Legitimacy as a Social Process
To gain an in-depth understanding of legitimacy as a general social process, we review contemporary approaches to legitimacy within two areas of sociology: social psychology and organizations. A comparison of these distinct approaches allows us to explain the process, both in implicit and explicit ways at different levels of analysis, through which a social object is construed as legitimate. This comparison also suggests four stages in the process by which new social objects, both individual (worthy/unworthy individuals) and collective (organizational forms), gain legitimation: innovation, local validation, diffusion, and general validation. We then show how legitimation of the status quo—that is, the acceptance of widespread consensual schemas/beliefs in the larger society—often fosters the stability of nonoptimal actions and practices that are created as a result of these new individual and collective social objects. Finally, we discuss how consensual beliefs such as status beliefs and cultural capital fuel the reproduction of inefficiency and inequality in groups and organizations.
Psychological Perspectives on Legitimacy and Legitimation
Legitimacy is a psychological property of an authority, institution, or social arrangement that leads those connected to it to believe that it is appropriate, proper, and just. Because of legitimacy, people feel that they ought to defer to decisions and rules, following them voluntarily out of obligation rather than out of fear of punishment or anticipation of reward. Being legitimate is important to the success of authorities, institutions, and institutional arrangements since it is difficult to exert influence over others based solely upon the possession and use of power. Being able to gain voluntary acquiescence from most people, most of the time, due to their sense of obligation increases effectiveness during periods of scarcity, crisis, and conflict. The concept of legitimacy has a long history within social thought and social psychology, and it has emerged as increasingly important within recent research on the dynamics of political, legal, and social systems.
Operationalizing Legitimacy
Legitimacy is widely invoked as a condition, cause, and outcome of other social phenomena, yet measuring legitimacy is a persistent challenge. In this article, I synthesize existing approaches to conceptualizing legitimacy across the social sciences to identify widely agreed upon definitional properties. I then build on these points of consensus to develop a generalizable approach to operationalization. Legitimacy implies specific relationships among three empirical elements: an object of legitimacy, an audience that confers legitimacy, and a relationship between the two. Together, these empirical elements constitute a dyad (i.e., a single unit consisting of two nodes and a tie). I identify three necessary conditions for legitimacy— expectations, assent, and conformity—that specify how elements of the dyad interact. I detail how these conditions can be used to empirically establish legitimacy (and illegitimacy), distinguishing it from dissimilar phenomena that often appear similar empirically. Followed to its logical conclusion, this operationalization has novel implications for understanding the effects of legitimacy. I discuss these implications, and how they inform debates over the relevance of legitimacy as an explanation for socially significant outcomes.
The myth of meritocracy: who really gets what they deserve?
The long read: Sorting people by ‘merit’ will do nothing to fix inequality
The Paradox of Redistribution and Strategies of Equality: Welfare State Institutions, Inequality, and Poverty in the Western Countries
Debates on how to reduce poverty and inequality have focused on two controversial questions: Should social policies be targeted to low-income groups or be universal? Should benefits be equal for all or earnings-related? Traditional arguments in favor of targeting and flat-rate benefits, focusing on the distribution of the money actually transferred, neglect three policy-relevant considerations: (1) The size of redistributive budgets is not fixed but reflects the structure of welfare state institutions. (2) A trade-off exists between the degree of low-income targeting and the size of redistributive budgets. (3) Outcomes of market-based distribution are often more unequal than those of earnings-related social insurance programs. We argue that social insurance institutions are of central importance for redistributive outcomes. Using new data, our comparative analyses of the effects of different institutional types of welfare states on poverty and inequality indicate that institutional differences lead to unexpected outcomes and generate the paradox of redistribution: The more we target benefits at the poor and the more concerned we are with creating equality via equal public transfers to all, the less likely we are to reduce poverty and inequality.
If you rise, I fall: Equality is prevented by the misperception that it harms advantaged groups
Nine preregistered studies ( n = 4197) demonstrate that advantaged group members misperceive equality as necessarily harming their access to resources and inequality as necessarily benefitting them. Only when equality is increased within their ingroup, instead of between groups, do advantaged group members accurately perceive it as unharmful. Misperceptions persist when equality-enhancing policies offer broad benefits to society or when resources, and resource access, are unlimited. A longitudinal survey of the 2020 U.S. voters reveals that harm perceptions predict voting against actual equality-enhancing policies, more so than voters’ political and egalitarian beliefs. Finally two novel-groups experiments reveal that advantaged participants’ harm misperceptions predict voting for inequality-enhancing policies that financially hurt them and against equality-enhancing policies that financially benefit them. Misperceptions persist even after an intervention to improve decision-making. This misperception that equality is necessarily zero-sum may explain why inequality prevails even as it incurs societal costs that harm everyone. , Advantaged groups misperceive equality as harming their resource access, which predicts voting against equality policies.
