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Showing papers on "Legitimacy published in 2016"



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TL;DR: Deephouse and Suchman as discussed by the authors reviewed 1299 publications and conference papers that had the string "legitim" in the title, abstract, or keywords of a paper and identified six central questions around which this chapter is arranged: What is organizational legitimacy? Why does legitimacy matter? Who confers legitimacy, and how? What criteria are used (for making legitimacy evaluations)? How does legitimacy change over time?
Abstract: Legitimacy is a fundamental concept of organizational institutionalism. It influences how organizations behave and has been shown to affect their performance and survival (Pollock & Rindova, 2003; Singh, Tucker, & House, 1986). As developed in organizational institutionalism the term has spread widely across the social sciences, and because of this, our current understandings of legitimacy and how it is managed are much more nuanced and elaborate than portrayed in early institutional accounts. In this chapter, we seek to bring greater clarity and order to the growing and sometimes confusing literature, focusing on the conceptualization of legitimacy itself and how it changes over time.This chapter builds from the previous edition (Deephouse & Suchman, 2008, available online at www.sage.org/organizational institutionalism/legitimacy). In updating that chapter we reviewed 1299 publications and conference papers that had the string “legitim” in the title, abstract, or keywords. Reflecting the reach and power of legitimacy, these publications included books and a wide range of journals and across a wide range of disciplines (e.g., communication, political science, public administration, and sociology -- not just management). Our goal was both to identify both broad trends in theory and research and possible theoretical innovations and also to highlight important applications for scholars in organizational institutionalism. From this review we identified six central questions around which this chapter is arranged: What is organizational legitimacy? Why does legitimacy matter? Who confers legitimacy, and how? What criteria are used (for making legitimacy evaluations)? How does legitimacy change over time? These questions are shown in Figure 1.1. Our final section asks “Where do we go from here?” and offers suggestions for future research.

305 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate how the organizational identity of a technology venture must adapt to meet the expectations of critical resource providers at each stage of its organizational life cycle and provide a temporal perspective on the interactions among identity, organizational legitimacy, institutional environments, and entrepreneurial resource acquisition for technology ventures.
Abstract: To acquire resources, new ventures need to be perceived as legitimate. For this to occur, a venture must meet the expectations of various audiences with differing norms, standards, and values as the venture evolves and grows. We investigate how the organizational identity of a technology venture must adapt to meet the expectations of critical resource providers at each stage of its organizational life cycle. In so doing, we provide a temporal perspective on the interactions among identity, organizational legitimacy, institutional environments, and entrepreneurial resource acquisition for technology ventures. The core assertion from this conceptual analysis is that entrepreneurial ventures confront multiple legitimacy thresholds as they evolve and grow. We identify and discuss three key insights related to entrepreneurs’ efforts to cross those thresholds at different organizational life cycle stages: institutional pluralism, venture-identity embeddedness, and legitimacy buffering.

283 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors examined whether the effect of procedural justice and competing variables (i.e., distributive justice and police effectiveness) on police legitimacy evaluations operate in the same manner across individual and situational differences.
Abstract: This study tests the generality of Tyler’s process-based model of policing by examining whether the effect of procedural justice and competing variables (i.e., distributive justice and police effectiveness) on police legitimacy evaluations operate in the same manner across individual and situational differences. Data from a random sample of mail survey respondents are used to test the “invariance thesis” (N = 1681). Multiplicative interaction effects between the key antecedents of legitimacy (measured separately for obligation to obey and trust in the police) and various demographic categories, prior experiences, and perceived neighborhood conditions are estimated in a series of multivariate regression equations. The effect of procedural justice on police legitimacy is largely invariant. However, regression and marginal results show that procedural justice has a larger effect on trust in law enforcement among people with prior victimization experience compared to their counterparts. Additionally, the distributive justice effect on trust in the police is more pronounced for people who have greater fear of crime and perceive higher levels of disorder in their neighborhood. The results suggest that Tyler’s process-based model is a “general” theory of individual police legitimacy evaluations. The police can enhance their legitimacy by ensuring procedural fairness during citizen interactions. The role of procedural justice also appears to be particularly important when the police interact with crime victims.

