Showing papers on "Legitimacy published in 2003"

The Role of Procedural Justice and Legitimacy in Shaping Public Support for Policing

Abstract: This study explores two issues about police legitimacy. The first issue is the relative importance of police legitimacy in shaping public support of the police and policing activities, compared to the importance of instrumental judgments about (1) the risk that people will be caught and sanctioned for wrongdoing, (2) the performance of the police in fighting crime, and/or (3) the fairness of the distribution of police services. Three aspects of public support for the police are examined: public compliance with the law, public cooperation with the police, and public willingness to support policies that empower the police. The second issue is which judgments about police activity determine people’s views about the legitimacy of the police. This study compares the influence of people’s judgments about the procedural justice of the manner in which the police exercise their authority to the influence of three instrumental judgments: risk, performance, and distributive fairness. Findings of two surveys of New Yorkers show that, first, legitimacy has a strong influence on the public’s reactions to the police, and second, the key antecedent of legitimacy is the fairness of the procedures used by the police. This model applies to both white and minority group residents.

Constructing a Market, Performing Theory: The Historical Sociology of a Financial Derivatives Exchange

Abstract: This analysis of the history of the Chicago Board Options Exchange explores the performativity of economics, a theme in economic sociology recently developed by Callon. Economics was crucial to the creation of financial derivatives exchanges: it helped remedy the drastic loss of legitimacy suffered by derivatives in the first half of the 20th century. Option pricing theory—a “crown jewel” of neoclassical economics—succeeded empirically not because it discovered preexisting price patterns but because markets changed in ways that made its assumptions more accurate and because the theory was used in arbitrage. The performativity of economics, however, has limits, and an emphasis on it needs to be combined with classic themes in economic sociology, such as Granovetterian embedding and the way in which exchanges can be cultures and moral communities in which collective action problems can be solved.

Procedural Justice, Legitimacy, and the Effective Rule of Law

Abstract: Legal authorities gain when they receive deference and cooperation from the public. Considerable evidence suggests that the key factor shaping public behavior is the fairness of the processes legal authorities use when dealing with members of the public. This reaction occurs both during personal experiences with legal authorities and when community residents are making general evaluations of the law and of legal authorities. The strength and breadth of this influence suggests the value of an approach to regulation based upon sensitivity to public concerns about fairness in the exercise of legal authority. Such an approach leads to a number of suggestions about valuable police practices, as well as helping explain why improvements in the objective performance of the police and courts have not led to higher levels of public trust and confidence in those institutions.

Stakeholder Theory and Organizational Ethics

Abstract: The only detailed, comprehensive treatment of stakeholder theory-the most popular framework for discussions of business ethics-currently in print - Examines stakeholder theory from the perspective of several fields of study, including strategic management, economics, moral and political philosophy, social psychology, and environmental ethics - Provides a means for determining who are and are not stakeholders and why-including such controversial stakeholder candidates as competitors, activists, and the natural environment Business ethics is a staple in the news today. One of the most difficult ethical questions facing managers is, To whom are they responsible? Organizations can affect and are affected by many different constituencies-these groups are often called stakeholders. But who are these stakeholders? What sort of managerial attention should they receive? Is there a legal duty to attend to stakeholders or is such a duty legally prohibited due to the shareholder wealth maximization imperative? In short, for whose benefit ought a firm be managed? Despite the ever growing importance of these questions, there is no comprehensive, theoretical treatment of the stakeholder framework currently in print. In Stakeholder Theory and Organizational Ethics, Robert Phillips provides an extended defense of stakeholder theory as the preeminent theory of organizational ethics today. Addressing the difficult question of what the moral underpinning of stakeholder theory should be, Phillips elaborates a "principle of stakeholder fairness" based on the ideas of the late John Rawls-the most prominent moral and political philosopher of the twentieth century. Phillips shows how this principle clarifies several long-standing questions in stakeholder theory, including: Who are an organization's legitimate stakeholders? What is the basis for this legitimacy? What, if any, are the limits of stakeholder theory? What is the relationship between stakeholder theory and other moral, political, and business ethical theories? Applying research from many related disciplines, Stakeholder Theory and Organizational Ethics is an overdue response to several long-standing and fundamental points of contention within business ethics and management theory.

