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Recently, the concept of social cohesion has been increasingly used in the South African government and policy circles when discussing the challenges of social cohesion in a society deeply divided by race, class, and nationality. Related to this concept is the practice of naming and renaming places, precisely after regime change. Also known as a toponymic purge, new rulers change exisiting names to gian political legitimacy for their political values and to reflect the new socio-political order, rendering place names of the previous regime obsolete in the process. As a result, this paper analyses toponymic renaming as a reflection of social cohesion in the street renaming process of the City of Tshwane, South Africa. The paper uses a qualitative research approach and a case study design. A sample of 14 participants were puposively selected and data were technically analysed. The findings of the study revealed that the street renaming process accomodated Black people who had previously been marginalized. Therefore, Coloureds and Black participants believed that social cohesion and social justice had been accomplished through the process of renaming the streets. White participants, on the other hand, held a different perspective that the process did not contribute to social cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food insecurity in South Africa was critical prior to the COVID‐19 outbreak, but the problem deepened quickly during the pandemic when government controls caused job losses, a food supply collapse, and escalating hunger. The food and fuel price hikes and political instability that followed led to the July 2021 ‘unrest’, which left more than 350 people dead. Behind this lay a crisis within the governing African National Congress. In this paper, we draw on in‐depth interviews and ethnography with individuals working in food‐based livelihoods to investigate how people continued to secure food, and how rural food systems were affected. Against a backdrop of hunger, social unrest, and xenophobic hostility, we consider how people perceive the state in a rural area of KwaZulu‐Natal. We argue that weak governing institutions and South Africa's exposure to globally‐triggered spikes in food and fuel prices are leading to food insecurity. Hunger, in turn, is contributing to a crisis of legitimation for the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research on the effects of women's descriptive representation on citizens' attitudes has mainly investigated potential positive effects, namely on political engagement or the legitimacy of outcomes. However, trends in representation have rarely been theorized as potential causes of resentment among women. While a male backlash to increasing representation has been theorized, this article argues that women may also be discontent with their trajectory of representation, if they perceive it as stagnating. Using a survey experiment fielded in Germany, the results show that a stagnating representation trajectory mobilizes women to vote for a progressive party, the German Greens. In contrast, the paper demonstrates that men do not lash back against women's increasing representation, even if they realize that this means a lower standing for themselves. This article contributes to research on political behavior by highlighting that discontent with persisting inequality is a mobilizing factor for progressive parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By now we are familiar with studies which tie being 'left behind' to voter support for populist or other extreme views. In the UK case, this is seen in support for Brexit but can also apply to support of parties such as UKIP (e.g. Bolet, 2021; Ford and Goodwin, 2014). Comparative studies show that electoral support for populist parties in part reflects lowered trust in mainstream politics (e.g. Geurkink et al., 2020; Keefer et al., 2021; Mauk, 2020), which is seen as a behavioural indicator of slipping legitimacy. Political support for populist movements is interpreted as declining legitimacy of existing governments, and that decline is seen as being tied to economic stress and the 'left behind' areas. In this article, we ask whether economics stresses also have impact upon another and possibly more direct measure of government legitimacy – tax morale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent review of the Scottish professional standards for teachers, led by the General Teaching Council for Scotland, offered a unique perspective to interrogate participative approaches in policy‐making in the Scottish education context and to provide insights and implications for future policy‐making. Using one of the authors’ experiences as a General Teaching Council Scotland Officer during the review of the professional standards, this paper conceptualises the consultation process as a form of democratic governance, using Sørensen and Torfing's framing of the four anchorage points that enable democratic legitimacy in governance networks. This perspective places policy‐making within a governance structure that is created by networks that interact, overlap and are entangled with each other, implying a decentralised form of governance. An analysis of the stages of the review process demonstrated that it was participatory. However, there was an over‐reliance on the established policy‐making community. In addition, authentic participation was restricted as choices were limited by the metagovernor. We argue that Sørensen and Torfing's anchorage points for democratic legitimacy allow an interrogation of the extent to which policy‐making in Scottish education is authentically democratic and conclude by offering a framework of critical questions for more transparent democratic participation in future iterations of similar professional standards reviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the factors that affect Chinese political identity. Although the Chinese government claims that maintaining the traditional Confucian political heritage represented by the Great Harmony Society (大同社会) and common prosperity is its main source of political legitimacy, this study found that for the majority of Chinese people, their support for the Chinese government is not based on the government’s Confucian political heritage, but rather on the government’s National Accountability system and national-oriented ideology, For individuals, supporting the state is an unconditional moral requirement, even if the state’s performance is not good, so Chinese people have higher political satisfaction. This ideology encourages the state to restrain freedom of the people in the form of omnipotence, and is also responsible for meeting all the needs of the people. This study suggests that China’s thousands of years of centralized political tradition and the inertia of large government have made the people more accustomed to an omnipotent government. The governance of the Chinese government is also a model of external