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.

The failure of many governments to provide basic rights for their citizens has given rise to the expectation that globally operating corporations should step in and fill governance gaps, for example in the area of human rights. Today, many large multinational corporations claim to conduct business in a socially responsible manner, yet no tools exist to assess whether and to what degree they have indeed systematically revised their business practices to take on these new responsibilities. Managing Corporate Legitimacy addresses these research gaps by clarifying the role of the corporation as a private actor in global governance at conceptual and empirical levels; by contributing to our theoretical understanding of CC as a new phenomenon in globalization; and by furthering the development of appropriate approaches to CC in practice through its toolkit. The tool structures the implementation process in five learning stages (defensive, compliance, managerial, strategic and civil). The final civil stage describes political corporate behaviour. The author includes an empirical assessment of five Swiss multinationals in this book which reveals that most companies – even those with relatively long-standing and mature policies on social and environmental issues – have only just started to learn how to become corporate citizens. The book therefore concludes with a discussion of an issue-specific extension of the assessment tool and presents methods for setting priorities in the approach to corporate citizenship that may also facilitate corporate engagement with stakeholders. The tools developed in this book provide practical and detailed guidance for implementing and embedding CC and managing corporate legitimacy. It will be essential reading for practitioners looking for ways to legitimize their engagement with societal issues and for academics considering how we can better measure the engagement of business with CC.

In many countries, civil society organizations (CSOs) are more trusted by the general public than businesses and government. Business leaders might maximize their profits at the expense of the business or its customers, and government officials might use their power for their own gain, but CSOs depend on their good reputations and performance in order to mobilize resources. They have fewer opportunities to convert resources into self-interested uses. Recent experience suggests, however, that civil society leaders can also be guilty of self-interested behavior, even though the rewards may be less dramatic than they are in other sectors. This is especially a concern as CSOs become more influential in national and international affairs. Without legitimacy in the eyes of the public and other key actors, CSOs cannot effectively function in the transnational arena. Civil society expert L. David Brown provides approaches to assessing and enhancing the legitimacy and accountability of CSOs, allowing them to reach their full potential in contributions to governance and problem-solving. Creating Credibility is an essential text for anyone concerned with understanding the challenges to civil society legitimacy and finding ways CSOs can respond to these challenges.

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.

Furthering the understanding of the legitimate authority in internationally-led peace-and state-building interventions This 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 legitimacy Based on wide ranging fieldwork and twelve case studies Broader lessons for IR and for policy-makers Includes 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.

Explores the theme of "resources" in entrepreneurship, and examines entrepreneurs that persevere in uncertain times to build new businesses. The different perspectives gathered in this volume present new ways of thinking about how entrepreneurs acquire, borrow, and make use of resources in seemingly impossible environments.