The essays included in this dissertation develop a fair play account of state legitimacy. I argue for a modest revision to the traditional analysis of legitimacy. I then defend the principle of fair play against common objections. Next, I argue that the principle of fair play is capable of generating all the rights included in the new analysis of legitimacy defended earlier. Finally, I argue that the principle of fair play grounds the legitimacy of existing reasonably just states.

As courts in separation-of-powers systems are said to have the power of neither the purse nor the sword, their institutional legitimacy is essential for ensuring compliance with their decisions. While institutional legitimacy has been examined in-depth for national high courts, the legitimacy of sub-national courts has been overlooked. In this dissertation I develop a new measure of court-level institutional legitimacy for state high courts. I use multilevel regression and poststratification to create state-level measures from individual-level survey results. In this dissertation, I develop a theory of review and delegation by state high courts. I argue that these courts work toward two main goals: implementing their policy preferences and maintaining the legitimacy of their institution. I argue for a two-stage process that considers whether or not the court will decide on the constitutionality of a statute in the first stage and whether they will overturn the statute and delegate policy control back to the other branches of government in the second. Relying on the literatures on both institutional legitimacy and political delegation, I suggest that courts may delegate policy control back to the other branches of government by specifically stating this in their opinion. Finally, I examine the conditions under which a state high court will delegate to either the state legislature or the executive branch. Overall, I find that legitimacy is important when considering state high court decision-making; and it must be considered along with political context and institutional rules as one of the central motivations for state high courts in separation of powers theories.

Att företag tar fram kärnvärden som ett sätt att ge de anställda riktlinjer för hur de ska agera inom företaget blir allt mer vanligt, men fyller dessa kärnvärden till fullo den funktion i företaget som de är framtagna för? Syftet med denna studie har varit att ge en bild av hur ett specifikt företag, i denna studie Peab, arbetar med att förmedla sina kärnvärden och hur de anställda uppfattar och förhåller sig till dessa värden. För att få fram viktig bakgrundsinformation gjordes det en dokumentgranskning av det material som har tillhandahållits från Peab gällande deras kärnvärden och hur de arbetar med att förmedla dessa. I denna studie har en kvalitativ ansats valts och det genomfördes sex semistrukturerade intervjuer med två olika yrkeskategorier inom företaget, som i denna studie benämns som chefer och yrkesarbetare. Studiens resultat visar att den information som ges kontinuerligt till Peabs medarbetare skiljer sig åt beroende på vilken av de två ovannämnda yrkeskategorierna de anställda tillhör. Detta leder i sin tur till skilda uppfattningar om vad kärnvärdenas uppgift är i företaget och hur hög graden av överensstämmelse är mellan respondenternas egna personliga värderingar och kärnvärdena. / That organizations develop core values as a way to give employees guidance on how to act in the company becomes more common, but are these core values filling the function of the company as they are developed to do? The purpose of this study was to provide a picture of how a specific company , in this study, Peab, is working to convey their core values and how employees perceive and relate to these values. In order to obtain important background information, a document review was made of the material that has been provided from Peab concerning their core values and how they work to convey them. In this study, a qualitative approach was selected and six semi-structured interviews was carried out with two different professional groups in the company, which in this study is referred to as managers and skilled workers. Our result demonstrate that the information given continuously to Peab employees differ depending on which of the above two occupational categories the employees belong to. This in turn leads to different perceptions of what the core values role are in the company and how high the degree of agreement between respondents' personal values and the core values are.

