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Political Legitimacy and Legitimation: Conceptual and Methodological Perspectives

Comparative Politics
Contentious Politics
Democracy
Elections
European Union
Political Parties
Mixed Methods
Public Opinion
P282
Claudia Wiesner
Fulda University of Applied Sciences
Christian von Haldenwang
German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS)

Building: BL27 Georg Sverdrups hus, Floor: 3, Room: GS 3527

Thursday 15:50 - 17:30 CEST (07/09/2017)

Abstract

Political legitimacy and legitimation are among the core topics of political science in general as well as in the subfield of Comparative Politics. But both concepts are essentially contested. Their multidimensional character is often raised, but so far not extensively elaborated upon in the literature. Legitimacy and Legitimation relate to core questions in political science – the relation between rulers and ruled, the properties of a political system, its democratic quality, the rule of law, and its policy output, to name but a few. Moreover, the concept of legitimacy refers to normative and theoretical as well as empirical dimensions of research. Finally, both concepts are linked in a way that is not always conceptually and empirically clear. While legitimacy describes rather the condition of a political system, i.e. the properties and qualities of a polity and the ways they are seen by the citizens, legitimation rather refers to the processes that lead to the creation and the sustainment of legitimacy. Based on this state of the art in the discussion on legitimacy and legitimation, we propose a panel on legitimacy and legitimation in order to discuss theoretical, conceptual, methodical and empirical questions. The panel will set the main focus on unresolved conceptual and methodological questions as well as on recent developments in the field of comparative research on political legitimacy. We invite papers dealing with classical and newer areas of research that touch upon a) the different conceptualisations and operationalisations of legitimacy and legitimation and their articulation, b) the different research methods and how they could connect, and c) empirical findings from quantitative, qualitative and mixed-methods approaches.

Title Details
Innovating Empirical Research on Legitimacy: Repertory Grid Analysis View Paper Details
The Legitimation of Political Change - A Framework for Empirical Inquiry View Paper Details
Here to Stay: The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) between Protest, Euroscepticism and Substantial Electoral Support View Paper Details
Conceptual and Methodological Challenges of Comparative Research on Political Legitimacy View Paper Details
Policy Citizenship. The Impacts of Neoliberalism and Supranationalization on Democratic Linkages in Western Democracies View Paper Details