Confucianism and internal law(外儒内法), with Confucian political heritage as the surface propaganda, but the internal system is centralized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special double issue identifies the tools and conditions that allow (re)emerging autocrats to undermine democratic traditions and constrain civil rights across the world. In our introduction, we posit that identifying the tools of the established, emerging, and aspiring authoritarians in today's world is vital, theoretically and practically. It allows us to identify common denominators across specific contexts to advance knowledge about the features and risks that authoritarian regimes pose today. It also permits us to reveal the inter-state and transnational expert networks through which autocrats share strategies, information, and resources to remain in power. Through a global and comparative lens, we thematically organize the articles' key findings. The articles reveal a set of tools of authoritarianism that (re)emerging autocrats use to control media to manipulate public perceptions and delegitimize opponents and critics, seek to maintain the legitimacy of a democratic rule by aligning with "grassroots" social movements composed of extremists and hate organized groups, redefine the meaning of democracy, and use a range of repressive methods domestically and abroad, all while maintaining a façade of democracy. This special issue also captures variation in the successful deployment of autocratic tools as authors caution against equating conditions across different autocratic regimes. We bookend the special issue with a brief reflection on populism on the left and right and what it means for the main themes of the special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Equity of access to electoral polling stations (EPS) is a key to enhancing the legitimacy of elections in democratic governance. A crucial characteristic of this equity is the level of spatial access to EPS and its distribution among populations and related socio-economic determinants. This study investigates the disparities of access to EPS for four selected regions in Ghana. The findings show that economic status and access to EPS are inversely related, indicating that access to EPS is not equitable within and between regions. The poor access for economically disadvantaged populations is indicative of unequal access to basic socioeconomic opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Belief in evil and hidden supernatural forces, generally referred to as witchcraft, is widespread in many parts of the African continent. In addition to affecting individual health, perceived security, and social relations, witchcraft allegations may be used as covert political instruments, resulting in governance challenges such as lack of trust, transparency, administrative delegation, and political accountability. Since witchcraft is commonly associated with physiological and psychological violence, some citizens may be less willing to participate in political activities, including seeking elected office or criticizing political elites for fear of falling victim to witchcraft. The focus of our study is Malawi where large groups in the population believe in the power of witchcraft. We aim to unpack how local witchcraft beliefs have a bearing on governance – whether, and the extent to which, witchcraft influences how citizens understand and practice transparency and accountability in everyday life. Particularly, the belief in witchcraft among Malawian elites' warrants closer scrutiny, especially since existing literature and local discourse on the impact of witchcraft tend to largely focus on rural and less educated groups in the population. As the highly secret and complex dimensions of witchcraft resist clear-cut definitions, representations, and analysis, it is not our intention to describe witchcraft in everyday life. Rather, we explore the potential political implications of not addressing elite discourses of and belief in witchcraft. We find that belief in witchcraft can influence citizens' perceptions of power and authority and can potentially undermine the legitimacy of democratic institutions and processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union established the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) to address the socio-economic impact of Covid-19. The RRF promotes domestic ownership through increased engagement of national authorities with stakeholders. However, empirical manifestations of ownership remain unclear. This study refines the concept of 'ownership' and analyses the engagement of social actors in the formulation of National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRPs) in Croatia, the Netherlands and Sweden. The findings indicate that all three countries exhibit limited procedural ownership, while the extent of substantive ownership varies based on pre-existing conditions. Interestingly, higher financial allocation can hinder the ownership of social actors, although low allocations do not necessarily facilitate their involvement. Time pressures and divergent time horizons between EU and national politics further undermine domestic ownership. While the centralised preparation of NRRPs has led to the concentration of ownership primarily in the hands of governments, poor governance of NRRPs could erode legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The watchdog role is central to the democratic legitimacy of journalism and is also perceived as an essential part of journalists' role performance by the public. So far, the expectations on journalists' watchdog role performance have been studied as a static concept resulting in limited knowledge of the underlying dynamics in audience demand and expectations for this type of journalism. We argue that the demand for watchdog journalism is dynamic and varies according to changes in the broader context and across audience characteristics. We take a multi-method approach to examine the demand for watchdog journalism during the COVID-19 pandemic in Denmark. First, we use data from three representative surveys (n≈1.000 in each), including a panel component (n = 336), to demonstrate that the demand for watchdog journalism increased over time, especially among opposition voters, as the political context offered more political conflict and contested policy solutions. Second, a qualitative analysis of answers to an open-ended question in the surveys examines how the audience believes the watchdog role should be performed. We show that the demand for different functions of journalists' critical reporting varies over time and that the form used by journalists when conducting critical reporting is extremely important to the audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the effects of social and political accountability arrangements on citizens' legitimacy perceptions. Accountability arrangements are often suggested to improve the perceived legitimacy of governmental organizations. Based upon a