink)

Digital peddling of fake news is influential to persuasive political participation, with veritable social media platforms. Social media, with their instantaneous and widespread usage, have been exploited by ‘anonymous’ political influencers who fabricate and inundate internet community with unverified and false information. Using van Leeuwen’s Discourse Legitimation approach and insights from Discourse Analysis, this study analyses 120 purposively sampled fake news posts on Whatsapp, Facebook and Twitter, shared during the 2019 general elections in Nigeria. WhatsApp allows for the easy and (...) fast sharing of fake news as it pulled the largest occurrence of legitimation strategies, followed by Facebook. Authorisation is the highest occurring legitimation strategy at 46.6% frequency; this is followed by Moralisation which has 27% and Rationalisation at 26.4%; while Mythopoesis did not feature at all in the sampled data, leaving it at 0%. In particular, expert and role model authority are most often deployed to validate fake news such as the demise and cloning of President Buhari, ruling party’s plan to rig and destabilise the 2019 election, massive corruption in the current administration and imminent ethnic violence. The study argues that these strategies are viable persuasive tools owing to their use of discourse markers like make-believe images, emotive language, appeal to emotions, rational conclusions, hateful comments, verbal indictment and coercive verbs. (shrink)

ABSTRACTTwo recently proposed solar radiation management experiments in the United States have highlighted the need for governance mechanisms to guide SRM research. This paper draws on the literatures on legitimacy in global governance, responsible innovation, and experimental governance to argue that public engagement is a necessary condition for any legitimate SRM governance regime. We then build on the orchestration literature to argue that, in the absence of federal leadership, U.S. states, such as California, New York, and other existing leaders in (...) climate governance more broadly have an important role to play in the near-term development of SRM research governance. Specifically, we propose that one or more U.S. states should establish a new interdisciplinary advisory commission to oversee and review the governance of SRM research in their states. Centrally, we propose that state-level advisory commissions on SRM research could help build legitimacy in SRM research decision... (shrink)

Austrian immigration authorities frequently reject the family reunion applications of immigrant workers. They justify their decisions not only on legal grounds but also on the basis of their own often prejudiced judgements of the applicants' ability to `integrate' into Austrian society. A discourse-historical method is combined with systemic-functionally oriented methods of text analysis to study the official letters which notify immigrant workers of the rejection of their family reunion applications. The systemic-functionally oriented methods are used in a detailed analysis of (...) a sample of rejection letters while the discourse-historical method allows this analysis to be intertextually connected to other related genres of discourse and strategies of argumentation, and to the history of post-war immigration in Austria generally. (shrink)

Companies disclosing negative aspects in sustainability reports often employ legitimation strategies to present mishaps in a favorable light. In incentivized experiments, we find that nonprofessional investors divest from companies with a negative sustainability-related incident, and that symbolic legitimation (which only evasively explains a negative incident) is not a strong enough signal to counter this divestment behavior. Even substantial legitimation (which reports on measures and behavioral change) mitigates the divestment decisions only if the company reports on concrete remediation actions in morally (...) charged situations, such as social or environmental incidents. We elaborate these results in light of signaling and screening theory, and suggest the conceptual extension of “costly signals” to what we call “valuable signals.” We argue that valuable signals need be not only costly for the sender from an economic perspective but also perceived as appropriate by the receiver from a noneconomic perspective. (shrink)

_The purpose _of this article is to find out whether philosophical and anthropological studies of human nature affect the legitimization of decisions about human life and death, using the example of a philosophical analysis of the problem of euthanasia. _Theoretical__ basis._ Philosophically and anthropologically based situational analysis in bioethics is chosen as the research methodology, which reveals the legitimation of euthanasia as a complex and highly responsible moral decision, which should be based on both the consideration of all the (...) patient’s special circumstances and the competent and adequate application of fundamental knowledge about the human being. _Originality._ From a philosophical point of view, it would be correct to legalize euthanasia, but under the condition of significantly limiting the cases of its application, clearly defining the conditions for its provision and strict control over its implementation. It is morally unacceptable to justify either murder or torture, so euthanasia appears as an attempt to avoid both at the same time. _Conclusions._ Specific solutions to practical problems often indicate the necessary direction for solving theoretical difficulties. Thus, making proper moral decisions about euthanasia requires reliance on fundamental knowledge about human beings, but at the same time it provides arguments "for" and "against" artificial termination of life. The basic principles of bioethics – autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence and respect for the dignity of human life – serve as criteria for making balanced ethical decisions both in theory and in practice. These principles should be complemented by a coherent ethical, legal and philosophical position on euthanasia, which is achieved through legitimation procedures. Decisive for making a decision on euthanasia should be the strong desire of the patient himself. (shrink)

It is commonly supposed that citizens of a reasonably just state have a prima facie duty to obey its laws. In recent years, however, a number of influential political philosophers have concluded that there is no such duty. But how can the state be a legitimate authority if there is no general duty to obey its laws? This article is an attempt to explain how we can make sense of the idea of legitimate political authority without positing the existence of (...) a general duty to obey the law. The explanation makes use of a distinction between laws of general application, on one hand, and on the other the particularized, directed efforts by state officials to channel and resolve disputes (including those arising from violations of the law). A state's legitimate authority entails a general duty to cooperate in the latter type of effort, rather than upon a dubious general duty to obey the law. (shrink)

