Showing papers on "Legitimacy published in 2002"

Introduction: The legitimising effect of social and environmental disclosures – a theoretical foundation

Abstract: This paper serves as an introduction to this special issue of Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal; an issue which embraces themes associated with social and environmental reporting (SAR) and its role in maintaining or creating organisational legitimacy. In an effort to place this research in context the paper begins by making reference to contemporary trends occurring in social and environmental accounting research generally, and this is then followed by an overview of some of the many research questions which are currently being addressed in the area. Understanding motivations for disclosure is shown to be one of the issues attracting considerable research attention, and the desire to legitimise an organisation’s operations is in turn shown to be one of the many possible motivations. The role of legitimacy theory in explaining managers’ decisions is then discussed and it is emphasised that legitimacy theory, as it is currently used, must still be considered to be a relatively under‐developed theory of managerial behaviour. Nevertheless, it is argued that the theory provides useful insights. Finally, the paper indicates how the other papers in this issue of AAAJ contribute to the ongoing development of legitimacy theory in SAR research.

Beyond Survival: Achieving New Venture Growth by Building Legitimacy

Abstract: In this article we argue that (1) legitimacy is an important resource for gaining other resources, (2) such resources are crucial for new venture growth, and (3) legitimacy can be enhanced by the strategic actions of new ventures. We review the impact of legitimacy on new ventures as well as sources of legitimacy for new ventures, present strategies for new ventures to acquire legitimacy, explore the process of building legitimacy in the new venture, and examine the concept of the legitimacy threshold.

The third wave of science studies: Studies of expertise and experience

Abstract: Science studies has shown us why science and technology cannot always solve technical problems in the public domain. In particular, the speed of political decision-making is faster than the speed of scientific consensus formation. A predominant motif over recent years has been the need to extend the domain of technical decision-making beyond the technically qualified elite, so as to enhance political legitimacy. We argue, however, that the `Problem of Legitimacy' has been replaced by the `Problem of Extension' - that is, by a tendency to dissolve the boundary between experts and the public so that there are no longer any grounds for limiting the indefinite extension of technical decision-making rights. We argue that a Third Wave of Science Studies - Studies of Expertise and Experience (SEE) - is needed to solve the Problem of Extension. SEE will include a normative theory of expertise, and will disentangle expertise from political rights in technical decision-making. The theory builds categories of expertise, starting with the key distinction between interactive expertise and contributory expertise. A new categorization of types of science is also needed. We illustrate the potential of the approach by re-examining existing case studies, including Brian Wynne's study of Cumbrian sheep farmers. Sometimes the new theory argues for more public involvement, sometimes for less. An Appendix describes existing contributions to the problem of technical decision-making in the public domain.

Decentralization of Governance and Development

Abstract: All around the world in matters of governance, decentralization is the rage. Even apart from the widely debated issues of subsidiarity and devolution in the European Union and states’ rights in the United States, decentralization has been at the center stage of policy experiments in the last two decades in a large number of developing and transition economies in Latin America, Africa and Asia. The World Bank, for example, has embraced it as one of the major governance reforms on its agenda (for example, World Bank, 2000; Burki, Perry and Dillinger, 1999). Take also the examples of the two largest countries of the world, China and India. Decentralization has been regarded as the major institutional framework for the phenomenal industrial growth in the last two decades in China, taking place largely in the nonstate nonprivate sector. India ushered in a landmark constitutional reform in favor of decentralization around the same time it launched a major program of economic reform in the early 1990s. On account of its many failures, the centralized state everywhere has lost a great deal of legitimacy, and decentralization is widely believed to promise a range of benee ts. It is often suggested as a way of reducing the role of the state in general, by fragmenting central authority and introducing more intergovernmental competition and checks and balances. It is viewed as a way to make government more responsive and efe cient. Technological changes have also made it somewhat easier than before to provide public services (like electricity and water supply) relatively efe ciently in smaller market areas, and the lower levels of government have now a greater ability to handle certain tasks. In a world of rampant ethnic cone icts and separatist movements, decentralization is also regarded as a way of diffusing social and political tensions and ensuring local cultural and political autonomy. These potential benee ts of decentralization have attracted a very diverse range