267 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, an organization theory-based approach is used to study the performance of a well-functioning governmental crisis management system, and how this can be studied using an organization theoretic approach.
Abstract: What makes a well-functioning governmental crisis management system, and how can this be studied using an organization theory–based approach? A core argument is that such a system needs both governance capacity and governance legitimacy. Organizational arrangements as well as the legitimacy of government authorities will affect crisis management performance. A central argument is that both structural features and cultural context matter, as does the nature of the crisis. Is it a transboundary crisis? How unique is it, and how much uncertainty is associated with it? The arguments are substantiated with empirical examples and supported by a literature synthesis, focusing on public administration research. A main conclusion is that there is no optimal formula for harmonizing competing interests and tensions or for overcoming uncertainty and ambiguous government structures. Flexibility and adaptation are key assets, which are constrained by the political, administrative, and situational context. Furthermore, a future research agenda is indicated.

259 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that algorithmic governance does pose a significant threat to the legitimacy of public decision-making processes (bureaucratic, legislative and legal) and propose two possible solutions: resistance and accommodation.
Abstract: One of the most noticeable trends in recent years has been the increasing reliance of public decision-making processes (bureaucratic, legislative and legal) on algorithms, i.e. computer-programmed step-by-step instructions for taking a given set of inputs and producing an output. The question raised by this article is whether the rise of such algorithmic governance creates problems for the moral or political legitimacy of our public decision-making processes. Ignoring common concerns with data protection and privacy, it is argued that algorithmic governance does pose a significant threat to the legitimacy of such processes. Modelling my argument on Estlund’s threat of epistocracy, I call this the ‘threat of algocracy’. The article clarifies the nature of this threat and addresses two possible solutions (named, respectively, ‘resistance’ and ‘accommodation’). It is argued that neither solution is likely to be successful, at least not without risking many other things we value about social decision-making. The result is a somewhat pessimistic conclusion in which we confront the possibility that we are creating decision-making processes that constrain and limit opportunities for human participation.

225 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors studied the rise and fall of technology legitimacy of agricultural biogas in Germany over a period of more than 20 years (1990-2012) and explained the technology's loss of legitimacy despite its compliance with original policy objectives: growth and maturation.

194 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors propose a way to zoom in on the concept of the social license to operate (SLO) from the broader normative perspective of contractarianism, and show how academic concepts such as legitimacy and stakeholder management have a tendency to provide the intellectual underpinning for the business case for securing an SLO.
Abstract: This article proposes a way to zoom in on the concept of the social license to operate (SLO) from the broader normative perspective of contractarianism. An SLO can be defined as a contractarian basis for the legitimacy of a company’s specific activity or project. “SLO”, as a fashionable expression, has its origins in business practice. From a normative viewpoint, the concept is closely related to social contract theory, and, as such, it has a political dimension. After outlining the contractarian normative background to the SLO, we will show how academic concepts such as legitimacy and stakeholder management have a tendency to provide the intellectual underpinning for the business case for securing an SLO. While business case perspectives on the SLO may well be in line with the use of the term in business practice, we will highlight certain difficulties and ambiguities related to the instrumental use of the expression. In the final section, we briefly introduce the articles of this Special Issue to the reader and explain how they relate to the topic.