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.

A Neo‐Gramscian Approach to Corporate Political Strategy: Conflict and Accommodation in the Climate Change Negotiations*

Abstract: A neo-Gramscian theoretical framework for corporate political strategy is developed drawing from Gramsci's analysis of the relations among capital, social forces, and the state, and from more contemporary theories. Gramsci's political theory recognizes the centrality of organizations and strategy, directs attention to the organizational, economic, and ideological pillars of power, while illuminating the processes of coalition building, conflict, and accommodation that drive social change. This approach addresses the structure-agency relationship and endogenous dynamics in a way that could enrich institutional theory. The framework suggests a strategic concept of power, which provides space for contestation by subordinate groups in complex dynamic social systems. We apply the framework to analyse the international negotiations to control emissions of greenhouse gases, focusing on the responses of firms in the US and European oil and automobile industries. The neo- Gramscian framework explains some specific features of corporate responses to challenges to their hegemonic position and points to the importance of political struggles within civil society The analysis suggests that the conventional demarcation between market and non-market strategies is untenable, given the embeddedness of markets in contested social and political structures and the political character of strategies directed toward defending and enhancing markets, technologies, corporate autonomy and legitimacy.

The Political Philosophy of Needs

Abstract: Preface Introduction 1. Liberalism's rights-preferences couple 2. Beyond the rights-preferences couple 3. The form and outline of the argument Part I. The Nature of Needs: 4. Need categories 5. Vital needs 6. Particular social needs 7. Agency needs 8. The natures of needs: historical, normative, political Part II. The Formation and Interpretation of Needs: 9. Generation and legitimation 10. Normative power and the institution of private property 11. Perception and interpretation 12. Oppression and need 13. True interests 14. The concepts of true interest Part III. The Political Evaluation of Needs: 15. Freedom and rights: a critique of the concept of 'civil society' 16. Practices, institutions, and the evaluation of institutions 17. Roles: reclaiming the census 18. Practical reason and practical imperatives Part IV. The State of Needs: 19. The state 20. The modern state, coercion and power 21. The state as ultimate evaluator and guarantor for meeting needs 22. Need priority: practical not theoretical 23. Political participation: procedural and institutional proposals 24. Legitimacy and paternalism 25. States of needs Conclusion: What needs to be done? The case of South Africa Bibliography Index.

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.

Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

Abstract: In November of 2002, the Justice and Development Party swept to victory in the Turkish parliamentary elections. Because of the party's Islamic roots, its electoral triumph has sparked a host of questions both in Turkey and in the West: Does the party harbor a secret Islamist agenda? Will the new government seek to overturn nearly a century of secularization stemming from Kemal Ataturk's early-twentieth-century reforms? Most fundamentally, is Islam compatible with democracy? In this penetrating work, M. Hakan Yavuz seeks to answer these questions, and to provide a comprehensive analysis of Islamic political identity in Turkey. He begins in the early twentieth century, when Kemal Ataturk led Turkey through a process of rapid secularization and crushed Islamic opposition to his authoritarian rule. Yavuz argues that since Ataturk's death in 1938, however, Turkey has been gradually moving away from his militant secularism and experiencing "a quiet Muslim reformation." Islamic political identity is not homogeneous, says Yavuz, but can be modern and progressive as well as conservative and potentially authoritarian. While the West has traditionally seen Kemalism as an engine for reform against "reactionary" political Islam, in fact the Kemalist establishment has traditionally used the "Islamic threat" as an excuse to avoid democratization and thus hold on to power. Yavuz offers an account of the "soft coup" of 1997, in which the Kemalist military-bureaucratic establishment overthrew the democratically elected coalition government, which was led by the pro-Islamic Refah party. He argues that the soft coup plunged Turkey into a renewed legitimacy crisis which can only be resolved by the liberalization of the political system. The book ends with a discussion of the most recent election and its implications for Turkey and the Muslim world. Yavuz argues that Islamic social movements can be important agents for promoting a democratic and pluralistic society, and that the Turkish example holds long term promise for the rest of the Muslim world. Based on extensive fieldwork and interviews, this work offers a sophisticated new understanding of the role of political Islam in one of the world's most strategically important countries.

