Legitimacy

About: Legitimacy is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 26153 publications have been published within this topic receiving 565921 citations.

The Strength of Weak States? Non-State Security Forces and Hybrid Governance in Africa

Abstract: In this article, I explore the recent revalorization of non-state forms of order and authority in the context of hybrid approaches to governance and state building in Africa. I argue for a more empirical and comparative approach to hybrid governance that is capable of distinguishing between constructive and corrosive forms of non-state order, and sharpens rather than blurs the relationship between formal and informal regulation. A critique of the theoretical and methodological issues surrounding hybrid governance perspectives sets the scene for a comparative analysis of two contrasting situations of hybrid security systems: the RCD-ML of eastern DR Congo, and the Bakassi Boys vigilante group of eastern Nigeria. In each case, four issues are examined: the basis of claims that regulatory authority has shifted to informal security systems; the local legitimacy of the security forces involved; the wider political context; and finally, whether a genuine transformation of regulatory authority has resulted, offering local populations a preferable alternative to the prior situation of neglectful or predatory rule. I argue that hybrid governance perspectives often essentialize informal regulatory systems, disguising coercion and political capture as popular legitimacy, and I echo calls for a more historically and empirically informed analysis of hybrid governance contexts.

The judicial process in comparative perspective

Abstract: Part 1 The evolving role and responsibility of judges: the law-making power of the judges and its limits who watches the watchmen? Part 2 The expansion and legitimacy of judicial review: judicial review in comparative perspective the "mighty problem" of judicial review repudiating Montesquieu? - the expansion and legitimacy of "constitutional justice" Part 3 Social justice and the public interest - new challenges for the judiciary: access to judicial remedies in civil litigation - comparative constitutional, international and social trends vindicating the public interest through the courts Part 4 Promoting legal integration through the courts: the judicial branch in the Federal and Transnational Union - its impact on integration is the European Court of Justice "running wild?"

The social sources of financial power : domestic legitimacy and international financial orders

Abstract: A state's financial power is built on the effect its credit, property, and tax policies have on ordinary people: this is the key message of Leonard Seabrooke's comparative historical investigation, which turns the spotlight away from elite financial actors and toward institutions that matter for the majority of citizens. Seabrooke suggests that everyday contests between social groups and the state over how the economy should work determine the legitimacy of a state's financial and fiscal system. Ideally, he believes, such contests compel a state to intervene on behalf of people below the median income level, leading the state to broaden and deepen its domestic pool of capital while increasing its influence on international finance. But to do so, Seabrooke asserts, a state must first challenge powerful interests that benefit from the concentration of financial wealth. Seabrooke's novel constructivist approach is informed by economic sociology and the work of Max Weber. This book demonstrates how domestic legitimacy influences the character of international financial orders. It will interest all readers concerned with how best to transform state intervention in the economy for the good of the majority.

Personal Rule: Theory and Practice in Africa

Abstract: Personal rule has been a compelling facet of politics at least since the time of Machiavelli. It is the image not of a ruler but of a type of rulership.' Personal rule is a dynamic world of political will and activity that is shaped less by institutions or impersonal social forces than by personal authorities and power; it is a world, therefore, of uncertainty, suspicion, rumor, agitation, intrigue, and sometimes fear, as well as of stratagem, diplomacy, conspiracy, dependency, reward, and threat. In other words, personal rule is a distinctive type of political system in which the rivalries and struggles of powerful and wilful men, rather than impersonal institutions, ideologies, public policies, or class interests, are fundamental in shaping political life. Indicators of personal regimes in sub-Saharan Africa are coups, plots, factionalism, purges, rehabilitations, clientelism, corruption, succession maneuvers, and similar activities which have been significant and recurring features of political life during the past two decades. Furthermore, there is no indication that such activities are about to decline in political importance. Whereas these features are usually seen as merely the defects of an otherwise established political orderwhether capitalist, socialist, military, civilian, or whatever-we are inclined to regard them much more as the integral elements of a distinctive political system to which we have given the term "personal rule."2 It is ironic that in the twentieth century a novel form of "presidential monarchy" has appeared in many countries of the Third World. The irony consists in the contradiction of what is perhaps the major tendency in the evolution of the modern state during the past several centuries: the transformation of political legitimacy from the authority of kings to the mandate of the people.3 What has happened in the