188 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper examined the political risk experienced by Google and Yahoo at home and abroad due to their activities in China to illustrate the benefits of a holistic approach to political risk and argued that there is a need to update the bargaining power and political institutions theories and further develop a legitimacy-based view of political risk.
Abstract: Traditional political risk theories often focus on a developing host country government's ability to intervene in the activities of foreign multinationals in the extractive or infrastructure sectors. This results in inadequate understanding of (1) how a government's motivation to intervene is influenced by the broader societal context, (2) the importance of multinationals' political risk at home, and (3) the increasing political risk faced by high-tech and service firms. We argue that there is a need to update the bargaining power and political institutions theories and further develop a legitimacy-based view of political risk. Then, we examine the political risk experienced by Google and Yahoo at home and abroad due to their activities in China to illustrate the benefits of a holistic approach to political risk. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

181 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper explored how market and non-market activity affect foreign firm legitimacy in times of political turmoil and found that those that also invested in social-benefit projects and in social ties with families with few ties to the Qadhafi family earned a broad-based legitimacy that helped them survive the overthrow of Moghaddam.
Abstract: Using the before–after natural experiment occasioned by the Arab Spring in Libya, we explore how market and non-market activity affect foreign firm legitimacy in times of political turmoil. Although all MNEs in Libya had to cultivate strong ties to Qadhafi to succeed during his 40 years of rule, we found that those that also invested in social-benefit projects and in social ties with families with few ties to the Qadhafi family earned a broad-based legitimacy that helped them survive Qadhafi’s overthrow. Our findings contribute to the political risk and political behavior literature the notion that the pursuit of firm legitimacy in general, and especially in the eyes of social-sector actors, is an effective hedge against political risk. More theoretically, our findings support the addition of a social-sector-based path to firm legitimacy in the host country that complements and may at times substitute for, the government-based path to foreign firm legitimacy. Practically, our findings suggest that MNEs’ facing severe political risk can improve their prospects for survival by investing in relationships with influential social groups and by offering goods or services that are perceived as socially valuable.

171 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Results from the linear regression analyses showed that the police legitimacy scale is related to cooperation with the police, and that the observed association is attenuated when the obligation to obey scale is included in the model specification in both the United States and Ghana data.
Abstract: This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from APA via http://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/lhb0000153

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a case study of a corporation's stakeholder engagement in social media is conducted and the authors propose a networked legitimacy strategy, where legitimacy is gained through participation in non-hierarchical open platforms and the co-construction of agendas.
Abstract: How can corporations develop legitimacy when coping with stakeholders who have multiple, often conflicting sustainable development (SD) agendas? We address this question by conducting an in-depth longitudinal case study of a corporation's stakeholder engagement in social media and propose the concept of a networked legitimacy strategy. With this strategy, legitimacy is gained through participation in non-hierarchical open platforms and the co-construction of agendas. We explore the organizational transition needed to yield this new legitimacy approach. We argue that, in this context, legitimacy gains may increase when firms are able to reduce the control over the engagements and relate non-hierarchically with their publics. We contribute to the extant literature on political corporate social responsibility and legitimacy by providing an understanding of a new context for engagement that reconfigures cultural, network, and power relations between the firm and their stakeholders in ways that challenge previous forms of legitimation.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors introduce the ideal types of domination of Weber and discuss various ways that communist regimes tried to legitimate themselves and how they entered eventually a legitimation crisis, leading to the collapse of communism, and explore the different ways post-communist capitalisms seek legitimacy with various combinations of legal rational authority and patrimonialism.
Abstract: This article has four main objectives. First, it introduces the ideal types of domination of Weber. Contrary to the received wisdom, which knows only “three ideal types” (traditional, charismatic and legal rational) I present the “fourth” type of domination, Weber called “Wille der Beherrschten” as an important correction of his ideal type of legal-rational authority. Next I make a novel, critical distinction between patrimonial and prebendal types of traditional authority. Third, I discuss various ways that communist regimes tried to legitimate themselves and how they entered eventually a legitimation crisis, leading to the collapse of communism. In the next section, I explore the different ways post-communist capitalisms seek legitimacy (with various combinations of legal rational authority and patrimonialism), and finally I conclude with a trend of re-convergence of some post-communist systems (especially Russia and Hungary, but with signs for similar trends elsewhere) into an illiberal, prebendal quasi-democratic system.