pre-registered vignette experiment with a representative sample of N = 1574 citizens from the Netherlands, we show that social accountability (accountability to citizens) increases legitimacy perceptions, but that political accountability (accountability to politicians) does not affect legitimacy perceptions. These patterns are highly similar for both decision winners and losers, with accountability slightly more important for losers. This has important implications for our understanding of the impact of accountability for perceived legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies often suggest that the thrust of peasant politics is the advancement of autonomous family farming. Such studies seem remote in rural places where migration, pluriactivity, and non-agrarian jobs and aspirations are the norm. We examine peasant politics in rural Ecuador, where peasant communities have driven nationwide uprisings in recent years. We find that many peasant community organizations cultivate political legitimacy among their members by advancing diverse, non-agrarian objectives, rather than autonomous farming. We argue that researchers stand to learn much about peasant politics by attending to precisely how agrarian livelihoods and post-agrarian aspirations weave together to (re)produce rural institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IMPACT: Accounting systems have been traditionally seen as technical calculative practices to quantify public sector activities, used by governments for (internal) decision-making purposes and to be externally accountable. This article suggests taking a different perspective by considering the relational nature of accounting systems, with the idea that a more interactive approach between citizens and governments can enhance both decision-making and accountability. By relying on a more dialogic approach, policy-makers and public managers at all levels of government can encourage citizens to participate in public service performance measurement, so that citizens can comment on what counts, how to measure it, and how to account for it. Doing this will reinvigorate government legitimacy, increase mutual trust between citizens and the public sector, and pursue public values that citizens actually want. Public sector accounting systems have been criticised for being 'monological' tools, narrowly focusing on efficiency and financial values while disregarding the plurality of public values, and suffering from limited use, relevance, transparency, and involvement of citizens. This article offers a new perspective by highlighting not only the technical but also the relational nature of accounting systems where citizens and governments interact in deciding what counts, measuring it, and accounting for it. It calls for future research exploring the potential of interactive forms of accounting systems, both government- and citizen-initiated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between states and the diaspora represents an important transformation from the focus on state, territoriality, and sovereignty, especially due to the rise of populist regimes and the instruments used by them. Diaspora becomes one of the instruments to not only exercise influence in international politics but also gain domestic legitimacy for political projects, transnationalising politics and populism. This paper elucidates the ways in which the current Indian government, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has made efforts to craft proximity with the Indian diaspora in the USA, UK and Australia. We specifically focus on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech at the Howdy, Modi! rally in 2019 in Houston Texas to illustrate the crafting of emotional proximity to the homeland, through a discourse focusing on aspirational pride. We place these populist narratives within the framework of an aspirational state, that is built on the politics of vishwas or trust, rather than empirical reality. By looking at how proponents of Hindu nationalism, shape the Indian diaspora’s emotional linkages to the homeland, the study illuminates the complex ways in which transnational emotional proximity is constructed across borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a 2022 article the author described the late Sir Julian Priestley, Secretary-General of the European Parliament, 1997–2007, as being a ‘consequential senior European Union civil servant’, notably because of initiatives Priestley championed to provide simultaneous interpretation for all languages in an enlarged European Union – a facility not guaranteed at the time but which provided the Parliament with continued democratic legitimacy. This article builds on and develops that ‘consequential’ concept, by identifying some further examples of such consequential senior EU civil servants and then by teasing out common aspects of their roles and activities. It posits that they are in effect sub-political policy entrepreneurs (in the Kingdon definition) who can and do have significant effects on the development of their institutions and of the Union more generally. It shows how they share certain characteristics: long service in or with ‘their’ institutions, enabling them to develop reformist visions; political coverage; the determination to see their visions through. The fact that they remain sub-political raises potential questions about political legitimacy. The article concludes by questioning whether the phenomenon is specific to the European Union or can also be observed in national civil services and the secretariats of other international organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In post-genocide Cambodia and Rwanda, low-level perpetrators often identify as victims of the genocidal regimes alongside those they tortured and killed. However, state and societal responses to these claims appear to have varied dramatically. In Cambodia, the government and civil society organizations seem to view former Khmer Rouge cadres’ claims to victim status as socially acceptable and politically useful, while in Rwanda, the government and civil society organizations have firmly rejected perpetrators’ efforts to claim space as victims. What accounts for these different societal responses in Cambodia and Rwanda? At present, there is ample literature on how authoritarian government actors in both contexts have shaped their nation’s post-genocide transitional justice responses to prevent future bloodshed, while simultaneously reinforcing their regimes’ sometimes tenuous political legitimacy. However, this article offers complementary insights by exploring two otherwise under-researched factors that we argue further inform these polar-opposite reactions to perpetrators’ claims to victim status: (1). post-genocide governments’ offers of inclusivity in defining who is part of each nation’s ideal post-genocide ingroup; and (2). the social proximity of perpetrators and their victims during and after the genocides. Our focus on inclusivity and social proximity