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This article makes three points. First, the police need public support & cooperation to be effective in their order-maintenance role, & they particularly benefit when they have the voluntary support & cooperation of most members of the public, most of the time. Second, such voluntary support & cooperation is linked to judgments about the legitimacy of the police. A central reason people cooperate with the police is that they view them as legitimate legal authorities, entitled to be obeyed. Third, a key antecedent of public judgments about the legitimacy of the police & of policing activities involves public assessments of the manner in which the police exercise their authority. Such procedural-justice judgments are central to public evaluations of the police & influence such evaluations separately from assessments of police effectiveness in fighting crime. These findings suggest the importance of enhancing public views about the legitimacy of the police & suggest process-based strategies for achieving that objective. 64 References. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright 2004.]

Legitimacy affects questions on constitutional design, international political regimes, and specific policy sectors. Although it permeates society at various levels, legitimacy becomes particularly crucial when decisions hold long-term or permanent consequences. In democratic societies, decisions on electoral reform or constitutional amendments typically include various checks and balances to increase the legitimacy of the outcome and similarly, on a smaller scale, resource development also undergoes of series of checks and balances to improve legitimacy. I investigate one such resource development, mineral extraction, to look at key factors of input, throughput, and output legitimacy in a policy sector with long-term or permanent outcomes. If the strength of the input legitimacy (democratic, participatory quality) is high, then a deficit of output legitimacy (decisions, outcomes) can be overlooked –and vice-versa. This interpretation of legitimacy focuses on the decision-making process and the outcomes, but with the active role companies take in mining operations it becomes critical to consider the non-state actors involved in the process. To address this additional piece of this equation, throughput legitimacy is utilized to analyze the effect of relationships in policy decisions. By looking at the quality of interaction, this thesis investigates where throughput fits within the three dimensions of legitimacy in the mining sector. Using interview and survey data from Sweden and Canada, this research in this thesis addresses both theoretical and empirical issues. Theoretically, the effect of multiple actors on the policy process legitimacy of policy processes are explored. Using the input, throughput, and output legitimacy trichotomy provides a basis through which to investigate the changes engendered by different governance arrangements and their effect on legitimacy. When support for policy also depends on activity outside the formal processes of government, the implications for legitimacy change –creating a new theoretical criterion. Empirically, the qualities and factors that affect the legitimacy of a process are identified. The findings of this thesis provide insight on future process designs; understanding the relationship between participation, interaction, and outcomes inresource development processes and the factors critical to legitimacy emerges and endures.

As modes and institutions of governance proliferate beyond the state, legitimacy has become a key concept for assessing, supporting or contesting not only the domestic but also the international political order. Often, however, it tends to be used as an umbrella term encompassing different standards of evaluation. How we are to understand legitimacy beyond the state systemically and to relate the different discussions on legitimacy to each other or to the legitimacy of our political order in its entirety are questions yet to be answered.
Against this background, I aim to systematise the underlying issues and questions discussed in contemporary politics and in academic debates by means of a relational conception of political legitimacy. This conception stresses the importance of a constructive relation between institutions and those subject to them, i.e. between objects and subjects of legitimacy. They form the frame of the norms and processes, implied in conceptions of legitimacy. By foregrounding this relation, it becomes visible that debates on norms and processes, which transcend the state, implicate uncertainties, if not struggles about the subjects and objects of legitimacy. Thus, making explicit and discussing openly who the subjects of legitimacy are and how they are or should be related to the objects of legitimacy constitutes a jurisdictional challenge. This is a challenge we have to face if we accept and apply legitimacy as a valid standard for transnational politics. In addition, determining the subject of legitimacy constitutes a conceptual and political challenge, which becomes especially relevant when debating legitimacy transnationally. While both challenges call for broadening and deepening our understanding of legitimate political orders as well as legitimate second-order decisions, the latter, in particular, constitutes a meta-jurisdictional task when thinking about and debating the legitimacy of political orders.