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This thesis studies how sick leave legitimacy is managed in interaction and develops an empirically driven conceptualization of 'legitimacy work'. The thesis applies an ethnomethodological framework that draws on conversation analysis, discursive psychology, and membership categorization analysis. Naturally occurring interaction is examined in two settings: (1) multi-party meetings at the Swedish Social Insurance Agency, in which participants assess and discuss the 'status' of the sick leave and plan for work rehabilitation; (2) peer-based online text-in-interaction in a Swedish forum thread that gathers people on sick leave. The thesis shows how mental states, activities and alternative categories function as resources for legitimacy work. However, such invocations are no straight-forward matter, but impose additional contingencies. It is thus crucial how they are invoked. By detailed analyses of the interaction, with attention to aspects such as lexicality and delivery, the thesis identifies a range of discursive features that manage sick leave legitimacy. Deployed resources are also subtle enough to be deniable as legitimacy work, that is, they also manage the risk of an utterance being seen as invested or biased. While legitimate sick leave is a core concern for Swedish policy-making, administration, and public debate on sick leave, previous research has for the most part been explanatory in orientation, minding legitimacy rather than studying it in its own right. By providing detailed knowledge about the legitimacy work that people on long-term sick leave do as part of both institutional and mundane encounters, the thesis contributes not only new empirical knowledge, but a new kind of empirical knowledge, shedding light on how the complexities of sick leave play out in real-life situations. Traditional sociological approaches have to a significant extent treated legitimacy as an entity with beginnings and ends that in more or less direct ways relate to external norms and cognitive states, or that focus on institutions, authority or government. By contrast, the herein emerging concept 'legitimacy work' understands legitimacy as a locally contingent practicality – a collaborative categorially oriented accomplishment that is integral to the interactional situation.

"This book offers a systematic treatment of the requirements of democratic legitimacy. It argues that democratic procedures are essential for political legitimacy because of the need to respect value pluralism and because of the learning process that democratic decision-making enables. It proposes a framework for distinguishing among the different ways in which the requirements of democratic legitimacy have been interpreted. Peter then uses this framework to identify and defend what appears as the most plausible conception of democratic legitimacy. According to this conception, democratic legitimacy requires that the decision-making process satisfies certain conditions of political and epistemic fairness."--Jacket

Although it is widely appreciated that rights of exit from a legal order can be important and valuable, there currently exists no adequate account of the relationship between exit rights and legitimacy. This Article cures that deficiency by describing the contribution made by exit rights to the legitimacy of a legal order--a contribution that I call the "exit legitimacy" of that legal order--and offers two accounts of its normative significance. On the "thin" account, exit rights operationalize consent by making it more genuine, more ascertainable, and more closely related to relevant acts and relationships of governance; on the "thick" account, exit rights instantiate a value that I call 'political autonomy." The Article offers grounds to think that, while exit legitimacy is salient in legal orders of all kinds, it is particularly significant for international orders and institutions, which often lack the democratic, traditional, and other legitimating resources available to their national equivalents. Finally, to complete the account of exit legitimacy, the Article considers and responds to four of the strongest objections to which it appears vulnerable. It demonstrates that none of these objections convincingly undermines the case for this unique ground of legitimacy, and that each provides useful guidance for promoting exit legitimacy in legal orders of all kinds.

This article provides a conceptual analysis of different uses of the term 'legitimacy'. Rather than attempting to provide a simple 'definition' I argue that the meaning of the concept cannot be understood in terms of a clear reference, but has to be analysed through its links with other concepts within a semantic field. In this way we are also able to 'explain' why at first contradictory uses of the term (designating its 'input' or the 'output' side) are part of its 'grammar'. To that extent attempts at stipulative definitions aiming at an unequivocal sense of the term fundamentally misunderstand the function of this concept within the political discourse.

This Article on Richard Fallon's Law and Legitimacy in the Supreme Court focuses on public acceptance of the Supreme Court's authority, what Fallon calls sociological legitimacy. After setting out Fallon's accounts of legitimacy and constitutional argumentation, the Article looks at public opinion data and political science scholarship on the extent to which the Court's decisions affect public acceptance of the Court. It then turns to the normative question of whether, even if the Court's decisions may undermine its sociological legitimacy, that impact is a legally legitimate factor for the Court to consider. The Article argues that strategic consideration of the Court's public legitimacy can be an appropriate factor in the Justices' decision making, but such consideration may end up actually harming the Court's reputation if undertaken openly and candidly as Fallon would seem to require.

Conventional wisdom maintains that the Chinese Communist Party is upheld by performance-based legitimacy. Yet what about procedural legitimacy? Analyzing national survey data on China, this study finds that governance procedures affect the legitimacy of subnational levels of governing, if not necessarily that of the national level. Good governance contributes to trust in local leaders, while corruption not only detracts from trust in local and regional leaders, it increases the public's willingness to protest. This reality was not well-incorporated into the core legitimacy-building approach adopted during the Hu-Wen era. Despite low priority and constrained governance reforms, the main legitimation strategy in the Hu-Wen era remained focused on performance-as growth and equity-even as the public valued procedural legitimacy. While performance legitimacy and traditional legitimacy are also shown to be important phenomena, this study highlights why these are fragile bases for legitimacy, especially considering rising modernization forces and economic slowdown.