Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/227137 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Citation: 
[Journal:] European Political Science Review [ISSN:] 1755-7747 [Volume:] 13 [Issue:] 1 [Publisher:] Cambridge University Press [Place:] Cambridge [Year:] 2021 [Pages:] 77-94
Publisher: 
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Abstract: 
Governments routinely justify why the regime over which they preside is entitled to rule. These claims to legitimacy are both an expression of and shape of how a rule is being exercised. In this paper, we introduce new expert-coded measures of regime legitimation strategies (RLS) for 183 countries in the world from 1900 to 2019. Country experts rated the extent to which governments justify their rule based on performance, the person of the leader, rational-legal procedures, and ideology. They were also asked to qualify the ideology of the regime. The main purposes of this paper are to present the conceptual basis for the measure, describe the data, and provide convergent, content, and construct validity tests for new measures. Our measure of regime legitimation performs well in all these three validation tests, most notably, the construct validity exercise which explores commonly held beliefs about leadership under populist rule.
Subjects: 
legitimacy
legitimation strategies
expert survey
populism
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc-sa Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

Files in This Item:





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.