Importance of Legitimation: Public Policy and Political Science

This essay explores the concept of legitimation, examining its significance in public policy and political science. It defines public policy and highlights the importance of legitimacy in power relations, emphasizing the distinction between voluntary compliance and coercion. The essay discusses legitimation crisis, its measurement, and the consequences of its absence, such as instability and conflict. It also presents legitimation methods and strategies, using examples like the U.S. army withdrawal from Iraq and the Egyptian revolution. The study concludes by reiterating the importance of legitimation, referencing the challenges it faces, including public opinion disparities and the need for trust in governance. The essay draws on various scholarly sources to support its arguments, providing a comprehensive overview of the topic.

Running head: IMPORTANCE OF LEGITIMATION
Importance of Legitimation
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IMPORTANCE OF LEGITIMATION
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Main Arguments..............................................................................................................................2
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................6
References........................................................................................................................................7

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IMPORTANCE OF LEGITIMATION
Introduction
The concept of legitimacy is related to the important legal, political and ethical
aspects of the research based on the world affairs. Legitimacy is able to present the problem
which the research is not able to present due to the vagueness. Political legitimacy is defined as
the division between enforcing of the principles on others who are subjected to these. The
various types of the liberal democracy related to the practice associated to the political
representation. The main objective of the essay is to present the conceptualization of public
policy and the various types of the policy approaches related to the same. It has been further able
to state why theory of legitimating is important in the first place and the some of the crucial
deficit and crisis related to the same. The study will also put forward the strategies and tools
legitimating of the events. The essay has been mainly divided into three sections, the first part
has been able to introduce the topic, the second part has been able to bring forward the main
argument presented in the topic and the last part of the study has been able to state on the aims of
the essay which needs to be achieved (O’Neil & Ucbasaran, 2016).
Main Arguments
Public Policy is defined as the principle guide to the action which has been taken based
on the action by the various types of the administrative branches of the state in a certain way
which is identified to be consistent with the institutional customs and law. The basic foundation
of the public policy consists of the different types of the national constitutional laws and the
regulations. Some of the other form of the subtractes has been seen with the considerations of
both judicial interpretations and the regulations authorized by the regulation (Shirley, 2015).

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IMPORTANCE OF LEGITIMATIONLegitimating of power as per the relevant casual driver in the explaining the policy
change and public policy which would not have been possible in the previous two decades.
Legitimacy has been historically considered with the top subject of the study related to the
political science. The various types of the public policy studies and the research, legitimacy is
considered as the “the belief” in the existing legitimation of power. The traditional political
science regimes are seen to relevant to the topic of the study. The various types of the political
science are considered as the regimes with the study of legitimacy. Public Policies are considered
as simple products which are considered as larger political system, which is seen to be dependent
on the broader regime or the legitimacy of the political system (Kailitz, 2013).
Legitimacy is important with the power relations. Without the presence of legitimacy,
power is exerted with the coercion with legitimacy, and the power can be exerted with the
legitimacy power and the power which can be depicted with the voluntary and quasi-voluntary
compliance. This power has been seen to be true for armed by the non-state groups. The overall
understanding of the legitimacy is considered as an acceptance of the authority which has been
evident among the authority of both the elite and the non-elite groups. Legitimacy is seen to be
prevalent among the main state-citizen which is seen to be in relation with the whole state
building agenda. Legitimacy is seen to be important for forming of the basic foundation of the
Government which has seen to be evolved from the support of the public and identified as the
only source of the Government. Legitimacy has been further seen to be an integral part of all the
regimes and provides the reason for the existence of the regime for their existence in the first
place.
The conceptualization of legitimation crisis refers to the decreasing the confidence of the
administrative functions, leaderships and the different types of the intuitions for the same. The

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IMPORTANCE OF LEGITIMATIONmain initiation of the term was seen to be coined in the year 1973 by Jürgen Habermas.
Habermas has been further seen to expand the concept of legtimation crisis with the institution or
the organization which do not have the administrative capacity for maintaining effective
structures for achieving goals. Legitimation crisis does not involve any unanimity with the social
scientists. The usual way of measuring the legitimation crisis needs to consider the different
types of the attitudes which have been aimed at the organisation in question (Voronov et al.,
2013).
In situations where the concept of legitimacy is not seen to be present the negative
consequence of power will be more prevalent. In case situations of low amount of legitimacy,
this implies that the states are not up to the mark in terms of the delivering the required amount
of the various types of the services which are seen to be important for the purpose of public
service and further allow the citizens and the rulers will be able to claim for the obedience. The
lack of legitimacy will further lead to more domination, resistance, struggle and the instances of
interests are less common. The main consideration of legitimacy will lead to explicit testing and
the relationship of the various types of the other explanations. The lack of legitimacy will lead to
less stable, less war prone and a richer condition for an organization. The main form of the
question has been identified with the consideration of legitimacy which is beyond the moral
approbation (Bexell, 2014).
Legitmation is not seen to be playing an important role in several situations where the
political subsystems of the social world are seen to require the input from the mass loyalty. The
rationality crisis situation has been also seen to be the situations where the need for legitimating
crisis has not seen to be applicable. Some of the various types of the other considerations in
absence of the legitimacy have been defined with the various types of the propositions which has

