Showing papers on "Legitimacy published in 1994"

Fools Rush in? The Institutional Context of Industry Creation

Abstract: Now organizations are always vulnerable to the liabilities of newness, but such pressures are especially severe when an industry is in its formative years. We focus on one set of constraints facing entrepreneurs in emerging industries-their relative lack of cognitive and sociopolitical legitimacy. We examine the strategies that founders can pursue, suggesting how their successful pursuit of legitimacy may evolve from innovative ventures to broader contexts, collectively reshaping industry and institutional environments.

Coloring the Field: Gender, “Race,” and the Politics of Fieldwork

Abstract: My experiences combining research and activism within the Japanese-Canadian community reflect a growing concern among feminist and anti-racist scholars with the politics of work among people marginalized by racism and sexism. This concern arises within a context where “other voices” are being heard, but the legitimacy of one individual or group to represent another is being challenged. Such challenges require that essentialism and naturalism be addressed politically and theoretically, a difficult irony given the need to utilize essentialist categories to address the oppressive conditions under which they emerged. To do so, a critical theory of political construction is required.

Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns: State-Building and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe

Abstract: The contemporary organization of global violence is neither timeless nor natural, argues Janice Thomson. It is distinctively modern. In this book she examines how the present arrangement of the world into violence-monopolizing sovereign states evolved over the six preceding centuries. Tracing the activities of mercenaries, pirates, mercantile companies, and sovereigns from the Mediterranean to the Northwest Territories, the author addresses the questions: why do we have centralized bureaucracies - states - which claim a monopoly on violence?; why is this monopoly based on territorial boundaries?; and why is coercion not an international market commodity? Thomson maintains that the contemporary monopolization of violence by sovereign states results from the collective practices of rulers, all seeking power and wealth for their states and themselves, and all competing to exploit extraterritorial violence to achieve those ends. She examines the unintended consequences of such acts, and shows how individual states eventually fell victim to violence. As rulers became increasingly aware of the problems created by nonstate coercive tactics abroad, they worked together to curtail this violence, only to find it intertwined with nonstate violence on the national state level. Exploring the blurred boundaries between the domestic and international, the economic and political, and the state and nonstate realms of authority, this book addresses practical and theoretical issues underlying the reconciliation of violence with political legitimacy.

Organizations or Communities? Changing the Metaphor Changes the Theory

Abstract: Educational administration must develop an identity of its own The basic theories and root metaphors of the field center on organization, whose assumptions include legitimacy, hierarchy, and self-i...

The Delusion of Impartial Intervention

Abstract: Physicians have a motto that peacemakers would do well to adopt: "First, do no harm." Neither the United States nor the United Nations have quite grasped this. Since the end of the Cold War unleashed them to intervene in civil conflicts around the world, they have done reasonably well in some cases, but in others they have un wittingly prolonged suffering where they meant to relieve it. How does this happen? By following a principle that sounds like common sense: that intervention should be both limited and impartial, because weighing in on one side of a local struggle un dermines the legitimacy and effectiveness of outside involvement. This Olympian presumption resonates with respect for law and international cooperation. It has the ring of prudence, fairness, and restraint. It makes sense in old-fashioned U.N. peacekeeping operations, where the outsiders' role is not to make peace, but to bless and monitor a cease-fire that all parties have decided to accept. But it becomes a destructive misconception when carried over to the messier realm of "peace enforcement," where the bel ligerents have yet to decide that they have nothing more to gain by fighting.

Gendered Government@@@Gender Images in Public Administration: Legitimacy and the Administrative State

Abstract: Preface Chapter 1 Gender and Public Administration Chapter 2 \"On Tap But Not on Top\": Women in the Administrative State Chapter 3 \"Sharpening a Knife Cleverly\": The Dilemma of Expertise Chapter 4 \"Look Like a Lady, Act Like a Man\": The Dilemma of Leadership Chapter 5 The Hero Factory: The Dilemma of Virtue Chapter 6 From the Ground(s) Up: Women Reformers and the Rise of the Administrative State Chapter 7 Paths Toward Change References Index About the Author

Rules, Resources, and Legitimacy Processes: Some Implications for Social Conflict, Order, and Change

Abstract: Current scholarship on how science affects law's legitimacy in advanced capitalist democracies yields inconsistent predictions and findings. This article resolves inconsistent and provides new insights by constructing a general framework relating law's legitimacy to the mix of legal and scientific rationalities in law. Consistent with dualistic visions of structure as both rules/schemas and resources, the theory specifies how competing legal and scientific rule/resource sets shape action and produce order and change through conflict in and over legal institutions. The theory's guiding orientations illuminate legitimacy processes, order, and change in other institutions including the economy, the polity, and education.

