Legitimacy

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

‘Physics Envy’, Cognitive Legitimacy or Practical Relevance: Dilemmas in the Evolution of Management Research in the UK

Abstract: We reflect on the key debates and controversies that face business schools and management research. This paper frames the core debates in terms of organizational legitimacy as a lens through which to analyse the rapid rise and development of business schools in the UK. The production of management knowledge straddles the precarious divide between academic rigour and practical relevance. We argue that the conflicting sources of legitimacy could be undermining the international research competitiveness of UK schools and that a far-reaching review of management education and research is necessary.

Citizen Involvement in Public Policy-making: Does it Improve Democratic Legitimacy and Accountability? The Case of pTA

Abstract: In many policy areas demands for enhanced citizen participation have been met in the last twenty years or so. Recently, the participatory discourse has entered the till then highly expert-oriented debates over science and technology policy-making. In the field of technology assessment in particular, different types of participatory procedures have been developed that aim to include stakeholders, those directly affected and/or the general public at local, national, or even supranational level. Numerous procedures have been employed—above all with regard to social conflicts over biotechnology—in many European countries, but also elsewhere in the world.The debate on participatory technology assessment (pTA) is influenced by an almost romanticising picture. Participatory procedures are believed to (1) increase the motivation of those involved, (2) enhance the knowledge and values basis of policy-making, (3) initiate a process of social learning, (4) open up opportunities for conflict resolution and achieving the common good, and (5) improve the level of acceptance and legitimacy of political decisions. A more direct relation between citizens and policy-makers shall foster democracy and accountability. I argue that these claims are based on a reductionism of what ‘true’ democracy is, i.e. deliberative democracy, whereas empirical research on the impacts of participatory procedures displays a more differentiated picture. Participatory procedures are still in an experimental stage; their linkages to the institutions of representative democracy vary from case to case and from country to country—and are, by and large, weak. Consequently, many procedures have, at best, a limited impact on the socio-technological conflict and its resolution. I claim that participatory procedures do not per se improve the democratic legitimacy and accountability of policy-making. In order to do so, their linkage to the political system has to be reconsidered and improved—empirically as well as conceptually.

Three Human Rights Agendas

Abstract: In this paper I distinguish between three conceptions of human rights and thus three human rights agendas. Each is compatible with the others, but distinguishing each from the others has important theoretical and practical advantages. The first conception concerns those human rights tied to natural duties binding all persons to one another independent of and prior to any institutional context and the violation of which would “shock the conscience” of any morally competent person. The second concerns the institutional conditions necessary and sufficient for particularist legal and political obligations to take on prima facie moral force so that the members of different polities face one another in an asymmetric moral relationship, with each side having a rightful claim to political self-determination. The third concerns those human rights arising exclusively as a matter of positive international law out of the voluntary undertakings of legitimate polities within the international order. Each of these different conceptions is tied to a different human rights agenda. The second is tied to the struggle to realize recognitional norms of legitimacy within the international order. The third is tied to the ongoing effort to incorporate into positive international law through voluntary initiative an ever expanding moral consensus between legitimate polities. The first is tied to the emerging practice of humanitarian intervention and system of international criminal liability. Thus, while all human rights share certain features - they’re universal, and so on - human rights differ in important ways. Attending to these differences would likely improve both the theory and practice of human rights.