Dans ce travail de thèse, nous avons tenté de répondre à la question suivante : Comment un observateur extérieur –ou témoin– détecte-t-il une situation observée comme discriminatoire ? Notre objectif était donc d'élaborer un modèle général de détection de la discrimination de la part de l'observateur extérieur. En nous basant sur les conceptions scientifiques, légales et profanes de la discrimination, ainsi que sur la littérature traitant de cet objet, nous avons formulé la thèse suivante. La discrimination étant conceptualisée comme un comportement intergroupe contre-normatif, la détection de la discrimination serait déterminée par a) la différenciation des catégories sociales du discriminateur et de la victime et le caractère de leur échange, et b) l'évaluation de la légitimité du comportement du discriminateur. La première partie de ce travail de thèse traite du premier point cité. Nous avons défendu l'hypothèse que la détection de la discrimination était fonction de la perception de l'échange entre le discriminateur et la victime comme intergroupe plutôt qu'interpersonnel. Afin de tester cette hypothèse, nous avons manipulé la distinctivité catégorielle des groupes sociaux du discriminateur et de la victime, ainsi que le rapport entretenu entre le discriminateur et la victime. Les cinq études de la première partie permettent de soutenir l'hypothèse que la catégorisation sociale des acteurs et la perception de leur échange détermine la détection de la discrimination. La seconde partie de ce travail de thèse traite du second point cité. Nous avons défendu l'hypothèse que la légitimité perçue du comportement du discriminateur modère l'effet de la distinctivité catégorielle sur la détection de la discrimination. Les deux études de la seconde partie fournissent des arguments empiriques qui soutiennent cette hypothèse. Globalement, l'ensemble de ce travail permet d'appréhender le processus de détection de la discrimination comme relevant de l'interaction entre un processus perceptif –la catégorisation sociale des acteurs–, et un second processus, davantage délibératif, qui implique l'évaluation normative du comportement du discriminateur et/ou de ses motivations. / In this research, we attempt to answer the following question: How a distant observer – or witness – will detect an observed situation as discriminatory? Our aim is to elaborate a general model of discrimination detection by the distant observer. Based on scientific, legal, and lay definition of discrimination, we propose the following argument: As discrimination is defined as a counter-normative intergroup behavior, discrimination detection will depend on a) the distinctiveness of both perpetrator and victim social categories, and by the nature of these actors exchange, and b) the perceived legitimacy of the perpetrator's behavior. The first part of this research deals with the first point quoted above. We made the hypothesis that discrimination detection will depend on the nature of the perceived exchange between the perpetrator and the victim as intergroup rather than interpersonal. In order to test this hypothesis, we manipulated the distinctiveness of the respective social categories of perpetrator and victim. The five studies of this research first part support the hypothesis that the social categorization of perpetrator and victim and the following perception of their exchange impact discrimination detection. The second part of this research deals with the second point quoted above. We defended the hypothesis that the perceived legitimacy of the perpetrator's behavior moderates the effect of social categories distinctiveness on discrimination detection. The two studies of the second part of this work support this hypothesis. Broadly speaking, this work allows to understand the discrimination detection process as the interaction between a perceptive process –the social categorization of the actors–, and a deliberative process, which imply the normative evaluation of perpetrator's behavior and/or motivations.