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IMPORTANCE OF LEGITIMATIONbeen seen to be directly related to the absence of the normative structure and the extent to which
the motivation crisis is seen to be prevalent in nature. In some of the various types of the special
cases technical and the political aspects of the legitimacy may in a perfect equilibrium and
henceforth in such situations the importance of legitimacy may not be experienced (Laïfi &
Josserand, 2016).
The main form of the legitimation methods and strategies are seen with policies which
are seen to design and configure the power relation which may influence the policy change. As
per the social construction the various types of the public policy are seen to be designed with
complex set of instrumental and subjective dimensions. Another strategy may be taken in form
of various types of the alterations made in the legitimacy pattern (Mackay, 2015). Some of the
examples associated to legitimation of events are discussed below:
1. In a study conducted for legitimation of the events of U.S. army withdrawal from Iraq,
the main discursive structures included “authorization”, “rationalization”, and “moral
evaluation”. This has been seen with linguistic legitimation (Ali et al., 2016).
2. The legitimation strategy to represent the positive aspects of Egyptian revolution and
negative repercussion of Hosni Mubarak’s regime depicted four main categories of
''authorization'', ''evaluation'', ''rationalization'', and ''mythopoesis''. The study further
depicted Far News has been able to put more focus on legitimizing Egyptian revolution
rather than delegitimizing Hosni Mubarak's regime. Another aspect of "personal
authority" was seen to be more prominent in nature (Academypublication.com, 2017).
3. A study of legitimation on the comparative study in democratic theory and empirical
analyses has been able to comply with the challenges in non-democratic regimes
(Ecpr.eu, 2017).

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IMPORTANCE OF LEGITIMATION4. Another example of the legitimation has been identified with the key process, which has
been including the legitimation the strategies and judgements. The main analysis has
been depiced with sender-receiver model which has been able to focus on central role of
media in the contemporary society.
5. The political developments in South Asia have been identified with specific legitimation
strategies. The study has been able to focus on the question of “political, moral, and
religious forms of leadership in the region and the global South Asian” situation. The
study depicted that legitimation has led to acceptance and exercising leadership along
with authority (Crassh.cam.ac.uk, 2015).
The main challenge associated to legitimation may be as a result of difference in the
opinion and conflict of the institutions to introduce and establish the various types of the
democratic practice. The legitimation crisis has been further viewed as a challenge for the public
service. The formation and the expansion of the modern public service have been seen with
imitative reproduction in the postcolonial societies continuing for centuries. The disparity in the
public onion has been identified as the main challenge in the legitimation process. Along with
the public opinion democracy among the public has been also viewed as another problem
associated to democracy. In several cases Government has been seen to be lacking the distrust
among governing in an age of trust and lacks legitimacy in general. People have been seen to like
social security as a result of ligitimation however, in several cases Government has been seen to
confiscate the money from the pay check and retire in decades (Goddard & Krebs, 2015).

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IMPORTANCE OF LEGITIMATIONConclusion
The study has been able to state that Public Policy has been defined as the principle guide
to the action which has been taken based on the action by the various types of the administrative
branches of the state in a certain way which is identified to be consistent with the institutional
customs and law. Legitimacy has been historically considered with the top subject of the study
related to the political science. The traditional political science regimes are seen to be relevant to
the topic of the study. Legitmation is not seen to be playing an important role in several
situations where the political subsystems of the social world are seen to require the input from
the mass loyalty. Legitimacy is important with the power relations.

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IMPORTANCE OF LEGITIMATION
References
Academypublication.com. (2017). [online] Available at:
http://www.academypublication.com/issues/past/jltr/vol04/05/20.pdf [Accessed 7 Oct.
2017].
Ali, M., Christopher, A. and Nordin, M. (2016). Linguistic Legitimation of Political Events in
Newspaper Discourse. Advances in Language and Literary Studies, [online] 7(4), pp.76-
83. Available at: http://www.journals.aiac.org.au/index.php/alls/article/view/2402
[Accessed 7 Oct. 2017].
Bexell, M. (2014). Global Governance, Legitimacy and (De)Legitimation. Globalizations, 11(3),
289–299. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2014.919744
Crassh.cam.ac.uk. (2015). Leadership, Authority and Legitimation in South Asia – CRASSH.
[online] Available at: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/26168 [Accessed 7 Oct. 2017].
Ecpr.eu. (2017). Legitimation in Non-Democracies: Concepts, Theories and Empirical Evidence
across Regime Subtypes . [online] Available at: https://ecpr.eu/Events/PanelDetails.aspx?
PanelID=3990&EventID=101 [Accessed 7 Oct. 2017].
Goddard, S. E., & Krebs, R. R. (2015). Rhetoric, legitimation, and grand strategy. Security
Studies, 24(1), 5–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2014.1001198
Kailitz, S. (2013). Classifying political regimes revisited: Legitimation and durability.
Democratization, 20(1), 39–60. https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2013.738861
Laïfi, A., & Josserand, E. (2016). Legitimation in practice: A new digital publishing business

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IMPORTANCE OF LEGITIMATIONmodel. Journal of Business Research, 69(7), 2343–2352.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2015.10.003
Mackay, R. R. (2015). Multimodal legitimation: Selling Scottish independence. Discourse &
Society, 26(3), 323–348. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926514564737
O’Neil, I., & Ucbasaran, D. (2016). Balancing “what matters to me” with “what matters to
them”: Exploring the legitimation process of environmental entrepreneurs. Journal of
Business Venturing, 31(2), 133–152. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2015.12.001
Shirley, D. (2015). The legitimation crisis of educational change. Journal of Educational
Change, 16(3), 245–250. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-015-9254-4
Voronov, M., De Clercq, D., & Hinings, C. R. (2013). Conformity and Distinctiveness in a
Global Institutional Framework: The Legitimation of Ontario Fine Wine. Journal of
Management Studies, 50(4), 607–645. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12012