The relevance of legitimation – a new framework for analysis

ABSTRACT

The legitimacy of political orders is an important reference point in political analysis, but the concept is difficult to operationalize and measure – particularly in those countries where legitimacy is critical, i.e. cases of political transformation, non-democratic rule and high state fragility. To be successful, legitimation (the process by which legitimacy is procured) has to fulfil two functions: relate demands for legitimation to government performance (the ‘demand cycle’), and relate legitimacy claims issued by the rulers to behavioural patterns of the ruled (the ‘supply cycle’). Looking at the recent academic debate, the article finds that empirical research has largely ignored the demand cycle, while attempts to explore the relationships underlying the supply cycle tend to suffer from misconceptions of basic terms. The article proposes a framework for empirical enquiry that addresses both shortcomings.     

Place of registration and place of residence: the non-linear detrimental impact of transportation cost on electoral participation

The French case offers a very valuable opportunity for testing the impact of transportation costs on the individual decision of turnout, because in France, voters can be registered in a municipality other than their residential municipality. Voters with a non-residential registration have to travel great distances in order to cast their ballots compared to voters with a residential registration. Our empirical analysis, based on a unique dataset extracted from the French Census database, uses a selection model to estimate the probability of voting of an individual voter with a non-residential electoral registration and assesses the impact of the distance to the voting municipality on this probability. The analysis shows that distance and in fine the cost of voting have a highly significant impact on electoral turnout: at the median distance (22 km), a 1% increase in distance induces a reduction of 0.01% in turnout in the first round of the 2012 French presidential election and 0.007% in the second round. Moreover, the impact of distance is non-linear: an increase in distance for voters with a short distance to travel is more detrimental to turnout than the same increase for voters who travel great distances. The results are robust to several checks, ranging from analyzing other elections to changes in the estimation method. This analysis provides new insights in the issue of voting cost and its impact on electoral turnout.     

Lost Cause-ism in American Southerners’ News Writing About the First Russo-Chechen War (1994–1996)

In this article, I analyze how writers for newspapers in the American South used a culturally salient story about the past—the Myth of the Lost Cause—to make sense of an event in the present—the First Russo-Chechen War (1994–1996). I take a Proppian approach, according to which a story’s plot is defined as a set of functions, or generalized acts that influence course of the story’s action. Stories that appear to be different thus can share the same plot, inasmuch as they are composed of the same functions. I argue that, to construct narratives about the First Russo-Chechen War, Southern news writers substituted concrete actions from the conflict in Chechnya into the familiar functions that make up the plot of the Lost Cause. I use a combination of discourse analysis and qualitative content analysis to show how those functions appear in five Southern news accounts of the First Russo-Chechen War.     

Testing responsive regulation in regulatory enforcement

The policy ideals of responsive regulation have been developed on the basis of substantial empirical evidence. The overall formulation of responsive regulation theory itself, however, has rarely been empirically tested. This article sets out the theoretical concept of responsive regulation in the context of business regulation enforcement and discusses how we might operationalize and empirically measure it. We develop two alternative theoretical interpretations of responsive regulatory enforcement: “tit for tat” responsive regulation and “restorative justice” responsive regulation. We then measure business firms' perceptions of the reactions and counter‐reactions of a regulatory enforcement agency throughout the investigation and enforcement process. We find little evidence of tit for tat responsiveness actually occurring in practice. To the extent that tit for tat responsiveness does exist, we find a small amount of evidence that it has the hypothesized effects on behavior but not on attitudes. We find clearer evidence of restorative justice responsiveness having the hypothesized effects on attitudes but not on behavior.     

Transitional Justice, Interdisciplinarity and the State of the 'Field' or 'Non-Field'

¹Transitional justice appears to be an established field ofscholarship connected to a field of practice on how to dealwith past human rights abuses in societies in transition. Theoriginal focus of transitional justice discourse was that humanrights law requires accountability in transitions, rooted inthe discipline of law. Over time, this focus has been expandedto include a much broader range of mechanisms, goals and inquiriesacross a range of disciplines. In order to probe the currentstate of the field, this article argues against the currentconception of transitional justice as a praxis-based interdisciplinaryfield. It suggests that there is a hidden politics to how transitionaljustice has been constructed as an interdisciplinary field thatobscures tensions between the range of practices and goals thatit now incorporates.     

Identification of a female murder victim found in Burgenland,Austria in 1993

In 1993, the skeletal remains of a female corpse were found in Burgenland, Austria. Initial identification of the approximately 25–35-year-old female appeared impossible, but the case was reopened 23 years later. By applying biogeochemical isotope methods to her body tissues, the geographical origin of the unknown corpse could be predicted. The results of the C, N, S, H, Sr, and Pb isotope analyses suggested that the female did not originate from Europe and most likely spent her youth in the northern Caribbean. Using these findings, the police were able to identify the woman within 2 weeks. The female came from the Dominican Republic and resided in Austria for only a short period before she was murdered. This case shows that isotope biogeochemistry investigations can provide the police with crucial information that enables unknown persons to be identified.

Keypoints

• C-N-S-H and Sr-Pb isotope analyses were applied to human remains associated with a cold case.
• It was possible to determine the region of origin of the unknown deceased individual as the northern Caribbean.
• After 23 years, the murder victim was successfully identified.

     

Book reviews

The Afterlife of Property: Domestic Security and the Victorian Novel, by Jeff Nunokawa. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1994.

Review of Scenes of Seduction: Prostitution, Hysteria and Reading Difference in Nineteenth‐Century France, by Jann Matlock (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994)     

No future? Narrating the past in Bosnian history museums

Recent unrest and the 2014 elections have corroborated the impression of Bosnia as a failing state, one that is constantly being undermined by the three-way impasse between constituent ethnic groups of Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs. Major history museums in Bosnia, however, provide a more complex picture. This paper analyzes museums and exhibitions on twentieth-century history in Sarajevo, Banja Luka, and Jajce, with regard to their narrative strategies, their aesthetic appearance, and the commemorative practices in their respective locations. From this perspective, the use of history in building group identity in Bosnia is far from coherent. Although museums are one means to assert firmly entrenched national identities both old and new, they compete at the same time with nostalgic commemorations of socialist Yugoslavia and with equally nostalgic references to the Austrian occupation. Various civic groups struggle to assert their visions of belonging, mostly with rather modest financial means. Based on these findings, this paper will explore not only the underlying assumptions of what history and, in particular, museums are all about, but also how visions of the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina are inscribed in these uses of history – if indeed they are.