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Legitimacy

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


Papers
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MonographDOI
26 Mar 1998
TL;DR: In this paper, Gregory Starrett focuses on the historical interplay of power and public culture, showing how these new forms of communication and a growing state interest in religious instruction have changed the way the Islamic tradition is reproduced.
Abstract: The development of mass education and the mass media have transformed the Islamic tradition in contemporary Egypt and the wider Muslim world. In "Putting Islam to Work", Gregory Starrett focuses on the historical interplay of power and public culture, showing how these new forms of communication and a growing state interest in religious instruction have changed the way the Islamic tradition is reproduced. During the twentieth century new styles of religious education, based not on the recitation of sacred texts but on moral indoctrination, have been harnessed for use in economic, political, and social development programs. More recently they have become part of the Egyptian government's strategy for combating Islamist political opposition. But in the course of this struggle, the western-style educational techniques that were adopted to generate political stability have instead resulted in a rapid Islamization of public space, the undermining of traditional religious authority structures, and a crisis of political legitimacy. Using historical, textual, and ethnographic evidence, Gregory Starrett demonstrates that today's Islamic resurgence is rooted in new ways of thinking about Islam that are based in the market, the media, and the school.

275 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that PRA's practice/empiricist orientation causes it to be insufficiently theorised and politicised, and that questions about inclusiveness, the role of PRA facilitators, and the personal behaviour of elites overshadow, or sometimes ignore, questions of legitimacy, justice, power and the politics of gender and difference.
Abstract: The practice orientation of Robert Chambers' work on Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), which aims at enabling local people and communities to take control over their own development, has received much attention in development circles. This article attempts to shift the emphasis away from PRA's practice towards its theoretical underpinnings. The article argues that PRA's practice/empiricist orientation causes it to be insufficiently theorised and politicised. As a result, questions about inclusiveness, the role of PRA facilitators, and the personal behaviour of elites overshadow, or sometimes ignore, questions of legitimacy, justice, power and the politics of gender and difference. The article draws on arguments and debates involving Habermasian 'deliberative democracy' and post-structuralist notions of power.

275 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, an examination of the influence of street stops on the legal socialization of young men showed an association between the number of police stops and a diminished sense of police legitimacy.
Abstract: An examination of the influence of street stops on the legal socialization of young men showed an association between the number of police stops and a diminished sense of police legitimacy. This association however is not only a consequence of the number of street or car stops they experience or of the degree of police intrusion that occurs during those stops. Rather, the estimated impact of involuntary contact with the police is mediated by evaluations of the fairness of police actions and judgments about whether the police are acting lawfully. Whether the police are viewed as exercising their authority fairly and lawfully directly shapes respondent’s decision acceptance and the impact of stops on respondent’s general judgments about police legitimacy. Fairness and lawfulness judgments, in turn, are influenced by the number of stops or the degree of police intrusion during those stops. Similarly, judgments of justice and lawfulness mediate the estimated influence of judgments of the general character of police behavior in the community on general perceptions of police legitimacy. These results suggest that the widespread use of street stops undermines legitimacy. Lowered legitimacy has an influence on both law abidingness and the willingness to cooperate with legal authorities. However, the findings also show that it is not only police streets or police conduct during such stops that matters per se, but more importantly public perceptions of police injustice/illegality during those stops. The results suggest that police legitimacy is shaped by how fairly/legally the police are viewed as exercising their authority.

274 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore whether the presence of women officeholders affects constituents' evaluations of their members of Congress, levels of political efficacy and trust in government, and propensity to participate politically, and uncover little evidence of the independent symbolic effects scholars typically ascribe to women's presence in Congress.
Abstract: Gender politics literature stresses the symbolic importance of electing more women to high-level political office. Despite references to the heightened legitimacy that women in politics bring to the political process, and the manner in which they affect constituents’ political attitudes and behavior, little empirical evidence exists regarding the actual benefits of symbolic representation. Using pooled National Election Study data from 1980 to 1998, I attempt to fill a void in the literature, exploring whether the presence of women officeholders affects constituents’ evaluations of their members of Congress, levels of political efficacy and trust in government, and propensity to participate politically. After controlling for party congruence between the representative and his/her constituent, I uncover little evidence of the independent symbolic effects scholars typically ascribe to women’s presence in Congress. Women represented by women tend to offer more positive evaluations of their members of Congres...

274 citations

Book
26 Jan 2018
TL;DR: This article examined the role of public opinion in the European integration process and found that public opinion is composed of different types with fundamentally different views about the way the EU should be reformed and which policy priorities should be pursued.
Abstract: The European Union (EU) is facing one of the rockiest periods in its existence. At no time in its history has it looked so economically fragile, so insecure about how to protect its borders, so divided over how to tackle the crisis of legitimacy facing its institutions, and so under assault by Eurosceptic parties. The unprecedented levels of integration in recent decades have led to increased public contestation, yet at the same the EU is more reliant on public support for its continued legitimacy than ever before. This book examines the role of public opinion in the European integration process. It develops a novel theory of public opinion that stresses the deep interconnectedness between people’s views about European and national politics. It suggests that public opinion cannot simply be characterized as either Eurosceptic or not, but rather that it consists of different types. This is important because these types coincide with fundamentally different views about the way the EU should be reformed and which policy priorities should be pursued. These types also have very different consequences for behaviour in elections and referendums. Euroscepticism is such a diverse phenomenon because the Eurozone crisis has exacerbated the structural imbalances within the EU. As the economic and political fates of member states have diverged, people’s experiences with and evaluations of the EU and national political systems have also grown further apart. The heterogeneity in public preferences that this book has uncovered makes a one-size-fits-all approach to addressing Euroscepticism unlikely to be successful.

274 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
20245
20231,984
20224,252
2021967
20201,096
20191,281