Methods to observe empirical legitimacy

Three different methods have been used to measure empirical legitimacy: public opinion research (the attitudinal dimension), the observation of affirmative political action or contention (the behavioral dimension), and analysis of public communication (the communicative dimension). These methods should be considered as complementary rather than competing as each of these methods has its particular strengths and weaknesses (Schmidtke & Schneider 2012: 229).

Public opinion research has been broadly used during the last decades as a tool for analyzing the legitimacy of western democracies. It submerges into legitimacy beliefs through surveys that ask citizens about their support for a political regime and their

evaluation of authorities.⁴⁵ It is assumed that support derives from the individual evaluation of greater or lesser difference between the norms and demands of citizens, and the perceived reality (Westle 2007: 115). In this perspective, support, and more specifically legitimacy, is conceptualized as a quantitatively measureable attribute of political orders or institutions, and is operationalized as the aggregate of individual responses to survey questions (Schneider et al. 2010: 20). Apart from measuring legitimacy attitudes, public opinion research also tries to shed light on motives and criteria for them (Westle 2007: 115). It has been applied in regularly conducted official public opinion surveys such as the Eurobarometer (Schneider et al. 2010: 19).

Probably its biggest advantage is that indicators are easy to quantify; results take the form of numbers which renders possible a comparison of legitimacy attitudes between countries, between different societal groups, or at different points of time. Thus, over the years research has generated an abundance of highly reliable data on individual legitimacy beliefs especially as regards the democracies of the Western world (Schneider et al. 2010: 19). However, the attitudinal approach also has some shortcomings. As regards the operationalization of the method, it is highly complex to differentiate between genuine legitimacy convictions and more specific output-oriented attitudes and evaluations of day-to-day politics. As a result, studies have often confounded these two variables (Westle 1989). Apart from questions of operationalization, the public survey method does not rely on natural data, i.e. real-world legitimation, but collects data in a decontextualized encounter between the interviewer and the respondent that is “far removed from the actual practices that underpin the legitimation of political systems” (Schneider et al. 2010: 24). A typical questionnaire preselects certain objects and criteria for legitimacy beliefs which respondents are asked to evaluate; this obscures the fact that some people may not hold genuine legitimacy beliefs at all, and impedes the detection of unexpected legitimacy criteria as well as the consideration of the concrete phrasing and justification of legitimacy beliefs (ibid.: 22).

A second method which has been broadly used is the study of political action. From this perspective, legitimacy is socially constructed through actions of consent, while it may

45 For an overview over conceptualizations and the operationalization of political support, as well as problems concerning its measurement and interpretation see Westle (2007).

equally be weakened through dissent. Various forms of conventional and unconventional behavior as well as political rituals qualify as indicators of legitimacy.

Thus, voting or paying taxes, lobbying and obeying the law – “the normal actions of citizens” – or rather choosing not to do these things might be interpreted as indicators of legitimacy or of the challenging and withdrawal of legitimacy respectively (Barker 2007:

32). Moreover, the repertoires of contention of social movements such as demonstrations or other forms of manifest protest and unconventional collective action should be taken into consideration as indicators (Haunss 2007: 171). One advantage of this approach is that many of the respective indicators are easy to observe and even quantifiable (Schneider et al. 2010: 25).

However, behavioral indicators of legitimacy are often ambivalent. It is highly difficult to separate legitimacy from coercion and self-interest, as the observable results, namely compliance, are identical (Hurd 1999: 390). Thus, political action might be triggered by completely different motivations which may not be tied to normative criteria, i.e.

legitimacy evaluations at all. Moreover, one cannot assign an unequivocally legitimating or delegitimating character to most forms of political action or contention. For instance, abstention from voting might be interpreted as an indicator for a legitimacy deficit of a certain government, but also as the positive evaluation that all possible candidates equally satisfy one’s preferences (Schneider et al. 2010: 28–29). The decline of the European referendum by French voters in 2005 has been interpreted not only as a sign of missing legitimacy, but also as evidence of strong European citizenship (Barker 2007:

31). Moreover, observing political action fails to tell us which specific elements of political orders are the objects of (de-)legitimation. However, it may be very relevant to know whether actual dissatisfaction is tied to a specific event or decision, or whether it refers to the functioning of an institution at a more general level (Schneider et al. 2010:

27). An analysis of political behavior thus seems especially promising when actions are accompanied by discursive strategies, such as in many mobilizations by social movements. When social movements verbally frame their actions, they often use legitimation and delegitimation to make their point (Haunss 2007: 169). These discursive strategies allow for a better interpretation of actions.

