The Nexus of Policy Legitimacy and Crisismanship Performance: Examining the Harmonizing Role of Value-Based Decision Making

Crisismanship performance is an acid test of governance. Legitimate policies can significantly contribute to the crisismanship performance because they can ensure the willing obedience of public stakeholders and citizens. Therefore, a key research question is how a government can frame crises and pertinent policies to ensure its legitimacy and crisismanship performance? To legitimate policies, this study proposes a contingent model which is based on matching the legitimation strategies (i.e., input, throughput, and output) with different types of value decisions involved in a crisis (i.e., taboo, routine, and tragic trade-offs). This study provides three main propositions. First, in the most salient crises, characterized by taboo trade-offs, the vital role of the input legitimacy (i.e., the responsiveness of a government) can rule out the throughput (i.e., the quality of policy-making process) and the output legitimacy (i.e., the quality of policy outcome). Second, regarding the moderately salient crises, characterized by tragic trade-offs, the throughput legitimacy plays a significant role in determining the crisismanship performance. Finally, in the least salient crises, characterized by routine trade-offs, the output legitimacy can make up for the lack of input and throughput legitimacy.