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Abstract
This introduction to the double special issue on the theme of rebels and legitimacy aims to set out the parameters for the discussion. It looks at legitimacy as a concept and at legitimation as a process. To date most of the literature on legitimacy has focused on the state. However, rebel groups such as insurgents, terrorists, warlords and guerrillas have all had claims, and continue to claim, legitimacy as well. How and when are these rebels seen as legitimate actors? Existing suggestions of rebel legitimacy focus heavily on state models of social order and the social contract. This first contribution discusses how to conceptualize legitimacy and how to make it operational. A two-pronged approach, borrowing heavily from Max Weber, is proposed. Legitimacy is investigated based on beliefs and belief systems about what is considered legitimate. This is combined with practices whereby legitimacy is enacted, copied and emulated by the population the rebels claim to represent.
Acknowledgements:
The author would like to thank Leiden University’s profile area on Political Legitimacy for the funding awarded to the project on ‘Counter-Societies and the Resources of Legitimacy’. The double special journal issue is the first product of this project. Furthermore, the project team consisting of Jose Carlos Aguiar, Rodrigo Peña and Karla Medrano have provided much appreciated feedback on these arguments, as have the participants of the workshop ‘From Disorder to Order: Conflict and the Resources of Legitimacy’, held on 20–21 October 2016 at Leiden University. A final word of thanks goes to Stijn van Hooff who as research assistant helped to initially develop some of the ideas on which the project is based.
Notes
1. Aidid and Ruhela, The Preferred Future Development in Somalia.
2. United Nations Security Council, “UNSC S-PV.4351.”
3. Chesterman, You, the People; Wallis, “A Liberal-local Hybrid Peace Project in Action?” 735–61.
4. Mac Ginty, “Indigenous Peace-making versus the Liberal Peace,” 154.
5. Schaar, “Legitimacy in the Modern State,” 104.
6. Beetham, The Legitimation of Power, 5, emphasis in original.
7. Tyler, “Psychological Perspectives on Legitimacy and Legitimation,” 375.
8. Barker, Political Legitimacy and the State, 11.
9. Finnemore and Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change,” 887–917.
10. Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization.
11. Beetham, The Legitimation of Power.
12. Fossen, Political Legitimacy and the Pragmatic Turn.
13. Beetham, The Legitimation of Power, 10.
14. Ibid., 11. Emphasis added.
15. Ibid., 15–16.
16. Moore, “Legitimation as a Process”; Lentz, “The Chief, the Mine Captain and the Politician,” 46–67.
17. Sikor and Lund, “Access and Property,” 1–22.
18. Marquez, “The Irrelevance of Legitimacy.”
19. Duyvesteyn and Frerks, “Reconsidering Rebel Governance.”
20. Kasfir, “Rebel Governance,’ 21.
21. Schlichte and Schneckener, “Armed Groups and the Politics of Legitimacy,” 417.
22. Dahl, Modern Political Analysis, 52.
23. Wrong, Power, 86.
24. Barker, Political Legitimacy and the State, 4.
25. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War.
26. Wrong, Power; Lake, “Building Legitimate States After Civil War,” 29–51; Tyler, “Psychological Perspectives on Legitimacy and Legitimation,” 375–400.
27. Olson, “Dictatorship, Democracy and Development”; Kasfir, “Rebel Governance.”
28. See note 21 above.
29. Thornhill, “Towards a Historical Sociology of Constitutional Legitimacy,” 165.
30. Claessen, “Changing Legitimacy,” 25. Emphasis in original.
31. Beetham, The Legitimation of Power; Barker Legitimating Identities; 2001; Thornhill, “Towards a historical sociology of constitutional legitimacy.”
32. Barker, Legitimating Identities.
33. Schlichte, “With the State Against the State?” 248.
34. Schlichte and Schneckener, “Armed Groups and the Politics of Legitimacy,” 420.
35. Föster, “Dialogue Directe,” 204.
36. Suchman, “Managing Legitimacy,” 571–610.
37. Lake, “Building Legitimate States After Civil War,” 29–51; Lake, Building Legitimate States After Civil Wars; Levi et al., “Conceptualizing Legitimacy,” 354–75; Levi and Sacks, “Achieving Good Government”; Rothstein, “Creating Political Legitimacy,” 311–30.
38. See note 21 above.
39. Mampilly, “Performing the Nation-State,” 83.
40. See note 21 above.
41. Ibid., 417.
42. Ibid., 417.
43. Malthaner, “Violence, Legitimacy, and Control,” 425–45.
44. Migdal, “Researching the State,” 190, emphasis in original.
45. Gerdes, “The Interplay of Domestic Legitimation and Foreign Relations,” 446–64; Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States AD 990–1992; Krasner, Sovereignty, Organized Hypocrisy; Beetham, The Legitimation of Power.
46. Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States AD 990–1992.
47. Krasner, Sovereignty, Organized Hypocrisy.
48. See note 11 above.