Criticism of contract theory has always played an important role in Hartmut Kliemt’s writings on political philosophy. Notwithstanding his objections to a consent-based justification of the state he has never subscribed to an anarchist position. In Hartmut Kliemt’s view, a minimal state which protects the basic liberties of its citizens has to be considered legitimate. The article begins with a...

In this paper we address the issue of the steady and significant increase in the scope of the codecision procedure and the motivation of the member states for increasing the power of the European Parliament. Using a rational choice framework we argue that the important variable in the assessment of the changes in the decision making procedures is the expected benefit from the various legislativ...

Résumé Abstract John Arras se positionne contre la légalisation du suicide assisté par un médecin et celle de l’euthanasie active sur la base des coûts sociaux, qu’il anticipe comme résultat probable de cette légalisation. Arras croit que la légalisation hautement balisée du suicide assisté est le premier pas vers la légalisation de l’euthanasie active sans restriction particulière, une prédict...

We present a method to quantify the political legitimacy of a populace using public Twitter data. First, we represent the notion of legitimacy with respect to k-dimensional probabilistic topics, automatically culled from the politically oriented corpus. The short tweets are then converted to a feature vector in k-dimensional topic space. Leveraging sentiment analysis, we also consider the polar...

Legality and Legitimacy in International Order T  NATO armed intervention over Kosovo was illegal under international law, but widely regarded as legitimate. Th e 2003 US invasion of Iraq was both illegal and illegitimate, though unilateral attempts were made to legitimize it, using the Kosovo precedent. Th e sanctions against Iraq, preceding the 2003 invasion, were legal, but seen by many ...

This paper summarising ‘procedural justice’ approaches to policing, contrasting these to the more politically dominant discourse about policing as crime control. It argues that public trust in policing is needed partly because this may result in public cooperation with justice, but more importantly because public trust in justice builds institutional legitimacy and thus public compliance with t...

In past decades, an extraordinary amount of effort and resources have been spent to extend basic civil infrastructure such as water, sanitation, and energy systems to developing communities. While the construction of this infrastructure is well intended, recent improved monitoring and evaluation of these projects has called new attention to the problem of unsustainable infrastructure. Specifica...

Roe v. Wade was heralded as an end to unequal access to abortion care in the United States. However, today, despite being common and safe, abortion is performed only selectively in hospitals and private practices. Drawing on 61 interviews with obstetrician-gynecologists in these settings, we examine how they determine which abortions to perform. We find that they distinguish between more and le...

this article contends that legitimacy in the exercise of power comes from the consent of those subject to it. in global health, this implies that the participation of poor country citizens is required for the legitimacy of major actors and institutions. but a review of institutions and processes suggests that this participation is limited or absent. particularly because of the complex political...