More recently, growing attention has been paid to the communicative dimension of legitimacy as a third method to study empirical legitimacy. This research strategy focusses on the role of public communication in the creation and maintenance of

legitimacy. The underlying assumption is that legitimacy is essentially a linguistic phenomenon; in other words, legitimacy is constructed through legitimation discourses (Schneider et al. 2010: 32). In the same vein, Steffek (2003: 263) states: “‘Reasoning’ or

‘giving reasons’ is the communicative process that legitimates governance.” The discourse perspective highlights discursive interaction between the rulers and the ruled as an expression of legitimacy, thus strengthening a relational understanding of legitimacy. Moreover, it is argued that in any legitimation discourse a set of arguments and interpretations exists on which individuals draw in forming their own legitimacy beliefs, and to which they contribute (Schneider et al. 2010: 35). Collective norms and individual perceptions thus mutually constitute each other. Research allows considering the social context in which statements are made. Thus, i. a. discursive coalitions which bring forward similar arguments and discursive elites which dominate legitimation discourses may be identified (ibid.: 34).

The main disadvantages of this approach are a result of its comparatively recent development. Public communication analysis is a comparatively intricate endeavor for which no standard procedures exist so far. This results in a lack of comparable data (Schmidtke & Schneider 2012: 237–238). The necessary sampling of texts also confronts the researcher with challenges regarding representativeness and generalizability (ibid.:

238). Additionally, it has been argued that discourse analysis fails in distinguishing between strategic and moral arguing. In some cases, the motive for engaging in discursive delegitimation may lie in general dissatisfaction or in a conscious utilitarian assessment of what furthers one’s interests, rather than in notions about what is just and fair (Mulligan 2006: 366–367). Two reasons weaken this last critique: first, (de-)legitimation, to be successful, must appeal and allude to collective norms. Independent of the underlying motivations, legitimation statements thus tell us about collective normative benchmarks. Second, as argued above, legitimation confers legitimacy. This remains true as long as the motivations behind legitimation statements are not openly challenged as amoral, which in turn would make it easy for the researcher to detect them. Thus, the “‘giving of reasons’ is an important political act, notwithstanding the fact that such statements might be disingenuous” (Hurd 1999: 391).

In this dissertation, I have opted for a combination of analyzing public communication and behavior. Both methods look at processes of legitimation – understood as actions of seeking and granting legitimacy in authority relationships – as they take place in the real

world. Legitimation has the advantage that – in contrast to legitimacy – it can be observed (Schmidtke & Schneider 2012), and it allows for insights into how legitimacy is being constructed. Legitimation comes in two forms: discourse and action. I argue that we only get a complete picture of legitimation when we take into account both dimensions. Both methods complement each other, and the results gained from one method may serve to countercheck results obtained from the other, thus allowing for more solid conclusions. For example, to detect whether constituencies are only paying lip service, it might be interesting to also analyze their actions. While this might be too time-consuming in other projects, it seems fairly viable when researching the legitimacy of a limited number of institutions. In other words, what I plan to do is to “connect the discursive level of verbal claims and argumentations with the interactional level of […]

mobilizations” (Haunss 2007: 162).

In turn, I abstain from (additionally) relying on public opinion research mainly for practical reasons: On the one hand, public opinion research has been developed in the context of legitimacy research on the political systems of nation states, especially in pluralist democracies; and only in very few cases has it been transferred to the global sphere (Huckel Schneider 2009: 149). Thus, research cannot rely on data which is generated by other institutions such as the Eurobarometer by the European Commission. Moreover, it is a quite different task to assess the legitimacy of transnational institutions. The field-tested survey questions and indicators do not work in this case, and developing indicators and a questionnaire would have been time-consuming and complex. At the same time, due to the specific context in which data would have been generated, it would not have been easily comparable to existing data sets. Moreover, as in any case I conducted interviews with central representatives of the field which also allowed some insight into attitudes (see Appendix), the expected limited additional insights of a full-fledged opinion survey did not seem to warrant the extra effort.