ix
PROLOGUE
combination is key in making an argument that at its crux concerns practices of legitimation.
What is legitimation, why does it feature practices, and what does it
have to do with a crisis of accountability? Notably, an accountability crisis
is distinct from the Habermasian notion of a legitimation crisis, which
refers to a confidence deficit in leadership, institutions or administrative
functions among the subjects of the state in an era of late capitalism. To wit:
The state can avoid legitimation problems to the extent that it can manage
to make the administrative system independent of the formation of legitimating will. To that end, it can, say, separate expressive symbols (which
create a universal willingness to follow) from the instrumental functions of
administration…. The scope for manipulation, however, is narrowly delimited, for the cultural system remains peculiarly resistant to administrative
control. There is no administrative creation of meaning, there is at best an
ideological erosion of cultural values. The acquisition of legitimation is selfdestructive as soon as the mode of acquisition is exposed. Thus, there is a
systematic limit for attempts at making up for legitimation deficits by means
of well aimed manipulation. This limit is the structural dissimilarity between
areas of administrative action and cultural tradition. (Habermas 1973: 657)
This book adopts a similar premise but a different point of entry. Taking
forward an approach developed by Kraft and Wolf (2018), legitimation is
a relationally produced artefact that can be empirically scrutinised to characterise accountability. Where an accountability crisis occurs, it need not
manifest as breakdown (a legitimation crisis) but can be upheld through
practices of legitimation even as things run aground. In this sense, we have
been in an accountability crisis for centuries, and in the case of many actors
knowingly so for decades, extracting and consuming resources with deeply
inequitable distributions and emitting carbon (and other greenhouse
gases—this book uses ‘decarbonisation’ as shorthand) that far exceed sustainable limits. Legitimation refers to the process through which an act
(by its doer) is recognised as valid (by its authoriser and its public) in relation to societal norms. This process involves a set of distinct practices.
Practices of legitimation are social relations premised on accountability
and constitutive of it. Sectoral changes manifest in and through them.
Thus, practices of legitimation embody the very means by which an act
becomes legitimate and normalised (Luckmann 1987). They are necessarily also the relational sites where such normalisation can be laid bare and
challenged. Such informed exposure represents Habermas’ systematic
PROLOGUE
combination is key in making an argument that at its crux concerns practices of legitimation.
What is legitimation, why does it feature practices, and what does it
have to do with a crisis of accountability? Notably, an accountability crisis
is distinct from the Habermasian notion of a legitimation crisis, which
refers to a confidence deficit in leadership, institutions or administrative
functions among the subjects of the state in an era of late capitalism. To wit:
The state can avoid legitimation problems to the extent that it can manage
to make the administrative system independent of the formation of legitimating will. To that end, it can, say, separate expressive symbols (which
create a universal willingness to follow) from the instrumental functions of
administration…. The scope for manipulation, however, is narrowly delimited, for the cultural system remains peculiarly resistant to administrative
control. There is no administrative creation of meaning, there is at best an
ideological erosion of cultural values. The acquisition of legitimation is selfdestructive as soon as the mode of acquisition is exposed. Thus, there is a
systematic limit for attempts at making up for legitimation deficits by means
of well aimed manipulation. This limit is the structural dissimilarity between
areas of administrative action and cultural tradition. (Habermas 1973: 657)
This book adopts a similar premise but a different point of entry. Taking
forward an approach developed by Kraft and Wolf (2018), legitimation is
a relationally produced artefact that can be empirically scrutinised to characterise accountability. Where an accountability crisis occurs, it need not
manifest as breakdown (a legitimation crisis) but can be upheld through
practices of legitimation even as things run aground. In this sense, we have
been in an accountability crisis for centuries, and in the case of many actors
knowingly so for decades, extracting and consuming resources with deeply
inequitable distributions and emitting carbon (and other greenhouse
gases—this book uses ‘decarbonisation’ as shorthand) that far exceed sustainable limits. Legitimation refers to the process through which an act
(by its doer) is recognised as valid (by its authoriser and its public) in relation to societal norms. This process involves a set of distinct practices.
Practices of legitimation are social relations premised on accountability
and constitutive of it. Sectoral changes manifest in and through them.
Thus, practices of legitimation embody the very means by which an act
becomes legitimate and normalised (Luckmann 1987). They are necessarily also the relational sites where such normalisation can be laid bare and
challenged. Such informed exposure represents Habermas’ systematic