example of political science research paper

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Writing a Research Paper in Political Science: A Practical Guide to Inquiry, Structure, and Methods

Student resources, welcome to the companion website.

Want your students to write their first major political science research paper with confidence? With this book, they can.  Author Lisa Baglione breaks down the research paper into its constituent parts and shows students precisely how to complete each component. The author provides encouragement at each stage and faces pitfalls head on, giving advice and examples so that students move through each task successfully. Students are shown how to craft the right research question, find good sources and properly summarize them, operationalize concepts, design good tests for their hypotheses, and present and analyze quantitative and qualitative data. Even writing an introduction, coming up with effective headings and titles, presenting a conclusion, and the important steps of editing and revising are covered with class-tested advice and know-how that’s received accolades from professors and students alike. Practical summaries, recipes for success, worksheets, exercises, and a series of handy checklists make this a must-have supplement for any writing-intensive political science course.

In this Third Edition of Writing a Research Paper in Political Science , updated sample research topics come from American government, gender studies, comparative politics, and international relations. Examples of actual student writing show readers how others "just like them" accomplished each stage of the process.

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge Lisa Baglione for writing an excellent text and developing the ancillaries on this site.

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POLSC101: Introduction to Political Science

Research in political science.

This handout is designed to teach you how to conduct original political science research. While you won't be asked to write a research paper, this handout provides important information on the "scientific" approach used by political scientists. Pay particularly close attention to the section that answers the question "what is scientific about political science?"

If you were going to conduct research in biology or chemistry, what would you do? You would probably create a hypothesis, and then design an experiment to test your hypothesis. Based on the results of your experiment, you would draw conclusions. Political scientists follow similar procedures. Like a scientist who researches biology or chemistry, political scientists rely on objectivity, data, and procedure to draw conclusions. This article explains the process of operationalizing variables. Why is that an important step in social science research?

Defining politics and political science

Political scientist Harold Laswell said it best: at its most basic level, politics is the struggle of "who gets what, when, how". This struggle may be as modest as competing interest groups fighting over control of a small municipal budget or as overwhelming as a military stand-off between international superpowers. Political scientists study such struggles, both small and large, in an effort to develop general principles or theories about the way the world of politics works. Think about the title of your course or re-read the course description in your syllabus. You'll find that your course covers a particular sector of the large world of "politics" and brings with it a set of topics, issues, and approaches to information that may be helpful to consider as you begin a writing assignment. The diverse structure of political science reflects the diverse kinds of problems the discipline attempts to analyze and explain. In fact, political science includes at least eight major sub-fields:

• American politics examines political behavior and institutions in the United States.
• Comparative politics analyzes and compares political systems within and across different geographic regions.
• International relations investigates relations among nation-states and the activities of international organizations such as the United Nations, the World Bank, and NATO, as well as international actors such as terrorists, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and multi-national corporations (MNCs).
• Political theory analyzes fundamental political concepts such as power and democracy and foundational questions, like "How should the individual and the state relate?"
• Political methodology deals with the ways that political scientists ask and investigate questions.
• Public policy examines the process by which governments make public decisions.
• Public administration studies the ways that government policies are implemented.
• Public law focuses on the role of law and courts in the political process.

What is scientific about political science?

Investigating relationships

Although political scientists are prone to debate and disagreement, the majority view the discipline as a genuine science. As a result, political scientists generally strive to emulate the objectivity as well as the conceptual and methodological rigor typically associated with the so-called "hard" sciences (e.g., biology, chemistry, and physics). They see themselves as engaged in revealing the relationships underlying political events and conditions. Based on these revelations, they attempt to state general principles about the way the world of politics works. Given these aims, it is important for political scientists' writing to be conceptually precise, free from bias, and well-substantiated by empirical evidence. Knowing that political scientists value objectivity may help you in making decisions about how to write your paper and what to put in it.

Political theory is an important exception to this empirical approach. You can learn more about writing for political theory classes in the section "Writing in Political Theory" below.

