Corruption and Legitimacy

Trading legitimacy: everyday corruption and its consequences for medical regulation in southern Vietnam.

Government regulation of health professionals is believed to ensure the efficacy and expertise of practitioners for and on behalf of patients. Certification and licensing are two common means to do so, legalizing a physician to practice medicine. However, ethnography from Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) suggests that in corrupt socioeconomic environments, certification and licensing can alternatively p...

Political Legitimacy and Democracy

The stability and functioning of any kind of political regime—including democratic or representative ones—relies on the combination of the capacity of rulers and government officials to use coercion and the development of political legitimacy. Political legitimacy can be described as people's recognition and acceptance of the validity of the rules of their entire political system and the decisi...

Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy

Joshua Cohen In this essay I explore the ideal of a 'deliberative democracy'.1 By a deliberative democracy I shall mean, roughly, an association whose affairs are governed by the public deliberation of its members. I propose an account of the value of such an association that treats democracy itself as a fundamental political ideal and not simply as a derivative ideal that can be explained in t...

Correction: Expanded HTA: Enhancing Fairness and Legitimacy

Legitimacy and Morality

The changes are of many different kinds. In the religious realm, the role of the Lutheran folk church that formerly was very influential in many parts of society has changed. The differentiation of society in Modernity diminished the immediate significance of religion outside a narrow religious sphere. Today one can see an increasing interest in religion but this does not mean a return to the r...