Legitimacy

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

The Legitimacy of CSR Actions of Publicly Traded Companies Versus Family-Owned Companies

Abstract: Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is one of the ways through which companies gain legitimacy. However, CSR actions themselves are subject to public skepticism because of increased public awareness of greenwashing and scandalous corporate behavior. Legitimacy of CSR actions is indeed influenced by the actions of the company but also is rooted in the basic cultural values of a society and in the ideologies of evaluators. This study examines the legitimacy of CSR actions of publicly traded forest products companies as compared to family-owned forest products companies. Results indicate a lower legitimacy for CSR actions of publicly traded companies than for family-owned companies. The study also examines the effect of social responsibility orientation (SRO) of evaluators on the legitimacy accorded to companies' CSR actions. We found that SRO was negatively associated with legitimacy, especially for women. Perceived profitability of companies was negatively associated with legitimacy of CSR actions for publicly traded but not for family-owned companies.

The fallacy of constructing hybrid political orders: a reappraisal of the hybrid turn in peacebuilding

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.

Legitimacy, sovereignty, solidarity and cosmopolitanism: On the recent work of Jürgen Habermas

Abstract: I read this paper, ‘A Plea for the Constitutionalization of International Law’, as an extension of the problematic taken up in Zur Verfassung Europas: Ein Essay (2011), translated as The Crisis of the European Union: A Response, the lecture, ‘Democracy, Solidarity, and the European Crisis’ (2013) and the essay ‘A Political Constitution for a Pluralist World Society’ (2008). This paper on the constitutionalization of international law builds on ideas taken from these quite recent works and it achieves an elegant level of generalization that goes beyond them. The general context for the constitutionalization of international law has been the ‘juridification of international relations’ which began after the Second World War leading to a fundamental change in our understanding of state power, suggesting a potential transnationalization of democracy. What is new in Habermas’ position regarding both the problems of the European Union and the concept of world citizenship is the special use of the concept of mixed constituent power, pouvoir constituant mixte. Although this idea is as old as Emmanuel Sieyes and James Madison, Habermas gives it a new meaning. The idea is that the development of constitutional law within the EU represents the potential for a new stage in international law viewed from the perspective of an historical reconstruction, which was originally framed by Kant. In contrast to the Euro skeptics Habermas constructs ‘a convincing new narrative’ which will characterize the potential development of the EU as a new stage in the process of the constitutionalization of international law as we move from the national to the transnational or supranational level of democratic development.

The Citizen and the Terrorist

Abstract: Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, there have been more than one thousand incidents of hate violence reported in the United States. How do we understand the emergence of this violence in a context of national tragedy? What are the seeds of this violence, and how has the political climate following September 11 allowed them to grow? Of course, there are no easy answers to these questions. This Article suggests that September 11 facilitated the consolidation of a new identity category that groups together persons who appear "Middle Eastern, Arab, or Muslim." This consolidation reflects a racialization wherein members of this group are identified as terrorists and disidentified as citizens. The stereotype of the "Arab terrorist" is not an unfamiliar one. But the ferocity with which multiple communities have been interpellated as responsible for the events of September 11 suggests there are particular dimensions converging in this racialization. The Article examines three: the fact and legitimacy of racial profiling; the redeployment of Orientalist tropes; and the relationship between citizenship, nation and identity.

Stripped of illusions? Exploring system justification processes in capitalist and post-Communist societies.

Abstract: Sociologists and political scientists have often observed that citizens of Central and Eastern Europe express high levels of disillusionment with their social, economic and political systems, in comparison with citizens of Western capitalist societies. In this review, we analyze system legitimation and delegitimation in post-Communist societies from a social psychological perspective. We draw on system justification theory, which seeks to understand how, when and why people do (and do not) defend, bolster and justify existing social systems. We review some of the major tenets and findings of the theory and compare research on system-justifying beliefs and ideologies in traditionally Capitalist and post-Communist countries to determine: (1) whether there are robust differences in the degree of system justification in post-Communist and Capitalist societies, and (2) the extent to which hypotheses derived from system justification theory receive support in the post-Communist context. To this end, we summarize research findings from over 20 countries and cite previously unpublished data from a public opinion survey conducted in Poland. Our analysis confirms that there are lower levels of system justification in post-Communist countries. At the same time, we find that system justification possesses similar social and psychological antecedents, manifestations and consequences in the two types of societies. We offer potential explanations for these somewhat complicated patterns of results and conclude by addressing implications for theory and research on system justification and system change (or transition).