Input legitimation dynamics in regional organizations: Mercosur and civil society

Post-Weberian scholarship remains divided between a conception of legitimation as an exercise of justification by rulers and legitimation as the necessary consent given by the ruled. Going beyond these contending approaches, the field now envisions legitimation as an interactive process linking the authorities of international and regional organizations to various stakeholders. This is a significant step forward, but the field has still not taken resolutely the “empirical turn.” The paper seeks to fill this void by introducing the concept of bi-directional legitimation and proposing a framework for research on the material practices of legitimation/delegitimation inside regional organizations using the Mercosur as a case study. I analyze the practices of regional authorities and civil society organizations at the input stage of the legitimation process. The case study illustrates the usefulness of the notion of bi-directional legitimation, combined with a focus on material practices, for the analysis of the dynamics of legitimation.