related to the Cambodian and Rwandan genocide advances scholarly understandings of the various factors that shape government and social responses to perpetration in the aftermath of genocide internationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State governance is, in many ways, a discursive practice that relies on the creation, translation, and transmission of governance-oriented texts. The act of governance by translation typically occurs in multi-ethnic, multilingual, and unified political contexts. When translation adheres to established patterns and effective regimes, it forms a governance technique known as "translation governmentality." In the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), confronted with the challenge of governing a vast territory with diverse ethnic groups speaking different languages, the Qing authorities prioritized the translation of official documents to implement this translation governmentality. Despite its significance, a comprehensive overview of official document translation in the Qing dynasty within the framework of governance by translation has not received sufficient attention. This study employs documentary analysis to understand the historical contexts of official document translations, interpret the motivations behind these translations, and reconstruct the organized regimes of translation practices in the Qing period. The findings reveal that the Qing dynasty developed a relatively organized and mature translation regime for official documents by establishing translation agencies, appointing specialized translation officials, and adopting multilingual translation modes. This governance-oriented translation regime effectively shaped the core concepts, institutional systems, and organizational mechanisms of state governance in the Qing dynasty. Additionally, it contributed to establishing the legitimacy of state governance during that era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of regional branding on the dual innovation of agriculture-related enterprises (AREs). Based on data from 298 Chinese AREs, the study constructs a mediated moderation model. The results indicate that, first, the regional branding of AREs enhances their political legitimacy and market legitimacy, which in turn promote their exploratory and exploitative innovation. Second, government support positively moderates the effect of regional branding on AREs’ exploitative innovation. Third, government support increases the impact of regional branding on the exploratory innovation of AREs with a low industry status relative to AREs with a high industry status. This paper expands the application of institutional theory and provides suggestions on corporate decision-making on regional branding and dual innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the influence and complex relationship between Shakespeare's "Cymbeline" and Beaumont and Fletcher's "Philaster," examining how Shakespeare may have adapted themes of "strange" and "stranger" from Philaster. Topics include how these plays engage with ideas of cultural and political legitimacy, explore racial and national boundaries within Jacobean drama, and reimagine concepts of kinship and domestic identity.

Universities are specific local entities, and as such are in competition with one another for resources and prestige. The general tone of the literature—which sees universities mainly as specific organizations—is quite negative, with competition leading to destructive market and political forces. The tone is surprising, given the extraordinary worldwide university expansion over the last seven or eight decades. This inconsistency is resolved with the perspective of neo-institutional theory: the university is a stunningly successful global institution from which specific cases derive their accredited standing and legitimacy. The enlarged and grand institutional canopy has supported thousands of expanded and rationalized organizations, which then suffer from competition. But in their struggles, the contending organizations produce further elaborations of the domain of the overall institution. The university grows, though the instances it flowers may sometimes suffer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the narrative intricacies in John Gower's adaptation of Constance's tale. Topics include the complexities of Constance's identity and marital legitimacy as a candidate for queen, the portrayal of King Allee's character as a model of charity amidst controversies, and the role of oral tradition in shaping Gower's unique narrative approach.

We argue that one is likely to accept what a speaker says when the expected utility of accepting their testimony is greater than the expected utility of continuing inquiry. One virtue of our hypothesis is that it allows us to explain why confidence in experts has declined in recent years. In a traditional media landscape expert testimony is easy to find, and alternative sources of information are relatively costly to access. Hence, practical considerations largely favour accepting expert testimony. But on social media, alternative information is easy to find, and it is often practically rational to accept this information rather than to search for (and identify) genuinely expert testimony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on contemporary debates on legitimacy and contestation in international relations, the article offers a novel analytical framework to study processes of legitimation and delegitimation of international sanctions. We apply the framework to analyse foreign policymakers' evaluations of the legitimacy of the sanctions imposed by states and international organisations against Nicolás Maduro's regime in Venezuela. The content analysis of evaluative statements shows that (de)legitimation processes focus mostly on who has the right to enforce sanctions and reveals differentiated legitimacy evaluations of multilateral versus unilateral enforcers, as well as of different types of international organisations. Sanctions imposed by multilateral senders and with a restricted impact on targeted individuals are evaluated as more legitimate than unilateral sanctions with a wider scope. We argue that the study of the (de)legitimation of sanctions may have important implications not only for enhancing compliance, but especially for transforming international sanctions into a legitimate mechanism of global governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU is as a liberal normative community, where liberal norms play a central role. While contestation is considered essential within a normative community to establish the legitimacy of norms, within the EU, contestation can also challenge the validity of its foundational norms. This raises the question of how this type of contestation affects EU foreign policy. This study examines two radical forms of contestation: opposition and dissidence. Through the analysis of two case studies, namely the Global Compact for Migration and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, it becomes evident that the EU's foreign policy system can sustain opposition, but dissidence has the potential to challenge or undermine those norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The localization of humanitarian operations is commonly characterized as a return of ownership to local and national actors. Localization policies in Kenya have made refugee‐led community‐based organizations a viable alternative for humanitarian provisioning. Simultaneously, localization facilitated the ongoing enlargement of the Kenyan state into refugee management. Incidentally, the Kenyan state has introduced limitations on community‐based organizations’ international funding and registration through a verification process. Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic research in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya, this article explores how community‐based organizations mediate Kenyan state control through verification. The article develops the concept of “stateness” to examine how refugee actors claim legitimacy as a state function. Stateness is generated by members of community‐based organizations through practices involving fellow refugees and Kenyan state actors. Using stateness, this article seeks to draw attention to how refugees can become a part of wider state apparatus and shape how the state is constituted within the camp. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the emergence of munhwaŏ ("Cultured Language") in relation to the primacy of the leader in the DPRK. The articulation of the linguistic and cultural policies of munhwaŏ was inseparable from the development and formalization of the political leadership. The active translation, reception, and development of the Stalinist and Soviet linguistic tradition by North Korean intellectuals, together with the death of Stalin in 1953, importantly shaped the state's quest for linguistic modernity. By tracing the "rhetorical turn" in North Korean linguistics in the 1960s, the author explores the development of munhwaŏ and its relation to the distinctive development of a charismatic oratory and a linguistic etiquette for the leader. One significant feature of North Korea's quest for linguistic modernity is the way in which it diverges from its Soviet counterpart. By meticulously theorizing the language to be used of and for the leader, or what the author describes as the linguistic ritualization of charisma, North Korea offered an original contribution to the field of charismatic rhetoric. A comprehensive manual describing this rhetoric was developed, serving as a guide to the "sacred text" of the leader and describing how to articulate and express the presence of the leader in the public sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During armed conflict civilians often inhabit areas of contested governance or areas where rebel groups, NGOs, and/or criminal syndicates vie for authority and challenge the control of the state. As non-state actors confront the authority and legitimacy of the state, civilians become central players in that competition asked to uphold or undercut these alternative governance claims. In this paper we examine the long-term impact of rebel governance for citizens living in spaces where state governance is challenged. Leveraging survey data from areas historically under PKK control in Southeastern Turkey, we focus on the ways in which contestation over governance during the conflict influenced future trust and engagement with the Turkish state. Specifically, we find that individual engagement with rebel governance institutions and personal conflict experience are important factors in understanding the effects of contested governance. Our findings increase our understanding of the long-term impact of armed conflict on civilians and the potential lasting impacts of rebel governance on the post-conflict state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractCanonical international relations research treats international orders as systemic, long-term projects of hegemons. However, orders can also provide valuable domestic political capital for leaders. Hegemonic leaders have stronger incentives to invest in hegemony when doing so potentially enhances their political legitimacy. Using a new dataset of over 8,000 Ming and Qing dynasty tribute exchanges between 1368 and 1895, I assess whether emperor legitimacy needs help explain China’s engagement in tribute diplomacy, a central institution of Chinese hegemony. The findings show that new emperors, particularly those following “irregular” entry into power, invested heavily in tribute to pursue legitimacy among internal and external audiences. This behavior was most common with “high-value” counterparts. An illustrative case documents how the Yongle Emperor deployed tribute to legitimize his right to rule. The findings demonstrate the importance of domestic politics and leader legitimacy for understanding the nature and persistence of hegemonic order in early modern Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intrinsic relation between form and substance in law and between the institutional law of the EU and its substantive goals – idea and criteria for a 'substantive core' to the legal order – the internal market as early EU law's substantive core – the EU's changing policy substance and the subsequent 'de-coring' of the legal order – the consequences of de-coring and its impact on EU law's relevance and legitimacy – early attempts to reconcile EU law with the changing substance of EU policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many people are concerned about the legitimacy of digital technology companies like Meta. In this paper we show that two existing models for characterizing power – sovereign power and structural power – are inadequate when it comes to digital technology companies. This is because they fail to accommodate something crucial: the uniquely empowering nature of digital power. Companies like Meta empower users to interact by providing them with versatile systems defined by minimalist permission structures. Drawing on Searle's theory of institutions and Hart's theory of law, we show how these permission structures facilitate the creation of new powers, as well as new institutions, through the emergence and recognition of new social norms. This means we must ask how entities that provide us with such versatile – and thus unsteerable – means of empowerment can come to be legitimate. We argue that a custodial framework for digital legitimacy can assign responsibility for the patterns of empowerment that are sustained by companies like Meta. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights the importance of endogenous changes in the foundations of legitimacy for political regimes. It focuses on the central role of legitimacy changes in the rise of constitutional monarchy in England. It first defines legitimacy and briefly elaborates a theoretical framework enabling a historical study of this unobservable variable. It proceeds to substantiate that the low-legitimacy, post-Reformation Tudor monarchs promoted Parliament to enhance their legitimacy, thereby changing the legislative process from the "crown and Parliament" to the "crown in Parliament" that still prevails in England. The break with Rome permanently altered England's political development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The policy implemented in Israel with the purpose of eradicating the COVID‐19 pandemic restricted Israeli citizens' individual freedom. During this period, Israel was suffering from government instability that led to recurring election campaigns within a short period. In addition, the prime minister was under legal investigation for suspicions of government corruption. This study examines the legitimization of government by the Israeli public during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Methods: The research findings are based on a representative attitude survey conducted by a survey company among Israeli citizens (men and women older than 18), including 604 respondents from the Jewish population and others and another 135 respondents from the Arab sector, that is, a total of 739 respondents, where the sampling error was 4.4 percent. Results: The findings indicate that right‐wing voters tended to support governmental legitimization at a higher rate compared to voters from opposing blocs. Correspondingly, they tended to oppose claims attacking governmental legitimization at a lower rate in comparison to coalition party voters. Conclusion: The conclusion indicates that the party identification of the respondents is a mediating variable in their perception of governmental legitimacy vis‐à‐vis each of the three variables examined, thereby strengthening the perceptual screening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do peripheral, 'voiceless' people engage with politics in authoritarian contexts where formal politics is not a viable option? This article demonstrates the value of applying an everyday politics perspective to grassroots religious activity and mobilities, by providing an in-depth case study of a recently Christianised ethnic minority group based in Vietnam's politically sensitive borderlands. In the face of religious persecution and social conflict sponsored by an overbearing state, hundreds of thousands of ordinary ethnic Hmong Protestants subtly resist, evade and/or support religious policies through mundane, everyday behaviour which have unintended geopolitical consequences, collectively undermine state legitimacy and can be credited with substantial policy changes over time. Based on rich qualitative data, I argue that a careful investigation of everyday spaces as sites of political contestation not only highlights the agency of non-elite religious actors but can also reveal insights about the nature of the 'top-down' forces they engage with. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the authors' reflections and responses to critiques of their collective work on revolution studies. Topics include the importance of theoretical analysis and methodological approaches in understanding revolutionary waves, the significance of world-system analysis in the context of global revolutions, and the evolving characteristics and tasks of the fifth generation of researchers in this field.

This article assesses Frank I. Michelman's constitution-centered and proceduralist interpretation of Rawls' conception of political legitimacy and argues that it merits attention because it highlights the institutional aspects of Rawls' understanding of political legitimacy for constitutional democracies. However, the article also questions Michelman's interpretation of Rawls' 'liberal principle of legitimacy' (LPL) and the later 'idea of political legitimacy based on the criterion of reciprocity' (ILBR). As Michelman rightly points out, for the exercise of political power to be legitimate in a constitutional democracy, it must be in accordance with a constitution that is itself legitimate or reasonably acceptable to free and equal citizens. Yet, the article argues that Rawls' two legitimacy formulations are attempts to make an additional point: Namely that when democratic citizens exercise political power in 'the fundamental political issues', or in issues that shape the basic justice of society or the essentials of the constitution itself, they must respect the ideal of public reason – or ensure themselves and other citizens that their exercise of political power is in accordance with the underlying basic political-moral ideas of persons and society that make the constitution itself acceptable to them. The LPL and the ILBR are conceptions of political legitimacy, not in the sense of setting up a criterion for when a specific law is legitimate, but in the sense of outlining civic or "office-specific" constraints that citizens and public officials must put on their reasoning and exercise of political power in the fundamental political issues for the practice of a constitutional democracy to be legitimate, or well-ordered, reasonably just, and stable for the right reasons – in the long run. The article also discusses why Rawls saw the need to reformulate the LPL, and how the later ILBR assigns a new significance to citizens' actual use of public reason and their intersubjective deliberation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A crucial insight in Michelman's 'Constitutional Essentials' is that constitutions may serve a justificatory or proceduralizing aim in modern liberal democracies. Yet the pervasiveness of moral disagreement – all-the-way-up; all-the-way-down – suggests, as I will argue, a democratic-experimentalist turn, which focuses on a non-hierarchical process of stakeholder deliberation and the court's role in instigating and overseeing that process, ensuring non-domination. I believe that Frank is exactly right in arguing that a liberally justification-worthy political framework-law-in-place is normatively necessary for democratic politics to succeed in divided societies. But I want to suggest that democratic experimentalism can offer further support to this claim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In January and February 2023, the University of Luxembourg hosted a series of four online seminars on Frank Michelman's then just recently published book Constitutional Essentials (CE), a book which in Frank's own words aimed to work out the implications of Rawls' theory of political liberalism for constitutional theory and debates between constitutional lawyers regarding a number of constantly recurring questions of constitutional law. Eleven of the invited contributions to the four seminars (presentations of 15–20 minutes) plus one additional contribution by Silje Langvatn, are now collected in this special issue of Philosophy & Social Criticism, followed by a response by Michelman. This introduction to the discussions between Michelman and his interlocutors begins with a brief synopsis