National Self-Determination Today: Problems of Legal Theory and Practice

Abstract: INTERNATIONAL lawyers need not be reminded of the revolutionary and unclear character of self-determination. During the 1960s and 1970s we were able to contain its potentially explosive nature by applying it principally to the relationships between old European empires and their overseas colonies.' The legitimacy of colonial rule had by that time lapsed at home and abroad. Progressive application of Articles 1(2) and 55 of the UN Charter soon made it an anachronism in international relations. The

Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement

Abstract: According to Michael Barkun, many white supremacist groups of the radical right are deeply committed to the distinctive but little-recognized religious position known as Christian Identity. In ""Religion and the Racist Right"" (1994), Barkun provided an exploration of the ideological and organizational development of the Christian Identity movement. In this revised edition, he traces the role of Christian Identity figures in the dramatic events of the first half of the 1990s, from the Oklahoma City bombing to the rise of the militia movement to the Freemen standoff in Montana. It also explores the government's evolving response to these challenges to the legitimacy of the state.

Policy Legitimacy and the Supreme Court: The Sources and Contexts of Legitimation

Abstract: Conflicting evidence regarding the ability of the Supreme Court to confer policy legitimacy suggests that the process of legitimation is both subtle and multifaceted. Two aspects of this process are examined here First, the rela tionship between policy legitimacy and policy agreement is explored. Ex perimental tests demonstrate that policy legitimacy emerges from a direct process of symbolic legitimation, and through an indirect process of per suasive legitimation. Second, the mediated character of Supreme Court rul ings is examined as it relates to the Court's ability to enhance policy legitimacy. Experimental tests reveal that the Court's power of legitimation remains con sistent regardless of variance in the specific content of news coverage Col lectively, findings highlight the intricacy of policy legitimation while providing evidence that the institutional legitimacy maintained by the Supreme Court can produce significant shifts in policy evaluations.

New French Thought: Political Philosophy

Abstract: Since the early 1980s France has seen a remarkable flourishing of new work in political philosophy. This anthology brings into English essays by some of the best young French political thinkers writing today, including Marcel Gauchet, Pierre Manent, Luc Ferry, and Alain Renaut. The central theme of these essays is liberal democracy: its nature, its development, its problems, its fundamental legitimacy. Although these themes are familiar to American and British readers, the French approach to them - which is profoundly historical and rooted in the tradition of continental philosophy - is quite different from other approaches. Included in this collection is a series of reconsiderations of French critics of liberal society (Levi-Strauss, Foucault, Bourdieu) and of classical European liberals (Kant, Constant, Tocqueville). The continuing controversies over the nature of the modern era and the place of religion within it play a central role throughout the collection. The book includes a debate on the foundations of human rights and on the nature of a liberal political order. The concluding section presents some of the new sociological writing on modern individualism, its pleasures and its discontents. An introduction by Mark Lilla provides the historical background to the revival of French political thought about liberalism, and offers an analysis of what American and English readers might learn from it.

Political Ideas and Concepts: An Introduction

Abstract: Introduction - Politics, Government and the State - Sovereignty, the Nation and Supranationalism - Power, Authority and Legitimacy - Law, Order and Justice - Rights, Obligations and Citizenship - Democracy, Representation and the Public Interest - Human Nature, the Individual and Society - Freedom, Tolerance and Liberation - Equality, Social Justice and Welfare - Property, Planning and the Market - Reaction, Reform and Revolution

Public Policy for Democracy.