As a result of being measured, individuals sometimes alter their behavior and attitudes to such extent that subsequent measurement results are affected. This ‘reactivity’ to measurement problematizes prediction and explanation, but some reactivity is nevertheless legitimate. Using the example of the measurement of race in the US Census, this article demonstrates that some forms of reactivity do not affect the accuracy of research. The article argues that legitimacy of reactivity depends on the metaphysical status of the phenomenon being measured. It (...) is argued that reactivity’s legitimacy is affected by the arbitrariness of a measure and the voluntariness of measurement results. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

In Legitimate Differences, Georgia Warnke argues that we can make important progress in resolving a number of seemingly intractable political debates about various contested social issues if we stop viewing them as debates between defenders of different moral principles, and start seeing them as debates among defenders of different interpretations of the same set of moral principles. Competing interpretations of literary texts can differ and disagree and yet all be legitimate. Thus, if debates about social policy questions turn out to (...) be merely debates about how to interpret moral principles, Warnke claims, then it will be possible for citizens on different sides of these issues to recognize the legitimacy of the positions of their opponents. Through extensive discussions of the public debates in the U.S. about abortion, surrogacy, affirmative action, and pornography, she argues that taking such an interpretive turn will allow us to appreciate that it is possible for many sides in such debates to be defending legitimate positions. (shrink)

A large number of Swedish public authorities produce ‘platform of values’ texts that present core values. This article presents a study of how such texts and practices, including the core values they revolve around, are legitimized. Using Van Leeuwen’s legitimation framework, three different data sets are analysed: 47 ‘platform of values’ texts, a focus group discussion with seven senior HR officers, and a quantitative questionnaire study answered by civil servants at three public authorities. The analysis shows how the existence of (...) ‘platform of values’ texts and practices is legitimized through rationalizations, above all by describing the texts as concrete means for reaching specific ends and, with regard to the choice of core values, through a custom-conformity type of authority. Thus, this article addresses discursive transformations of contemporary organizations with a particular focus on available discursive space for critical thinking in the wake of New Public Management and related developments. (shrink)

Theoretical approaches to public opinion are hard to find in the sociological literature, with the exception of the seminal work of Jürgen Habermas. One important alternative, although almost unknown in the English-speaking world, is offered in a few contributions by the systems theoretician Niklas Luhmann. Both critical theory and systems theory start from a historical analysis of the conditions that led to the rise of a public sphere and understand its function as the limitation and control of the arbitrariness of (...) power. Critical theory considers the public sphere as a social space where citizens can participate and discuss freely and without constraints. Thus, it legitimizes political power. Systems theory presents a completely different concept of the public sphere and conceives of it in terms of second-order observation. Through public opinion the modern political system observes itself and stimulates as well as limits its decision-making processes. This paper argues that both approaches share the idea that the political system, like every other social subsystem, must generate a system-specific uncertainty in order to limit its own arbitrariness and to be able to develop its decision-making potential. Both approaches locate this uncertainty in the sphere of public opinion. But they radically differ in the way they conceptualize public opinion’s effects on modern politics. Such differences between critical theory and systems theory are illustrated by an analysis of recent political events. (shrink)

One and many THE PLURALIST CHORUS There is a remarkable consensus on one point amongst recent thinkers and schools, even when they are otherwise radically ...

What do we mean when affirming ‘the powerful return of the state’? Do we have in mind the jus ad bellum employed by aggressive states, or are we thinking of the duties that a state has towards its citizens? Starting from these questions, this article aims to reconceptualize the issue of the political legitimacy of a state by reconsidering the relationship between power and violence. Among other forms of emergencies and violence, then, a legitimate state needs to be capable of (...) responding to gender-based (sexual and domestic) violence. To reinforce my suggestion, I will reinterpret some Greek and Roman myths related to the founding of cities (Thebes, Athens and Rome). Through these myths, we will be able to illustrate, in particular, the necessity for a state to be capable of combating both public and private violence, reframing the notion of nemesis (as a fate that can be changed by descendants) and fear (as a status that can be stopped in the present). (shrink)

The debate about justice in immigration seems somehow stagnated given that it seems justice requires both further exclusion and more porous borders. In the face of this, I propose to take a step back and to realize that the general problem of borders—to determine what kind of borders liberal democracies ought to have—gives rise to two particular problems: first, to justify exclusive control over the administration of borders (the problem of legitimacy of borders) and, second, to specify how this control (...) ought to be exercised (the problem of justice of borders). The literature has explored the second but ignored the first. Therefore, I propose a different approach to the ethics of immigration by focusing on concerns of legitimacy in a three-step framework: first, identifying the kind of authority or power that immigration controls exercise; second, redefining borders as international and domestic institutions that issue that kind of power; and finally, considering supranational institutions that redistribute the right to exclude among legitimate borders. (shrink)

Despite a recent explosion of interest in the ethics of armed conflict, the traditional just war criterion that war be waged by a “legitimate authority” has received less attention than other components of the theory. Moreover, of those theorists who have addressed the criterion, many are deeply skeptical about its moral significance. This article aims to add some clarity and precision to the authority criterion and to debates surrounding it, and to suggest that this skepticism may be too quick. First, (...) it provides an analysis of the authority criterion, and argues there are (at least) two distinct moral claims associated with the criterion, requiring separate evaluation. Second, it outlines an increasingly influential “reductivist” approach to just war theory, and explains how it grounds powerful objections to the authority criterion. Third, and in response, it sketches the most promising strategies for providing a (qualified) defense of authority, and the further questions and complications they raise. Importantly, these strategies aim to rehabilitate the authority criterion from within a broadly reductivist view. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

Safeguarding public interest was vital to early modern state legitimacy in Western Europe and East Asia. Wenkai He identifies similar patterns in state-society interactions surrounding public goods provision and explores how conflicts over public interest led to calls for fundamental political change and to modern representative politics.