of some of the key lines of argument that Michelman develops in CE and then moves on to survey all the arguments offered in response. The last section takes a briefly look at Michelman's replies to these responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This response to commentaries composing a symposium on my book 'Constitutional Essentials: On the Constitutional Theory of Political Liberalism' (2022) includes restatements of some major themes from the book, as prompted by thoughts from the commentators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The participation of representatives of organized civil society in the National Public Security Council of Mexico allows us to discuss the practical scope of the collaboration of some social agents in the definition of public policies on the matter. From a theoretical point of view, a selection of conceptual approaches focused on the relationship between participation and incidence allows us to clarify the case study in this article as an experience in which formal participation channels have not generated formal incidence mechanisms but have a series of informal possibilities to increase the legitimacy of the government sphere and the reputation of the organizations selected to participate in the Council. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate over voting system reform in Canada has been framed as a choice among competing but equally valid values as they are embodied in or produced by different voting systems, typically represented as trade-offs. The key point of such discourse is that whatever choice is made will unavoidably produce both benefits and costs (e.g., more proportional outcomes but less local representation, or stable governing majorities but less party competition). Yet what is striking about this approach when examined is how weakly operationalized the value-based claims are and the lack of evidence sustaining them. Because public debate over policy choices is best conducted with a ready source of evidence to help participants assess competing claims and judge potential benefits and costs, the absence of empirical support in this discussion is deeply problematic. To address this information deficit, this article attempts to operationalize what the claimed values supporting different voting system choices in the Canadian debate might mean concretely in four areas—voting complexity, governing stability, local representation, and representational accountability—and then explore comparative evidence about their workings and impact to assess their legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The terms "politics" and "political" have become so overdetermined that it is difficult to use them in any effective manner. We argue that this has dangerous political consequences, and that this could be addressed by providing a new, sounder, notion of politics. This paper argues that defining politics in relation to the notion of play can provide a notion both intuitively appealing and able to withstand the problematic overdeterminations. We argue that politics is the set of practices through which the indeterminate of Spielraum is made more determinate. This suggests that politics is always partly a matter of play: it is about instituting values without making any claims about the legitimacy of this instituting act. With reference to Huizinga and Nietzsche's analyses of play, we define play as the living unity of seriousness and frivolity, and non-play as either seriousness without frivolity or frivolity without seriousness. In order to illustrate this, we comparatively analyse the attitudes of Barack Obama and Donald Trump in the single context of the well-known yearly White House Correspondent's Dinner. There, we see two opposed attitudes to playfulness. Our analysis allows us to apply our Spielraum model of politics to show that the thrust of Obama's attitude involves an embrace of the non-foundational nature of politics as play, whereas Trump's attitude is politicidal: it is animated by a refusal to acknowledge its own lack of foundation, leading to an oscillation between over-seriousness and over-frivolity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the evaluative attitudes of citizens and their association with regime support in European democracies. In the context of widespread public scepticism with politics, different findings about the effect of political dissatisfaction in terms of democratic legitimacy have appeared. This may imply that citizens' attitudes towards politics and their interrelations are complex and that the effects might not be the same across individuals and contexts. To investigate the link between political dissatisfaction and democratic support, data from the European Values Study and hierarchical regression models are used. The results of the analysis suggest that political dissatisfaction is not related to democratic support by highly interested and highly involved citizens. Nevertheless, contrary to the assumptions, the negative effect is quite strong in less corrupt countries, while in corrupt ones it tends to be positively related to democratic support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research emphasizes popular support for democracy as a key ingredient of democratic regime consolidation. Both formal and informal institutions are commonly seen as the key actors that generate the requisite attitudinal shift, socializing ordinary citizens to adopt democratic values. It is thus puzzling that existing studies of attitudes towards democracy in the developing world have neglected to consider the impact of widely prevalent traditional institutions. Not only do these institutions vary considerably in their own democraticness, they also play a prominent role in the daily lives of many citizens. Filling this lacuna in extant knowledge, this study links a continent-wide dataset of the institutional features of contemporary traditional institutions in Africa with over fifty thousand survey respondents. The results indicate that the degree of democraticness exhibited by traditional institutions is a robust if weak predictor of ordinary Africans' support for democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars of Vietnam have studied different forms of labour resistance such as wildcat strikes, petitions, complaints, work stoppages, and boycotts, with which workers demand higher wages and pensions, overall better working conditions, and the implementation of workers' rights. This article pays attention to the small, yet not negligible group of dissident labour activists, who are subjected to much harsher state repression compared to labour resistance in and around the workplace. This article asks: What makes dissident labour activism a (real or perceived) threat to the state? A common and widely accepted explanation refers to the nature of the demands of dissidents, which includes independent trade unions, democratisation, and regime change. This article digs deeper and finds that dissident labour activists