Showing papers on "Legitimacy published in 2001"

A Public Role for the Private Sector: Industry Self-Regulation in a Global Economy

Abstract: Increasing economic competition combined with the powerful threat of transnational activism are pushing firms to develop new political strategies. Over the past decade a growing number of corporations have adopted policies of industry self-regulation --corporate codes of conduct, social and environmental standards, and auditing and monitoring systems. A Public Role for the Private Sector explores the phenomenon of industry self-regulation through three different cases --environment, labor, and information privacy --where corporate leaders appear to be converging on industry self-regulation as the appropriate response to competing pressures. Political and economic risks, reputational effects, and learning within the business community all influence the adoption of a self-regulatory strategy, but there are wide variations in the strength and character of it across industries and issue areas. Industry self-regulation raises significant questions about the place of the private sector in regulation and governance, and the accountability, legitimacy and power of industry at a time of rapid globalization.

The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better off Financially

Abstract: The Case for Marriage: Why Married People are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially. Linda J. Waite & Maggie Gallagher. New York: Doubleday. 2000. 260 pp. ISBN 0-38550085-8. $24.95 cloth. Marriage, our second oldest institution, has been controversial during most of its existence. In The Bankruptcy of Marriage, Calverton (1928) observed, "It is marriage as we know it... the marriage of modern monogamy, of the bindingcontract variety, our system of marriage, in other words, that has broken down, and to-day is bankrupt" (p. 62). Given its age and its undisputed importance, marriage has long been challenged and defended. The Case for Marriage offers a spirited and well-documented but flawed example of such a defense. First, its use of language is far from neutral. Its tone oozes with disrespect for those who deviate from lifelong marriage. Marriage throughout the text is referred to as a "bargain," a superior investment benefiting both those who participate and society at large. Cohabitation, on the other hand, is a "deal," something one picks up at a flea market. Cohabiting partners, regardless of their age, are referred to as "live-in" boy- or girlfriends and are described as "couples living together without commitment" (p. 190). Adult singles are treated as a residual category. As constructionists remind us, the use of language is not just a descriptive but a creative and frequently assertive activity. My second concern is conceptual. Marriage institutionalizes the legitimacy of offspring in human societies. Children born in it, regardless of its form, are considered "legitimate" and belong to a kinship network. The marriage institution, then, has a clear stake in its procreative consequences, as is exemplified by its sole universal rule, the "incest taboo." Its main "enemy" is promiscuous reproduction. Its "allies" are those other forms of "living together" that, regardless of their duration, counter random mating. "Family," the oldest human institution, traditionally is responsible for "caring" for the very young, and nowadays also for the aged. It seems impossible to imagine humanity's pilgrimage without these two institutions. It is quite possible, however, to imagine each one taking on a variety of forms. The core units of the marriage and family institutions are, respectively, married couples and family networks. The bulk of Waite's and Gallagher's book is not about the institutions of marriage and family, but rather about individuals who choose to participate in marital and familial units. They conceptualize marriage as more than a "private emotional relationship" and specify a "lifelong commitment to form a new family" (p. 187) as its raison d'etre. They use the words marriage and family interchangeably. This is confusing. For example, are voluntarily childless married couples to be considered deviants? Uncommitted? What about one-parent families? Are they a different legitimate family form or, as the authors seem to imply, simply an outcome of unwed motherhood, marital failure, or early spousal death? I agree with the authors that marriage's "larger public role must be acknowledged and supported by the larger society and its institutions" (p. 187). All social arrangements, whether sacred or profane, to use Durkheim's terminology, that combat reproductive promiscuity or inadequate family care deserve support from "society and its institutions." The authors' treatment of cohabitation is equally troublesome to me. Analytically, cohabitation, in its many manifestations, should not be contrasted or compared with marriage but rather with the equally diverse category of singlehood. I have no problem with the multitude of quantitative data amassed by the authors to show that enduring marriages and families, on the average, offer some distinct advantages over cohabitation. …

Ten Theses on Politics

Abstract: 1. To identify politics with the exercise of, and struggle to possess, power is to do away with politics. But we also reduce the scope of politics as a mode of thinking if we conceive of it merely as a theory of power or as an investigation into the grounds of its legitimacy. If there is something specific about politics that makes it something other than a more capacious mode of grouping or a form of power characterized by its mode of legitimation, it is that it involves a distinctive kind of subject considered, and it involves this subject in the form of a mode of relation that is its own. This is what Aristotle means when, in Book I of the Politics, he distinguishes between political rule (as the ruling of equals) from all other kinds of rule; or when, in Book III, he defines the citizen as 'he who partakes in the fact of ruling and the fact of being ruled.' Everything about politics is contained in this specific relationship, this 'part-taking' [avoirpart],[3] which should be interrogated as to its meaning and as to its conditions of possibility.

