Strategic Legitimation through Rhetorical Dissociation in International Relations

Abstract

What are the processes through which strategic political actors legitimize their preferred policy choice with multiple audiences in international politics? This article builds a conceptual framework of rhetorical dissociation where strategic actors present normative justifications hierarchically to gain acceptance among different audiences. Such hierarchizing works in three interconnected ways whereby strategic actors delineate audience types, create a rhetorical presence to resonate with sympathetic audiences, and establish a bounded dialogue in their legitimation politics to sideline the normative validity claims of other audiences. By engaging with International Relations (IR) theories of strategic legitimation, this article contributes to this field by showing how strategic actors use multiple audiences in the game to their advantage and wrestle a distinct normativity through rhetoric so that it fits their strategic goals. I illustrate the model by empirically examining India's strategic legitimation of intervention in the East Pakistan crisis in 1971. This article also sets the stage for further empirical examination of strategic legitimation, particularly in engaging with humanitarian crises abroad.

Sustaining social license: nuclear weapons and the art of legitimation

“…However, no comprehensive typology of the full array of legitimation practices discussed in this article has been offered. Most existing typologies of legitimation focus only on discourse or styles of argumentation (Sundaram 2021 ; MacKay 2019 : 719; Abulof 2015 : 79; Vaara 2014 ; Reyes 2011 ). Others are tailored to the important, but narrower question, of how global governance institutions legitimate their exercise of political authority in international affairs (Grigorescu 2015 ; Gronau and Schmidtke 2016 ; Dingwerth et al 2019 ; Tallberg and Zürn 2019 ; Dellmuth and Schlipphak 2020 ; Bexell et al 2021 ).…”

“…Understanding how contested institutions and policies are legitimated and ensconced from pressure is essential to grasping the ways in which those same institutions and policies are perpetuated and, potentially, vulnerable to abolitionist pressures (Grigorescu 2015 ). This article is thus aimed at contributing to ongoing debates on legitimation (Dajani et al 2021 ; Gronau and Schmidtke 2016 ; Bäckstrand and Söderbaum 2018 ; Tallberg and Zürn 2019 ; Bexell et al 2021 ; Sundaram 2021 ) and normative change in the global nuclear order and international society more broadly (Ritchie 2013 , 2019 ; Biswas 2014 ; Sauer and Reveraert 2018 ; Considine 2019 ; Burke and Fishel 2020 ; Pelopidas 2021 , 2022 ).…”

Populism, jihad, and economic resistance: Studying the political discourse of Iran's supreme leader

“…The analysis in this study indicates that, in his speeches, Khamenei uses religious concepts to attract, unify, and persuade his audience in a populist manner. Political actors tend to apply normative justifications to be accepted by a sympathetic and unsympathetic audience (Sundaram, 2021). The evidence found in this research indicates that Iran's Supreme Leader uses methods of strategic (dis)association to filter audience types, adjust justifications, and provide reasoning to supporters and opponents.…”