Book
16 Jun 2016
TL;DR: In this article, the authors develop a framework for analyzing ideologies of linguistic authority and use it to illuminate the politics of language in Catalonia, where Catalan jostles with Castilian for legitimacy, arguing that there is an ongoing shift at both public and personal levels away from the ethnolinguistic authenticity that powered relations in the early transition to political autonomy, and toward new discourses of anonymity, rooted cosmopolitanism, and authenticity understood as a project rather than an essence.
Abstract: A surge of public and political advocacy for an independent Catalonia has brought renewed urgency to questions about what it means, personally and politically, to speak or not to speak Catalan and to claim Catalan identity. This book develops a framework for analyzing ideologies of linguistic authority and uses it to illuminate the politics of language in Catalonia, where Catalan jostles with Castilian for legitimacy. Longitudinal research by the author across decades of political autonomy contextualizes this ethnographic study of the social meaning of Catalan in the 21st century. Part I lays out the ideologies of linguistic authenticity, anonymity, and naturalism that underpin linguistic authority in the modern western world, and gives an overview of a shift in the ideological grounding of linguistic authority in contemporary Catalonia. Part II examines public discourses in the media. Chapters analyze three public linguistic controversies, over an immigrant president’s linguistic competence, a municipal festival, and an international book fair. Part III explores linguistic practices and discourses at the individual level, drawing on classroom ethnographies and interviews with two generations of young people from the same high school. The book argues that there is an ongoing shift at both public and personal levels away from the ethnolinguistic authenticity that powered relations in the early transition to political autonomy, and toward new discourses of anonymity, rooted cosmopolitanism, and authenticity understood as a project rather than an essence.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss contemporary entrepreneurship education research and identify the manner in which the three articles comprising this special issue contribute to advancing the theoretical and methodological foundations of the field.
Abstract: This editorial discusses contemporary entrepreneurship education research and identifies the manner in which the three articles comprising this special issue contribute to advancing the theoretical and methodological foundations of the field. In so doing we seek to describe how and why entrepreneurship education research may struggle for legitimacy along with the complexities of working in this field. This special issue raises questions about entrepreneurship education research and, through the featured articles provides some responses. This special issue itself, however, is presented as part of an ongoing discussion about the nature and role of entrepreneurship education more widely and is intended to provoke further critical engagement and stimulate theoretical and methodological development.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors address the problem of how contemporary managers engage with the critiques of the past and how this corporate engagement with the past affects the legitimacy of current business and propose a theoretical basis for holding a corporation responsible for decisions made by prior generations of managers.
Abstract: Corporations are increasingly held responsible for activities up and down their value chains but outside their traditional corporate boundaries. Recently, a similar wave of criticism has arisen about corporate activities of the past, overseen by prior generations of managers. Yet there is little or no scholarly theorizing about the ways contemporary managers engage with these critiques or how this corporate engagement with the past affects the legitimacy of current business. Extending theorizing about political corporate social responsibility and organizational legitimacy, we address this omission by asking the following: (1) What is the theoretical basis for holding a corporation responsible for decisions made by prior generations of managers? (2) What is the process by which such claims are raised and contested? (3) What are the relevant features that render a charge of historical harm-doing more or less legitimate in the current context? (4) How will a corporation’s response to such charges affect the ...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the governance of Bitcoin and assess its potential to create input and output legitimacy as a payment system and as a monetary system in comparison with current practice.
Abstract: The virtual currency and payment project Bitcoin intends to challenge the current monetary and payment system that finds itself in a legitimacy crisis in the aftermath of the financial market turmoil of 2008. In examining the governance of the Bitcoin system, I try to assess its potential to create input and output legitimacy as a payment system and as a monetary system in comparison with current practice.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A review of the recent academic and policy interest in hybridity and hybrid political orders in relation to peacebuilding can be found in this article, where the authors argue that the shallow instrumentalization of hybridity is based on a misunderstanding of the concept.
Abstract: This article reviews the recent academic and policy interest in hybridity and hybrid political orders in relation to peacebuilding. It is sceptical of the ability of international actors to manufacture with precision hybrid political orders, and argues that the shallow instrumentalization of hybridity is based on a misunderstanding of the concept. The article engages in conceptual-scoping in thinking through the emancipatory potential of hybridity. It differentiates between artificial and locally legitimate hybrid outcomes, and places the ‘hybrid turn' in the literature in the context of the continued evolution of the liberal peace as it struggles to come to terms with crises of access and legitimacy.