The Psychology of Legitimacy: Emerging Perspectives on Ideology, Justice, and Intergroup Relations

Abstract: Part I: Introduction: 1. Emerging perspectives on the psychology of legitimacy John T. Jost and Brenda Major Part II. Historical Perspectives on Sociological and Psychological Theories of Legitimacy: 2. Theories of legitimacy Morris Zelditch, Jr 3. Reflections on social and psychological processes of legitimization and delegitimization Herbert C. Kelman Part III. Cognitive and Perceptual Processes in the Appraisal of Legitimacy: 4. A perceptual theory of legitimacy: policies, prejudice, social institutions, and moral value Chris Crandall and Ryan Beasley 5. Blame it on the group: entitativity, subjective essentialism, and social attribution Vincent Yzerbyt and Anouk Rogier 6. Status vs. quo: naive realism and the search for social change and perceived legitimacy Robert J. Robinson and Laura Kray Part IV. The Tolerance of Injustice: Implications for Self and Society: 7. Tolerance and personal deprivation James M. Olson and Carolyn Hafer 8. Legitimacy and the construal of social advantage Brenda Major and Toni Schmader 9. Individual upward mobility and the perceived legitimacy of intergroup relations Naomi Ellemers 10. Restricted intergroup boundaries: tokenism, ambiguity and the tolerance of injustice Stephen C. Wright Part V. Sterotyping, Ideology and the Legitimation of Inequality: 11. The emergence of status beliefs: from structural inequality to legitimizing ideology Cecilia L. Ridgeway 12. Ambivalent stereotypes as legitimizing ideologies: differentiating paternalistic and envious prejudice Peter Glick and Susan T. Fiske 13. Legitimizing ideologies: the social dominance approach Jim Sidanius, Shana Levin, Christopher M. Federico, and Felicia Pratto 14. The (il)legitimacy of intergroup bias: from social reality to social resistance Russell Spears, Jolanda Jetten and Bertjan Doosje 15. Conflicts of legitimation among self, group, and system: the integrative potential of system justification theory John T. Jost, Diana Burgess and Cristina Mosso Part VI. Institutional and Organizational Processes of Legitimation: 16. The architecture of legitimacy: constructing accounts of organizational controversies Kimberly D. Elsbach 17. A psychological perspective on the legitimacy of institutions and authorities Tom R. Tyler 18. License to kill: violence and legitimacy in expropriative social relations Mary R. Jackman.

Legitimacy and economy in deliberative democracy

Abstract: Deliberative democracy, though the dominant theme in recent democratic theory, remains on the face of it impossible-at least to the degree it is cast as an account of democratic legitimacy. Yet this is how the theory arrived in Joshua Cohen's classic formulation, and this is still the claim at the theory's core: that outcomes are legitimate to the extent they receive reflective assent through participation in authentic deliberation by all those subject to the decision in question.' As Seyla Benhabib puts it, "Legitimacy in complex democratic societies must be thought to result from the free and unconstrained deliberation of all about matters of common concern" (emphasis added).2 The essence of deliberation is generally taken to be that claims for or against collective decisions need to be justified to those subject to these decisions in terms that, given the chance to reflect, these individuals can accept. But in real-world deliberations, all or even very many of those affected do not appear to participate, thus rendering deliberative democracy vulnerable to demolition of its legitimacy claims. In the context of the supposedly exemplary case of health care rationing in Oregon,3 Ian Shapiro asks, "Why should we attach legitimacy at all to a deliberative process that involved very few of those whose health care priorities were actually being discussed?"4 There are ways to fudge the issue; for example, Cohen specifies only that "outcomes are democratically legitimate if and only if they could be the

Governance in a Partially Globalized World

Abstract: Facing globalization, the challenge for political science resembles that of the founders of the United States: how to design institutions for a polity of unprecedented size and diversity. Globalization produces discord and requires effective governance, but effective institutions are difficult to create and maintain. Liberal-democratic institutions must also meet standards of accountability and participation, and should foster persuasion rather than rely on coercion and interest-based bargaining. Effective institutions must rely on self-interest rather than altruism, yet both liberal-democratic legitimacy and the meaning of self-interest depend on people’s values and beliefs. The analysis of beliefs, and their effect on institutional outcomes, must therefore be integrated into institutional analysis. Insights from branches of political science as diverse as game theory, rational-choice institutionalism, historical institutionalism, and democratic theory can help political scientists understand how to design institutions on a world—and human—scale.

