Self-Legitimacy: Origins, Construct, and Relevance to Policing

This chapter provides detailed coverage of the political science literature associated with powerholder legitimacy and incorporates a refreshed and updated synthesis of the criminological literature associated with police self-legitimacy. It is fully dedicated to contextualising and elucidating the political science origins of self-legitimacy and its more modern theoretical development. Aided through the more coherent translations of Kronman (Max Weber, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1983), it is here that the important theoretical connectivity between the internalisation process of self-justification (as self-legitimacy) and citizen acknowledgement of the right to govern is signposted and explained, alongside the theoretical assessment of the two dimensions that make up a ‘mutually constitutive’ whole (Bensman, Conflict and control: Challenge to the legitimacy of modern governments. Sage Publications, London, 1979). It is also where the ‘duality’ of legitimacy—with its recognised emphasis on both powerholder and audience legitimacy—is explored and described. The extensive synthesis of the literature presented here provides a valuable platform to share knowledge associated with the transition of the powerholder dimension of legitimacy within political science and its subsequent advancement in criminology. Alongside the known correlates, the expressed practical utility, (described as organisational ‘virtues’), of this dimension of legitimacy theory that emerges from the literature is explored. This topic is wide-ranging and comprehensively covers officer self-confidence, service delivery, social order, positive organisational behaviour, and what is interpreted as a ‘protective cloak’ effect.