Browsing by Subject "legitimacy"

The study explores why and how is the legitimacy of the mining project in Sokli, Savukoski municipality in North-Eastern Finland contested. The concept and theory of legitimacy is often neglected in research concerning mining and the concepts of acceptance and social license to operate are found in the mainstream of research. The study discusses the possibilities and challenges the theories and concept of legitimacy in the context of mining. Furthermore the Sokli mine is analyzed in the wider context of the expansion of extractive frontier towards perihpheries. This expansion has been desrcibed to be permitted by a new coalition between the state and private corporations. Moreover the new coalition has been linked to a new development paradigm portrayed as (neo-)extractivism. The literature on extractivism has focused strongly to Global South despite the process’ global character. A case study approach is adapted. The data consists of five semi-structured interviews conducted with locals in Savukoski region. Complimenting the interview data, the analysis is extended to four official documents by stakeholders of the possibly forthcoming mine in Sokli. In the light of a diverse combination of legitimacy theory created in this thesis the legitimacy of the Sokli mine is contested primarily on moral grounds. The mine does not fit into the locals’ conception of how the environment ought to be utilized. The mine also makes the development of traditional livelihoods in the area harder. In sum the locals’ vision of the future of the municipality and their conception of development contradicts with the expansion of the extractive industry. Finnish mining legislation is one of the most important structural permitting condition, which in Savukoski is contested and considered illegitimate. On the other hand the mine is supported mainly for it’s possible tax revenue and because it creates jobs. Employmen moreover is a core argument supporting mining in Finland. There have been controversies between estimations and fulfilled revenues and jobs. The environmental disaster and supicious practices by mining authorities in the area were often referenced and the casof Talvivaara had effected attitudes towards mining in Savukoski. The case study demonstrates an exception in the landscape of mostly positive and legitimate attitudes towards mining in Finland. Moreover the global expansion of extractives and the global rush for land have resulted in strong political opposition and mobilization in for example Latin America but not similarly in Finland. The further commodification of nature might in the future lead to political turmoil also in Finland if the legal conditions for mining persist. The larger structural shift away from the Nordic welfare state needs to be further researched in the context of extractive industries.

This thesis examines an open public consultation, Debate on the future of Home Affairs policies, organized by the European Commission in 2013-2014. Moreover, it investigates perceived significance of the consultation, in which several interest organizations took part. Because of its institutional position, The Commission needs input and expertize from interest organizations for both input and output legitimacy aspirations. Moreover, it has developed a consultation regime as part of European Governance. Although prior research exists, relatively little is known about open online consultations. Utiliziing theories of representation and legitimacy, this thesis examines why do interest organizations participate in online consultation, and how and whether are they able to contribute to advance legitimacy in Commission’s decision making processes. To investigate the research problem, semi-structural interviews were conducted in Brussels during spring 2015. The range of respondents consists of a representative of the Commission, and senior officials coming from NGO’s, employers’ interest organizations and trade unions. The interviews are analysed with qualitative content analysis methods, in interaction with the theories of representation and legitimacy. The criteria to assess legitimacy is based on prior research, and consists of responsiveness, representativenes, inclusiveness, transparency, weight of the results and efficacy. Moreover, the analysis is reflected to prior research. Based on the interview data, open online consultation on the future of home affairs policies is perceived as a complementary consultation instument for both the Commission and interest organization. However, interest organizations highlight that although they don’t have high expections in making an impact in open online consultation, participating in them cannot be ignored. Results indicate that when forming a position to online consultation, organizations consult their members, but rarely receive a great deal of input from their members. Interest organizations’ links with their regular members are constant, but in terms of participating in online consultation, the process is Brussels-lead. Moreover, both the Commission and the consultation participants value the consultation culture. Understanding the role of non-electoral representation, and assessing their contribution to democracy or legitimacy is outlined as one of the key research fields in EU studies and this thesis has made a contribution in it. The thesis has also limitations regarding both the data and theoretical frameworks that are to be kept in mind. The interview data consists of individual individual perceptions of respondents and must be treated accordingly. Therefore, far reaching conclusions based on the results ought to be avoided.

This study examines how corporate sustainability discourses are constructed and utilized for building corporate legitimacy during global crises by the Nordic international financial institutions (Nordic Finance Group) through the conceptual lens of strategic corporate sustainability communication and discursive legitimacy theory and held up against the scrutiny of critical discourse analysis. In the analysis, two overarching ways to talk about corporate sustainability were found: Integrative and Instrumental. In practice, instead of more integrated understanding(s) of corporate sustainability, the Nordic IFIs seem to construct most of their argumentative legitimacy schemes on interdiscursive framings of corporate sustainability. Furthermore, the critical discourse analysis revealed that this legitimacy is signalled through ‘Purpose’, ‘Responsibility’, ‘Conformity’, and ‘Capability’ corporate sustainability discourses, respectively. Importantly, by mimicking the crisis specific topical discursive patterns, the Nordic IFIs attempt to seize the communicative opportunities to convey legitimacy narratives and mitigate the risks the sudden societal disturbances might create. The sustainability discourses utilized by the Nordic IFIs seem to advocate neoliberal ideology and global capitalism by building a narrative of action and utility around ´sustainable finance´. The analysis reveals that the Nordic IFIs rely on various co-existing discursive legitimation strategies during crises. The analysis identifies the use of four distinctive discursive legitimation strategies, namely, authorization, rationalization, narrativization and moralization. This study also argues that the concepts of ‘corporate sustainability’ and ‘sustainable finance’ can be seen as discursive legitimation tools. Furthermore, strategic corporate sustainability communication should be seen as a proactive corporate strategy and strategic practice to seek legitimacy.