Meaning and Measurement in Cross-National Research on Satisfaction with Democracy

Abstract: The stability of a democratic nation has long been thought to rest on its level of legitimacy among the mass public. Yet, measure- ment of such support has been characterized by considerable confusion. One key element in that confusion is the heavy reliance over the past 20 years on data from a survey item that measures respondents' levels of satisfaction with democracy. Data from this item have been analyzed in numerous studies of political support. This research has proceeded despite the existence of substantial disagreement regarding what di- mension or dimensions of support the item measures. In an effort to resolve this ambiguity, we examine the conceptual and empirical prop- erties of the item in question. The analysis draws on original surveys conducted in 1999 in Romania and El Salvador and on data from the 1997 Latinbarometer. Results reveal that the satisfaction with democracy item taps multiple dimensions of political support and that the substan- tive content represented by the item varies across both individuals and nations. We argue that these empirical characteristics limit the capacity of analysts to derive meaningful inferences from study of this item and that, until clarification of the measurement issue is obtained, progress in identifying predictors of democratic stability will be slowed. Improving our understanding of political support constitutes one of the central tasks facing students of comparative politics. Much of the research on support makes use of a survey item that has appeared on the Eurobarometer, the Latinbarometer, and elsewhere. In this article, we examine the conceptual and empirical properties of this "satisfaction with democracy" (SWD) question. The SWD question asks, "On the whole, are you very satisfied, fairly satisfied,

The Myth of the Dichotomy: Complementarity of Politics and Administration in the Past and Future of Public Administration

Abstract: At the heart of the practice of public administration is the relationship between administrators, on one hand, and political leaders and the public on the other hand. The nature of that relationship and the proper role of administrators in the political process have been the subject of considerable debate. Anxiety about administrative legitimacy has been particularly intense in the United States, where the rise of the administrative state was out of synch with a democratic society (Stillman 1997), but similar issues have arisen in other countries as well (Rutgers 1997). As the field emerged, it was important to differentiate a practice based on professional knowledge and values from political particularism, but the extent and scope of the differentiation were unclear. It was also necessary to reconcile the tensions among complying with the directions of elected officials, maintaining professional integrity, and serving the public. Observers differ as to whether American thinking about the relationship of public administration to society has experienced major shifts over time or has gradually evolved. Along the lines developed by Lynn, the case can be made that there has generally been continuity in the development of public administration in the United States rather than an abandonment of the traditions of the field. Whereas Lynn organizes his reexamination around the bureaucratic paradigm, my emphasis is the core relationship between politicians and administrators.(1) Not only did traditional thought, as Lynn observes, seek to maintain "balance between administrative capacity and popular control on behalf of public purposes defined by electoral and judicial institutions," it also sought to justify the contributions of public administrators to shaping the definition of public purposes. Put simply, early contributors to the development of public administration acknowledged a policy role for administrators that has often been ignored. Even the politics-administration dichotomy that is a part of the traditional paradigm usually incorporates the ideas of accountability and responsibility--although the paradigm can be expressed in ways that seem to preclude these qualities by portraying administration as mechanically instrumental--but the emphasis on a strict dichotomy of politics and administration will not accommodate the policy role of administrators that has come to be widely recognized. In the past--and, I would argue, in the present as well--there was simultaneous emphasis on separation and insulation of administrators from political interference, on one hand, and interaction and incorporation of administrative contributions in the design and the implementation of public policy, on the other hand. Wilson and Goodnow favored such contributions, as did Leonard White, who acknowledged but dismissed concerns about the growth of administration "controlling in the first instance the application of law to the individual case, cooperating also in the formulation of policy" (1926, 33). Although legislative control of administration is critical, he argued, "it is nevertheless important to remember that the administration cooperates indispensably with the legislature, and that without its assistance, the task of legislation would become much less informed and much less effective." These founding fathers of the field never advocated the dichotomy attributed to them--a conclusion demonstrated repeatedly (Golembiewski 1977; Rabin and Bowman 1984, 4; Rohr 1986, 31; Van Riper 1984, 209-10).(2) Still, the myth that public administration began as a narrow, confined, and insulated activity is regularly repeated partly because, as Lynn implies, it is self-satisfying to view ourselves as enlightened and to view earlier, particularly prewar scholars and practitioners, as benighted. There are a number of reasons why the dichotomy idea has persisted. It is convenient to explain the division of roles in terms of total separation because it is easier to explain than a model based on sharing roles, particularly since the separation model does not limit the actual policy contributions of administrators in practice. …

Market-Driven Politics: Neoliberal Democracy and the Public Interest

Abstract: "...[P]olitics everywhere are now market-driven. It is not just that governments can no longer 'manage' their national economies; to survive in office they must increasingly 'manage' national politics in such a way as to adapt them to the pressures of transnational market forces." Market-driven Politics is an empirical examination of the extent to which politics and policy are conditioned, or even determined, by global economic forces. It is a multi-level study which moves between an analysis of those global forces, through national politics, to the changes occurring week by week in two fields of public life that are both fundamentally important and familiar to everyone - television broadcasting and healthcare. The focus is Britain, but the arguments apply in many other contexts. Public services like health care and broadcasting play an important role, because they affect the legitimacy of the government of the day; in market-driven politics such domains become political flashpoints because they are also targets for global capital. Colin leys agues lucidly that we are witnessing a fundamental shift in the relationship between politics and economics. His original analysis of the key processes of commodification of public services, the conversion of public-service workforces into employees motivated to general profit, and the role of the state in absorbing risk is critically important, not just for an analysis of market-driven politics but also for longer-term defence of democracy and the collective values on which it depends.

