Legitimacy and Social Impact in the Context of Changing Public Cultural Organizations

This article explores an organization's practices, values, and its role in society within a transformed legal status. The article clarifies the role of the organizational form in engagement with society and outlines the connections between different types of legitimacy by elaborating concepts of neo-institutional theory and cultural policy. A conceptual map of the institutional elements, cultural values, and legitimacy is presented. The analysis is based on the Estonian Russian Theater and concludes that an organization can influence the basis of its legitimacy. The management's aspirations to balance values and deal with cognitive legitimacy may lead to rearranging the institutional framework.     

Pragmatized Aesthetics: The Impact of Legitimacy Pressures in Symphony Orchestras

This article explores the balancing exercise between opposing value regimes in symphony orchestras. This complex environment in which art organizations move while producing art will be mapped out in a model called a “biotope.” In recent years, orchestras have been struck hard by declines in the cultural sector. As a result of opposing legitimacy pressures in today’s symphony orchestras, standardized canonical repertoire now serves as a pragmatized aesthetic compromise. This article suggests that although this compromise grants short-term legitimacy to the art organization, it simultaneously brings its biotope out of balance, reinforcing the legitimacy crisis it was meant to avert.     

The Romanticization of Charismatic Leadership in the Arts

ABSTRACT

This inter-disciplinary article focuses on the role, significance, and impact of charisma in cultural leadership. It brings together fresh empirical data with a critical review of the literature to investigate the role of charisma in the operation, reputation, and strategic success of arts organizations. For the first time, this article synthesizes a diverse range of literature from sociology, psychology, political science, management, and leadership studies and applies it critically to the context of the arts. This comprehensive review is compared against interviews with key stakeholders in the arts, which challenge the neo-charismatic literature on leadership and support a return to aspects of the original formulation of charisma, as envisaged by Max Weber. The article finds that charismatic leaders are seen as extraordinary individuals and are excessively romanticized by arts managers, policymakers, and audiences. It questions this normative bias and concludes that charismatic leaders should be treated with a degree of skepticism, even caution, to temper any negative impacts on "followers" and organizations.     

Legal aid services in Spain within the migration industry debate. Public policy,business or social compromise?

ABSTRACT

The objective of this article is to examine the unexplored role of public defenders who provide legal aid services to immigrants within the debate on the migration control and rescue industries. Although these services are provided by bar associations, public organizations that group private professionals, they are paid for with government funds due to regulations guaranteeing the right to legal defence. The main argument and conclusion of this article is that although lawyers working in these services receive public compensation for the legal aid they provide, they generally become public defenders due to personal beliefs, such as a commitment to protecting the rights of foreigners.     

When Art and Commerce Collide: Colorization and the Moral Right

ABSTRACT

This article challenges the dominant framework that drives US public diplomacy initiatives and insists that, short of major structural changes, US public diplomacy lacks ethical legitimacy. Based on a review of past US public diplomacy practices, the article finds that these efforts were mainly characterized by a one-way flow of information and an emphasis on image management. Using the theories of hegemony, American exceptionalism, Orientalism, and cultural imperialism, the author lays a theoretical framework for analyzing public diplomacy. The author suggests that, for public diplomacy to move beyond propaganda, it needs to incorporate two-way communication and symmetry.     

Using the Strategy Tripod to Understand Strategic Management in the “Evaluation-Friendly” Organizations of Cultural and Creative Industries

Abstract

This article provides a new conceptual framework based on the Strategy Tripod to understand challenges and orientation that affect performance evaluation in the organizations of cultural and creative industries (CCI). The analysis is built on a quantitative study carried out in Estonia. Multinomial logistic regression was performed to assess the ability of different variables to predict performance evaluation. The new conceptual framework provides a holistic understanding of the uncertain environment and its impact on strategic management in “evaluation-friendly” organizations in CCIs. It adds new insight into theoretical and managerial discussions on how and why strategic management in CCIs is practiced.     

Cultural Policy in Denmark

ABSTRACT

Do cultural producers know each other? Do their relations influence the cultural field? This article analyzes the impact of the social structure on the art festivals' field in Piedmont, Italy. Cultural production is described through the perspective of the relations among the producers. Festivals' organizations observe each other, exchange information and artists, co-produce events, and share performing spaces. These actions generate relations that constitute the field. Analytical tools from social network analysis and QAP regression for network data are applied to describe the field through the relational perspective and assess the impact of the social structure on the cultural system.     

Democratic legitimacy in the European Union: Fulfilling the institutional logic

The European Union's delicate institutional balance between intergovern‐mentalism and supranationalism has been the source of both the EU's successes and its problems. This balance is under scrutiny as representatives of Member States and EU institutions pursue their particular visions of democratic legitimacy in the course of the 1996–97 Intergovernmental Conference. This essay examines three competing conceptualisations of democratic legitimacy: the Gaullist view, which associates legitimacy narrowly with national sovereignty; a national culture perspective that posits a unique correspondence of national character and national parliaments; and a parliamentary view that associates legitimacy with the role played by parliaments in scrutinising the behaviour of executives, whether at national or European level. Only the last of these perspectives acknowledges that democratic legitimacy is a continuous variable rather than an all‐or‐nothing concept, and that the EU may therefore accumulate legitimacy by improving both the process and substance of policy making within the logic of existing institutional structures.     