Abstract: A fundamental rethinking is under way about the roles of government, citizens, and community organizations in public policy. Can government be reconstructed to make public policies more responsive to citizens and thus more effective? This challenge is apparent in the activist policy agenda of the Clinton administration, which supports national service programs, government-voluntary collaborations, and community-based development projects. Public Policy for Democracy is an important and timely contribution to the current discussion of how to get people more involved in their own governance. In this book, contributors urge policymakers and policy analysts to promote a more vigorous and inclusive democracy by incorporating concerns about citizenship in their craft, rather than strictly emphasizing efficiency and effectiveness. The authors provide insight into how the social construction of politics affects the recipients of the policies and the public in general. They call attention to how policies reinforce negative stereotypes of some groups, such as welfare recipients, and often lead to political alienation and withdrawal. In addition, they discuss how polices using ""clinical reason"" --a term borrowed from medicine and used as a way to classify people --are increasingly applied to nonmedical situations, such as domestic violence, to restrict individual power and legitimacy. The authors argue that much needs to be done by the government itself to improve policy design and empower all citizens to participate in the democratic process. They identify concrete strategies for policymakers to enhance the role of citizens without sacrificing program effectiveness.

Putting Scandinavian Equality to the Test: An Experimental Evaluation of Gender Stereotyping of Political Candidates in a Sample of Norwegian Voters

Abstract: The issue of the equitable representation of women in political bodies has concerned both political activists and political scientists for a number of years. Greater representation of women is predicted to have a number of effects on public policy and social interactions. Among these effects are changes in policy priorities, improved system legitimacy and a change in the political culture as old stereotypes disappear and women come to be viewed as the equals of men in the political sphere. The view has been that if women were to get into office, they could prove themselves effective. Therefore societal views on women as political leaders would change, and old stereotypes as to their limited competence would break down. The hope of many is that as women politicians become commonplace, a country's political culture would change so that gender is no longer a relevant consideration in evaluating political leaders. This Note directly tests the assertion that increased participation by women leads to this genderneutral view of political leaders.

Between the Norm and the Exception: The Frankfurt School and the Rule of Law

Abstract: Introduction: recovering the rule of law. Part 1 Carl Schmitt meets Karl Marx: a totalitarian concept of the political the social rule of law. Part 2 Legality and legitimacy: parliamentary legality or plebiscitary dictatorship? the unfinished agenda of rational law. Part 3 Sovereignty and its discontents: the permanent state of emergency beyond state sovereignty. Part 4 Toward the democratic rule of law: a democratic concept of the political between the norm and the exception. Conclusion: the presence of the past.

Judicial Legitimacy as a Repeated Game

Abstract: An independent judiciary faces the problem of how to restrain high-court judges from indulging their personal whims. One restraint is the desire of judges to influence future judges. To do so, judges may have to maintain their own or the system's legitimacy by restraining their own behavior. This situation can be viewed as an equilibrium of an infinitely repeated game. Such a game has many equilibria, some of which are Pareto superior to others. In some equilibria, self-interested judges are responsible even without the threat of external penalties. Copyright 1994 by Oxford University Press.

The debate on immigration and the crisis of national identity

Abstract: The legacy of mass labour migration to Europe in the 1960s is a considerable permanent ‘foreign’ population. Now recession and industrial restructuring have cast doubt on that population's economic, social and political legitimacy; simultaneously, the nation state is under pressure from both above and below. Despite historically very different approaches to the role of immigration in Britain, France and Germany, there has emerged a common problem of national identity. Across Europe there remains strong popular attachment to the national cultural identities, and it is this inertia which denies the logic of adaptation and change.

Ghana : the political economy of recovery

Abstract: The contributors look at the issues involved in Ghana's current reform programme, addressing questions of governance, the transformation of the ruling party, regime legitimacy, the parallel economy, economic restructuring, export diversification and international financial negotiations.

Can Prisons be Legitimate?: Penal Politics, Privatization and the Timeliness of an Old Idea

Abstract: This paper seeks to follow some of the twists and turns of recent penal discourse, especially those official rhetorics which support the marketization of the system as a principal means of addressing its problems I contend that there is a deeply vexed, but generally unarticulated, problem that haunts most discussions of prisons, prison disorders, and other aspects of penal politics, whether these spring from 'official' or 'radical' perspectives This is what has long been known to sociologists and political theorists as the problem of legitimacy It is a problem whose practical, theoretical, and normative dimensions need to be much more carefully and patiently examined than is currently usual in penal debates I want to suggest that in pausing to consider the problem of legitimacy directly, rather than obliquely and implicitly as is more often done, we may be able to organize and attain a critical point of purchase upon a number of otherwise confusing and apparently discrete recent developments Indeed, just as some commentators propose that legitimacy can rightly be seen as the central problem of political theory (see Beetham 1991: 41, revising Weber (1991) and Habermas (1976)), so I hope to show that it can provide an organizing idea in penal politics, in terms of which both the coherence and justifiability of particular practices and the adequacy of critical and reforming stances upon them can be considered In particular I want to try to assess the claim embedded in the rhetorics favouring privatization (or contracting out, or proprietary prisons, as the various locutions have it) to have answered many of the key legitimation problems of modern penal systems I will argue that in fact such concerns are more often evaded or suppressed than answered, and that the arguments over the justification of any practice of imprisonment (private or otherwise) need to be more strenuously pursued than contemporary rhetorics allow