How Democratic Is the American Constitution

Abstract: In this provocative work, an American political scientist poses the question, "Why should we uphold our constitution?". The vast majority of Americans venerate the American Constitution and the principles it embodies, but many also worry that the United States has fallen behind other nations on crucial democratic issues, including economic equality, racial integration and women's rights. Robert Dahl explores the vital tension between the Americans' belief in the legitimacy of their constitution and their belief in the principles of democracy. Dahl starts with the assumption that the legitimacy of the American Constitution derives solely from its utility as an instrument of democratic governance. Dahl demonstrates that, due to the context in which it was conceived, the constitution came to incorporate significant antidemocratic elements. Because the Framers of the Constitution had no relevant example of a democratic political system on which to model the American government, many defining aspects of the political system were implemented as a result of short-sightedness or last-minute compromise. Dahl highlights those elements of the American system that are most unusual and potentially antidemocratic: the federal system, the bicameral legislature, judicial review, presidentialism, and the electoral college system. The political system that emerged from the world's first great democratic experiment is unique - no other well-established democracy has copied it. How does the American constitutional system function in comparison to other democratic systems? How could the political system be altered to achieve more democratic ends? To what extent did the Framers of the Constitution build features into the political system that militate against significant democratic reform? Refusing to accept the status of the American Constitution as a sacred text, Dahl challenges America to think critically about the origins of its political system and to consider the opportunities for creating a more democratic society.

Representing people, representing nature, representing the world.

Abstract: Problems of representation lie at the centre of recent experiments in deliberative democracy. The problems are not primarily social scientific questions concerning the statistical representiveness of small-scale deliberative institutions but normative questions about their political and ethical legitimacy. Experiments in deliberative democracy often rely for their representative legitimacy on appeals to the presence of members of different groups. However, they often do so without clear sources of authorisation and accountability from those represented. The representation of nonhumans and future generations in deliberative institutions is still more problematic. In the necessary absence of their authorisation, accountability, and presence, claims to speak on their behalf relies on epistemic claims, coupled with care. To highlight these problems is not to claim that small deliberative institutions are illegitimate but rather to point out the need for a clearer account of their role in democratic institutions and the proper sources of contestability of their outcomes.

The provision of public goods under Islamic law: origins, impact, and limitations of the waqf system.

Abstract: The Islamic waqf appears to have emerged as a credible commitment device to give property owners economic security in return for social services. Throughout the Middle East, it long served as a major instrument for delivering public goods in a decentralized manner. In principle, the manager of a waqf had to obey the stipulations of its founder to the letter. In practice, the founder's directives were often circumvented. An unintended consequence was an erosion of the waqf system's legitimacy. In any case, legally questionable adaptations proved no substitute for the legitimate options available to corporations. As it became increasingly clear that the waqf system lacked the flexibility necessary for efficient resource utilization, governments found it ever easier to confiscate their resources. In the 19th century, the founding of European-inspired municipalities marked a formal repudiation of the waqf system in favor of government-coordinated systems for delivering public goods. Whatever its level of development, every society must grapple with the challenge of providing "public goods"-goods that are nonexcludable (not easily denied to unauthorized consumers) as well as non-rival (capable of being enjoyed by many consumers at once). The private provision of such goods is not impossible; language conventions and measurement standards offer examples of pure public goods that have emerged without the guidance or interference of a governing authority. Yet, if only because competitive markets do not always supply such goods efficiently, various forms of state intervention have been ubiquitous. The public good of national defense tends to be supplied directly by governments. Other public goods are provided by government-enforced private monopolies. For example, technological innovations are promoted through patents that give inventors exclusive rights to exploit their inventions commercially. Of course, the known mechanisms do not guarantee efficiency (Comes & Sandler 1996:ch. 1-2, 6-10). Nor are they necessarily motivated by this goal. Rent-seekers promote delivery mechanisms that raise prices above the levels necessary for profitability (Rowley et al. 1988; Shleifer & Vishny 1998:ch. 1-9). In the premodern Middle East, from 750 C.E., perhaps even earlier, an increasingly popular vehicle for the provision of public goods was the waqf, known in English also as an "Islamic trust" or a "pious foundation." A waqf is an unincorporated trust established under Islamic law by a living man or woman for the provision of a designated social service in perpetuity. Its activities are financed by revenue-bearing assets that have been rendered forever inalienable. Originally the assets had to be immovable, although in some places this requirement was eventually relaxed to legitimize what came to be known as a "cash waqf." The reason the waqf is considered an expression of piety is that it is governed by a law considered sacred, not that its activities are inherently religious or that its benefits must be confined to Muslims. Traditionally, various public goods that are now generally provided by government agencies were provided through private initiatives. Not until the second half of the 19th century did the giant cities of the Middle East begin to establish municipalities to deliver urban services in a centralized and coordinated manner. Even a lighthouse on the Romanian coast was established under the waqf system,' which is particularly noteworthy in view of the modern intellectual tradition that treats the lighthouse as the quintessential example of a pure public good that must be provided by the government out of tax revenues. It is in reaction to this tradition that Ronald Coase (1974) drew attention to several 19th-century British lighthouses constructed and administered by private individuals.2 However, contrary to what is sometimes presumed, Coase did not discover cases in which the state played no role whatsoever. …