A Government is an entity of a society exercising authority over its subjects, preferably with their compliance. It is however not always agreed by the citizens that the government is acting in their interest, this making the relation in-between them lacking in legitimacy. This presents problems not only for the stability of a country, but for the expansion of financial markets, limiting the sources of finding finance to invest in development and infrastructure as it limits financing from within.  In this paper I look at Ethiopia where the government is perceived to have a generally low legitimacy, in 2010 they lunched the GERD* bond to finance a hydropower station on the Blue Nile. Ethiopia has a small economy thus the government asked its citizens to purchase savings bonds into the project, as international financing was not an option due to geopolitics. As the GERD is a €3.3 billion project many Ethiopians have inverted one full month salary. The question addressed in this paper it that of the willingness in entering in to this scheme, this due to legitimacy concerns within the country. More precisely the research question is formulated: is there a justifiable concern of legitimacy when rapidly intensifying a bond market in a developing country in which freedom is limited?  To address this field interviews was conducted in Addis Ababa and analysed via Weber’s three types of pure authority this to indicate the correlation of legitimacy dominations in-between the government and the investors. It is found that the GERD has common legitimacy dominations by both actors and as such the expansion of the bond market through the GERD has the preconditions to increase the trust level in the Ethiopian government. This is needed to increase legitimacy in the government, stabilize the country and expand the financial markets further.

Based on last years events that have taken place, events on the school Lundbergs and the police values of work, has the meaning of having a set of values been questioned. This study aimed to investigate and answer the fundamental values based on the common value basis for the government employees within an organization and how it perceived by employees. The new institutional theory was the framework for this qualitative study conducted with semi-structured interviews. Respondents were employees within the organization. Ethnographic qualitative methodology was the basis for our methodology and we used a thematic model of theme interpretation, communication and knowledge in our analysis. The study shows that there is a lack of communication regarding values and work values within the organization. It’s up to the employees themselves as individuals to become aware of the values and keep their work tied to it. It also emerged in the study that employees had little knowledge of the common core values of the civil service as an employee in the organization should assume in their daily work. The reason for this may be that values are general and can be perceived as self-evident principles, and this is a natural part of their work. Moreover, the study showed that there was a difference between employees who have been employed for quite some time and relative newcomers. Those employees who have been employed for quite some time possessed more knowledge about the values and values work. / Utifrån det senaste årets uppmärksammade händelser på Lundsberg och med polisens värdegrundsarbete, har innebörden av att ha en värdegrund ifrågasatts. Denna studie syftade till att undersöka och besvara hur värdegrundsarbetet utifrån den gemensamma värdegrunden för de statsanställda inom en organisation uppfattas av medarbetarna. Nyinstitutionell teori utgjorde referensram för denna kvalitativa studie som genomförts med semi-strukturerade intervjuer. Respondenterna var medarbetare inom organisationen. Etnografisk kvalitativ metodik låg som grund för vår studie och vi utgick från en tematisk modell med tema tolkning, förmedling och kännedom i vår analys. I studien framkom att medarbetarna upplever en brist i förmedlingen gällande värdegrunden och arbetet omkring den. Det är mycket upp till medarbetarna själva som individer att ta del av värdegrunden och hålla deras arbete knytet till den. Det framkom även i studien att medarbetarna inte hade någon större kännedom om den gemensamma värdegrunden för de statsanställda som medarbetare inom organisationen ska utgå från i sitt dagliga arbete. Detta kan bero på att värdegrunden är generell och upplevas som självklara principer samt redan är en naturlig del av deras arbete. Vidare visade studien att det fanns en skillnad i kännedomen mellan medarbetare som har varit anställda ett längre tag och relativt nyanställda. De med längre anställningstid hade större kännedom om värdegrunden och värdegrundsarbetet inom organisationen.

The debate regarding the advantages and disadvantages of using DDT for IRS has divided the scientific community. The health benefits of reducing malaria spreading are weighed against the potential health and environmental consequences of the chemical, and opinions also differ regarding the cost-effectiveness of the use of DDT. Global recommendations regarding use of DDT for IRS have been issued by the WHO, and the receipt of these on the local level is determined by the intended beneficiaries’ perception of legitimacy of the organisation. The WHO recommendations on DDT as well as interviews conducted with residents of a South African village and representatives for two South African NGOs have been reviewed using qualitative content analysis. This method was used to highlight different perceptions of and views on DDT use, as well as for examining the potential effect that the interviewees’ perception of international institutions’ legitimacy has on their views on DDT. This study shows that the controversy regarding DDT is not as prominent on the local level as on the global level, and that the perceptions of IRS with DDT differ between the WHO, the NGOs and the residents of the village. Further, this study shows that assessing legitimacy is dependent on a definition of “the people” in question, and that the accountability of authoritative actors on different levels needs to be evaluated further.