Legitimacy of Inequality in a Highly Unequal Context: Evidence from the Chilean Case

Economic inequality is usually assumed to be a threat to social cohesion and democracy. Nevertheless, this opposition of inequality and democracy is based on further assumptions such as (a) that people perceive economic inequality accurately, and (b) that, by and large they consider inequality unjust. Research into distributive issues has not found consistent support for neither of these assumptions. Quite the contrary, empirical evidence indicates that economic inequality is widely misperceived and that inequality is to some extent considered legitimate. So far most of the empirical evidence in the area of legitimacy comes from experimental studies in the developed world. The present research aims at widening the scope of legitimacy studies by focusing on Chile as a case country, one of the societies with the highest economic inequality worldwide, guided by the question to what extent is economic inequality considered legitimate in a context of high economic inequality? In addressing this question, and based on previous evidence, the article proposes a way to evaluate (a) the legitimacy of inequality at a country level via survey research, and (b) the role of inequality perception and justice ideologies in the justification of economic inequality. The data to be analyzed is the public opinion survey International Social Justice Project (ISJP), implemented in Chile in the year 2007 (n = 890). Multivariate analysis results reveal signs of legitimacy of inequality in Chile, opening a series of issues regarding the acceptance and stability of unequal distributions.     

“Broken Windows” and fractured history: The use and misuse of history in recent police patrol analysis

In a recent and provocative article entitled “Broken Windows,” James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling propose a new role orientation for the urban police in America. They argue that the police should replace their current preoccupation with crime control and concentrate instead on dealing with small order maintenance problems. Their argument is based upon a synthesis of recent police research and an analysis of police history.

This article critiques the analysis of police history offered by Wilson and Kelling. It disputes their argument that American police officers enjoyed a high degree of legitimacy in the eyes of urban neighborhood residents in the years before the advent of the patrol car. It also offers a different interpretation of the impact of technological innovation upon patterns of police-citizen contacts during the past fifty years.     

Removing fuel subsidies: How can international organizations support national policy reforms?

This article investigates how international organizations can support fuel subsidy reform. Departing from earlier studies, we focus on the ability of international organizations to assist national governments directly in the enactment and implementation of national reforms. While international organizations lack the capacity to directly enforce policy or force countries to abolish subsidies, they can increase the cost of reform reversal by governments that have a preference for reform but worry about the credibility and durability of their reforms. Moreover, international organizations can support learning from peers. In practice, governments interested in subsidy reform can announce a public commitment and submit progress reports to peer review by other countries under the auspices of an international organization. We characterize the institutional design of international organizations for success, discuss the role of the civil society in the process, and offer short illustrations from recent efforts by international organizations to promote fuel subsidy reform.     

A Contest for Legitimacy: The Divestment Movement and the Fossil Fuel Industry

The divestment movement has sought to influence attitudes to fossil fuels by framing producer companies as pariahs and as unnecessary and redundant. In response, the fossil fuel industry has engaged in a direct and aggressive attack on the divestment movement. This article considers the relationship between the movement and the industry as a contest for legitimacy for both the organizations and the norms they advocate. Through a case study of the coal discourse in Australia from 2013 to 2016, it explores how each party has attempted to undermine the other's legitimacy and to build or defend its own. It concludes that the contest for legitimacy is complex, being conducted at multiple levels (pragmatic, moral, legal, and cognitive) and before multiple audiences. For the movement to “win” the contest, it will require more than a simple rebalancing of the legitimacy scales.     

Maintaining legitimacy using external communication strategies: An analysis of police-media relations

Police organizations must strategically control their external environment in order to maintain organizational legitimacy. Exploiting their relationship with the news media is one way to accomplish this goal effectively. Despite the documented importance of crime, justice, and social control as a news topic, there is a limited understanding of the variables driving how police and media evaluate this relationship. This study used data collected from a national sample of police media personnel to fill this gap, and concluded that the police and media valued their interdependent relationship, but for different reasons. Police public information officers recognize the power of the media and attempt to use this power to promote the organization. News personnel are satisfied because the police provide data so they can easily produce crime stories. The implications for understanding how police organizations control their external organization are discussed.     

Public sector innovation: the effect of universities

A growing literature in public management has identified the key role that innovation can play in enhancing agency efficiency, effectiveness, performance and legitimacy. However, considerably less is known about the actual sources of knowledge generating innovative activity in the public sector. This paper fills this crucial gap in the literature by explicitly analyzing the link between a key source of knowledge and ideas, universities, and the innovative activities of public organizations. By utilizing a new source of data, this paper is able to show that not only do universities play a key role in generating innovative activity in public organizations, but the nature of innovations and their impact on public sector performance are related to the role played by universities. The findings suggest that universities play a key role in generating innovative activity in public organizations as doing so can increase the quality of public services, employee job satisfaction, and interagency collaboration.