[The Social Life of Stories: Narrative & Knowledge in the Yukon Territory]

Abstract: Julie Cruikshank, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1998, illus., xxvii + 211 pages, ISBN 0-7748-0648-6 (cloth).Reviewer: Jennifer S.H. BrownUniversity of WinnipegThis is an important and useful book, although not entirely new. Three of its seven chapters are published here for the first time, while the other four are revised to varying extents from pieces that Julie Cruikshank published in diverse venues earlier in the 1990s. Her inclusion of a preface and epilogue helps to unify the book and to provide some personal reflections on the broad themes running through her work. The book has a retrospective quality as Cruikshank presents in modified form some of her writings of the last decade, adds to her thoughts on their topics, and looks back over more than two decades of working with Yukon elders and with the stories they have shared with her.One ongoing feature of Cruikshank's work is her sense of ethnography as dialogic, interactive, and processual, as involving relationships that grow and shift and inform and enrich over a long period. Some of the most important Yukon elders with whom she worked are deceased, yet their stories and teachings continue to yield new insight and understanding for their communities and for Cruikshank herself as the years pass. The present participles in her chapter titles reveal this open-ended sense of process, of lack of closure: "Establishing Meanings through Story and Song" (chap. 2), "Confronting Cultural Erasure" (chap. 4), "Rethinking Objects of Ethnographic Collection" (chap. 5), "Claiming Legitimacy" (chap. 6), "Negotiating with Narrative" (chap. 7). Similarly, she cautions against treating oral sources as stable, reified "collectible texts" yielding "data"; rather, they, like humans, have social histories, and their "content depends largely on what goes into the questions, the dialogue, the personal relationship through which it is communicated" (p. 40).For brevity, the following comments focus only on Chapters 1, 3, and 4, newly published here. " 'My Roots Grow in Jackpine Roots': Culture, History, and Narrative Practice in the Yukon" borrows a quote from elder Kitty Smith to draw contrasts between narratives rooted in the Yukon and its people and those that come from outside, "periodizing history, categorizing the world" (p. 4). Indigenous stories and languages maintain connections to land and place, taking on fresh significance as land claims negotiations proceed. …

Good Governance and Aid Effectiveness: The World Bank and Conditionality

Abstract: Prompted by concerns over the effectiveness of aid, the World Bank has significantly stretchedits policy frontiers by endorsing “good governance” as a core element of its developmentstrategy. Governance, which captures the manner in which power is exercised in themanagement of a country’s economic and social resources for development, is a multifacetedconcept. Limited by its restrictive mandate and institutional ethos, the Bank has adopted arestrictive approach, confining itself to the economic dimensions of governance. Nevertheless,this evolution represents an ambivalent enterprise with both promises and dilemmas, as theinherent tension between the economic and political dimensions of governance appears themost contentious issue. While democracy tends to refer to the legitimacy of government, goodgovernance refers to the effectiveness of government. This article assesses the Bank’s approachfor promoting good governance in developing countries. It argues that that the

Environmental Disclosures in the Annual Report: Extending the Applicability and Predictive Power of Legitimacy Theory

Abstract: Much of the extant research into why companies disclose environmental information in the annual report indicates that legitimacy theory is one of the more probable explanations for the increase in environmental disclosures since the early 1980s. Legitimacy theory is based on the idea that in order to continue operating successfully, corporations must act within the bounds of what society identifies as socially acceptable behaviour. The purpose of the practical research undertaken and reported in this paper is to extend the applicability and predictive power of legitimacy theory by investigating to what extent annual report disclosures are interrelated to: attempts to gain, maintain and repair legitimacy; and the choice of specific legitimation tactics. The quasi‐experimental method adopted utilised semi‐structured interviews with senior personnel from three large Australian public companies. The findings indicated support for legitimacy theory as an explanatory factor for environmental disclosures. Moreover, findings about the likelihood of specific micro‐legitimation tactics being used in response to legitimacy threatening environmental issues/events, and dependent on whether the purpose of the response is designed to gain, maintain or repair legitimacy, are reported.

