Legitimacy and Authority

My Feminist Perspective of Authority – Part 1 by Elise M. Edwards

by Feminism and Religion

Originally posted on the Feminism and Religion project

I make a distinction between power and authority.  Authority is a personal characteristic based on a relationship... more I make a distinction between power and authority.  Authority is a personal characteristic based on a relationship of trust between me and a text, a person, or their work.  Power, on the other hand, is operative with or without trust.

This past weekend, I had the honor of participating in a workshop on Living Texts: Celebrating Feminist Perspective and Theo/alogy, Authority, and the Sacred in the Academy.  The workshop was organized for the Women’s Caucus of WECSOR, a regional association of national organizations who study religion.  I was delighted to connect with new friends, mentors and sisters interested in feminism and religion,

Academic Autonomy: Authority, Self-Confidence, and Resistance

by Sylvia Burrow

Paper appears as a chapter in the anthology Academic Motherhood in a Post Second-Wave Context

Abstract

This paper shows that a masculine model of the ideal academic constrains academic mothers'... more Abstract

This paper shows that a masculine model of the ideal academic constrains academic mothers' autonomy. My account appeals to philosophy but its implications extend to all those academic disciplines dominated by masculine ideals of status and authority that create a chilly climate for women. Pressure, reproaches, and judgements from others in academia suggest that academic mothers are not serious academics, which can undermine self-confidence and self-appreciation. I argue that self-confidence underlies self-appreciation, such as self-respect, self-worth, and self-trust; and that together, these form the grounds for autonomy. In a climate in which academic mothers are not regarded as serious academics, doubt over choices regarding child or career commitments can erode self-confidence. Self-confidence is further challenged because women's status and authority are routinely undermined in a chilly climate that values the masculine and devalues the feminine. Academic mothers face additional stereotypes assuming that mothers are less serious academics than their colleagues. And so whether academic mothers alter academic or family commitments, we are exposed to masculine assumptions that undermine autonomy. The cost to autonomy is significant since it damages the possibility of both career success and personal integrity. I suggest that resisting pressures against autonomy is part of cultivating autonomy and so through resisting masculine stereotypes and ideals, academic mothers can advance or regain their own autonomy.

Collective action and delegitimization processes: the Hontza night centre case for drug-dependents in Bilbao.

by Eduardo Apodaka

Collective action and delegitimization processes: the Hontza night centre case for drug-dependents in Bilbao.
more Collective action and delegitimization processes: the Hontza night centre case for drug-dependents in Bilbao.


Key words: processes of legitimization and delegitimization, communication, collective action, social movements.



We present a case study developed within a research line about processes of (de)legitimization where the collective action gets involved. Following Bourdieu, legitimacy would be a capital of recognition that makes people involved in a relationship of dominance perceive authority in the dominant pole of it, this is, whatever makes someone feel that another person or collective has a legitimate power over some aspect of their life. From this point of view it is possible to apply communication models to the processes of loss and profit of capital, since it is a capital basically symbolic that links in some aspects and psychologically the dominated and the dominants. Such processes have their most dynamic space in collective action. Social movements, interest groups, standard political parties, corporations, etc., develop their activity in spaces of strategic communication where it is needed to attain a position, an intervention status, an audience in front of which acquire authority and on which support their demands and projects. In this case study this communication model is applied to the case of opposition movements to the night centre for drug-dependents, Hontza in Bilbao

Conceptions of power and paradigms of legitimacy

by Eduardo Apodaka

This paper intends to discuss the relationship between the power conceptions and authority, and the different... more This paper intends to discuss the relationship between the power conceptions and authority, and the different paradigms of legitimacy. Legitimacy can be understood as a capital of recognition (Bourdieu). This symbolic capital makes a coercive force be accepted for whom it “suffers”. Power becomes authority when it possesses “capital of legitimization”. However, bearing in mind that throughout political history of the West that capital of legitimacy has function and has been stated in diverse ways, this distinction between power and authority must take in the multiple and diverse forms in which both have been conceived. There are mainly three legitimacy paradigms that can synthesize the earlier mentioned history: the paradigm of difference, that of equality, and that of interdependency between difference and equality. Each one of these paradigms entails different ways of conceiving the legitimate power and the illegitimate power: (1) within difference the legitimate power is the sacred force y owned by the sovereign over the subordinate who lacks power (since the illegitimate power lacks formulation it can only be conceived as a resistant practice; De Certeau); (2) within equality the legitimate power is the determination of the collection of equals (system, nation, society, …) over oneself, it is the self-created or emerging domain from a systemic collection of relations, while the illegitimate and subjective power splits up, fragments or scatters the whole, and at the same time progresses producing “illegitimacy”; (3) within interdependence the power assimilates the tension between potential (possibility) and force in action, all power and all authority is conceived as disintegrating and subjective, a degree of recognition between different ones who do not give up difference and who recognize themselves on it as equally strongly linked in interdependency webs where possibility of symmetry appears.