Sleeping with the enemy: A dynamic model of declining political commitment in state socialism

Abstract: In recent decades communist elites in virtually every socialist state embarked on strategies of reform that progressively weakened their authority. In Eastern Europe, the reform policy of the Hungarian state during the 1970s reflected official acceptance of the market-like informal economy. Rather than suppressing the shadow second economy, Kadar initiated reforms that sought to make official and legal the market activities of households. In China, economic reforms launched by post-Mao party leaders led to the emergence of markets both within and outside the boundaries of the state socialist redistributive economy. The state attempted to specify a new structure of property rights, institute legal and regulatory reforms, and create new economic institutions required for a hybrid mixed economy. As in Hungary, however, the spread of market transactions was broadly speaking corrosive of the legitimacy of the communist party. After more than a decade of reform, today the Chinese communist elite fitfully await the consequences of what they sense is a deepening crisis in the party's legitimacy. Both in Eastern Europe and in China, the combined effects of myriad market-like transactions highlighted the failures of central planning and contributed to the erosion of party legitimacy; in Eastern Europe they paved the way for regime change.2 Although perestroika accomplished little in reforming the Soviet economy, Soviet citizens too came to rely increasingly on the market-like informal second economy as their source of consumer goods and services.3 Although little progress was achieved under Gorbachev in instituting a market economy, high-level talks and public airing of plans for a rapid transition to a market economy contributed to the collapse of the Soviet planned economy. The failed coup of August 1991 reflected the extent of defection and the erosion of commitment to the party's cause within the Soviet elite. It was not so much the breadth of popular resistance as the failure of will on the part of conspirators that caused the coup's speedy collapse.

Between the Waves: Mass-Mediated Themes of Crime and Justice

Abstract: Introduction To help clarify the relationship between media and social control - the interaction between the mass media, law enforcement bureaucracies, and popular culture - and to appreciate how the news media in particular construct and reconstruct criminal events between crime waves and moral panics (Cohen, 1972; Cohen and Young, 1973; Hall et at., 1978; Best, 1990; Jenkins, 1992; 1994), I will focus on three themes of the crime news business that have evolved in the U.S. during the 20th century. They are the predator criminal as a media icon, the depiction of sexually violent crimes against women, and the portrayals of high-profile police-citizen encounters. These news staples of reporting on crime are not meant to be exhaustive, but rather are representative of a "meta-narrative" of crime drama/discourse that both focuses on the "randomness" and "impersonal" nature of criminal action and increasingly emphasizes the "violent" responses by criminals and crime fighters alike. As staples of news reporting, the portrayals of "criminal predators," "sexual victims," and "police-citizen" conflicts serve to frame, signify, map, and converge ordinary news images into what has come to be understood as the meaning of crime and punishment in everyday life and popular culture. When there are no contemporary "crime waves" or "moral panics" (i.e., drug wars, wars on crime, cultism, serial killers, etc.) to be established and contextualized, or while there is a lull in "claims-making/news-making" stories about a new trend in crime and violence, then the mass media fills this constructual void by providing a steady diet of the growing and omnipotent danger of impersonal crime. This constant bombardment by the mass media requires almost no explanation or contextualization of crime and criminals per se. Rather, it performs in an essentializing way to reduce the primary responses of "crime control" to those activities carried out by the legal order and the formal agencies of law enforcement and criminal justice. In short, the mass reality of crime has evolved to the point where certain domains or assumptions about crime and justice are no longer questionable. Instead, they are simply regarded as crime and crime-fighting truths, such as "the crime problem is getting worse" or "the courts have created too many legal obstacles in the war on crime." As Stuart Hall, Philip Jenkins, and others have shown, crime news construction "is a cumulative or incremental process, in which each issue is to some extent built upon its predecessors, in the context of a steadily developing fund of socially available knowledge" (Jenkins, 1994: 220). In effect, the staples of crime and justice news need no longer compete for attention with other claims makers whose topics must remain fresh and interesting (Best, 1989). In a sense, these staples have reached the mass-mediated level of perpetual legitimacy or relevancy because of the persuasiveness of "in your face" crime and justice images expressed daily in popular fiction, tabloid journalism, and prime-time news. Mass-Mediated Themes of Crime and Justice Identities, individual and collective, have always been constructed at three articulated sites: the biological, the social, and the cultural. Whether we are discussing premodern, modern, or postmodern societies, this has been true for "non-criminal" and "criminal" identities alike. While I am not subordinating the biological and social to the cultural sites per se, I am arguing that class-based representations today are largely constructed by mass-mediated culture, especially since the working-class community, itself a creation of the urban-based mass-production industries, has passed into history. In television, for example, with the primary exceptions of beer commercials and police stories, the working class has all but disappeared. As a result, there are basically three kinds of "classes" constructed by the mass media: the "rich" classes, the "middle" classes, and the "criminal" classes. …