Legislatures and statutory control of bureaucracy

Abstract: Existing theories of legislative delegation to bureaucracies typically focus on a single legislature, often the U.S. Congress. We argue that this parochial focus has important limitations. If one contends that politicians respond rationally to their political environment when adopting strategies for controlling bureaucrats, then theories of control should be able to explain how differences in the political environment-and in particular in the democratic institutional arrangements that shape this environment-influence strategies for controlling bureaucrats. We offer such a theory about the conditions under which legislatures should rely on statutory control (i.e., detailed legislation) in order to limit the discretion of agencies. The theory focuses on the interactions of four factors: conflict between legislators and bureaucrats, the bargaining costs associated with choosing the institutions for controlling bureaucrats, the professional capacity of legislators to create institutions for control, and the impact of political institutions on the relative costs and benefits of statutory and nonstatutory strategies of control. We test our argument using legislation from 1995 and 1996 that affects Medicaid programs. The results show that legislatures are more likely to make use of statutory controls when control of government is divided between the two parties, the two chambers of the legislature are unified in their opposition to the executive, the legislature is more professionalized, and the legislature does not have easily available options for nonstatutory control. ureaucratic involvement in policymaking is a pervasive condition of modern political life. Bureaucracies implement policies that legislatures have enacted, and they create policies where legislatures have avoided doing so. They can act to regulate industries, to distribute benefits and costs, and to redistribute wealth. They tackle policy areas as disparate as telecommunications, the environment, transportation, and public health. Given the pervasiveness of bureaucratic activity, it is not surprising that political scientists long have sought to understand the relationship between legislatures and agencies. Understanding this relationship is essential to democratic theory, as it focuses attention on the legitimacy of the role played by unelected policymakers in a representative democracy. Furthermore, it sheds light on the actions, abilities, and motivations of legislators. Thus, scholars have attempted to ascertain whether, to what extent, and under what conditions legislators influence the actions of agencies. Much of the focus of this research has been on the U.S. Congress, and much of the debate has centered on the question of whether in fact Congress controls the bureaucracy. This is a difficult question to answer, as it requires fairly precise information on legislator preferences and agency outputs. But while settling the empirical issue has been difficult, in addressing this question scholars have clarified several strategies for control, including the use of budget processes (e.g., Banks 1989; Bendor, Taylor, and Van Gaalen 1987), ongoing oversight (e.g., Aberbach 1990), and statutory control, whereby legislators use legislation to influence agency decisions.

Learning from successful local private firms in China: Establishing legitimacy

Abstract: Executive Overview Many international firms have found China a difficult market in which to prosper. In spite of this, many local private Chinese enterprises are succeeding, although they face an institutional environment that can be quite hostile. One of the principal reasons many local private firms have been able to succeed in a challenging environment where many multinationals have struggled is that they pursue strategic actions that establish their legitimacy in the society. The result is that the negative impact of meddlesome officials and the lack of well-codified and enforceable laws is reduced. This article identifies nine legitimacy-building strategies that local private firms have employed in China's transition economy. International firms entering these markets would be well served by observing and creatively replicating the local private firms' behaviors that helped to establish legitimacy.

Negotiating Identities: States and Immigrants in France and Germany.

Abstract: Immigration is even more hotly debated in Europe than in the United States. In this pivotal work of action and discourse analysis, Riva Kastoryano draws on extensive fieldwork--including interviews with politicians, immigrant leaders, and militants--to analyze interactions between states and immigrants in France and Germany. Making frequent comparisons to the United States, she delineates the role of states in constructing group identities and measures the impact of immigrant organization and mobilization on national identity. Kastoryano argues that states contribute directly and indirectly to the elaboration of immigrants' identity, in part by articulating the grounds on which their groups are granted legitimacy. Conversely, immigrant organizations demanding recognition often redefine national identity by reinforcing or modifying traditional sentiments. They use culture--national references in Germany and religion in France--to negotiate new political identities in ways that alter state composition and lead the state to negotiate its identity as well. Despite their different histories, Kastoryano finds that Germany, France, and the United States are converging in their policies toward immigration control and integration. All three have adopted similar tactics and made similar institutional adjustments in their efforts to reconcile differences while tending national integrity. The author builds her observations into a model of ''negotiations of identities'' useful to a broad cross-section of social scientists and policy specialists. She extends her analysis to consider how the European Union and transnational networks affect identities still negotiated at the national level. The result is a forward-thinking book that illuminates immigration from a new angle.

The Federal Vision: Legitimacy and Levels of Governance in the United States and the European Union