Book ChapterDOI
Abstract: In recent years, scholars of criminal justice and criminology have brought legitimacy to the forefront of academic and policy discussion. In the most influential definition, institutional trust is assumed to be an integral element of legitimacy, alongside duty to obey. For an individual to find a criminal justice institution to be legitimate, he or she must (a) believe that officials can be trusted to exercise their institutional power appropriately, and (b) feel a positive duty to obey rules and commands. In this chapter we argue that the nature, measurement, and motivating force of trust and legitimacy are in need of further explication. Considering these two concepts in a context of a type of authority that is both coercive and consent-based in nature, we make three claims: first, that legitimacy is the belief that an institution exhibits properties that justify its power and a duty to obey that is wrapped up in this sense of appropriateness; second, that trust is about positive expectations about valued behavior from institutional officials; and third, that legitimacy and institutional trust overlap conceptually if one assumes that people judge the appropriateness of the police as an institution on whether officers can be trusted to use their power appropriately. Our discussion will, we hope, be of broad theoretical and policy interest.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Habermas and Rawls as mentioned in this paper argued that the issue of how best to conceive of democratic legitimacy lies at the bottom of the debate between Habermas et al. But their argument is vitiated by a threefold ambiguity in what he means by "comprehensive doctrine".
Abstract: Many commentators have failed to identify the important issues at the heart of the debate between Habermas and Rawls. This is partly because they give undue attention to differences between their respective devices of representation, the original position and principle (U), neither of which are germane to the actual dispute. The dispute is at bottom about how best to conceive of democratic legitimacy. Rawls indicates where the dividing issues lie when he objects that Habermas’s account of democratic legitimacy is comprehensive and his is confined to the political. But his argument is vitiated by a threefold ambiguity in what he means by “comprehensive doctrine.” Tidying up this ambiguity helps reveal that the dispute turns on the way in which morality relates to political legitimacy. Although Habermas calls his conception of legitimate law “morally freestanding”, and as such distinguishes it from Kantian and Natural Law accounts of legitimacy, it is not as freestanding from morality as he likes to present it. Habermas’s mature theory contains conflicting claims about relation between morality and democratic legitimacy. So there is at least one important sense in which Rawls's charge of comprehensiveness is made to stick againstHabermas’s conception of democratic legitimacy, and remains unanswered.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the ways in which EU actors have engaged in incremental changes to the eurozone rules by stealth, that is, by reinterpreting the rules and recalibrating the numbers without admitting it in their public discourse.
Abstract: This article examines the ways in which EU actors have engaged in incremental changes to the eurozone rules ‘by stealth’ ‒ that is, by reinterpreting the rules and recalibrating the numbers without admitting it in their public discourse. Using the methodological framework of discursive institutionalism to focus on agents’ ideas and discursive interactions in institutional context, the article links EU actors’ reinterpretation of rules to their efforts to ensure greater legitimacy in terms of policy performance and governance processes as well as citizen politics. Using the normative theoretical framework of EU democratic systems theory, it analyses EU actors’ considerations of legitimacy not only in terms of their policies’ ‘output’ performance and citizens’ political ‘input’ but also the ‘throughput’ quality of their governance processes. The article illustrates this by elaborating on the different pathways to legitimation of the European Central Bank and the European Commission.