Social system
In sociology, a social system is the patterned network of relationships constituting a coherent whole that exist between individuals, groups, and institutions. It is the formal structure of role and status that can form in a small, stable group. An individual may belong to multiple social systems at once; examples of social systems include nuclear family units, communities, cities, nations, college campuses, religions, corporations, and industries. The organization and definition of groups within a social system depend on various shared properties such as location, socioeconomic status, race, religion, societal function, or other distinguishable features.
Meritocracy: the great delusion that ingrains inequality | Jo Littler
From Theresa May to Donald Trump, our leaders sell it as a utopian system of fairness – but ‘merit’ has been manipulated to privilege the wealthy
The Psychology of Legitimacy: A Relational Perspective on Voluntary Deference to Authorities
People within organized groups often internalize their feelings of obligation to obey group rules and the decisions of group authorities. They believe that group authorities and rules are legitimate and, hence, entitled to be obeyed. Because of this belief, group members voluntarily accept and obey rules and decisions from group authorities. This review draws on evidence from studies of authorities in political, legal, managerial, educational, and family settings to explore why people view as legitimate and voluntarily defer to group authorities. Two theories about legitimacy are contrasted: resource-based theories, represented by instrumental models, and identification based theories, represented by the relational model. The findings provide strong support for the existence of a relational component of legitimacy, suggesting that authorities draw an important part of their legitimacy from their social relationship with group members. The findings also show that there is an instrumental component to legitimacy. Hence, the psychology of legitimacy involves both instrumental and relational elements.
Fairness is what the powerful ‘can get away with’ study shows
The willingness of those in power to act fairly depends on how easily others can collectively push back against unfair treatment
Lo and behold, the bourgeois gaslighting machine! - Lemmy
This thread is an exemplary case of how “we” (that is, liberal-minded minions uncritically parroting the talking points of the bourgeoisie) inhibit any social and class consciousness from sprouting in the proletarian mind. The original post, titled “Nothing worth having in life comes easily”, goes as such: >Yes it does. Yes it fucking does. For SOME people. >Some people were born into rich families. Money is worth having, and money came easily to them. >[…] >Some people are born white. Not being discriminated against must be nice. >I could go on. You get the fucking point. >Why do people on Reddit keep repeating this blatantly false platitude? There are countless of examples of people in this world who didn’t have to work for shit, yet many things came easily to them. As you might expect, the comments went on the offense to discredit OP’s sentiments, in different manners. The first category of comments involves invoking “life” as some natural order of things which is beyond human control, ergo it must be accepted. >I get what you mean life is unfair sometimes. >Life sucks and then we die. >Life is 100% unfair. Full stop. Get used to it. This defeatist attitude just dissuades any doubts in one’s mind regarding the viability of the current system. The second category includes comments that deny any exteriority to OP’s sentiments and focus on their own personal ailments: >Some people get so fixated on being victims of society that they seem to give away their own power to change their lives. >This post is somewhat delusional. Highly suggest to not compare your insides to other people’s outsides or you’ll always come away with a distorted perception. There are so many false assumptions in here I don’t know where to start but if you wanna pity yourself and put others on pedestals - knock yourself out. >Being mad and jealous, letting negative emotions permeate through every facet of your mind will make it better. Keep going. They’re basically saying: “the world is fine, the problem is you; and you should feel bad for feeling otherwise.” The third category involves comments that dilute the importance of wealth and socioeconomic status: >Every privilege you mentioned comes with its own set of problems. >It might not seem like it, but everybody has the same amount of issues as everyone else. >Dating, money, and privilege aren’t the meaning of life. An obvious case of blatantly gaslighting people struggling to survive when they realize the unfairness of capitalism. And an honourable mentions goes to those talking down white supremacy and systemic racism! >Agreed except for the white comment. Every race gets discriminated against, just in different ways. >Oh good more hatred of White people this will surely solve this loser’s personal problems. >Oh, if you are born white don’t worry, there will be plenty of people who will discriminate against you. One of the major political parties sanctions it. It’s socially acceptable. There’s plenty of people like you. You get the point. >Well white people get discriminated against and this is all very victim mentality based. There are many other arguments, but you get the point. They all share the same motive: the annihilation of any hint of social consciousness. It is tragic because, more often than not, it is the oppressed who are gaslighting themselves and not the bourgeois and capitalists. The latter outsource even the labor of propagating their foul logic and arguments to the proletariat.
Young people deserve better – Victorian Socialists
Young people struggle to find secure work and decent, affordable housing. We support the right to vote at 16, full adult pay, and liveable welfare payments.
Does individual empowerment trade off against civilizational empowerment?
I'd tacitly assumed they'd be positively correlated, but not so sure anymore
Opposing racism – we’re stronger together – Victorian Socialists
Racism serves the rich and powerful by dividing workers. We’re fighting for working-class unity against racism so we can build a better society for everyone.