O que se pretende nesta pesquisa é buscar os procedimentos e pressupostos que conferem legitimidade à lei jurídica dentro da perspectiva da política kantiana. A pesquisa seguirá por três caminhos de investigação: primeiramente, a partir do artigo À paz perpétua e da Metafísica dos Costumes se busca lançar as bases do problema retomando a argumentação acerca da origem do Estado. Pela análise dos mecanismos e razões que conduziram à formação do Estado, perpassa-se por questões centrais da política kantiana como o estado de natureza, o contrato originário, a organização jurídica do estado civil e o republicanismo. Em um segundo momento, um passo inicial é incitar o debate sobre a fundamentação do direito ser externa ou interna, isto é, se a própria norma jurídica é suficiente para fundamentar a si mesma ou se necessita de um embasamento externo. Recorre-se à Fundamentação da metafísica dos costumes a fim de resgatar dali os conceitos de autonomia da vontade, o procedimento de universalização da máxima e o imperativo categórico a fim de estabelecer como se legitima a lei moral. Enfim, a última etapa argumentativa pretende efetivamente explorar se há um conflito e como resolvê-lo no que tange à conciliação entre o direito e a ética: como harmonizar a lei legítima fruto do republicanismo (advinda de uma representatividade) à lei que concorda com a autonomia da vontade. / This study aims to seek the mechanisms and conditions that legitimise the legal law on the scope of kantian politics. This research will be divided in three argumentative moments. The first one is related to groundworking the problem by proceeding the arguments of Toward Perpetual Peace and Metaphysics of Morals about the origins of the State. Through the analysis of the mechanisms and reasons that guide to the State formation we aim to point some central questions on the kantian politics as the state of nature, the original contract, the juridical civil organisation of the state and the republicanism. The second argumentative moment, our first step is to promote the debate about the foundation of Law being internal or external. So we use the \"Groundwork of Metaphysic of Morals\" to rescue the concepts of autonomy of will, categorical imperative and the universalisation of maxim in order to expose how the moral law finds its legitimacy as well as if this procedure serves as example to be followed to legitimise the legal law. Finally, the last moment of this study is dedicated to think if there is a conflict between Law and ethics and how to solve it - how to articulate the legitimacy of the republicanism law (that comes from a political representation) to the law that comes from the autonomy of will.

We have investigated organizations we consider having an elitist approach. Wehave researched how these approaches are manifested, managed, and what pros and cons that the approach can result in. Common consequences of an elitist approach include high perfor-mance and efficiency, but also high levels of stress and anxiety among employees. The organ-izations we chose for the study were a sales company and a consulting firm. The concept of elitist approach is broken down into three elements: achievement, culture and legitimacy. We made our own model of how the three components relate to each other and how so-called chan-nels, give power to the different components. The different channels are ambition, status, hier-archy and competition. During the study we encountered that in order to counteract the negative effects associated with an elitist approach, the organizations was using a compassionate culturewhich was surprising for the author group.

No description available.

