Legitimacy is a psychological property of an authority, institution, or social arrangement that leads those connected to it to believe that it is appropriate, proper, and just. Because of legitimacy, people feel that they ought to defer to decisions and rules, following them voluntarily out of obligation rather than out of fear of punishment or anticipation of reward. Being legitimate is important to the success of authorities, institutions, and institutional arrangements since it is difficult to exert influence over others based solely upon the possession and use of power. Being able to gain voluntary acquiescence from most people, most of the time, due to their sense of obligation increases effectiveness during periods of scarcity, crisis, and conflict. The concept of legitimacy has a long history within social thought and social psychology, and it has emerged as increasingly important within recent research on the dynamics of political, legal, and social systems.

Psychological perspectives on legitimacy and legitimation.

Why Men Rebel was first published in 1970 on the heels of a decade of political violence and protest not only in remote corners of Africa and Southeast Asia, but also at home in the United States. Forty years later, the world is riveted on uprisings in the Middle East, and the United States has been overtaken by a focus on international terrorism and a fascination with citizen movements at home and abroad. Do the arguments of 1970 apply today? Why Men Rebel lends new insight into contemporary challenges of transnational recruitment and organization, multimedia mobilization, and terrorism.

Why Men Rebel

Summary Welfare states treat different groups of needy people differently. Such differential rationing may reflect various considerations of policymakers, who act in economic, political and cultural contexts. This article aims at contributing to a theoretical and empirical understanding of the popular cultural context of welfare rationing. It examines European public perceptions of the relative deservingness of four needy groups (elderly people, sick and disabled people, unemployed people, and immigrants). Hypotheses, deduced from a literature review, are tested against data from the 1999/2000 European Values Study survey. It is found that Europeans share a common and fundamental deservingness culture: across countries and social categories there is a consistent pattern that elderly people are seen as most deserving, closely followed by sick and disabled people; unemployed people are seen as less deserving still, and immigrants as least deserving of all. Conditionality is greater in poorer countries, in countries with lower unemployment, and in countries where people have less trust in fellow citizens and in state institutions. At the national level there is no relation with welfare regime type or welfare spending. Individual differences in conditionality are determined by several socio-demographic and attitudinal characteristics, as well as by certain features of the country people live in.

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Making the difference in social Europe: deservingness perceptions among citizens of European welfare states

In comparative welfare state analyses, cross-national differences have often been explained both by the specific profiles of welfare state institutions and the constellations of social actors. However, the way in which cultural differences also contribute to the explanation is often ignored, or at least treated as a more marginal issue. The aim of this article is to reflect on the relationship between culture and welfare state policies, and consider how it might be analysed in a comparative perspective. A theoretical framework for analysis is introduced in which the relationship of culture and welfare state policies is conceptualised as a complex, multi-level relationship which is embedded in the specific context of a particular society and can develop in contradictory ways.

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Culture and Welfare State Policies: Reflections on a Complex Interrelation

Are American attitudes toward economic inequality different from those in other countries? One tradition in sociology suggests American “exceptionalism,” while another argues for convergence across...

“Fair” Inequality? Attitudes toward Pay Differentials: The United States in Comparative Perspective:

Analysis and debate about economic and political justice rarely involves research on the views of the common person. Scholars often make assumptions about what common people think is fair, but for the most part they confine their thinking to a single country and argue on rational or moral grounds, with little supporting empirical data. "Social Justice and Political Change", involves the collaboration of thirty social scientists in twelve countries, and represents broad-ranging comparative research.The book grows out of a collaborative study of public opinion about social justice. Though conceived prior to the revolutions that swept Central and Eastern Europe in 1989, the ISJP did not put its survey into the field until the summer of 1991, in a new climate of open international exchange in social research. Employing common methods of data collection and, within the limits of translation, identical survey instruments, the ISJP investigated public opinion in seven newly emerging post-Communist countries and five of the world's most influential capitalist democracies, with special sensitivity to divergencies in the newly united Germany.Among the themes addressed by the volume's distinguished contributors are the views and beliefs of citizens in the post-Communist states on the transition to market economies and parliamentary democracy; the role of ideology in legitimating inequality; the structural determination of beliefs about justice; the processes that shape individual level evaluations; and the major implications of public opinion and mass participation in the democratic process.

Social justice and political change : public opinion in capitalist and post-communist states

Much of the social science research on the post‐communist states has focused on the extent to which the populations of the region support democracy and the market, in both the abstract and the real...

Fairness Matters: Social Justice and Political Legitimacy in Post-Communist Europe

This study is part of the International Social Justice Project (ISJP), a collaborative international survey research effort, which was supported in whole or in part by each of the following organizations: the National Council for Soviet and East European Research; the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX); the National Science Foundation; the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan; OTKA (National Scientific Research Fund; Hungary); the Economic and Social Research Council (UK); the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Germany); Institute of Social Science, Chuo University (Japan); the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs; the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences; the Grant Agency of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences; Saar Poll, Limited (Estonia); the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Republic of Slovenia; the State Committee for Scientific Research (Komitet Badani Naukowych, Poland); and the Russian Federation Ministry of Labor. The principal investigators in the development of these data were as follows: Galin Gornev (Bulgaria), Petr Mat'ejiu (the Czech Republic), Andrus Saar (Estonia), Bernd Wegener (Germany), Gordon Marshall, Adam Swift and Carole Burgoyne (UK), Gy6rgy Csepeli, Antal Orkeny, Tamas Kolosi and Maria Nemenyi (Hungary), Masaru Miyano and Akihiro Ishikawa (Japan), Wil Arts and Piet Hermkens (Holland), Bogdan Cichomski and Witold Morawski (Poland), Ludmila Khakhulina and Svetlana Sydorenko (Russia), Vojko Antoncic (Slovenia), and Duane Alwin,James Kluegel and David Mason (USA). Extensive analysis of the results of this survey are provided in James R. Kluegel, David S. Mason and Bernd Wegener, eds., SocialJustice and Political Change: Public Opinion in Capitalist and Post-Communist States (Hawthorne: Aldine deGruyter Press, forthcoming).

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Attitudes toward the Market and Political Participation in the Postcommunist States

Chapter 1 Introduction: Public Opinion and Political Change in the Postcommunist States Chapter 2 Bulgaria: Political and Economic Crisis Democratic Consolidation Chapter 3 Economic Justice in the Czech Republic Chapter 4 Russia: Changing Perceptions of Social Justice Chapter 5 Trends and Perceptions of Social Inequality in Hungary, 1991-1996 Chapter 6 Justice Ideologies, Perceptions of Reward Justice, and Transformation: East and West Germany in Comparison Chapter 7 Market Justice in Transition Chapter 8 Political System Legitimacy: Representative? Fair? Chapter 9 Participation in the Foundations of Democracy Chapter 10 Conclusion: Social Justice, Democracy, and Capitalism in Eastern Europe

David S. Mason

Papers

Social justice and political change : public opinion in capitalist and post-communist states

Fairness Matters: Social Justice and Political Legitimacy in Post-Communist Europe

Attitudes toward the Market and Political Participation in the Postcommunist States

Marketing Democracy: Changing Opinion about Inequality and Politics in East Central Europe

Solidarity and the Politics of Anti-Politics: Opposition and Reform in Poland Since 1968