Security and Immigration: Toward a Critique of the Governmentality of Unease:

Abstract: Migration is increasingly interpreted as a security problem. The prism of security analysis is especially important for politicians, for national and local police organizations, the military police, customs officers, border patrols, secret services, armies, judges, some social services (health care, hospitals, schools), private corporations (bank analysts, providers of technology surveillance, private policing), many journalists (especially from television and the more sensationalist newspapers), and a significant fraction of general public opinion, especially but not only among those attracted to "law and order." The popularity of this security prism is not an expression of traditional responses to a rise of insecurity, crime, terrorism, and the negative effects of globalization; it is the result of the creation of a continuum of threats and general unease in which many different actors exchange their fears and beliefs in the process of making a risky and dangerous society. The professionals in charge of the management of risk and fear especially transfer the legitimacy they gain from struggles against terrorists, criminals, spies, and counterfeiters toward other targets, most notably transnational political activists, people crossing borders, or people born in the country but with foreign parents. This expansion of what security is taken to include effectively results in a convergence between the meaning of international and internal security. The convergence is particularly important in relation to the issue of migration, and specifically in relation to questions about who gets to be defined as an immigrant. The security professionals themselves, along with some academics, tend to claim that they are only responding to new threats requiring exceptional measures beyond the normal demands of everyday politics. In practice, however, the transformation of security and the consequent focus on immigrants is directly related to their own immediate interests (competition for budgets and missions) and to the transformation of technologies they use (computerized databanks, profiling and morphing, electronic phone tapping). The Europeanization and the Westernization of the logics of control and surveillance of people beyond national polices is driven by the creation of a transnational field of professionals in the management of unease. This field is larger than that of police organizations in that it includes, on one hand private corporations and organizations dealing with the control of access to the welfare state, and, on the other hand, intelligence services and some military people seeking a new role after the end of the Cold War. These professionals in the management of unease, however, are only a node connecting many competing networks responding to many groups of people who are identified as risk or just as a source of unease. (1) This process of securitization is now well known, but despite the many critical discourses that have drawn attention to the securitization of migration over the past ten years, the articulation of migration as a security problem continues. Why? What are the reasons of the persistent framing of migration in relation to terrorism, crime, unemployment and religious zealotry, on the one hand, and to integration, interest of the migrant for the national economy development, on the other, rather than in relation to new opportunities for European societies, for freedom of travel over the world, for cosmopolitanism, or for some new understanding of citizenship? (2) This is the question I want to address in this essay. Some "critical" discourses generated by NGOs and academics assume that if people, politicians, governments, bureaucracies, and journalists were more aware, they would change their minds about migration and begin to resist securitizing it. The primary problem, therefore, is ideological or discursive in that the securitization of migrants derives from the language itself and from the different capacities of various actors to engage in speech acts. …

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.

Legitimacy and the Privatization of Environmental Governance: How Non-State Market-Driven (NSMD) Governance Systems Gain Rule-Making Authority

Abstract: In recent years, transnational and domestic nongovernmental organizations have created non–state market–driven (NSMD) governance systems whose purpose is to develop and implement environmentally and socially responsible management practices. Eschewing traditional state authority, these systems and their supporters have turned to the market’s supply chain to create incentives and force companies to comply. This paper develops an analytical framework designed to understand better the emergence of NSMD governance systems and the conditions under which they may gain authority to create policy. Its theoretical roots draw on pragmatic, moral, and cognitive legitimacy granting distinctions made within organizational sociology, while its empirical focus is on the case of sustainable forestry certification, arguably the most advanced case of NSMD governance globally. The paper argues that such a framework is needed to assess whether these new private governance systems might ultimately challenge existing state–centered authority and public policy–making processes, and in so doing reshape power relations within domestic and global environmental governance.

