FOR MEDICAL HUMANITARIAN ORGANIZATIONS, MAKING THEIR SOURCES OF LEGITIMACY EXPLICIT IS A USEFUL EXERCISE, IN RESPONSE TO: misperceptions, concerns over the 'humanitarian space', controversies about specific humanitarian actions, challenges about resources allocation and moral suffering among humanitarian workers. This is also a difficult exercise, where normative criteria such as international ...

This study explores two issues about police legitimacy. The first issue is the relative importance of police legitimacy in shaping public support of the police and policing activities, compared to the importance of instrumental judgments about (1) the risk that people will be caught and sanctioned for wrongdoing, (2) the performance of the police in fighting crime, and/or (3) the fairness of th...

This paper argues that to prevent or lessen the impact of episodic water stress within modern political economies, harnessing and tailoring emerging modes of legitimacy will play a crucial role in formulating pragmatic, solution-focused policy. In setting out a case for this position, we analyse the role which existing and novel modes of legitimacy play in shaping the boundaries and opportunity...

Legitimacy is central to nearly all human relationships and, in turn, to most social science theories. The concept was invented to help account for social order in large societies. Since it is too costly to attain order in the long run on the basis of sanctions (whether derived from incentives or naked coercion), it stands to reason that order must also rest, in part, on the consent of the gove...

This article challenges the association between realist methodology and ideals of legitimacy. Many who seek a more “realistic” or “political” approach to political theory replace familiar orientation towards state (perfect) justice with structurally similar (sufficient) As result, they fail provide reliable practical guidance, wrongly displace radical demands. Rather than orienting action any a...