Abstract: The Federal Vision is about the complex and changing relationship between levels of governance within the United States and the European Union. Based on a transatlantic dialogue between scholars concerned about modes of governance on both sides, it is a collective attempt at analysing the ramifications of the legitimacy crisis in our multi-layered democracies, and possible remedies. Starting from a focus on the current policy debatea over devolution and subsidiarity, the book engages the reader in to the broader tension of comparartive federalism. Its authors believe that in spite of the fundamental differences between them, both the EU and the US are in the process of re-defining a federal vision for the 21st century. This book represents an important new contribution to the study of Federalism and European integration, which seeks to bridge the divide between the two. It also bridges the traditional divide between technical, legal or regulatory discussions of federal governance and philosophical debates over questions of belonging and multiple identities. It is a multi-disciplinary project, bringing together historians, political scientists and theorists, legal scholars, sociologists and political economists. It includes both innovative analysis and prescriptions on how to reshape the federal contract in the US and the EU. It includes introductions to the history of federalism in the US and the EU, the current debates over devolution and subsidarity, the legal framework of federalism and theories of regulatory federalism, as well as innovative approaches to the application of network analysis, principal-agent models, institutionalist analysis, and political theories of citizenship to the federal context. The introduction and conclusion by the editors draws out cross-cutting themes and lessons from the thinking together of the EU and US experiences, and suggest how a federal vision could be freed from the hierarchical paradigm of the federal state and articulated around concepts of mutal tolerence and empowerment. Contributors to this volume - Jacques Delors Joseph Nye Robert Howse and Kalypso Nicolaidis Daniel Elazar Joseph Weiler Mark Pollack David Lazer and Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger John Kincaid Andrew Moravcsik George Bermann Daniel Halberstam Giandomenico Majone Cary Coglianese John Peterson Vivien Schmidt Fritz Scharpf Sujit Choudhry Elizabeth Meehan Marc Landy Denis Lacorne Robert Howse and Kalypso Nicolaidis

Angola: new hopes for civil society?

Abstract: How does emerging Angolan civil society help bring about needed peace and constructive international support when the entire recent history of their country has been of internal repression and war aided by external, mostly malign, intervention with a million and a half people killed since 1975? On the face of it, civil society seems unlikely to succeed where elite negotiations and UN interventions have been so spectacularly unsuccessful, but there are some hopeful signs and some possible points of pressure ‐not least the fact that civil society may have greater popular legitimacy (if rather less power) than any of the political parties and government institutions. None the less it is important not to romanticise the attempts of Angolans to organise themselves for self‐help, peace promotion and the like. Many organisations do not last, there are divisions amongst and between groups and a lack of government structures able or interested in dialogue.

Religion as an Overlooked Element of International Relations

Abstract: Religion is among the most overlooked factors in the study of international politics. Some reasons for this include a bias against the study of religion that dates to the origins of the social sciences, the influence on social scientists of classical liberal ideas that stress the separation of church and state, and the fact that religion is difficult to quantify. Nevertheless, the essay holds that religion influences international politics in three ways: 1) religion influences the worldviews of many decisionmakers and their constituents and shapes the environment in which decisionmakers act; 2) religion is a source of legitimacy for political decisions and actions; 3) religion is an issue that crosses borders in many ways, including domestic conflicts with international implications. Equally significant are international religious movements, like fundamentalist movements and political Islam, and the foreign policies of theocratic states and other governments, which are guided by religious ideologies. Attention focuses on the international movement for the support of religious rights in the context of the world’s growing interdependence. This underscores the importance of religion in the study of international politics.

NGOs’ transnational advocacy networks: from ‘legitimacy’ to ‘political responsibility’?

Abstract: NGOs that operate as part of transnational advocacy networks face a number of ‘legitimacy challenges’ concerning their rights to participate in the shaping of global governance. Outlining the legitimacy claims that development NGOs make, the article argues that ‘legitimacy’ is a socially constructed quality that may be ascribed to an NGO by actors and stakeholders with different viewpoints. NGOs operating transnationally link disparate communities and conceptions of legitimacy, and undermine the discourse and practice of sovereignty. Therefore such NGOs will find it difficult to be universally regarded as legitimate, especially by states that hold a sovereignty-based conception of legitimacy. However, relationships are the building blocks of networks, and efforts to improve them should not be abandoned simply because ‘legitimacy’ is too closely connected with sovereignty. In particular, NGOs ought to improve their relationships with the poor and marginalized communities whose interests they claim to promote. To this end, the concept of ‘political responsibility’ is suggested as a pragmatic approach to understanding power relations as they arise in transnational advocacy networks and campaigns.

History and Illusion in Politics

Abstract: Preface Introduction Part I. The State: 1.1 Political associations 1.2 Violence, coercion, and power 1.3 The concept of the state 1.4 The concept of legitimacy 1.5 Authority 1.6 Weber's 'modern' state 1.7 History and the concept of the state 1.8 Anarchy and the state 1.9 The legitimacy of the state Part II. Liberalism: 2.1 The context 2.2 Toleration 2.3 Freedom 2.4 Individualism 2.5 Limited, unlimited, and discretionary power Part III. Democracy and Rights: 3.1 Democracy: description and interpretation 3.2 Democracy: evaluation 3.3 Popular control and the state 3.4 Legal rights 3.5 Human rights 3.6 Rights and politics 4. Conclusion Index.