Building theories

Since theory-building serves as the cornerstone of the discipline, it may be useful to see how it works. You may be wrestling with theories or proposing your own as you write your paper. Consider how political scientists have arrived at the theories you are reading and discussing in your course. Most political scientists adhere to a simple model of scientific inquiry when building theories. The key to building precise and persuasive theories is to develop and test hypotheses. Hypotheses are statements that researchers construct for the purpose of testing whether or not a certain relationship exists between two phenomena. To see how political scientists use hypotheses, and to imagine how you might use a hypothesis to develop a thesis for your paper, consider the following example. Suppose that we want to know whether presidential elections are affected by economic conditions. We could formulate this question into the following hypothesis: "When the national unemployment rate is greater than 7 percent at the time of the election, presidential incumbents are not reelected".

Collecting data

In the research model designed to test this hypothesis, the dependent variable (the phenomenon that is affected by other variables) would be the reelection of incumbent presidents; the independent variable (the phenomenon that may have some effect on the dependent variable) would be the national unemployment rate. You could test the relationship between the independent and dependent variables by collecting data on unemployment rates and the reelection of incumbent presidents and comparing the two sets of information. If you found that in every instance that the national unemployment rate was greater than 7 percent at the time of a presidential election the incumbent lost, you would have significant support for our hypothesis.

However, research in political science seldom yields immediately conclusive results. In this case, for example, although in most recent presidential elections our hypothesis holds true, President Franklin Roosevelt was reelected in 1936 despite the fact that the national unemployment rate was 17%. To explain this important exception and to make certain that other factors besides high unemployment rates were not primarily responsible for the defeat of incumbent presidents in other election years, you would need to do further research. So you can see how political scientists use the scientific method to build ever more precise and persuasive theories and how you might begin to think about the topics that interest you as you write your paper.

Clear, consistent, objective writing

Since political scientists construct and assess theories in accordance with the principles of the scientific method, writing in the field conveys the rigor, objectivity, and logical consistency that characterize this method. Thus political scientists avoid the use of impressionistic or metaphorical language, or language which appeals primarily to our senses, emotions, or moral beliefs. In other words, rather than persuade you with the elegance of their prose or the moral virtue of their beliefs, political scientists persuade through their command of the facts and their ability to relate those facts to theories that can withstand the test of empirical investigation. In writing of this sort, clarity and concision are at a premium. To achieve such clarity and concision, political scientists precisely define any terms or concepts that are important to the arguments that they make. This precision often requires that they "operationalize" key terms or concepts. "Operationalizing" simply means that important – but possibly vague or abstract – concepts like "justice" are defined in ways that allow them to be measured or tested through scientific investigation.

Fortunately, you will generally not be expected to devise or operationalize key concepts entirely on your own. In most cases, your professor or the authors of assigned readings will already have defined and/or operationalized concepts that are important to your research. And in the event that someone hasn't already come up with precisely the definition you need, other political scientists will in all likelihood have written enough on the topic that you're investigating to give you some clear guidance on how to proceed. For this reason, it is always a good idea to explore what research has already been done on your topic before you begin to construct your own argument. (See our handout on making an academic argument.)

Example of an operationalized term

To give you an example of the kind of "rigor" and "objectivity" political scientists aim for in their writing, let's examine how someone might operationalize a term. Reading through this example should clarify the level of analysis and precision that you will be expected to employ in your writing. Here's how you might define key concepts in a way that allows us to measure them.

We are all familiar with the term "democracy". If you were asked to define this term, you might make a statement like the following: "Democracy is government by the people". You would, of course, be correct – democracy is government by the people. But, in order to evaluate whether or not a particular government is fully democratic or is more or less democratic when compared with other governments, we would need to have more precise criteria with which to measure or assess democracy. Most political scientists agree that these criteria should include the following rights and freedoms for citizens:

• Freedom to form and join organizations
• Freedom of expression
• Right to vote
• Eligibility for public office
• Right of political leaders to compete for support
• Right of political leaders to compete for votes
• Alternative sources of information
• Free and fair elections
• Institutions for making government policies depend on votes and other expressions of preference

By adopting these nine criteria, we now have a definition that will allow us to measure democracy. Thus, if you want to determine whether Brazil is more democratic than Sweden, you can evaluate each country in terms of the degree to which it fulfills the above criteria.

What counts as good writing in political science?

While rigor, clarity, and concision will be valued in any piece of writing in political science, knowing the kind of writing task you've been assigned will help you to write a good paper. Two of the most common kinds of writing assignments in political science are the research paper and the theory paper.

