Rethinking Legitimation: Positional and Mediated Legitimation Processes for Croatian NGOs

Abstract

How do new forms of organizations legitimate themselves? Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have emerged as a dominant form of civil society organization in the past 35 years, often in societies undergoing social and political transitions. This paper analyzes legitimation processes for NGOs in postwar and postcommunist Croatia using interview and archival data. Starting from a principle that legitimation is a process involving multiple audiences, I examine the mechanisms NGOs use to legitimate themselves to different audiences. I find that Croatian civil society organizations adopted the NGO organizational form to legitimate themselves to international actors, who in turn pressured the Croatian government to accept these organizations as legitimate. However, the actions NGOs took to legitimate themselves to international actors undermined their legitimacy with the Croatian public. This case demonstrates that legitimation is a challenging prospect for a new type of organization, especially given the fragile nature of mediated legitimacy and the conflicting priorities of different audiences.

Maintaining the Boundary

“…The ambiguous meaning of professionalization resonates with recent research on Croatian NGOs' legitimation strategies in the period before EU accession (Heideman, 2017(Heideman, , 2019. According to Heideman, mechanisms such as professionalization and formalization were related to successful legitimation of NGOs in front of international donors and national government in the period before the EU accession (Heideman, 2019). These mechanisms, however, did not do much for legitimation of NGOs on the level of grassroot activism and general public (ibid.…”

“…As Croatia's long process of EU accession, and especially the process of accession negotiations, was coming to its end, organizations lost substantial strategic leverage stemming from EU conditionality mechanisms that used to secure them privileged access to various policy processes and an important role in assessing the country's progress in undertaking EU-related reforms (Wunsch, 2016). With international actors' attention moving away from Croatia, NGOs' specific legitimation provided by the international actors was also gone (Heideman, 2019). In that sense, 'post-accession Croatia' is not exceptional, as similar changes in NGOs' relationship to the state were encountered in other Eastern European countries as well (e.g., Fagan, 2005;O'Dwyer, 2012O'Dwyer, , 2013Slootmaeckers, 2017).…”

“…The aim of this question was to elicit the characteristics that interviewees use in defining civil society. The assumption behind this interviewing strategy was that persistent valuing of nonpartisan position is reinforced through NGO activists' discursive construction of their specific role and purpose in the political context or, in other words, NGOs' legitimation (see Heideman, 2019). Throughout the interviews, the definitions of civil society abounded with the notion of the state and its institutions.…”

“…These organizations often define themselves as nonparti-san 1 , meaning that they are careful to avoid any public association with political parties or declaring their endorsement of electoral candidates. Based on a specific position of nonpartisan expert, 'second wave' NGOs were successful in gaining their influence during the process of the country's accession to the European Union, especially in promoting and supervising various legislative reform processes (Butterfield, 2016;Wunsch, 2016;Heideman, 2019). However, in recent years, we can observe that the position of the second wave NGOs as nonpartisan experts in policy processes has been weakening.…”

Moro Women's Participation and Legitimation in the Bangsamoro Peace Process

“…I follow Laura Heideman's (2019) definition of legitimation as a process involving credibility or authority to an individual, organisation, or idea by shaping an audience's perception or assumption that an organisation, individual, or idea is desirable, proper, or appropriate. Legitimation is therefore a process, positional in relation to an audience, and has mechanisms, actions, or scripts to legitimate themselves (Heideman 2019, 476–477). For example, the state can portray itself as lawful while insurgent groups can depict themselves as revolutionaries that uphold justice.…”