The Impact of Corruption on Regime Legitimacy: A Comparative Study of Four Latin American Countries

Abstract: Economists have long warned about the pernicious impacts of corruption, arguing that it increases transaction costs, reduces investment incentives, and ultimately results in reduced economic growth. Political scientists, on the other hand, ever the realists, have had a much more ambivalent view of the problem. Indeed, much classic literature focusing on the Third World saw corruption as functional for political development, enabling citizens to overcome intransigent, inefficient bureaucracies while increasing loyalty to the political system. More recent research, however, points in the opposite direction toward an erosion of public support for corrupt regimes. A series of serious methodological problems has prevented the testing of these contradictory assertions about the impact of corruption. This article uses national sample survey data, with a total N of over 9,000, from four Latin American countries to test the effect of corruption experiences on belief in the legitimacy of the political system. It fi...

In Defence of the 'Democratic Deficit': Reassessing Legitimacy in the European Union*

Abstract: Concern about the EU’s ‘democratic deficit’ is misplaced. Judged against existing advanced industrial democracies, rather than an ideal plebiscitary or parliamentary democracy, the EU is legitimate. Its institutions are tightly constrained by constitutional checks and balances: narrow mandates, fiscal limits, super-majoritarian and concurrent voting requirements and separation of powers. The EU's appearance of exceptional insulation reflects the subset of functions it performs ‐ central banking, constitutional adjudication, civil prosecution, economic diplomacy and technical administration. These are matters of low electoral salience commonly delegated in national systems, for normatively justifiable reasons. On balance, the EU redresses rather than creates biases in political representation, deliberation and output.

Reassessing Legitimacy in the European Union

Abstract: Concern about the EU’s ‘democratic deficit’ is misplaced. Judged against existing advanced industrial democracies, rather than an ideal plebiscitary or parliamentary democracy, the EU is legitimate. Its institutions are tightly constrained by constitutional checks and balances: narrow mandates, fiscal limits, super–majoritarian and concurrent voting requirements and separation of powers. The EU’s appearance of exceptional insulation reflects the subset of functions it performs — central banking, constitutional adjudication, civil prosecution, economic diplomacy and technical administration. These are matters of low electoral salience commonly delegated in national systems, for normatively justifiable reasons. On balance, the EU redresses rather than creates biases in political representation, deliberation and output.

Managerial perceptions of corporate social disclosure: An Irish story

Abstract: This paper interprets managerial perceptions of corporate social disclosure (CSD) presence and absence through the lens of organisational legitimacy theory. Evidence from in‐depth semi‐structured interviews with 29 senior managers in 27 Irish public limited companies is presented. It is one of the few studies to use interview‐based evidence in attempts to understand the motivations for CSD and responds to calls for more empirical work of this nature in the CSD literature. The paper extends and interrogates the use of legitimacy theory to infer motivations for CSD by presenting a narrative which contemplates conceptions of legitimacy as both a process and a state while endeavouring to understand the motives for CSD. In this manner, the paper furnishes a more complex, complete, and critical story of the motives for CSD. The perspectives suggest that while CSD may occasionally form part of a legitimacy process, ultimately this is misguided as it is widely perceived as being incapable of supporting the achievement of a legitimacy state. Consequently, for many managers, the continued practice of CSD is deemed somewhat perplexing. The paper reflects on the implications of these findings for future CSD research and practice.

Beyond the Square Wheel: Toward a More Comprehensive Understanding of Biodiversity Conservation as Social and Political Process

Abstract: In this article we build on an accompanying critique of recent writings in international biodiversity conservation (this issue). Many scholars and observers are calling for stricter enforcement of protected area boundaries given the perceived failure of integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs) and other people-oriented approaches to safeguard biodiversity. Pointing to many ongoing, field-based efforts, we argue that this resurgent focus on authoritarian protection practices largely overlooks key aspects of social and political process including clarification of moral standpoint, legitimacy, governance, accountability, learning, and nonlocal forces. Following a discussion of these six points, we offer a series of recommendations aimed at highlighting existing work and encouraging dialogue and constructive debate on the ways in which biodiversity protection interventions are carried out in developing countries.

Institutional change in large law firms: a resource dependency and institutional perspective

Abstract: We integrate resource dependency and institutional theory to argue that resource scarcity drives, and legitimacy enables, institutional change. Building on a historical account, we examine the sources and timing of innovation departing from standard human resource practices using event history analysis of over 200 principal offices of large law firms. Offices with human resource scarcity innovated to acquire alternative resources; highly prestigious offices had the legitimacy to be first or early adopters. Our findings highlight the value of looking to the resource side and to the notion of legitimacy in building an institutional theory of change.