function as agents of an emerging epistemological third space, which permits the revitalisation of hidden knowledges about labour rights, the reclamation of the silenced idea of independent trade unions and the co-existence of critique of the status quo and imagination of an alternative future, which together threaten to endanger the Communist Party of Vietnam's political legitimacy and, by implication, capital utilisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the relationship between the sources of international law and fairness. The author addresses this issue within the framework the following main question: what is the role of fairness for the formal sources of international law? By analysing the relationship between fairness and the formal sources of international law, the author also responds to two other, substantively relevant, questions: is the typology of these sources listed in Article 38 of the Statute of the ICJ fair?; is soft law a means to fairness in the sources? The author claims that fairness is neither a material nor formal source of international law but it is a procedural value which supports the legitimacy of the making of international law. Thus, it is relevant to the formal, not material, sources of international law. The term 'formal sources' is used in the paper in the twofold meaning. First, as instrumentum or 'containers' for rules and principles (where the law can be found), and, second, as processes and forms by which rules and principles are made. The author's proposition is that fairness is primary relevant to the latter meaning. When the international law-making processes are fair, then their results, i.e., the formal sources conceived as instrumentum or 'containers' are also fair, and the law may be known. Rules and principles of international law are fair when they satisfy the requirements of a fair international law-making process, in particular, certainty, transparency and authoritativeness/representativeness. That is why, fairness may be seen as a crucial criterion of the legitimacy of international law-making processes. There are close relationships between fairness, law-making, legal certainty, effectiveness of rules and principles and the rule of law. These relationships mark the place of fairness in the sources of international law. The author seeks to point out that fairness as a product of the constantly changing social and political environment, does not occur in its pure form in practice. As such, fairness is a 'matter of degree' in the international law-making. That is why, a realistic goal of the international legal order is neutralization of unfairness as much as possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how aid activities by the World Bank and China, which take two competing approaches to building state capacity, affect a recipient government's effort to build state legitimacy vis-à-vis its population. The study operationalized legitimacy drawing on Levi's 'quasi-voluntary compliance,' and empirically analyzed the two approaches' effects at the local level. The study used the Afrobarometer survey conducted in Tanzania in 2014 and geocoded datasets for aid projects. Chinese aid, characterized by its 'Developmental State' approach, was associated with higher projection of state legitimacy at local level. Meanwhile, the World Bank's aid, which encourages building state legitimacy in a 'contractarian' way, did not demonstrate such a correlation, and there was limited evidence that the co-location of projects from both donors may condition the effects of the World Bank aid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the light of the crucial role political parties play in connecting citizens with political decisions, this article assesses national parties' organizational linkages with the European level. It focuses on explaining variation between parties and the motivations they have to organize the way they do. Building on qualitative comparative case studies of Danish and Flemish parties, this study finds that country‐level factors override party‐level factors. Particularly the domestic political relevance of European affairs, combined with historical ties with European integration and distance from Brussels, determine the nature of parties' multilevel linkages. Contributing to the literature on parties as multilevel organization in the EU, these findings call attention to the great difficulty parties face in reaching beyond the confines of the nation‐state, despite the important role they play in providing the EU with the necessary democratic legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Member States of the ECHR are complex entities made up of many levels. The subsidiarity principle is grounded in this social reality. However, the ECHR, just like general international law, treats its States as unitary entities: local authorities are procedurally and institutionally inexistent in the ECHR system, although they play important roles as protectors and violators of human rights. I show that the codification of the subsidiarity principle in the ECHR preamble was not intended to strengthen the role of local and regional authorities. Protocol No. 15 was only concerned with reinforcing 'the' States role vis-à-vis the Court. I explain this with the state's role as the bearer of political sovereignty and the fact that sovereignty is a pre-condition for a functioning political democracy and, therefore, a democratically legitimate human rights system. Finally, the paper enquires into whether the subsidiarity principle of the ECHR might be read as an interpretative principle, which contributes to determining the scope and content of the human rights that the Strasbourg Court must guarantee, and whether this might benefit local and regional associations. I answer in the negative. Such a reading would be contrary to Protocol No. 15, as it would further empower the Court. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does migration pose a threat to welfare state legitimacy? We address this prominent question with a multilevel analysis of novel survey data, the 'Inequality Barometer', which includes individual and local-level context data in Germany (6208 individuals, up to 401 local districts). Our results suggest that the public is more reluctant to support welfare where the proportion of migrants at the local level is larger. This effect even persists when welfare is directed at groups that are perceived as more deserving of welfare support (like children, sick or older individuals) and when we examine the levels of employed migrants (that pay into the welfare state). We also find that these effects are moderated by economic risk. Particularly, we find that individuals facing higher economic risk support welfare less than their counterparts when exposed to migration. Future research should expand the local-level approach and investigate the causal mechanisms that the welfare-migration nexus is based on in more detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]