The pronunciamiento was a political practice with its origins in early nineteenth-century Spain. It was a form of political petitioning usually undertaken by coalitions of military and civilian actors to make demands against regional and national governments and negotiate political change. The petitions were generally accompanied with the threat of the use of military force should the demands not be met. As such, pronunciamientos have been defined by Will Fowler as “forceful negotiations.” The pronunciamiento developed as a political practice in a context of institutional disarray and contested legitimacy as a response to the constitutional crisis in Spain (1812-1820), and it became a particularly popular political tool in early independent Mexico (1821-1876) in a context in which successive governments experimented with new political systems. The fact that the institutions these governments created needed to acquire a political legitimacy that was stable enough to replace that of the Ancien Regime would prove problematic. It would be this context of uncertain legitimacies that would allow the pronunciamiento to develop a legitimacy of its own. It was an extra-constitutional, subversive form of political participation. It was used as a last resort by political actors who believed that, in the particular circumstance of having constitutional routes closed to them or of the government having broken the social pact, they had a right to insurrection to protect the people from the abuses of unjust or tyrannical government. As it developed in early independent Mexico, the pronuciamiento became one of the most used practices for effecting political change. Pronunciamientos were used at one time or another by political actors of all social classes and political persuasions. They preceded most of the major political changes of the period on both a regional and national scale, be they changes in government, the introduction of new laws or a change of political system. Pronunciamientos have often been referred to in the historiography of early independent Mexico as military revolts or coups. The pronunciamiento has thus been seen as a cause of instability and evidence of praetorianism in the political life of nineteenth-century Spain and independent Mexico. However, recent and current research on the subject, including the project at the University of St Andrews “The Pronunciamiento in Independent Mexico 1821 – 1876” of which this PhD is a part, has resulted in a revision of this narrow view of pronunciamientos as revolts and coups. The project and its affiliated researchers have developed a picture of the pronunciamiento as a political practice which was much more intimately involved with the newly developing constitutional institutions than previously thought. This PhD is a contribution to that revision which uses regional history to analyse the nature and evolution of the pronunciamiento. It is a study of the dynamics of and political actors involved in pronunciamientos in the state of Jalisco in western Mexico between 1821 and 1852. Jalisco in the early national period was a geopolitically important state and a popular place from which to launch pronunciamientos. Many political actors from within and without the state chose to launch pronunciamientos from Jalisco some of which had a significant impact on regional and national politics. To date there has been no thoroughgoing study of the phenomenon of the pronunciamiento as it developed in Jalisco. This analysis of the pronunciamientos which took place in Jalisco shows that pronunciamientos were used by all political actors to effect political change and had a very real effect on the lives of those directly involved as well as those of the general public who witnessed pronunciamientos on the streets of their towns and cities. It shows how pronunciamientos became closely interconnected with the newly developing constitutional institutions and how, while most pronunciamientos were recognized by all political actors as potential bearers of instability, the pronunciamiento was also considered to be a legitimate form of political participation given the extraordinary circumstance of a lack of recognised or legitimate government. The research demonstrates that pronunciamientos launched in Jalisco had a central part to play in the development of the new political order in the “age of democratic revolutions” and during the transition Mexico underwent from having a traditional corporate society and polity to acquiring a modern liberal one. The findings of this study provide an insight into the way in which political culture developed in Jalisco in the early national period. Alongside regional studies into the pronunciamientos launched in the San Luis Potosí and Yucatán in a similar period carried out by Kerry McDonald and Shara Ali, this research helps to develop a picture of how Mexican pronunciamientos worked at a local level allowing for more accurate generalisations to be made regarding the pronunciamiento as a practice on a national scale. The study also contributes to an understanding of how politics worked in Mexico in periods of institutional disarray, uncertain legitimacy and political transition and how insurrectionary political forms became legitimised.

[pt] O presente trabalho tem por objetivo demonstrar como o instrumento de iniciativa popular de lei pode representar a participação dos cidadãos na construção e manutenção do ordenamento normativo. A utilização da Teoria Discursiva do Direito de Habermas, como marco teórico, servirá para apontar um caminho, ressaltando como o Estado Democrático de Direito deve contar com cidadãos que são, ao mesmo tempo, autores e destinatários das normas jurídicas. Pretende-se demonstrar que quanto mais os indivíduos participam como autores e destinatários na formação da legislação, discutindo autonomamente em espaços públicos, mais fortes são as possibilidades de efetivação da democracia. / [en] The present work has the objective of demonstrate how the instrument of popular legislative initiatives can represent the citizens participation on the construction and the maintenance of the normative ordering. Having the Habermas’ Law Discursive Theory, as the theoretical mark will serve to point a direction, emphasizing how the Fair State of law must rely on citizens, which are, at the same time, the authors and the recipients of the juridical standards. It searches to demonstrate that as much as the individuals act as authors and recipients on the construction of the law, discussing autonomously in public aspects, stronger are the possibilities of the effectuation of the democracy.

