The Legitimacy Clash

This book explores the structural political imbalances that exist within complex democratic federations.

"In the coming decade, we may see the advent of multinational federalism on an international scale. As great powers and international organizations become increasingly uncomfortable with the creation of new states, multinational federalism is now an important avenue to explore, and in recent decades the experiences of Canada and Quebec have had a key influence on the approaches taken to manage national and community diversity around the world. Drawing on comparative scholarship and several key case studies (including Scotland, Catalonia, Quebec, and interactions between Indigenous peoples and various orders of government) The Legitimacy Clash takes a fresh look at the relationship between majorities and minorities while exploring theoretical advances in both federal studies and contemporary nationalisms. Alain-G. Gagnon critically examines the prospects and potential for a multinational federal state, specifically for nations seeking affirmation in a hostile context. The Legitimacy Clash reflects on the importance of legitimacy over legality in assessing the conflicts of claims."--

In the coming decade, we may see the advent of multinational federalism on an international scale. As great powers and international organizations become increasingly uncomfortable with the creation of new states, multinational federalism is now an important avenue to explore, and in recent decades, the experiences of Canada and Quebec have had a key influence on the approaches taken to manage national and community diversity around the world. Drawing on comparative scholarship and several key case studies (including Scotland and the United Kingdom, Catalonia and Spain, and the Quebec-Canada dynamic, along with relations between Indigenous peoples and various levels of government), The Legitimacy Clash takes a fresh look at the relationship between majorities and minorities while exploring theoretical advances in both federal studies and contemporary nationalisms. Alain-G. Gagnon critically examines the prospects and potential for a multinational federal state, specifically for nations seeking affirmation in a hostile context. The Legitimacy Clash reflects on the importance of legitimacy over legality in assessing the conflicts of claims.

Why do citizens in pluralist democracies disagree collectively about the very values they agree on individually? This provocative book highlights the inescapable conflicts of rights and values at the heart of democratic politics. Based on interviews with thousands of citizens and political decision makers, the book focuses on modern Canadian politics, investigating why a country so fortunate in its history and circumstances is on the brink of dissolution. Taking advantage of new techniques of computer-assisted interviewing, the authors explore the politics of a wide array of issues, from freedom of expression to public funding of religious schools to government wiretapping to antihate legislation, analyzing not only why citizens take the positions they do but also how easily they can be talked out of them. In the process, the authors challenge a number of commonly held assumptions about democratic politics. They show, for example, that political elites do not constitute a special bulwark protecting civil liberties; that arguments over political rights are as deeply driven by commitment to the master values of democratic politics as by failure to understand them; and that consensus on the rights of groups is inherently more fragile than on the rights of individuals.

Questions surrounding the concept of legitimacy—the force that keeps a polity together, and whose absence causes it to shatter—are possibly the most important concern of a study of politics. M. F. N. Giglioli examines the shift to a distinctly modern understanding of the concept in Continental Europe, following the crisis of liberal rationalism in the late nineteenth century, and the search for new ways of envisaging the determinants of collective action into the twentieth century.The author examines certain aspects of the intellectual and political background of early twentieth-century theories of legitimacy elaborated by Max Weber and Antonio Gramsci. These theories are interpreted as the outcome of a contested process of redefinition of the concept, itself prompted by the social and political circumstances of the late nineteenth century, such as economic modernization and the attempt to incorporate the working class into the political system.This is the first book in a generation to offer a general reassessment of issues of legitimacy in political thought at the turn of the twentieth century. It examines the development of the concept in France, Italy, and Germany during the half-century or so following the Paris Commune. It discusses six key critics of classical Victorian liberalism on the revolutionary Left and the conservative Right. The political position and biography of each is a central focus of the study, as the culture of the age was decisively shaped by reflection on the social role of intellectuals.

This book examines the causes and consequences of a major transformation in both domestic and international politics: the shift from dynastically legitimated monarchical sovereignty to popularly legitimated national sovereignty. It analyzes the impact of Enlightenment discourse on politics in eighteenth-century Europe and the United States, showing how that discourse facilitated new authority struggles in Old Regime Europe, shaped the American and French Revolutions, and influenced the relationships between the revolutionary regimes and the international system. The interaction between traditional and democratic ideas of legitimacy transformed the international system by the early nineteenth century, when people began to take for granted the desirability of equality, individual rights, and restraint of power. Using an interpretive, historically sensitive approach to international relations, the author considers the complex interplay between elite discourses about political legitimacy and strategic power struggles within and among states. She shows how culture, power, and interests interacted to produce a crucial yet poorly understood case of international change. The book not only shows the limits of liberal and realist theories of international relations, but also demonstrates how aspects of these theories can be integrated with insights derived from a constructivist perspective that takes culture and legitimacy seriously. The author finds that cultural contests over the terms of political legitimacy constitute one of the central mechanisms by which the character of sovereignty is transformed in the international system--a conclusion as true today as it was in the eighteenth century.

Bill Torbert and associates illustrate how individuals and organizations can progress through more and more sophisticated "action-logics" -- strategies for analyzing the world and reacting to it -- until they will eventually be able to practice action inquiry continually. Offering action inquiry exercises at the end of the chapters, the book moves from junior managers beginning to practice action inquiry through CEO's transforming whole companies, to world leaders transforming whole countries, as exemplified by Czech president Vaclav Havel. Through short stories of leadership and organizational transformations, this groundbreaking book illustrates how action inquiry increases personal integrity, relational mutuality, company profitability, and long-term organizational and environmental sustainability.