Key words: paradigms of legitimacy, authority, power, equality, difference, interdependency.

The impact of social media on the content of the New York Times' news coverage?

by Jan Petras

The rise of social media comes with a number of overlapping consequences for news organizations around the world.... more The rise of social media comes with a number of overlapping consequences for news organizations around the world. These consequences vary from changes in methodology, such as the use of user generated content and participatory journalism1, to changes in business strategies, such as online subscriptions. Agreeing with Marshall McLuhan’s notion of ‘the medium is the message’ (McLuhan 1967), the change from reading news on paper to consuming news online through different media channels, is a drastic change. The medium through which news is received changed and therefore the message itself changed. This paper focuses on one specific change, namely the change in the content provided by a news organization.

The rise of new media and Internet power schemes: An impact study of social media rise on CNN.

by Jan Petras

Mass-media networks, which includes but is not limited to newspapers, have had, and some still do, a hard time... more Mass-media networks, which includes but is not limited to newspapers, have had, and some still do, a hard time adjusting to the rather quick rise of the social media. Many newspapers just closed shop, many more soon understood that no online presence was basically a death sentence for them. In theory, the rise of social media was, for many newspaper, a cease and desist notice. Newspapers, but not only, adapted and managed to survive but their future is considered uncertain, at best.

Retail Luxury Strategy: Assembling Charisma through Art and Magic

by Delphine Dion

Nationalism in Quiet Times: Ideational Power and Post-Soviet Electoral Authoritarianism

by Paul Goode

Forthcoming in May-June 2012 issue of Problems of Post-Communism

In explaining the durability of electoral authoritarian regimes, the bulk of existing scholarship focuses on the... more In explaining the durability of electoral authoritarian regimes, the bulk of existing scholarship focuses on the exercise of material and organizational power in accounting for the dynamics of intra-elite unity, the control of opposition, and the likelihood of social mobilization against the regime. This paper argues that this picture is incomplete without the consideration of ideational power in the form of nationalism among post-Soviet regimes. Nationalist practices are necessary because material sources of power are seldom sufficient to secure compliance and support during the “quiet” periods of daily life between noisy election cycles. Hybrid regimes therefore adopt nationalist stances and select among repertoires of nationalist practice associated with successful claims to rule. Yet nationalist practices are also essential in that they are constitutive of sovereignty and legitimacy. In other words, regimes engage in nationalist practice not simply because they choose to do so, but because they must. At the same time, examining nationalism as a source of durability for electoral authoritarian regimes suggests their underlying weakness. Nationalist practices expose regimes to a variety of risks in ways that accounts premised upon material and organizational definitions of power would not predict.

La légitimité du premier usurpateur : violence, pouvoir, droit.

by Francesco Mancuso

A paraitre in J.-F. Kérvegan - L. Jaffro, La violence et la norme, 2012

Legittimità
Effettività
Legalità Legittimità
Effettività
Legalità

Authority as Accomplishment. Intergenerational Dynamics in Talas, Northern Kyrgyzstan

by Judith Beyer

Il n’y a pas de rapport sexuel: The Irresolvability of the Gadamer-Habermas Debate

by William J. Urban

class paper written Good Friday, April 6, 2012

Governmental Stakeholder and Project Owner's Views on Regulative Frameworks in Nuclear Projects

by Liisa Sallinen

Authors: Sallinen, L., Ahola, T., Ruuska, I.

Conference paper presented in IRNOP (International Research Network on Organizing by Projects) conference in June 19th-22nd 2011 in Montreal, Canada.

The paper was chosen as one of the ten best papers of the conference and awarded as the Best Student Paper of the conference.

Published in Project Management Journal Vol. 42, No. 6, 33–47, 2011.

This paper aims at increasing understanding on a specific type of stakeholder, namely governmental stakeholders that... more This paper aims at increasing understanding on a specific type of stakeholder, namely governmental stakeholders that have significant influence over projects and base their influence on a regulative framework. Different parties in nuclear projects make their own interpretations on the framework. To understand why there are differences in these interpretations, we used three institutional elements: (1) laws and rules, (2) practices, and (3) values for analysis. This paper uses interview data from a nuclear industry governmental stakeholder and a project owner. The results show that interpretations aren’t always coherent, and the incoherencies are clearest in the practice element.