BookDOI
22 Apr 2016
TL;DR: Theoretical Framework: Governance and the democratic deficit: introduction, Victor Bekkers, Geske Dijkstra, Arthur Edwards and Menno Fenger as discussed by the authors The Governance Concept in Public Administration: a Conceptual Framework for Assessing Governance Practices, VBekkers and Arthur Edwards The idea of democracy in the 18th century, Koen Stapelbroek.
Abstract: Contents: Theoretical Framework: Governance and the democratic deficit: introduction, Victor Bekkers, Geske Dijkstra, Arthur Edwards and Menno Fenger The Governance Concept in Public Administration, Menno Fenger and Victor Bekkers Legitimacy and Democracy: a Conceptual Framework for Assessing Governance Practices, Victor Bekkers and Arthur Edwards The idea of democracy in the 18th century, Koen Stapelbroek. Governance at a Distance and Market Governance: Governance, Democracy and the European Modernization Agenda: a Comparison of Different Policy Initiatives, Victor Bekkers, Menno Fenger and Evelien Korteland Police, policing and governance in The Netherlands and in the United Kingdom, Arie van Sluis and Lex Cachet The Accountability of Professionals in Social Policy: or Why Governance is Multi-Focal and Democracy is Multi-Local, Peter Hupe and Michael Hill. Network Governance and Societal Self-Governance: The legitimacy of the Rotterdam integrated public safety program, Peter Marks Embedding Deliberative Democracy: Local Environmental Forums in The Netherlands and the United States, Arthur Edwards The Limits of Donor-Induced Participation: an Analysis of a Participatory Development Program in Mozambique, Geske Dijkstra and Lieve Lodewyckx. Multi-Level Governance: Democratic Legitimacy of Inter-Municipal and Regional Governance, Jose Manuel Ruano de la Fuente and Linze Schaap Democratic legitimacy of economic governance: the case of the European and Monetary Union, Frans van Nispen and Johan Posseth The OMC and the quest for democratic legitimization: the case of the European employment strategy, Patty Zandstra Supranational governance and the challenge of democracy: the IMF and the World Bank, Geske Dijkstra. Conclusions: Governance and the democratic deficit: an evaluation, Victor Bekkers, Geske Dijkstra, Arthur Edwards and Menno Fenger. Index.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors extend current knowledge on new venture legitimation by focusing on how environmental entrepreneurs enact their values and beliefs during the legitimation process and on the resultant business and personal consequences.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a broad range of policing components, including unobserved actions such as electronic surveillance, respecting the limits of one's legal authority, and unequal or equal distribution of policing resources between different groups, are investigated.
Abstract: Procedural justice theory predicts a relationship between police behaviour, individuals’ normative evaluation of police and decisions to comply with laws. Yet, prior studies of procedural justice have rather narrowly defined the potentially relevant predicates of police behaviour. This study expands the scope of procedural justice theory by considering a broad array of policing components, including unobserved actions such as electronic surveillance, respecting the limits of one’s legal authority, and the unequal or equal distribution of policing resources between different groups. Analysing data from a national probability sample of adults in England and Wales, we (1) present a comprehensive investigation of the heterogeneous elements of policing related to legitimacy judgments and (2) contribute to debate about the nature of legitimacy.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a top-down approach to the study of the empirical legitimacy of international institutions, which is defined as goal-oriented activities employed to establish and maintain a reliable basis of diffuse support.
Abstract: The article presents a top-down approach to the study of the empirical legitimacy of international institutions. It starts from the observation that international institutions’ representatives are engaged in various strategies aimed at cultivating generalised support. The article asserts that such strategies should be taken into account to gain deeper insights into the legitimation process of international institutions. To systematise these legitimation efforts and facilitate their empirical analysis, the article introduces the concept of legitimation strategies, which are defined as goal-oriented activities employed to establish and maintain a reliable basis of diffuse support. An analytical differentiation between three types of legitimation strategies is introduced depending on the addressees of legitimation strategies, that is, member state governments, international institutions’ staff, and the wider public. The applicability of the concept and the relevance of legitimation strategies for international institutions’ communication, behaviour, and institutional design is demonstrated by an empirical analysis of the G8’s and the IMF’s reaction to legitimation crises in the recent past of both institutions. In addition, the case studies suggest that a balanced set of legitimation strategies that takes into account the legitimacy concerns of all three constituencies is more likely to be successful in improving legitimacy perceptions.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Li et al. as discussed by the authors explored how entrepreneurs introducing a new organizational form can build legitimacy and capabilities to overcome significant liabilities of newness, and how their actions and the institutional structure co-evolve.