Throughout the world, entrepreneurship is viewed as a solution for struggling economies and a major engine of economic growth. As a result, the field of entrepreneurship research has captured the interest of scholars, educators and policy makers. A substantial amount of empirical studies over the last two decades has examined the role of personality in determining entrepreneurial outcomes. Concurrently, organisational legitimacy is perceived as a necessary organisational attribute for the survival and growth of new ventures. Strategic legitimacy of nascent organisations is important in explaining organizational emergence. The current study seeks to determine if there is a relationship between an entrepreneur’s personality and the strategic legitimisation activities they employ in creating a new venture. A multiple regression model tested four factors of entrepreneurs’ personality as antecedents of strategic legitimisation activities among entrepreneurs in South Africa. The empirical findings suggest that positive extraversion traits are strong predictors of entrepreneurial activities to gain strategic legitimacy for new ventures. More interestingly, negative agreeableness traits were found to be strong antecedents of strategic legitimisation activities. Such a conclusion is important in that it provides new grounds of theoretical nature to better understand the personorganisation interplay. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

This dissertation argues that there is an agreed upon commonsense view of violence, but beyond this view, definitions for kinds of violence are essentially contested and non-neutrally, politically ideological, given that the political itself is an essentially contested concept defined in relation to ideologies that oppose one another. The first chapter outlines definitions for a commonsense view of violence produced by Greene and Brennan. This chapter argues that there are incontestable instances of violence that are almost universally agreed upon, such as when an adult intentionally smashes a child’s head against a table, purposefully causing harm. It is also claimed that, because political, ideological distinctions between kinds of violence arise from the creation of moral equivalences to the commonsense view of violence, political ideology is the source of disagreement. The second chapter argues that the concept of violence and of the political are essentially contested concepts. Gallie’s criteria for what counts as an essentially contested concept are utilized in order to argue that violence is an essentially contested concept at the level of the political, though not at the level of the commonsense view of violence. In fact, the paradigmatic cases that the commonsense view of violence pertains to serve as the core cases that are then interpreted as kinds of violence at the ideological level. To define violence as altogether wrong, or to define kinds of violence as acceptable and others as wrong is itself a politically ideological move to make, such as when liberalism defines its own uses of violence as justified and legitimate, and its enemy’s violence as unjustifiable and illegitimate. The World Health Organization and Bufacchi’s definitions for violence are presented, as are the definition for terroristic violence defined by Nagel. Erlenbusch’s critique of a liberal view, such as that of Nagel and the World Health Organization, is addressed as a reflection on the fact that, beyond the commonsense view of violence, violence is an essentially contested concept for which an ideologically, politically non-neutral definition is unlikely. The third chapter outlines numerous definitions produced by various philosophers, historians, and theorists, such as Machiavelli, Arendt, Hobbes, Kant, Treitschke, Weber, Bakunin, Sorel, Žižek, and Benjamin. The definitions produced by each demonstrates that person’s political ideological assumptions. Their definitions demonstrate an ongoing disagreement, in the sense of Rancière’s formulation for what counts as a disagreement in that each theorist defines kinds of violence under the yoke of their own political ideology. They all might agree that a single act is violent, under the commonsense view of violence, but they disagree concerning what kind of violence it is. So, though they may point to the same events and actions as examples of violence, what they mean fundamentally differs, and this means that they disagree. Their disagreement arises due to their respective political ideologies. This disagreement shows that there is no neutral justification for the neutrality of a state, particularly if a neutral state must defend itself. The state is instead defined in historically contextual terms of how the state relates to kinds of violence, and the distinctions between kinds of violence are not themselves politically, ideologically neutral. So, the concept of violence, beyond the commonsense view, is an essentially contested concept for which a non-neutral definition is unlikely. Beyond the commonsense view, political ideology is inextricably bound up within distinctions between kinds of violence. The fourth chapter then examines arguments on the question of whether nonviolence counts as a kind of violence. If distinctions between kinds of violence are essentially contested and non-neutrally defined, and nonviolence is defined as distinct from violence, then it follows that nonviolence is an essentially contested concept for which no non-neutral definition is possible, at least beyond a commonsense view of nonviolence. A commonsense view of nonviolence is defined as the assumption that nonviolence is not violent in the way that the commonsense view defines violence. That is, nonviolence occurs when there is no action or event that most people would define as a violent one. Definitions for nonviolence, civil disobedience, nonviolent political actions, and nonviolent direct actions are then outlined. These definitions aim at showing that the doctrine of nonviolence does not merely refer to nonviolent acts, but to a strategy that is a means to defeating violence. Given that what counts as the nonviolence that defeats violence is ideologically a matter of disagreement, nonviolence, in this sense, can count as a kind of violence. The fifth chapter concludes, raising questions concerning how violence can be valued, the degree to which a state cannot neutrally justify its neutrality, and the degree to which, beyond the commonsense view of violence, there ever could be agreement concerning what counts as kinds of violence. 1 In this dissertation, I draw on a number of ideas/passages that appeared earlier in my paper “The Efficacy of Scapegoating and Revolutionary Violence," in Philosophy, Culture, and Traditions: A Journal of the World Union of Catholic Philosophical Societies, ed. William Sweet, 10(2014), 203-219. I am grateful to the editors of the journal for permission to draw on this material here.