Writing political science research papers

Your instructors use research paper assignments as a means of assessing your ability to understand a complex problem in the field, to develop a perspective on this problem, and to make a persuasive argument in favor of your perspective. In order for you to successfully meet this challenge, your research paper should include the following components: (1) an introduction, (2) a problem statement, (3) a discussion of methodology, (4) a literature review, (5) a description and evaluation of your research findings, and (6) a summary of your findings. Here's a brief description of each component.

In the introduction of your research paper, you need to give the reader some basic background information on your topic that suggests why the question you are investigating is interesting and important. You will also need to provide the reader with a statement of the research problem you are attempting to address and a basic outline of your paper as a whole. The problem statement presents not only the general research problem you will address but also the hypotheses that you will consider. In the methodology section, you will explain to the reader the research methods you used to investigate your research topic and to test the hypotheses that you have formulated. For example, did you conduct interviews, use statistical analysis, rely upon previous research studies, or some combination of all of these methodological approaches?

Before you can develop each of the above components of your research paper, you will need to conduct a literature review. A literature review involves reading and analyzing what other researchers have written on your topic before going on to do research of your own. There are some very pragmatic reasons for doing this work. First, as insightful as your ideas may be, someone else may have had similar ideas and have already done research to test them. By reading what they have written on your topic, you can ensure that you don't repeat, but rather learn from, work that has already been done. Second, to demonstrate the soundness of your hypotheses and methodology, you will need to indicate how you have borrowed from and/or improved upon the ideas of others.

By referring to what other researchers have found on your topic, you will have established a frame of reference that enables the reader to understand the full significance of your research results. Thus, once you have conducted your literature review, you will be in a position to present your research findings. In presenting these findings, you will need to refer back to your original hypotheses and explain the manner and degree to which your results fit with what you anticipated you would find. If you see strong support for your argument or perhaps some unexpected results that your original hypotheses cannot account for, this section is the place to convey such important information to your reader. This is also the place to suggest further lines of research that will help refine, clarify inconsistencies with, or provide additional support for your hypotheses. Finally, in the summary section of your paper, reiterate the significance of your research and your research findings and speculate upon the path that future research efforts should take.

Writing in political theory

Political theory differs from other subfields in political science in that it deals primarily with historical and normative, rather than empirical, analysis. In other words, political theorists are less concerned with the scientific measurement of political phenomena than with understanding how important political ideas develop over time. And they are less concerned with evaluating how things are than in debating how they should be. A return to our democracy example will make these distinctions clearer and give you some clues about how to write well in political theory.

Earlier, we talked about how to define democracy empirically so that it can be measured and tested in accordance with scientific principles. Political theorists also define democracy, but they use a different standard of measurement. Their definitions of democracy reflect their interest in political ideals – for example, liberty, equality, and citizenship – rather than scientific measurement. So, when writing about democracy from the perspective of a political theorist, you may be asked to make an argument about the proper way to define citizenship in a democratic society. Should citizens of a democratic society be expected to engage in decision-making and administration of government, or should they be satisfied with casting votes every couple of years?

In order to substantiate your position on such questions, you will need to pay special attention to two interrelated components of your writing: (1) the logical consistency of your ideas and (2) the manner in which you use the arguments of other theorists to support your own. First, you need to make sure that your conclusion and all points leading up to it follow from your original premises or assumptions. If, for example, you argue that democracy is a system of government through which citizens develop their full capacities as human beings, then your notion of citizenship will somehow need to support this broad definition of democracy. A narrow view of citizenship based exclusively or primarily on voting probably will not do. Whatever you argue, however, you will need to be sure to demonstrate in your analysis that you have considered the arguments of other theorists who have written about these issues. In some cases, their arguments will provide support for your own; in others, they will raise criticisms and concerns that you will need to address if you are going to make a convincing case for your point of view.

Drafting your paper

If you have used material from outside sources in your paper, be sure to cite them appropriately in your paper. In political science, writers most often use the APA or Turabian (a version of the Chicago Manual of Style) style guides when formatting references. Check with your instructor if he or she has not specified a citation style in the assignment. For more information on constructing citations, see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial.