Taxation has been trending in the financing for development agenda once again since the Monterrey Consensus in 2002. It has been widely stated amongst developing countries, donors and international institutions, that there is a growing importance for enhancing developing countries’ capacity to collect taxes in order to secure financing of SDG’s and reduce dependence on development assistance. Furthermore, it is believed that taxation plays a central role in building democratic and accountable states. Many donor countries, including Finland, have committed to double their support by the year 2020 to improve tax systems in developing countries. Namibia is one of the signatories of the Addis Tax Initiative (ATI), and has committed to step up its revenue collection in accordance with the principles aligned in the ATI. Although it is a popular idea that direct taxing of the citizens can lead to more responsive and accountable governments in developing countries, little research has been conducted that shed light on the complexity of this relationship in practice. The aim of this thesis is to provide insight on how legitimate do Namibian citizens consider the fact that they are being taxed, and which factors influence emergence or lack of this legitimacy. In order to gain understanding on this topic, qualitative thematic interviews have been conducted with Namibians and various tax experts. Three theoretical concepts – fiscal contract proposition, legitimacy and economic citizenship – are applied to the analysis of the interview material to illuminate different aspects that affect the perceived legitimacy of taxation. Although Namibia has a particularly high ratio of tax revenue to GDP in comparison to other sub-Saharan countries and collects a remarkable share of its revenues from direct taxes, it seems that the fiscal contract is unfounded in Namibia. None of the respondents thought that they are directly benefitting from paying taxes and saw very few benefits in paying taxes in general. Particularly the government’s irresponsible spending and corruption were major factors undermining the legitimacy of taxation in Namibia. Taxpayer education and possibilities to influence on the government’s decision-making were considered as very limited. Political culture matters; due to the dominant party system and weak civil society, there seems to prevail an attitude within the Namibian government that they do not need to be accountable toward the taxpaying citizens, as there is no alternative to vote for. The limitations of the fiscal contract proposition in the Namibian context are also discussed considering the demographic, geographic and economic structure, as well as the structure of political decision-making in Namibia. This thesis intends to draw attention to the context-specificity of taxation and its role in shaping state-society relations.

The thesis sheds light on European Union´s attempts to increase the voting turn out and decrease democratic deficit in the European Parliament elections by focusing on Spitzenkandidaten process, a reform implemented the first time in the 2014 elections. Still, in the spring 2018, the Spitzenkandidaten process is under discussion on the EU level whether it should be applied also in the future elections when the new parliament and the new President for Commision will be elected. The research has aimed to produce essential and topical information for the decision makers when making up one´s minds whether to support or not to support the reform. The research takes a closer look on the EU citizens´ views and public opinion on the process. The theories and criticism of earlier research are applied and tested by studying three research questions. The research questions are formulated as follows: 1) To what extent the attitudes towards the European Union explains whether the Spitzenkandidaten process is or is not considered to represent progress for democracy within the EU among the citizens´ of the Union? 2) To what extent the position on the scale of political left and political right explains the attitudes towards the Spitzenkandidaten process among the citizens´ of the Union? 3) To what extent the level of awareness about the processes of decision making in the European Union explains whether the Spitzenkandidaten process is or is not considered to represent progress for democracy within the EU among the citizens´ of the Union? The data studied in this thesis contains the data set of the Parlemeter of the European Parliament (EB/EP 82.4). The data was processed and analyzed with SPSS version 24 (SPSS Inc., Chicago IL). The results of the ordinal regression analysis show that more a person thinks his/her country's membership of the EU is a good thing, the more likely person is willing to think that the Spitzenkandidaten process represents progress for democracy. In addition, image on the EU has statistically significant relation with the attitude towards the Spitzenkandidaten process. The better image of the EU a person has, the more likely person is willing to think that the Spitzenkandidaten process represents progress for democracy. The ordinal regression analysis shows that the citizens` position on the scale of political "left" and "right" does not explain statistically significantly the attitudes towards the Spitzenkandidaten process among the citizens´ of the Union. According to the ordinal regression analysis, the better level of political awareness, both objectively and subjectively measured, the more likely person is willing to think Spitzenkandidaten process to represent progress for democracy. This research and its findings emphasize the role of political awareness as one of key elements to focus on when combating the democratic deficit in the European Union. The finding of this research support the findings in earlier research: Democratic deficit occurs until the EU-citizens understand how the Union effect on their lives (Wass 2014: 37). To be able to form opinions about the innovations like Spitzenkandidaten process in the future, citizens would need to be better informed about the reforms. More focus should be given to the active communication between the EU decision makers and the citizens.