This study investigates the challenges to the legitimacy and authority of scientific research in late modern philosophy of science. The author suggests that the different challenges to the legitimacy of science have led to relativism and amount to a crisis. Keeping in mind the positivist background, he illustrates the legitimacy crisis of science in the period from Popper to the present. In particular his analysis focuses on the "historical school" (Kuhn, Feyerabend etc.) in philosophy of science. The main question of this study is: what are the causes and the nature of the legitimacy crisis emerging in the contemporary philosophical assessment of science? To answer this question, a few specific challenges to the legitimacy of science emerging in particular areas are analysed: for example the difficulties of anchoring scientific certitude to its proper object of study, the loss of objectivity, growing scepticism about the possibility of communication and scientific progress. After substantiating the gradual emergence of relativist and sceptical approaches in the abovementioned areas, this study provides a "diagnosis" aiming at identifying the causes of the crisis. The humanist ground motive of nature and freedom and the choice of anchoring scientific certainty either in the subject or in the object of knowledge are considered the main sources of the crisis. They lead to arbitrary absolutisations of particular aspects of the scientific enterprise and (in the case of subjectivist approaches) to sceptical approaches to the possibility of scientific objectivity, communication and progress. This study also indicates a few possible resources, available in the reformational tradition, to counteract the legitimacy crisis of science. The main resource indicated in this study is the recognition of the structural order for reality, which is accessible to scientific analysis, "constrains" scientific research but also constitutes a common ground for researchers. Other important resources are the recognition of the link between scientific and pre-scientific knowledge and the acknowledgment that universality and individuality are traits of everything that exists. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Philosophy))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

The new Swedish Armed Forces will be radically different from the previous invasion-oriented defence and the Armed Forces will be a smaller and more flexible organization, better adapted to the international sphere. With the aim of meeting up with the demands of the transformed Armed Forces posture for professional competence, the Regular Officer Programme (YOP) was introduced in the autumn of 1999. This dissertation aims at attempting to illustrate, address the problems and investigate to what degree the basic officer training of the Regular Officer Programme (Swedish: YOP) and the professional competence of newlygraduated Second Lieutenants can be seen as being legitimate within the scope of professional practices of the Swedish Armed Forces, and how this legitimacy can be described and understood. The theoretical framework of the dissertation is comprised of a sociocultural perspective and institutional theory. The five central concepts of the dissertation are: professional practice, institutional rules, professional competence, learning and legitimacy. The empirical elements of the dissertation were collected during 2001 and 2002 and comprise data from six part-studies. The informants were officer cadets after their first year of the Basic Officer Training Programme (YOP) and officers up to the rank of general. The methods for collecting data have been in the form of a questionnaire study, focus group conversations at thirteen military units, three document studies and a study with questions via e-mail. The questionnaire study was processed by using the computer programme SAS. The focus group conversations, the document studies and the answers via e-mail to questions were analyzed and put into categories contents wise according to the sentence category principle in positive and negative statements, respectively, in relation to YOP and the professional competence of the newly-graduated Second Lieutenants. Results show that both YOP as well as the professional competence of the newly-graduated Second Lieutenants cannot be regarded as being fully legitimate among the informants or within the all the professional practices of the Armed Forces.