Europeanization and Political Parties Towards a Framework for Analysis

Abstract: Europeanization is a term used to describe the effects of European integration on the politics and policies of its member states as well as the process of enhancing European-level political institu...

Political Legitimacy and Democracy

Abstract: The term ‘political legitimacy’ is unfortunately ambiguous. One serious source of confusion is the failure to distinguish clearly between political legitimacy and political authority and to conflate political authority with authoritativeness. I will distinguish between (1) political legitimacy, (2) political authority, and (3) authoritativeness. I will also articulate two importantly different variants of the notion of political authority. Having drawn these distinctions, I will argue first that political legitimacy, rather than political authority, is the more central notion for a theory of the morality of political power. My second main conclusion will be that where democratic authorization of the exercise of political power is possible, only a democratic government can be legitimate. Another ambiguity is also a source of confusion. Sometimes it is unclear whether ‘legitimacy’ is being used in a descriptive or a normative sense. In this article I am concerned exclusively with legitimacy in the normative sense, not with the conditions under which an entity is believed to be legitimate. However, a normative account of legitimacy is essential for a descriptive account. Unless one distinguishes carefully between political legitimacy, political authority, and authoritativeness, one will not be clear about what beliefs in legitimacy are beliefs about.

Taking Politics to the People:Populism as the Ideology of Democracy

Abstract: Although populist1 movements are usually sparked off by specific social and economic problems, their common feature is a political appeal to the people, and a claim to legitimacy that rests on the democratic ideology of popular sovereignty and majority rule. Analyses of populism often point to the tension within western democracy between this populist tradition and liberal constitutionalism. Certainly, there are difficulties in reconciling the project of giving power to the people with the drive to restrain power within constitutional limits, but concentration on this particular problem leaves unexplained the enduring strength of populist-democratic ideology and the ways in which it sustains populist movements. In this chapter I will argue that in order to understand populism we need to be aware of a complex and elusive paradox that lies at the heart of modern democracy. Crudely stated, the paradox is that democratic politics does not and cannot make sense to most of the people it aims to empower. The most inclusive and accessible form of politics ever achieved is also the most opaque. Precisely because it is the most inclusive form of politics, democracy needs the transparency that ideology can supply, and yet the ideology that should communicate politics to the people cannot avoid being systematically misleading.

A Generation Apart? Youth and Political Participation in Britain:

Abstract: Conventional wisdom holds that young people in Britain are alienated from politics, with some claiming that this reflects a wider crisis of legitimacy that should be met by initiatives to increase citizenship. This article addresses these areas, presenting both panel survey and focus group data from first-time voters. It concludes that, contrary to the findings from many predominantly quantitative studies of political participation, young people are interested in political matters, and do support the democratic process. However, they feel a sense of anticlimax having voted for the first time, and are critical of those who have been elected to positions of political power. If they are a generation apart, this is less to do with apathy, and more to do with their engaged scepticism about ‘formal’ politics in Britain.

Why Expand?: The Question of Legitimacy and Justification in the EU’s Enlargement Policy†

Abstract: Why does the European Union (EU) enlarge and why does it make certain prioritizations amongst applicants in the enlargement process? In this article, different reasons that have been used in mobilizing for enlargement are examined. An analytical distinction is made between three different types of reasons: pragmatic, ethical–political and moral. The conclusion is that ethical–political reasons, which testify to a sense of kinship–based duty, are particularly important in mobilizing for enlargement to incorporate central and eastern Europe and thus also central to an appreciation of prioritizations in the EU’s enlargement policy.

Mobilizing the Logic of Managerialism in Professional Fields: The Case of Academic Health Centre Mergers

Abstract: This paper presents a qualitative inductive analysis of attempts to re-order the bases of legitimacy in fields of professional organizations. Concepts from institutional theory, political science and social movement theory are integrated to provide a model of the antecedents, processes and implications of this phenomenon. Findings from a study of US academic health centre mergers illustrate each element of the model. They show that as part of the political agenda to repress the prevailing institutional logic and structures of professionalism (Scott et al. 2000), executives are expected to adopt certain managerial innovations to maintain organizational legitimacy. Against this new basis of legitimacy, powerful agents have promoted merger so successfully that it has achieved mythical attributes of widespread and uncritical adoption (Meyer and Rowan 1977). The paper explains why the intended outcomes of this innovation emerge rarely when it is `sedimented' (Cooper et al. 1996) uncritically upon enduring aspe...