Institutions, Parties, and Coalitions in Argentine Politics

Abstract: In this summary of research about contemporary Argentine politics, Luigi Manzetti scans the political culture and the power conflicts that define today's Argentina. He uses a variety of sources, including public-opinion data, voting behaviour and detailed interviews with policy-makers, business leaders and analysts. Manzetti aims to develop a general theory of interest group behaviour, from the inception of these groups in Argentina until the Menem administration. He argues that Argentine political parties have not served the ideal function of reconciling social conflicts. Nor have they brought legitimacy to key national institutions like the presidency, Congress and the judiciary. In the absence of such mediation, vested interests such as the armed forces, organised labour, agricultural producers and industralists have taken matters into their own hands in a brutal struggle for power in Argentina. The book should be useful reading for academic professionals and college-level courses in Latin-American history and politics. It should also be of interest to policy researchers, government officials and business leaders, as well as all concerned with contemporary political events in Argentina.

Riding the Tiger: Legitimacy and Legal Culture in Post-Mao China

Abstract: Efforts at legal reform in China under the banner of the socialist legal system (shehui zhuyi fazhi) represent an attempt by the post-Mao regime to rest legitimacy in part on an ideology of formal law that complements the regime's efforts at economic reform. While the Party has not abandoned its reliance on the conceit that it represents the forces of historical revolution, the establishment of the socialist legal system is aimed to some extent at addressing a more immediate challenge of retaining legitimacy in the eyes of a populace for whom abstract notions of historical determinacy have little meaning. Proponents of reform have linked these abstract and practical aspects of legitimacy by asserting that legal reform is a requirement of the specific stage of historical development in which China now finds itself.

News as Social Knowledge in China: The Changing Worldview of Chinese National Media

Abstract: This article argues that the Chinese news media are the major stock of social knowledge, serving as ways for the general public to make sense of the changing environment both within and without the Chinese polity. Based on an extensive content analysis, both quantitative and qualitative, of China Central Television National Network News and People's Daily domestic edition in 1992, and compared with earlier content analyses dating back 15 years, this study suggests that since the reforms in the late 1970s, news in China has provided the Chinese society and people with the baseline knowledge needed for the building of a forced consensus, the basis of Communist rule and legitimacy.

Calling and Career in Christian Ministry

Abstract: This is a study of the relationship between "calling" and "career" in the lives of American clergy. Data were collected through a series of intensive interviews with ministers and priests from various Christian churches. It is my thesis that pressure for success in a career makes the calling increasingly problematic; however, the "discovery and development of vocation" (Emmet, 1958:254) remain critical for modern clergy not only because the legitimacy of their work rests on traditional claims to selflessness and divine direction, but also because their own identity and personal worth are defined by the call. These issues are approached by investigating two areas of pastoral experience: first, the nature of the relationship between clergy and laity, especially as this impacts the clergy's authority in the church; second, the clergy's concern with growth and change as the basic purpose of their work; in conclusion, links between calling and identity are reconsidered.