This research responds to calls for the establishment of an overriding rationale, or raison d'être, for public relations practice. Several scholars are suggesting that the construct of legitimacy provides an overarching rationale that would link public relations practice across organisations, industries and countries (Boyd, 2000; Massey, 2001; Metzler, 1995, 2001; van Ruler & Vercic, 2005; Vercic, van Ruler, Butschi, & Flodin, 2001). However, existing public relations studies using legitimacy have focused on the communicative aspects, with little emphasis on long term and societal level effects for organisations. In seeking to accommodate these challenges, the central research question of this thesis is: Does legitimacy provide a rationale for public relations practice, and if so, in what ways? This study draws on institutional theory, with its central imperative of legitimacy, to address this question. Institutional theory considers the relationship between organisations and environments from a social constructionist perspective. Institutions created through the social construction of reality are based on shared, rational myths of legitimacy which drive organisational and social action, and with which organisations need to demonstrate compliance through their organisational ceremonies or practices. These two central contributors to legitimacy -- rational myths and ceremonies -- provide the framework guiding the study. The study was conducted around issues about the corporate social responsibility (CSR) of the four major Australian banks. In order to consider relationships between public relations practice and legitimacy as an institutional concept, Giddens' theory of structuration is used as a theoretical apparatus to straddle the rational myths of legitimacy at the level of institution, with public relations practice related to ceremonies at the level of action. 'Structuring moments' identified in media coverage provide sites of microanalysis of the intense social construction of rational myths of legitimacy that include organisations and publics. Through these theoretical devices, a number of guiding research questions shape the study: RQ i): What is learned about the social construction of rational myths about legitimacy by studying media coverage about CSR in Australian banking? RQ ii): What is learned about legitimacy by studying public relations practices in relation to media coverage about CSR in Australia banking? A longitudinal, qualitative, case study approach was taken to explore the research questions in this study. As legitimacy was viewed as a process of ongoing social construction, a temporal bracketing strategy (Langley, 1999) was used to examine the relationships between the level of institution and of action over the six year period of the study. Media coverage, annual and social impact reports, and interviews were used as sources of data to examine the institutionalisation of corporate social responsibility in the Australian banking industry. The findings of the study show that there is a dynamic relationship between public relations and legitimacy at both theoretical and practical levels. Through the duality of structure lens, theoretically public relations can be conceived as agency and legitimacy as structure. The influence of these two dynamically interrelated levels of agency and structure is both constituted by human agency and is the medium of the institutions (Sewell, 1992). Public relations practices, therefore, can be seen as human agency that both shapes and is shaped by legitimacy. If legitimacy represents a dominant concept of organisational success, it is also a rationale for public relations practice as an act of human agency that seeks to create alignment between organisations and publics in their environment. As such, public relations practices are not just activities. Rather, public relations practices constitute a central resource that organisations can access to exert power to create and manage their legitimacy within the broader environment. Public relations practices, therefore, are resources because they are embedded within the deep structures of society that influence organisational practice, but also are actions that allow the organisation to shape those structural arrangements. This process takes place within webs of communication and relationships between organisations and publics that form institutionalised legitimacy. This study also found that public relations practice is a balance between the demands of time and space. The traditional focus of public relations studies has been on incidents of compressed time and space, such as crises and campaigns. This study suggests that expanded periods of time and space are also integral to how and why public relations make a contribution as, over time, there were shifts to the institutional arrangements that guide public relations practices. This suggests that there is a compression of time and space as organisations and publics communicate in their relationship and an expansion of time and space to shift frames of social structures and legitimacy. It is through this juxtaposition of time and space, and across dual levels of structure, that legitimacy provides a rationale for public relations practices. The conclusions of this research make a major contribution to public relations theory by building a model for considering how legitimacy provides a raison d'être for public relations practices. As such, the model developed in this research provides a theoretical framework of how public relations practices contribute to organisational legitimacy at a societal level. The study also provides deeper insights to the role of public relations practices in managing organisational legitimacy at the level of action. In doing so, it addresses theoretical and methodological issues of the conflation of publics and environment. A number of opportunities for further research are presented by this study in understanding drivers of public relations practices and the role of inspection forums in processes of legitimacy. For practice, there are implications of taking a longer term perspective to considering the role of public relations practices, its impact on organisational success and, therefore, how it is evaluated.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Canterbury, 2009. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 166-182). Also available via the World Wide Web.