The devil's in the theory: A critical assessment of Robert Chambers' work on participatory development

Abstract: The practice orientation of Robert Chambers' work on Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), which aims at enabling local people and communities to take control over their own development, has received much attention in development circles. This article attempts to shift the emphasis away from PRA's practice towards its theoretical underpinnings. The article argues that PRA's practice/empiricist orientation causes it to be insufficiently theorised and politicised. As a result, questions about inclusiveness, the role of PRA facilitators, and the personal behaviour of elites overshadow, or sometimes ignore, questions of legitimacy, justice, power and the politics of gender and difference. The article draws on arguments and debates involving Habermasian 'deliberative democracy' and post-structuralist notions of power.

The Idea of Constitutional Pluralism

Abstract: Constitutional discourse has perhaps never been more popular, nor more comprehensively challenged than it is today. The development of new constitutional settlements and languages at state and post-state level has to be balanced against the deepening of a formidable range of sceptical attitudes. These include the claim that constitutionalism remains too state-centered, overstates its capacity to shape political community, exhibits an inherent normative bias against social developments associated with the politics of difference, provides a language easily susceptible to ideological manipulation and, that, consequent upon these challenges, it increasingly represents a fractured and debased conceptual currency. A rehabilitated language of constitutionalism would meet these challenges through a version of constitutional pluralism. Constitutional pluralism recognises that in the post-Westphalian world there exists a range of different constitutional sites and processes configured in a heterarchical rather than a hierarchical pattern, and seeks to develop a number of empirical indices and normative criteria which allow us to understand this emerging configuration and assess the legitimacy of its development.

Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation

Abstract: Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation. Nancy E Cott. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2000. 297 pp. ISBN 0-674-- 00320-9. $27.95 (cloth). In this synthesis of the substantial historical literature about marriage, historian Nancy Cott demonstrates that an institution we have traditionally labeled private has in fact always served public purposes, operating through the apparatus of the state. Marriage laws, in the service of moral, economic, and civic objectives, have shaped and continue to shape gender roles inside the home and out; they control the choice of suitable partners, at times in the past establishing racial barriers and at present determining the (il)legitimacy of samesex unions. In addition, marriage law trenches on the conveyance of citizenship, which affects both nationality and suffrage. Most citizens most of the time accept and therefore confirm legal limits; others resist, making marriage law over time a common site of contest about social mores. The revolution that separated the United States from Great Britain affected not only international relations and domestic legal systems; marriage theory also incorporated the repudiation of subjection implicit in monarchical governments. American women "consented" to be governed by husbands of their own choosing, although they lost substantial autonomy when they did so. But the American form of marriage reflected the values not only of a democratic republic but also of a Christian nation. During the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, Native Americans, European and Asian immigrants, religious dissidents such as the Mormons, Utopian socialists-all who espoused nonmajoritarian marital practices could not withstand the demands of Congress and of states that families form themselves into the units prescribed by the Christian church. Thus, tribal arrangements, polygamy, "common law" couples, and communities of "free lovers" largely disappeared by 1900, while tolerance of arranged marriages vanished in the twentieth century. "If marriages produced the polity," Cott notes, "then wrongfully joined marriages could be fatal" (p. 155). Choice and consent notwithstanding, Christian marriage doctrine could countenance rules making interracial marriage unacceptable; and if marriage signified state-sanctioned sexual association, laws controlling prostitution and sex outside of marriage (through restrictions on abortion and birth control) represented the other side of the coin-all in the service of a single model of marriage. …

The Emergence of Hybrid Organizational Forms: Combining Identity-Based Service Provision and Political Action:

Abstract: After the 1960s, women, Blacks, and other ethnic groups mapped political objectives onto a more traditional form of voluntary association, along with investing in direct political protest and advocacy for civil and social rights. One result was the development of a hybrid organizational form that combines advocacy and service provision as its core identity and thus faces distinctive environmental uncertainties and boundary conditions. This article provides a community ecology framework for analyzing the development of the service/advocacy organizational form. The author argues that hybrid forms of organization, by expanding the resource infrastructure and legitimacy available to identitybased organizations, play a critical role in anchoring the continued viability of identitybased service organizations under newly politicized conditions. Data are drawn from a study of national women’s and racial and ethnic minority organizations since 1955.