01 Jan 2016
TL;DR: The first peaceful transition from a single to a multi-party system of governance with a change of leadership in English-speaking Africa was described as the beginning of an era of confidence in the possibilities of democratic change as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: THE observation and monitoring of elections and referenda has become a 'growth business' in Africa since external and internal pressures have forced the leaders of one-party states to test their political legitimacy. The closely monitored 199I presidential and parliamentary elections in Zambia heralded the first peaceful transition from a single to a multi-party system of governance with a change of leadership in English-speaking Africa. It marked the beginning of an era of confidence in the possibilities of democratic change, and confirmed the positive influence that international observers can have on such processes. Their presence was henceforth considered an essential pre-condition for acceptable transitional multi-party elections. The hopes that Zambia would indeed 'set a standard for Africa',1 and offer encouragement to nascent democratic movements on the continent have, however, remained elusive. More recent elections have been replete with controversy, intimidations, and violence. Despite being certified to varying degrees as free and fair by observers, the losers have contested the results - in Angola with arms, in Kenya and Ghana with threatened and actual boycotts. Doubts about the commitment of African leaders to democratic standards, and the real possibility that they use the state machinery in their own favour, are perceived as major threats to free and fair elections. In these precarious and volatile situations observers were likened to a 'democracy police',2 who by their mere presence were expected to deter blatant fraud and by their mandate to witness and expose irregularities. Recently, however, the commitment of the international observers themselves has come under fire from among the

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a framework for evaluating the extent to which flood risk governance arrangements support societal resilience, and demonstrate efficiency and legitimacy, through empirical research conducted within the EU project STAR-FLOOD.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors assess the specific case of ISO 26000 and examine the question of how legitimacy beyond nation-state democracy is ensured or constricted, focusing on the idea of deliberate democracy and democratic legitimacy.
Abstract: Globalization arguably generated a governance gap that is being filled by transnational rule-making involving private actors among others. The democratic legitimacy of such new forms of governance beyond nation states is sometimes questioned. Apart from nation-centered democracies, such governance cannot build, for example, on representation and voting procedures to convey legitimacy to the generated rules. Instead, alternative elements of democracy such as deliberation and inclusion require discussion to assess new instruments of governance. The recently published standard ISO 26000 is an interesting example of transnational governance. ISO 26000 was developed in a lengthy multiorganizational process for the purpose of giving guidance on the social responsibility of organizations. By assessing the specific case of ISO 26000, this study sheds light on the question of how legitimacy beyond nation-state democracy is ensured or constricted. Centering on the idea of deliberate democracy and democratic legitim...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors reviewed research into the legitimacy and impact of business schools and pointed out that it is more than a decade now since Pfeffer and Fong's (2002) provocative paper challenging the perceived orthodoxy of business school success in the very first edition of the Academy of Management Learning & Education.
Abstract: It is an appropriate moment to review research into the legitimacy and impact of business schools. It is more than a decade now since Pfeffer and Fong's (2002) provocative paper challenging the perceived orthodoxy of business school success in the very first edition of the Academy of Management Learning & Education.