Governance for Sustainability: Towards a ‘Thick’ Analysis of Environmental Decisionmaking

Abstract: Environmental decisions made by individuals, civil society, and the state involve questions of economic efficiency, environmental effectiveness, equity, and political legitimacy. These four criteria are constitutive of the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development, which has become the dominant rhetorical device of environmental governance. We discuss the tendency for disciplinary research to focus on particular subsets of the four criteria, and argue that such a practice promotes solutions that do not acknowledge the dynamics of scale and the heterogeneity of institutional contexts. We advocate an interdisciplinary framework for the analysis of environmental decisionmaking that seeks to identify legitimate and context-sensitive institutional solutions producing equitable, efficient, and effective outcomes. We demonstrate the usefulness of our approach by using it to examine decisions concerning contested nature conservation and multiple-use commons in the management of Hic...

Black-White Differences in Attitudes toward Homosexuality and Gay Rights

Abstract: Black homophobia has been cited as a contributing factor in slowing mobilization against AIDS in the African-American community, as an obstacle to black lesbians and gay men in coming to terms with their sexuality, and as a challenge to the legitimacy of the gay rights movement. Yet evidence that blacks are more homophobic than whites is quite limited. This article uses responses from almost seven thousand blacks and forty-three thousand whites in 31 surveys conducted since 1973 to give more definitive answers on black-white attitudinal differences and their demographic roots. Despite their greater disapproval of homosexuality, blacks' opinions on sodomy laws, gay civil liberties, and employment discrimination are quite similar to whites' opinions, and African Americans are more likely to support laws prohibiting antigay discrimination. Once religious and educational differences are controlled, blacks remain more disapproving of homosexuality but are moderately more supportive of gay civil liberties and markedly more opposed to antigay employment discrimination than are whites. Yet religion, education, gender, and age all have weaker impacts on black than on white attitudes, suggesting that black and white attitudes have different roots

Identity in Democracy

Abstract: Written by one of America's leading political thinkers, this is a book about the good, the bad, and the ugly of identity politics.Amy Gutmann rises above the raging polemics that often characterize discussions of identity groups and offers a fair-minded assessment of the role they play in democracies. She addresses fundamental questions of timeless urgency while keeping in focus their relevance to contemporary debates: Do some identity groups undermine the greater democratic good and thus their own legitimacy in a democratic society? Even if so, how is a democracy to fairly distinguish between groups such as the KKK on the one hand and the NAACP on the other? Should democracies exempt members of some minorities from certain legitimate or widely accepted rules, such as Canada's allowing Sikh members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to wear turbans instead of Stetsons? Do voluntary groups like the Boy Scouts have a right to discriminate on grounds of sexual preference, gender, or race? Identity-group politics, Gutmann shows, is not aberrant but inescapable in democracies because identity groups represent who people are, not only what they want--and who people are shapes what they demand from democratic politics. Rather than trying to abolish identity politics, Gutmann calls upon us to distinguish between those demands of identity groups that aid and those that impede justice. Her book does justice to identity groups, while recognizing that they cannot be counted upon to do likewise to others. Clear, engaging, and forcefully argued, Amy Gutmann's Identity in Democracy provides the fractious world of multicultural and identity-group scholarship with a unifying work that will sustain it for years to come.