Bosnia after Dayton : nationalist partition and international intervention

Abstract: Since 1996, Bosnia & Herzegovina has been the site of a remarkable project of political engineering. A complex consortium of international agencies backed by Western governments have been transforming a devastated, ethnically partitioned, post-war territory into a multiethnic, democratic and economically viable state. Despite an enormous investment of personnel and resources, six years later BiHs post-Yugoslav future remains tenuous. Did the engineering project work? In an era when countries from Somalia to Afghanistan are confronting questions of state legitimacy amidst international intervention, Bosnia after Dayton is a fascinating study in the dilemmas of the post-Cold War international order. How effective are international peace-building interventions in fractured states? Is the preservation of a multinational state desirable-or even possible-where the majority of citizens only reluctantly acknowledge its legitimacy? Drawing on the authors extensive field experience, this book takes a hard look at the issues that Bosnia continues to face. Juxtaposing big-picture analysis with an intimate knowledge of the region, Bose situates the international community's extensive program of state-building and democratization in BiH since the Dayton Peace Agreement in the context of Bosnia's and the former Yugoslavia's complex historical legacy of coexistence and conflict. Bose tells the gripping story of the divided city of Mostar, and analyses the institutional structure and process of Dayton Bosnia. He dissects the making of the Dayton peace accords through American-led coercive diplomacy, and provides a constructive critique of international peace-building. A fascinating study of democratization in a divided society, this book promises to be a landmark in the literatures on former Yugoslavia, and international intervention.

Unraveling the Threads of History: Soviet–Era Monuments and Post–Soviet National Identity in Moscow

Abstract: This article explores the formation of post–Soviet Russian national identity through a study of political struggles over key Soviet–era monuments and memorials in Moscow during the “critical juncture” in Russian history from 1991 through 1999. We draw on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Pierre Nora to explain how competition among political elites for control over the sites guided their transformation from symbols of the Soviet Union into symbols of Russia. By co–opting, contesting, ignoring, or removing certain types of monuments through both physical transformations and “commemorative maintenance,” Russian political elites engaged in a symbolic dialogue with each other and with the public in an attempt to gain prestige, legitimacy, and influence. We make this argument through case studies of four monument sites in Moscow: Victory Park (Park Pobedy), the Lenin Mausoleum, the former Exhibition of the Achievements of the National Economy (VDNKh), and the Park of Arts (Park Isskustv). In the article, we firs...

It's Our Time to 'Chop': Do Elections in Africa Feed Neopatrimonialism Rather than Counter-Act it?

Abstract: This article addresses the concern that democratisation may contribute to the reproduction of neopatrimonialism, rather than to counter-act it. The article reports the result of a survey among MPs in Ghana regarding their election campaigns. Total spending, sources of funds, and their usage are analysed in the context of democratic consolidation of liberal democracy. The survey results are supplemented with data collected in 34 interviews with MPs. The data shows that a MPs are involved in patron-client relationships to a significant degree to reproduce their political power. Furthermore, the prevalence of patronage politics among MPs in Ghana has increased throughout the period of democratic rule. The prospects for a consolidation of liberal democracy are gloomy.The result of the analysis shows that a persistent pattern of patronage politics threatens the very heart of democratic consolidation. Vertical accountability and legitimacy is threatened by alternative pacts of loyalty, expectations of corruption, and tendencies to delegative mandates. Horizontal accountability risks pervasion by "big man" interventions, and by insufficient allocation of time to monitoring-, policy-, and legislative activities of the MPs. While Ghana's transition-process it an example many other countries may learn from, observers should also be aware of the hurdles of consolidation.

