Legitimacy for Activists

Social movements and activist networks blocking power stations, stopping trains, preventing migrant detention, disabling planes, guerilla gardening, organizing occupations, boycotts, strikes and informal social services – seek social change through exercising collective power. In doing so they take on the role of agents of justice -preventing wrongful acts, incentivizing behavioural change, redistributing resources and delivering social services. This paper proposes that these kinds of activity raise questions of political legitimacy (following Aitchison 2018) and explores potential legitimacy criteria for social movements and activist networks that exercise power to achieve social change acting, at least partially, outside of official channels. It draws on the insights of contemporary UK activists alongside political theories of legitimacy to develop bespoke criteria for informal agents of justice that seek to supplement or displace state institutions in the UK. The account conceives of activism outside of official channels as both necessary and desirable to achieve and maintain social justice.