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Legitimacy crises in embedded democracies
Recently, many comparativists and democratic theorists have argued that democracy is in imminent peril, even in countries that are thought to be its strongholds. But theorists like Andrew Gamble, Wolfgang Streeck, and David Runciman suggest that some democracies are too embedded to collapse. Instead...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Palgrave Macmillan UK
2022
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9462065/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/s41296-022-00588-z |
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author | Studebaker, Benjamin M. |
author_facet | Studebaker, Benjamin M. |
author_sort | Studebaker, Benjamin M. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Recently, many comparativists and democratic theorists have argued that democracy is in imminent peril, even in countries that are thought to be its strongholds. But theorists like Andrew Gamble, Wolfgang Streeck, and David Runciman suggest that some democracies are too embedded to collapse. Instead, they argue these democracies are experiencing long-term structural crises. This article explains how this alternative kind of crisis works. It conceives of legitimacy crises as ‘chronic crises’ in which democratic procedures are contested even as the democratic political system is affirmed. In these crises, democracies are threatened by distortion and deadlock rather than death. The article gives a precise account of chronic legitimacy crises. It treats legitimacy as a scalar concept, going beyond binary views where legitimacy is something a state either has or lacks. It distinguishes periods of chronic crisis from stable periods and from acute crises. It shows how chronic crises are distinctively about legitimacy. It carves out conceptual space for a different kind of legitimacy crisis, and it assists comparativists in thinking about how younger democracies differ from older ones. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9462065 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Palgrave Macmillan UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-94620652022-09-10 Legitimacy crises in embedded democracies Studebaker, Benjamin M. Contemp Polit Theory Article Recently, many comparativists and democratic theorists have argued that democracy is in imminent peril, even in countries that are thought to be its strongholds. But theorists like Andrew Gamble, Wolfgang Streeck, and David Runciman suggest that some democracies are too embedded to collapse. Instead, they argue these democracies are experiencing long-term structural crises. This article explains how this alternative kind of crisis works. It conceives of legitimacy crises as ‘chronic crises’ in which democratic procedures are contested even as the democratic political system is affirmed. In these crises, democracies are threatened by distortion and deadlock rather than death. The article gives a precise account of chronic legitimacy crises. It treats legitimacy as a scalar concept, going beyond binary views where legitimacy is something a state either has or lacks. It distinguishes periods of chronic crisis from stable periods and from acute crises. It shows how chronic crises are distinctively about legitimacy. It carves out conceptual space for a different kind of legitimacy crisis, and it assists comparativists in thinking about how younger democracies differ from older ones. Palgrave Macmillan UK 2022-09-09 2023 /pmc/articles/PMC9462065/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/s41296-022-00588-z Text en © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited 2022. Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law. This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic. |
spellingShingle | Article Studebaker, Benjamin M. Legitimacy crises in embedded democracies |
title | Legitimacy crises in embedded democracies |
title_full | Legitimacy crises in embedded democracies |
title_fullStr | Legitimacy crises in embedded democracies |
title_full_unstemmed | Legitimacy crises in embedded democracies |
title_short | Legitimacy crises in embedded democracies |
title_sort | legitimacy crises in embedded democracies |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9462065/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/s41296-022-00588-z |
work_keys_str_mv | AT studebakerbenjaminm legitimacycrisesinembeddeddemocracies |