Seasick on the Third Wave? Subverting the Hegemony of Propositionalism: Response to Collins & Evans (2002)

Abstract: Harry Collins and Rob Evans (Collins & Evans, 2002) offer a typically forthright normative vision for the 'Third Wave' of science studies, after what they call the earlier waves of post-war rationalism, then the postKuhnian 'cultural revolution' from the 1970s. They propose to redefine the accepted qualifications for expert standing in the countless areas of decision-making in which scientific knowledge has held presumptive sway as exclusive (but relentlessly disputed and increasingly eroded) public authority. Collins & Evans (2002) start from the problem of public legitimacy that has been widely recognized to beset science in recent times (House of Lords, 2000; European Union, 2000). They argue that 'the problem of legitimacy' for science has been mistakenly replaced by 'the problem of extension', in which real distinctions between experts and publics are dissolved and 'technical decision-making rights' (as they call them) are thus extended indiscriminately. Their aim of redefining competences for 'technical decision-making' in the public sphere, so as to include practical experience-based expertise alongside 'certified science', would be more inclusive compared with existing boundaries, but more exclusive compared with the apparent assumptions (of infinite 'extension') of the participation in science 'movements'. They use the case studies of Cumbrian sheep farmers (Wynne, 1992) and HIV-AIDS activists (Epstein, 1996) to illustrate this argument. Significantly, and as issues I take up later, for them the public sphere involves an accumulation of completely unrelated 'decisions' about what they define as exclusively 'propositional' decision-questions, such as whether nuclear power, anti-misting kerosene or UK beef is safe,

Neo-traditionalism and the limits of invention in british colonial africa

Abstract: Exploring a range of studies regarding the ‘invention of tradition’, the ‘making of customary law’ and the ‘creation of tribalism’ since the 1980s, this survey article argues that the case for colonial invention has often overstated colonial power and ability to manipulate African institutions to establish hegemony. Rather, tradition was a complex discourse in which people continually reinterpreted the lessons of the past in the context of the present. Colonial power was limited by chiefs' obligation to ensure community well-being to maintain the legitimacy on which colonial authorities depended. And ethnicity reflected longstanding local political, cultural and historical conditions in the changing contexts of colonial rule. None of these institutions were easily fabricated or manipulated, and colonial dependence on them often limited colonial power as much as facilitating it.

Framing Issues and Seizing Opportunities: The UN, NGOs, and Women's Rights

Abstract: How, why, and under what conditions are NGOs able to influence state's interests? To answer these questions, I examine the process through which women's organizations succeeded in placing front and center on the UN agenda two issues that had been perceived as exclusively private: violence against women and reproductive rights and health. I develop a theoretical framework drawing on both the agenda-setting and social movement literature. I suggest that NGOs attempt to influence states' interests by framing problems, solutions, and justifications for political action. Whether they are successful in mobilizing support is contingent on the dynamic interaction of primarily two factors: (1) the political opportunity structure in which NGOs are embedded, comprising access to institutions, the presence of influential allies, and changes in political alignments and conflicts; and (2) the mobilizing structures that NGOs have at their disposal, including organizational entrepreneurs, a heterogeneous international constituency, and experts. I find that in the beginning of the agenda-setting process, the influence of NGOs is rather limited, their frames are highly contested, and structural obstacles outweigh organizational resources. However, over time the influence of NGOs increases. As they establish their own mobilizing structures, they become capable of altering the political opportunity structure in their favor, and their frames gain in acceptance and legitimacy.

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.

Legitimacy Problems in Deliberative Democracy

Abstract: Focusing on the problem of scale, this paper offers a tentative solution using representation, a concept which is itself problematic. Along the way, the paper highlights issues with the legitimate role of experts, the different legitimate uses of statistical and electoral representation, and differences between the research and democratic imperatives driving current attempts to put deliberative principles into practice, illustrated with a case from a Leicester health policy debate. While much work remains to be done on exactly how the principles arrived at might be transformed into working institutions, they do offer a means of criticising existing deliberative practice.

The Legitimation of International Governance: A Discourse Approach:

Abstract: This article presents a discourse approach to the study of legitimacy of governance beyond the democratic state. It starts from the empirical question of how international organizations legitimate ...

