Building Legitimacy

This volume provides relevant insights into medieval political legitimation, and its impact on political competition and notions of power. With a main focus on medieval Castile, the political discourses purporting to legitimate practices of power are discussed, both as pieces of textual material and in their wider historical context.

This book compares two states in the Northeast with different socio-political trajectories—a relatively orderly Mizoram and a troubled Manipur—in order to understand the sources of political turmoil in the region. Taking the region as a case study, it examines the larger debates on success and failure in state-making. In discussing the divergent success of the two states in mitigating conflicts, Hassan demonstrates how in Mizoram the process of state-making helped consolidate public legitimacy and the authority of state leaders. He also shows how it strengthened the institutional capability of government agencies to provide services, manage group contestations, and avoid breakdown. At the same time, he illustrates how in Manipur, traditional centres of power—tribal and ethnic associations—gained in authority, compromising the legitimacy of the government and institutional capability of its agencies. The study highlights the important role, in the context of state breakdown, of the absence of an effective medium to regulate inter-group relationships and manage contestations over power, resources, opportunities, and identity. Rigorously comparative, it explains the sources of disorder in Northeast India by focusing on the nature of state–society relations in the region. While acknowledging the important role of history in structuring this failure of the state system in the region, it suggests ways in which the path dependence can be overcome.

Why do politicians sometimes make unpopular or contested policies that could damage their electoral prospects? This is the question Sakamoto tries to answer. Political scientists have long claimed that political behaviour can be explained as actors' self-interested goal-seeking behaviour. But Sakamoto demonstrates that politicians sometimes show behaviour that goes beyond the narrow confines of self-interest and that 'policy legitimacy' is the factor that can preempt or override the forces of self-interest and makes possible the implementation of contested policies by using the case of Japan. This innovative study will be of interest to students of Japanese politics, legislative studies and of rational choice theory.

This book reassesses performance legitimacy in the context of statebuilding and identifies the paradox between state institution building and state legitimacy by looking at the interplay between state legitimacy and leaders’ legitimacy The author reviews the significant weaknesses associated with the current measures of state legitimacy and uses this to demonstrate the incompatibility of these measurements with the reality faced by conflict and post-conflict countries. The author uses the Performance Legitimacy Theory of Transition framework to demonstrate the potential legitimacy paths that post-conflict countries can embark on and proposes a new approach for building state legitimacy in post-conflict countries. The author also introduces new indicators to measure performance legitimacy that also reflect its non-exclusive nature. Essential reading for students and researchers of Peace and Conflict Studies and especially of post-conflict development, peacebuilding, statebuilding, intervention, and democracy promotion. Also accessible to policy makers.

This book addresses one of the most relevant challenges to the sustainability of the European Union (EU) as a political project: the deficit of citizens’ support. It identifies missing elements of popular legitimacy and makes proposals for their formal inclusion in a future Treaty reform, while assessing the contribution that the EU may make to global governance by expanding a credible democratic model to other international actors. The contributors offer perspectives from law, political science, and sociology, and the 15 case studies of different aspects of the incipient European demos provide the reader with a comprehensive overview of these pertinent questions. The edited volume provides a truly interdisciplinary study of the citizens’ role in the European political landscape that can serve as a basis for further analyses of the EU’s democratic legitimacy. It will be of use to legal scholars and political scientists interested in the EU’s democratic system, institutional setup and external relations.

This book studies governance capacity and governance legitimacy for societal security and crisis management. It highlights the importance of building organizational capacity by focusing on the coordination of public resources and underscores the relevance of legitimacy by emphasizing the importance of public perceptions, attitudes, and trust vis-à-vis government arrangements for crisis management. The authors explore several cases and identify relevant dimensions concerning performance, capacity and legitimacy across different countries. It is an ideal volume for audiences interested in public administration, public policy, crisis management and security studies.

Furthering the understanding of the legitimate authority in internationally-led peace-and state-building interventionsThis study focuses on understanding the complexities of legitimate authority in internationally led peace- and statebuilding interventions. Innovative theoretical approach, engaging with local and contextual forms of legitimacy in peacebuilding contexts Introduces nuanced understandings of the concept of legitimacyBased on wide ranging fieldwork and twelve case studies Broader lessons for IR and for policy-makersIncludes local authors This edited volume focuses on disentangling the interplay of local peacebuilding processes and international policy, via comparative theoretical and empirical work on the question of legitimacy and authority. Using a number of conflict-affected regions as case studies - including Kosovo, Iraq, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Sudan - the book incorporates the expertise of a range of international scholars in order to understand the dynamics of local peacebuilding, the construction of legitimate authority, and its interplay with internationally led peace- and state-building interventions. The commissioned chapters advance our understanding of local legitimacy, sustainable international engagement, and the hybrid forms of authority they produce.

Peacebuilding is a critical issue in world politics. Surprisingly, however, there has not been a full examination of concrete policies and implementation strategies to generate legitimacy in "host states" by either international relations (IR) theorists or practitioners. The objective of this book is to develop an understanding of the mechanisms for constructing—or eroding—the legitimacy of newly created governments in post-conflict peacebuilding environments. The book argues that although existing accounts in the literature contend that compliance with key political programs, and constructing legitimacy in peacebuilding, largely depend on the levels of force (guns) and resource distribution (money) aimed at people who are governed, there are other significant factors, such as inclusive governments reconciling with old enemies, and the substantial role of international organizations (IOs) as credible third parties to establish fairness and impartiality within the political process. Highashi focuses on an in-depth analysis of the challenges involved in creating a legitimate government in Afghanistan, focusing on disarmament programs with powerful warlords, and the reconciliation efforts with the insurgency, especially the Taliban. In the conclusion the book also examines three complimentary cases—Iraq, East Timor, and Sierra Leone—which consistently support the argument presented earlier This work will be of interest to students and scholars of peacebuilding and conflict resolution as well as international relations more broadly.