scispace - formally typeset
Search or ask a question
Topic

Legitimacy

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


Papers
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Jamil Khan1
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyse the role of network governance in urban low carbon transitions and show that while network governance can contribute to niche developments and innovation at the urban level, the elitist character of networks risks maintaining existing unsustainable patterns and defining possible urban futures in too narrow terms.

119 citations

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.

119 citations

Posted Content
TL;DR: The authors argues that African states are conceptually faulty because they are the crude and thoughtless handiworks of European colonial powers and argues that democratic entities are unlikely to develop where pre-colonial nations and peoples find no rationale in the imposed state.
Abstract: This article questions the legitimacy of the African state and the imperial cartography on which it is based. It argues that African states are conceptually faulty because they are the crude and thoughtless handiworks of European colonial powers. It is the artificiality of the African state that has been responsible for its failure to cohere into a nation that is viable. The piece argues for geographic and normative re-articulation of the African state - by smashing the current states - to endow them with moral, political, and legal legitimacy. It concludes that democratic entities are unlikely to develop where pre-colonial nations and peoples find no rationale in the imposed state.

118 citations

15 Aug 2006

118 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Public sociology, along with its cousin policy sociology, are currently very popular. And I suspect that most people in the U.S. today who call themselves sociologists somehow want to be molders of society.
Abstract: My job is to introduce a little tension into an otherwise harmonious system. Public sociology, along with its cousin policy sociology, are currently very popular. My guess is that the vast majority of the audience is in agreement with Burawoy's call for an enlargement of public sociology. And I suspect that most people in the U.S. today who call themselves sociologists somehow want to be molders of society. It is important, therefore, to challenge some issues implied by the call for more public sociology. Yet, criticizing Burawoy's argument in a cogent way is difficult because his position is not entirely clear. Because what he means by "public sociology" is somewhat problematic, almost anything I say can be countered by a disclaimer that the object of my comment is not, in fact, part of his position or that it is not what he meant. Nevertheless, I will react to what I understand his points to be and to what I interpret his statements about public sociology to imply. As I understand it, Burawoy argues that (1) public sociology bears an interactive and mutually stimulating relationship with other forms of sociology, particularly what he calls "professional sociology," (2) public sociology is a desirable activity to be encouraged; indeed, that it is vital to the health of the entire sociological enterprise, (3) public sociology depends on a base of strong professional sociology and that the two are not fundamentally incompatible. Further, from his remarks here and from his writings, I gather that public sociology encompasses many things, including: (1) engagement in political activities to promote somebody's conception (I guess his) of social justice, (2) actively revealing to nonprofessional audiences the knowledge that sociologists think they have or the truths they think they know, (3) orienting our research and writing around moral issues, (4) engaging the public in debate about moral questions based on sociological insights, and (5) helping various "publics" solve problems or gather information relevant to their concerns, or helping to create such publics. If my interpretation of the meaning of "public sociology" is correct, then a program encouraging sociologists to become more "public" would appear to be a mistake. In my opinion, "public sociology" (1) involves some false assumptions, (2) endangers what little legitimacy sociology has, thereby helping

118 citations


Network Information
Related Topics (5)
Politics
263.7K papers, 5.3M citations
94% related
Democracy
108.6K papers, 2.3M citations
92% related
Globalization
81.8K papers, 1.7M citations
89% related
Corporate governance
118.5K papers, 2.7M citations
88% related
Public policy
76.7K papers, 1.6M citations
87% related
Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
20245
20231,984
20224,252
2021967
20201,096
20191,281