Salience, Credibility, Legitimacy and Boundaries: Linking Research, Assessment and Decision Making

Abstract: The boundary between science and policy is only one of several boundaries that hinder the linking of scientific and technical information to decision making. Managing boundaries between disciplines, across scales of geography and jurisdiction, and between different forms of knowledge is also often critical to transferring information. The research presented in this paper finds that information requires three (not mutually exclusive) attributes - salience, credibility, and legitimacy - and that what makes boundary crossing difficult is that actors on different sides of a boundary perceive and value salience, credibility, and legitimacy differently. Presenting research on water management regimes in the United States, international agricultural research systems, El Nino forecasting systems in the Pacific and southern Africa, and fisheries in the North Atlantic, this paper explores: 1) how effective boundary work involves creating salient, credible, and legitimate information simultaneously for multiple audiences; 2) the thresholds, complementarities and tradeoffs between salience, credibility, and legitimacy when crossing boundaries; and 3) propositions for institutional mechanisms in boundary organizations which effectively balance tradeoffs, take advantage on complementarities, and reach thresholds of salience, credibility, and legitimacy.

The Natives Are Gazing and Talking Back: Reviewing the Problematics of Positionality, Voice, and Accountability among "Native" Anthropologists

Abstract: In this article, a linguistic anthropologist reviews the growing literature on the possibilities and problematics of under- standing "native" anthropology and its implications for the construction of ethnographic knowledge. The author examines the cen- trality of language for "native" scholars in negotiating their legitimacy in the field. Confessions of failure by native scholars and their dilemmas with translation illuminate the dialogic and political nature of ethnographic inquiry, particularly when research is conducted in "home" communities. Moreover, native ethnographers' critical reflexivity regarding their subject positionings and "voice" may con- stitute a counterhegemonic rhetorical strategy for negotiating multiple accountabilities. Self-identification as a native scholar is seldom a means through which researchers "play the native card" via a noncritical privileging of their "insider" status. Instead, claiming native status may act tactically as both a normalizing and an exclusivizing endeavor, as well as a signif ier of the decolonization of anthropo- logical thought and practice. The author considers these and other critical implications of native anthropological research in relation to her own multisited research on African American linguistic and cultural practices focused on hair care. (Keywords: "native" anthropol- ogy, language, representation, reflexivity, translation)

Populist Democracy vs Party Democracy

Abstract: In their introduction to this volume, Yves Meny and Yves Surel draw a distinction between ‘popular democracy’ and ‘constitutional democracy’, the two pillars on which the legitimacy and effectiveness of democratic regimes rest. The popular democracy pillar is identified with an emphasis on the role of the demos that is, the free association of citizens, the maintenance of free elections, and the freedom of political expression. Popular democracy entails government by the people. The constitutional pillar, on the other hand, is identified with an emphasis on the institutional requirements for good governance—the establishment of rules and constraints limiting executive autonomy, the guaranteeing of individual and collective rights, and the maintenance of a system of checks and balances intended to prevent the abuse of power. The constitutional pillar may be associated with the defence of the public good, entailing government for the people. For Meny and Surel, an ideal democracy should aim to establish an equilibrium between both pillars.

The World Trade Organization's legitimacy crisis

Abstract: Despite the successful launch of a new round of multilateral trade negotiations at Doha, the World Trade Organization faces a legitimacy crisis. Protests continue to rock major international economic meetings, and the WTO's role in globalization is being questioned by many observers. This paper examines the contours of this crisis and explores the possibility that the WTO's indirect ties to popular sovereignty – through national governments – provide an insufficient foundation for the trade regime's authority and central role in the emerging structure of global governance. Arguing that the WTO needs to re-establish its legitimacy based on wider links to the public around the world in whose name freer trade is pursued, the paper suggests that the WTO must also re-build its reputation for efficacy in a context where success is no longer measured exclusively in narrow economic terms. To be seen as serving the interests of the world community broadly, the trade regime needs to pursue its economic goals in a fashion that shows sensitivity to other important goals and values, such as poverty alleviation, environmental protection, and the promotion of public health. Long-term success further depends on the trade regime becoming embedded within a broader structure of global governance that provides ‘checks and balances’ and reinforces the legitimacy of international trade policy making.