     

Revisiting the role of distributive justice in Tyler’s legitimacy theory

Objectives

Tyler’s theory of legitimacy identified procedural justice and distributive justice as antecedents of legitimacy, but placed distributive justice in a relatively minor position compared with procedural justice. This has led to researchers paying less attention to distributive justice in the development of theory, despite consistent findings that distributive justice is important to a number of outcomes for criminal justice authorities. This report uses uncertainty management theory to revisit Tyler’s legitimacy model and gain a more nuanced understanding of distributive justice.

Methods

The proposed model is tested using a series of latent variable analyses conducted on a sample of 2169 adults and a factorial vignette design. The vignette design randomly manipulates outcome favorability and officer behavior during a hypothetical traffic stop. Multiple indicator multiple cause (MIMIC) models are then utilized to test the impact of these manipulations on perceptions of procedural justice and distributive justice. This is followed by a structural equation model that tests the relationships between procedural justice, distributive justice, and legitimacy.

Results

Officer behavior is a primary predictor of both procedural justice and distributive justice. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that distributive justice judgments are shaped by perceptions of procedural justice. Accordingly, distributive justice mediates the relationship between procedural justice and legitimacy.

Conclusions

Distributive justice should not be treated as a competing explanation for legitimacy evaluations, but as a concept that contextualizes why procedural justice is important.

     

Foreign Occupation and International Territorial Administration: The Challenges of Convergence

International organizations have increasingly joined statesas occupiers of territory. Yet international law doctrine andpolicymakers have regarded occupation by states and administrationby international organizations as distinct legal and politicalphenomena. The stigma associated with state occupation has translatedinto an assumption that the two operations are governed by differentnorms and their tactics for asserting control subject to differentstandards of legitimacy. This article rejects that dichotomyand the doctrinal parsing that comes with it. It emphasizesthe common traits and challenges of these occupations and arguesfor a joint legal and political appraisal. From the legal perspective,the two sorts of missions operate under common legal frameworks;those managing both need to find the proper balance among internationalhumanitarian law, international human rights law, local law,and any mandate from an international organization. As a politicalmatter, each encounters resistance from those in the territoryopposed to its presence, leading to coercive responses whoselegitimacy will be questioned from within and outside the territory.The article concludes with some modest thoughts on how eachsort of occupier might learn something from the other.     

Between Law and Transnational Social Movement Organizations: Stabilizing Expectations of Global Public Goods

This article draws on Niklas Luhmann's theory and method to present transnational social movement organizations as a solution to the problem of increased expectations of global public goods which fail to find adequate accommodation in law. As a concrete example of the limits of law in this respect, it examines the non liquet of the World Court on the question of the illegality of nuclear weapons. The trajectory of anti‐nuclear norms is traced beyond the limits of law to the alternative structure of transnational social movement organizations, and the article presents such organizations as stabilizing increased expectations of global public goods through their recursive decision making and their capacity to continuously project those expectations at the legal and political systems. This generates observations on the concept of ‘global governance ‘, the structural relations between global civil society and international law, and the role of this form of organization in the evolution of the global political system.     

Criminalising encounters: MINUSTAH as a laboratory for armed humanitarian pacification

ABSTRACT

This article assesses the nexus of militarised humanitarian work, governance and violence in the context of the ‘Mission des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation en Haïti’ (MINUSTAH). It draws on empirical fieldwork in Port-au-Prince and Rio de Janeiro. Brazil’s leading role in this UN mission reinforces the country’s ambitions as an emergent economic and political power on a global stage. Brazilian military and civilian actors base their claim of being uniquely qualified for urban ‘pacification’ efforts on a supposedly deeper cultural sensitivity which they assert to have developed in everyday civil–military encounters in the criminalised peripheries of Brazilian cities. By analysing the conflicting narratives in which the military, police and citizens negotiate these encounters, we argue that they allow for a revealing of the contested and often violent forms in which peace enforcement occurs.     

When Weak Groups are Strong: How Low Cohesion Groups Allow Individuals to Act According to Their Personal Absence Tolerance Norms

The study described in this article took place in a commercial production organization and a non-profit social welfare organization (N = 377 and N = 582, respectively). The study investigates how group cohesiveness and absence tolerance separately and in tandem are related to company registered absenteeism rates. As predicted, results support the hypotheses that absence tolerance is positively related with absenteeism and interacts with low group cohesion to result in absenteeism. Contrasting earlier studies that found highly cohesive groups to interact with absence tolerance, results of this study are the first to show that low group cohesiveness interacts significantly with absence tolerance. That is, low cohesive groups counterintuitively are related to the lowest levels of voluntary sickness absence together with intolerant views toward absence. This interaction effect is found independently in two different organizations.