Media Participation A Legitimizing Mechanism of Mass Democracy

Abstract: This article reconsiders civic involvement and citizen empowerment in the light of interactive media and elaborates the concept of media participation. Departing from conventional notions of political activity which downplay the participatory opportunities inherent in communication media, the authors argue that since 1992 new media formats have made accessible to citizens a political system that had become highly orchestrated, professionalized and exclusionary. A typology of active, passive and inactive political involvement is presented to accurately distinguish civic involvement from political disengagement and to categorize the types of empowerment and rewards - both material and symbolic - that different modes of civic activity afford. Even if only symbolically empowering, civic engagement through new media serves as an important legitimizing mechanism of mass democracy.

Between Centralization and Fragmentation: The Club Model of Multilateral Cooperation and Problems of Democratic Legitimacy

Abstract: Multilateral cooperation has been remarkably extensive, indeed unprecedented, in the latter half of the 20th century. After World War II, a compromise was struck in rich countries that John Ruggie has termed embedded liberalism. Increasing economic openness was made politically feasible in a democratic era through the development of the welfare state, and through a set of international regimes for finance and trade that accommodated the welfare state. Until the end of the 1970s, what Fred Hirsch called "the missing legitimacy for a predominantly capitalist system in conditions of universal political participation" was provided by Keynesian policies that were tolerant of inflation. International regimes in this period "served the second-best objective of the liberal community, of maintaining an open international economy at whatever inflation rate [had] to be accepted to attain this." Inflation eventually rose to the point where it was a source not of legitimacy but of political disaffection, and since the 1980s governments of the advanced capitalist economies have emphasized price stability. Legitimacy at the domestic level has apparently been maintained in these countries, judging from the lack of large-scale protests and the maintenance in power of governments ? whether nominally of the Left or the Right - dedicated to preservation of a market system. Such legitimacy may have different sources in different countries: economic growth, as the United States, the preservation of a social safety net even in the presence of great unemployment, as in continental Europe, or simply the maintenance of still-prosperous and orderly, if stagnant, political economy, as in Japan. At any event, the collapse of socialism in the Soviet Union, and the serious constraints on the expansion of the welfare state resulting from global competition, have largely removed the major potential contenders from the field. Until recently, the international regimes for trade and money that made this system work were largely invisible to publics. We will characterize them as following a "club model" of institutions. While the club model is an ideal type, and gradual change has occurred since the Uruguay Round, the simplification is useful. As these institutions have become more important, and their membership more diverse, they have become more controversial, as the Seattle demonstrations against the World Trade Organization (WTO) of November 1999, and the Washington protests of April 2000 against the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, indicate. The classic political issue of legitimacy, within the context of democratic norms, has been insistently raised. The club model has come under challenge. In this paper, we consider descriptive and normative aspects of legitimacy, as it relates to international institutions, particularly to the WTO. First we will describe the club model and how, in a stylized sense, it has operated for the past half-century on issues such as international trade. After briefly introducing a distinction between adversary and unitary democracy, we will then consider the ways in which international organizations such as the WTO experience a "democratic deficit." We consider issues of transparency and participation, but we emphasize the insufficient politicization of these organizations ? their lack of effective politicians linking organizations to constituencies. We then turn to a more detailed normative analysis of democratic legitimacy. The legitimacy of institutions is affected both on the "input" side ? in particular, through procedures for accountability ? and on the "output" side, in terms of effectiveness. In the last few pages of the paper we offer some incomplete suggestions about steps that the WTO, and similar international organizations, might take to enhance their legitimacy, in a world infused by democratic norms. Other chapters in this volume discuss the WTO in greater detail: our focus is on our conceptualization the legitimacy and the challenges posed by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and critiques of the club model based on democratic theory.

Sociopolitical Diversity in Psychology: The Case for Pluralism

Abstract: Psychology celebrates diversity, recognizes the value and legitimacy of diverse beliefs, and strives to be inclusive. Yet, the profession lacks sociopolitical diversity. Most psychologists are politically liberal, and conservatives are vastly underrepresented in the profession. Moreover, when sociopolitical views guide the research, advocacy, or professional practice of psychologists, those views most often are liberal. The lack of political diversity in psychology has unintended negative consequences for research, policy advocacy, clinical practice, the design and implementation of social interventions, and professional education. It excludes or marginalizes conservatives and conservative views, having detrimental effects on the profession in each of these areas. This article examines the importance of political diversity and the negative consequences of its absence and provides strategies for increasing sociopolitical pluralism in psychology.

Critical reflections on the Westphalian assumptions of international law and organization: a crisis of legitimacy

Abstract: This article argues that the fields of international law and organization are experiencing a legitimacy crisis relating to fundamental reconfigurations of global power and authority. Traditional Westphalian-inspired assumptions about power and authority are incapable of providing contemporary understanding, producing a growing disjunction between the theory and the practice of the global system. The actors, structures, and processes identified and theorized as determinative by the dominant approaches to the study of international law and organization have ceased to be of singular importance. Westphalian-inspired notions of state-centricity, positivist international law, and ‘public’ definitions of authority are incapable of capturing the significance of non-state actors, informal normative structures, and private, economic power in the global political economy.