A frame in the fields: Policy making and the re-invention of politics

Abstract: Could policymaking be constitutive of politics? Conventionally, policymaking is conceived of as the result of politics. In this view classical-modernist political institutions seek to involve people in politics via a choice of elected officials who are subsequently supposed to represent the interests of their voters, initiate policy and oversee its implementation. But what if people do not always have clear-cut identities or preferences? What if they regard ‘party politics’ with a certain cynicism, and are much more ‘spectators’ than participants (cf. Manin 1997)? Is that the end of politics? This chapter argues that this is not necessarily true. Citizens could also be seen as political activists on ‘stand by’ who often need to be ignited in order to become politically involved. This creates a new role for policymaking. In many cases it is a public policy initiative that triggers people to reflect on what they really value, and that motivates them to voice their concerns or wishes and become politically active themselves. Public policy, in other words, often creates a public domain , as a space in which people of various origins deliberate on their future as well as on their mutual interrelationships and their relationship to the government. The idea of a network society only adds to this. Nowadays policymaking often takes place in a context where fixed political identities and stable communities always be assumed.

Measuring Attitudes toward the United States Supreme Court

Abstract: It is conventional in research on the legitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court to rely on a survey question asking about confidence in the leaders of the Court to indicate something about the esteem with which that institution is regarded by the American people. The purpose of this article is to investigate the validity of this measure. Based on a nationally representative survey conducted in 2001, we compare confidence with several different measures of Court legitimacy. Our findings indicate that the confidence replies seem to reflect both short-term and long-term judgments about the Court, with the greater influence coming from satisfaction with how the Court is performing at the moment. We suggest a new set of indicators for measuring the legitimacy of the Court and offer some evidence on the structure of the variance in these items.

Stalemate: Causes and Consequences of Legislative Gridlock

Abstract: Gridlock is not a modern legislative condition. Although the term is said to have entered the American political lexicon after the 1980 elections, Alexander Hamilton complained about it more than two hundred years ago. In many ways, stalemate seems endemic to American politics. Constitutional skeptics even suggest that the framers intentionally designed the Constitution to guarantee gridlock. In Stalemate , Sarah Binder examines the causes and consequences of gridlock, focusing on the ability of Congress to broach and secure policy compromise on significant national issues. Reviewing more than fifty years of legislative history, Binder measures the frequency of deadlock during that time and offers concrete advice for policymakers interested in improving the institutional capacity of Congress. Binder begins by revisiting the notion of "framers' intent," investigating whether gridlock was the preferred outcome of those who designed the American system of separated powers. Her research suggests that frequent policy gridlock might instead be an unintended consequence of constitutional design. Next, she explores the ways in which elections and institutions together shape the capacity of Congress and the president to make public law. She examines two facets of its institutional evolution: the emergence of the Senate as a coequal legislative partner of the House and the insertion of political parties into a legislative arena originally devoid of parties. Finally, she offers a new empirical approach for testing accounts of policy stalemate during the decades since World War II. These measurements reveal patterns in legislative performance during the second half of the twentieth century, showing the frequency of policy deadlock and the legislative stages at which it has most often emerged in the postwar period. Binder uses the new measure of stalemate to explain empirical patterns in the frequency of gridlock. The results weave together the effects of institutions and elections and place in perspective the impact of divided government on legislative performance. The conclusion addresses the consequences of legislative stalemate, assessing whether and to what degree deadlock might affect electoral fortunes, political ambitions, and institutional reputations of legislators and presidents. The results suggest that recurring episodes of stalemate pose a dilemma for legislators and others who care about the institutional standing and capacity of Congress. Binder encourages scholars, political observers, and lawmakers to consider modest reforms that could have strong and salutary effects on the institutional standing and legitimacy of Congress and the president.

