Legitimacy is a contested concept within specific sub-disciplines of political and public administration studies, where different conceptualisations and typologies of legitimacy both complement and compete with each other (for example, see Schmidt, 2013). In addition, it is unclear where this academic debate can be placed in regard to practical discussions of legitimacy, accountability, transparency and openness. This paper will explore the following research question: how has the concept of legitimacy developed in the social sciences literature over time? What are the academic and practical implications of the robustness of legitimacy as a concept?
The main focus of the paper will be on developing a conceptual map of legitimacy and how this differs across disciplines and sub-disciplines. Methodologically, the research will use bibliometric analysis to examine the idea of legitimacy across the social sciences. This will provide a bibliometric database of approximately 15,000 articles (using Web of Science) and 300,000 cited references. These can be used to analyse key research and sources used in conceptualising legitimacy, how the concept travels across disciplines and how research clusters on legitimacy exist statically and have developed over time. By identifying key articles, more fine-grained qualitative analysis of the meaning of the concept of legitimacy can also be developed. The paper is highly relevant, both generally and to the panel topic, in two ways. First, it will provide insight into how a concept develops, grows and spreads academically and across disciplines. This allows for an assessment of the robustness of this concept, with bibliometrics providing a quantitative approach to understanding the breadth and depth of literature on legitimacy. Second, it will provide insight into new areas into which the concept is moving, thus highlighting where innovative approaches to conceptualisation may be found and how academic work on legitimacy can be linked to practical applications of the concept.
Schmidt, Vivien A. (2013). Democracy and legitimacy in the European Union revisited: Input, output and ‘throughput’. Political Studies, 61, 2-22.
