Exploring citizens’ judgments about the legitimacy of public policies on refugees

Abstract

Journal of Communication ManagementExploring citizens' judgments about the legitimacy of public policies on refugees: in search of clues for governments' communication and public diplomacy strategies Maria Jose Canel, Evandro Samuel Oliveira, Vilma Luoma-aho, Article information:To cite this document: Maria Jose Canel, Evandro Samuel Oliveira, Vilma Luoma-aho, "Exploring citizens' judgments about the legitimacy of public policies on refugees: in search of clues for governments ' For AuthorsIf you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. Exploring citizens' judgments about the legitimacy of public policies on refugees:In search of clues for governments' communication and public diplomacy strategies ABSTRACT Purpose To introduce a theoretical frame regarding the meaning of legitimacy as an intangible asset of the public sector; to test a way of operationalizing legitimacy typologies that allows exploring and comparing how citizens from two countries evaluate the legitimacy of public policies; to suggest implications for governments' legitimacy-building strategies in shared international crisis, such as the refugees coming from the Syrian-region.Design/methodology/approach Building on Suchman's typology, it was defined and categorized different types of legitimacy into concrete measurable, communication related statements concerning consequential, procedural, structural and personal. For the illustrative example, four focus groups were conducted in two different European societies as a mean to have two poles of comparison.Findings The paper reports current understanding of legitimacy by citizens, discusses how different legitimacy types might demand different communication and public diplomacy approaches. The basis for hypothesis for further research on how governments should build legitimacy during emerging societal issues such as immigration policies is set. Practical implicationsIt proposes a typology and its operationalization, discusses how communication might shape legitimacy and profiles the challenge governments have in building it. Within a public diplomacy context, it brings clues for new strategies to the challenge of explaining policies on international crisis combining the tension of domestic with foreign publics.Origi...

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“…Moreover, it is worth noting that institutional legitimacy mediates the association between government-citizen relationships and policy acceptance. Extending the findings of previous studies [33,36,37,39], the findings of this study suggest that shaping favorable relationships between the government and citizens can generate positive citizen perceptions of a government organization in terms of institutional legitimacy, which in turn, may transfer into the formation of better attitudes toward public policy created by the organization. Considering that legitimacy is an operational resource for the functioning of organizations [36], it is necessary to pay special attention to the strategic management approach to build and improve government legitimacy among constituencies.…”

“…That is, nurturing a relational capital composed of trust, accountability, collaboration, cooperation, a sense of belonging, satisfaction, feelings of shared control, and commitment among constituencies may positively affect institutional legitimacy. Nevertheless, existing studies have not yet specifically investigated whether institutional legitimacy plays a mediating role [33,36,37,39]. Given the preceding arguments on the role of symmetrical and transparent government communication initiatives and government-citizen relationships relating to institutional legitimacy and policy acceptance, this study posited the following hypotheses: Hypothesis 5 (H5).…”

“…Suchman defined legitimacy as "a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions" [35] (p. 576). This conceptual definition indicates that legitimacy is an "operational resource" of the organization that is essential to the functioning of organizations [36] because organizational practices can develop, strengthen, maintain, or even destroy legitimacy [37,38]. As an organization continuously interacts with its audience to maintain its legitimacy, this view of legitimacy also emphasizes a degree of fit between the attributes of the organization and its environment [35,36].…”

“…Meanwhile, a few studies have noted that as a critical strategy to maintain legitimacy, organizations should communicate with their external constituents to reflect environmental pressures [37,39,40]. However, it takes time to develop and extend perceived legitimacy [8].…”

“…Based on the arguments above, we predicted that institutional legitimacy plays a mediating role in the association between government-citizen relations and policy acceptance. Previous studies have shown that constructing a quality government-citizen relationship and building institutional legitimacy have significant associations with the enhancement of citizens' acceptance of government intentions and actions [33,36,37,39]. That is, nurturing a relational capital composed of trust, accountability, collaboration, cooperation, a sense of belonging, satisfaction, feelings of shared control, and commitment among constituencies may positively affect institutional legitimacy.…”