Making European Space: Mobility, Power and Territorial Identity

Abstract: Making European Space explores how future visions of Europe's physical space are being decisively shaped by transnational politics and power struggles, which are being played out in new multi-level arenas of governance across the European Union. At stake are big ideas about mobility and friction, about relations between core and peripheral regions, and about the future Europe's cities and countryside. The book builds a critical narrative of the emergence of a new discourse of Europe as 'monotopia', revealing a very real project to shape European space in line with visions of high speed, frictionless mobility, the transgression of borders, and the creation of city networks. The narrative explores in depth how the particular ideas of mobility and space which underpin this discourse are being constructed in policy making, and reflects on the legitimacy of these policy processes. In particular, it shows how spatial ideas are becoming embedded in the everyday practices of the social and political organisation of space, in ways that make a frictionless Europe seem natural, and part of a common European territorial identity.

Cooperative forms of governance: Problems of democratic accountability in complex environments

Abstract: . Various schools of research in public policy (the literature on ‘governance’ and its continental counterparts) are converging to focus on the growth of policy styles based on cooperation and partnership in networks, instead of on vertical control by the state. This article focuses on issues of democratic accountability and responsiveness with these governance arrangements. It argues that until recently the legitimacy of governance networks was not at the forefront of theoretical developments, even though the ‘democratic deficit’ of governance is problematic both for normative and for pragmatic reasons. There is now increased sensitivity to this problem, but the remedies presented in the literature are unsatisfactory, and critiques of governance presuppose a somewhat idealised image of representative democracy in terms of accountability or responsiveness of decision-makers. They also fail to offer adequate solutions to some of the central legitimacy problems of policy-making in complex societies.

Private Power and Global Authority: Transnational Merchant Law in the Global Political Economy

Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. Conceptualizing the role of law in the global political economy 3. Theorizing the role of law in the global political economy 4. Medieval Lex Mercatoria 5. State-building: constituting the public sphere and disembedding the private sphere 6. The modern law merchant and the Mercatocracy Conclusion: transnational merchant law and global authority: a crisis of legitimacy Bibliography.

Belief in Control: Regulation of Religion in China

Abstract: This article examines the regulation of religion in China, in the context of changing social expectations and resulting dilemmas of regime legitimacy. The post-Mao government has permitted limited freedom of religious belief, subject to legal and regulatory restrictions on religious behaviour. However, this distinction between belief and behaviour poses challenges for the regime's efforts to maintain political control while preserving an image of tolerance aimed at building legitimacy. By examining the regulation of religion in the context of patterns of compliance and resistance in religious conduct, the article attempts to explain how efforts to control religion raise challenges for regime legitimacy.

Travails of the European Raj

Abstract: Can the extraordinary powers of the international mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina be justified by reference to a state of emergency, and do they facilitate its objectives of state-building and democratization? A review of the history of the international protectorate—and in particular the Office of the High Representative—finds that the answers to these questions are negative. Its philosophy, as revealed by its actions, is very similar to that of 19th century liberal imperialism; but the theory of emergency powers of the constitutional dictator of Niccolo Machiavelli offers a better roadmap for future post-conflict missions. The specification and independent monitoring of a red line beyond which international power will not be used is vital to their legitimacy and effectiveness.

'This is my EUtopia ...': Narrative as Power

Abstract: The original comparative mission of JCMS testifies to the propensity of the EU, since its inception, to project its model on to the rest of the world. This article argues that narratives of projection are indeed key to the EU's global influence and that, in this particular sense, the idea of Europe as a civilian power is more relevant than ever. But such narratives require our engagement with their reflexive nature: what is usually projected is not the EU as is, but an EUtopia. At a time when both the EU and the international trade system are undergoing crises of legitimacy, EU actors can learn a lot from the remedies suggested for the global level by such an EUtopia.

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

Abstract: This article addresses the concern that democratization may contribute to the reproduction of neo-patrimonialism, rather than to counteract it. The article reports the result of a survey among members of parliament in Ghana regarding their election campaigns. Total spending, sources of funds, and their usage are analysed in the context of the consolidation of liberal democracy. The survey results are supplemented with data collected in 34 interviews with MPs. The data show that 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. This 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 the government and legislative activities.

NGO Legitimacy: Technical Issue or Social Construct?

Abstract: The legitimacy of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) is poorly theorized in development studies literature, where it is usually seen as dependent on accountability, performance and representativ...