Legitimacy: problems of conceptualization and measurement

A growing body of literature acknowledges the importance of legitimacy and contributes to the conceptualization of the term. Also, some progress has been achieved concerning the measurement of legitimacy. However, these approaches focus almost exclusively on the perceptions of those who grant (or withdraw) legitimacy. In contrast, the strategic procurement of legitimacy – called legitimation – is hardly ever explored in a systematic way.

The project introduces an analytical approach which identifies six different modalities of legitimation. It discusses the particularities of each modality. It then identifies legitimation profiles characteristic for specific regime types. Subsequently, it discusses different ways of measuring legitimation.