Souveränität ohne Autorität. Zur Verfassungskultur der englischen Republik, in: Kommunikation und Konfliktaustragung. Verfassungskultur als Faktor politischer und gesellschaftlicher Machtverhältnisse, hrsg. v. Werner Daum / Kathrin S. Hartmann / Simon Palaoro / Bärbel Sunderbrink, Berlin 2010, S. 35-76.

by Andre Krischer

Rational self-commitment

by Bruno Verbeek

A Limited Vindication of Voluntarism in Practical Reason

by Bruno Verbeek

Manuscript. Please do not quote without permission!

Voluntarism is the view that obligations ultimately derive from an act of the will. Thus, theological voluntarism... more Voluntarism is the view that obligations ultimately derive from an act of the will. Thus, theological voluntarism about morality holds that all moral duties derive from the will of God. Similarly, democratic voluntarism holds that legal duties derive from the will of the legislator (e.g., parliament). Traditionally, voluntarism, of any sort has been dismissed by a widely diverging range of authors. Voluntarism, so these critics claim, is susceptible to all kinds of criticisms, ranging from the well-known Euthyphro dilemma, the so-called regress argument (Korsgaard) and the bootstrapping objection (Bratman, Broome). There are few positions in ethical theory that have been as thoroughly dismissed as voluntarism.
In the face of all these criticisms, voluntarist intuitions lead a remarkably tenacious existence, resurfacing again and again in various areas of practical philosophy. One of the more recent re-appearances of voluntarism is in the area of reasons for action. Thus, Korsgaard (1996) has argued that a person’s reasons for action are the result of her endorsing a particular consideration. David Gauthier in various publications has argued that a rational deliberator should treat her prior commitment to a choice procedure as rationalizing the choices selected by that procedure. Similarly, Michael Bratman , in spite of many claims to the contrary, has argued that by settling on intentions or long-term policies, one takes certain considerations as reasons for action. And there are many more. All these views, although very different, share a voluntarist intuition, namely that (some) reasons for action are the result of an act of the will.
In this paper I defend a moderate version of voluntarism about reasons for action against the main criticisms of voluntarism and in doing so, explain why philosophers, in spite of their official rejection of voluntarism are attracted to voluntarist intuitions.

Rebuilding legitimacy and police professionalism in an emerging democracy: The Slovenian experience

by Gorazd Mesko

In: Legitimacy and criminal justice: international perspectives
By Tom R. Tyler (2007)
Gorazd Meško & Goran Klemenčič

Procedural justice, legitimacy, and prisoner misconduct

by Gorazd Mesko

Co-authored with Michael D. Reisig;
Psychology, Crime & Law, Volume 15, Issue 1, 2009

Using structured interview data and official records from an incarcerated sample of adult males housed in a Slovene... more Using structured interview data and official records from an incarcerated sample of adult males housed in a Slovene prison, this study tests hypotheses derived from the process-based model of regulation (Tyler, in M. Tonry (Ed.), Crime and justice, pp. 283–357, 2003). The findings show that inmates who evaluate prison officers’ use of authority as procedurally just are less likely to report engaging in misconduct and are charged with violating fewer institutional rules. The observed association between procedural justice and legitimacy is indistinguishable from zero. Although legitimacy is inversely related to both prisoner misconduct measures, the associations are relatively weak. Overall, these findings partially support Tyler's social–psychological framework, and also provide empirical justification for fair and respectful offender management.

On the value of political legitimacy

by Mathew Coakley

Published in Politics, Philosophy, Economics, Nov 2011, Vol 10, No 4.

Theories of political legitimacy normally stipulate certain conditions of legitimacy: the features a state must... more Theories of political legitimacy normally stipulate certain conditions of legitimacy: the features a state must possess in order to be legitimate. Yet there is obviously a second question as to the value of legitimacy: the normative features a state has by virtue of it being legitimate (such as it being owed obedience, having a right to use coercion, or enjoying a general justification in the use of force). I argue that it is difficult to demonstrate that affording these to legitimate states is morally desirable, and that obvious alternative conceptions of the value of legitimacy (notably epistemic and instrumental) are not without problems of their own. The intuitive triviality of establishing the value of normative legitimacy may mask a serious problem.

Post-colonial law: legal establishments from past empires are illegitimate

by Jean-Paul Gagnon

Just Authority? Trust in the Police in England and Wales

by Ben Bradford

Jonathan Jackson, Ben Bradford, Betsy Stanko and Katrin Hohl

This is a pre-publication version of the foreword, introduction and first chapter of a book currently under press at... more This is a pre-publication version of the foreword, introduction and first chapter of a book currently under press at Routledge (to be published in summer 2012). It is presented with kind permission by Routledge.