With a rapid centralisation of fiscal sovereignty now being aired as a possibility following on from the financial and economic crisis, this thesis considers how legitimising discourses are shaping the efforts to reform EU fiscal governance. Norman Fairclough’s ‘moderately constructivist’ three-dimensional framework for CDA is drawn upon. This approach is also combined with insights drawn from the new institutionalist literature base (particularly from its historical and discursive strands of thought), with an additional emphasis being placed on broader understandings of structural forms of power as developed through the writings of Susan Strange. It is found that the emerging debate over EU fiscal governance reform is dominated by a limiting neoliberal legitimising discourse. This research also makes a contribution to our understanding of the ideational and institutional roots of the current impasse in European Integration. Finally, it is concluded that the efforts to reform the EU’s fiscal governance arrangements are likely to bring about, at best, incremental change along a path-dependent line.

This thesis examines how non-governmental organisations (NGOs) claim legitimacy in the UK national context with the aim of increasing the understanding of how NGOs’ access to power is justified. The thesis argues that the limits of current theories on NGOs and legitimacy do not enable proper scrutiny of the organisational complexities involved and proposes that Beetham’s approach to legitimacy is more fruitful. A Beethamite analysis is based on scrutinising NGOs’ legitimacy-in-context. This involves examining NGOs’ normative structures and internal organisation of power in order to explain and assess their legitimacy claims. It explores the legitimacy claims of three UK NGOs by applying a Beethamite analysis to interrogate their legitimacy claims. The NGOs that are my unit of analysis are enmeshed in complex organisational hierarchies that extend beyond the UK territory. Understanding the internal organisation of power in these hierarchies is important for identifying legitimacy sources that underpin NGOs’ legitimacy claims. The three NGOs are Amnesty International UK, Greenpeace UK and Cafod. The case study of Amnesty International UK shows how the legitimation of power is justified internally where the members of the UK section legitimise the representational powers of the International Secretariat. This is contrasted with the normative sources of legitimacy that are more commonly used to justify Amnesty International UK's legitimacy claims and which ignore members as an important source of authority. The analysis in the case study of Greenpeace UK demonstrates how it is a representative unit of Greenpeace International. It also highlights how scientific knowledge has become a legitimacy source that justifies Greenpeace UK's legitimacy claims with implications for how to assess their legitimacy claims. The case study of Cafod analyses how Cafod claims legitimacy as a Catholic agency and how it is institutionally embedded in the Holy See. Cafod is primarily a social agency of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. The case study demonstrates how Cafod's sources of legitimacy are primarily Catholic and that this causes legitimacy problems when Cafod uses secular rather than theological sources of legitimacy to justify its policies. One of the main conclusions of the thesis is that a differentiated approach is needed for analysing NGOs’ legitimacy claims, one that takes into consideration the context of NGOs’ legitimacy claims, their internal process of legitimation and their sources of legitimacy, when assessing their access to power. The lack of an appropriate regulatory framework, and in particular the systematic exclusion of politically oriented NGOs by UK regulators, hinders the advancement of proper assessment and understanding of NGOs’ role in society.