Although all assignments are different, the preceding outlines provide a clear and simple guide that should help you in writing papers in any sub-field of political science. If you find that you need more assistance than this short guide provides, refer to the list of additional resources below or make an appointment to see a tutor at the Writing Center.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing the original version of this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout's topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find the latest publications on this topic. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial.

Becker, Howard S. 1986. Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article . Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Cuba, Lee. 2002. A Short Guide to Writing about Social Science , Fourth Edition. New York: Longman.

Lasswell, Harold Dwight. 1936. Politics: Who Gets What, When, How . New York, London: Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill Book Company, inc.

Scott, Gregory M. and Stephen M. Garrison. 1998. The Political Science Student Writer's Manual , Second Edition. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc.

Turabian, Kate L. 1996. A Manual for Writers of Term Papers , Theses, and Dissertations, Sixth Edition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Political Science

What this handout is about.

This handout will help you to recognize and to follow writing standards in political science. The first step toward accomplishing this goal is to develop a basic understanding of political science and the kind of work political scientists do.

Defining politics and political science

Political scientist Harold Laswell said it best: at its most basic level, politics is the struggle of “who gets what, when, how.” This struggle may be as modest as competing interest groups fighting over control of a small municipal budget or as overwhelming as a military stand-off between international superpowers. Political scientists study such struggles, both small and large, in an effort to develop general principles or theories about the way the world of politics works. Think about the title of your course or re-read the course description in your syllabus. You’ll find that your course covers a particular sector of the large world of “politics” and brings with it a set of topics, issues, and approaches to information that may be helpful to consider as you begin a writing assignment. The diverse structure of political science reflects the diverse kinds of problems the discipline attempts to analyze and explain. In fact, political science includes at least eight major sub-fields:

• American politics examines political behavior and institutions in the United States.
• Comparative politics analyzes and compares political systems within and across different geographic regions.
• International relations investigates relations among nation states and the activities of international organizations such as the United Nations, the World Bank, and NATO, as well as international actors such as terrorists, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and multi-national corporations (MNCs).
• Political theory analyzes fundamental political concepts such as power and democracy and foundational questions, like “How should the individual and the state relate?”
• Political methodology deals with the ways that political scientists ask and investigate questions.
• Public policy examines the process by which governments make public decisions.
• Public administration studies the ways that government policies are implemented.
• Public law focuses on the role of law and courts in the political process.

What is scientific about political science?

Investigating relationships.

Although political scientists are prone to debate and disagreement, the majority view the discipline as a genuine science. As a result, political scientists generally strive to emulate the objectivity as well as the conceptual and methodological rigor typically associated with the so-called “hard” sciences (e.g., biology, chemistry, and physics). They see themselves as engaged in revealing the relationships underlying political events and conditions. Based on these revelations, they attempt to state general principles about the way the world of politics works. Given these aims, it is important for political scientists’ writing to be conceptually precise, free from bias, and well-substantiated by empirical evidence. Knowing that political scientists value objectivity may help you in making decisions about how to write your paper and what to put in it.

Political theory is an important exception to this empirical approach. You can learn more about writing for political theory classes in the section “Writing in Political Theory” below.

Building theories

Since theory-building serves as the cornerstone of the discipline, it may be useful to see how it works. You may be wrestling with theories or proposing your own as you write your paper. Consider how political scientists have arrived at the theories you are reading and discussing in your course. Most political scientists adhere to a simple model of scientific inquiry when building theories. The key to building precise and persuasive theories is to develop and test hypotheses. Hypotheses are statements that researchers construct for the purpose of testing whether or not a certain relationship exists between two phenomena. To see how political scientists use hypotheses, and to imagine how you might use a hypothesis to develop a thesis for your paper, consider the following example. Suppose that we want to know whether presidential elections are affected by economic conditions. We could formulate this question into the following hypothesis:

“When the national unemployment rate is greater than 7 percent at the time of the election, presidential incumbents are not reelected.”

Collecting data

In the research model designed to test this hypothesis, the dependent variable (the phenomenon that is affected by other variables) would be the reelection of incumbent presidents; the independent variable (the phenomenon that may have some effect on the dependent variable) would be the national unemployment rate. You could test the relationship between the independent and dependent variables by collecting data on unemployment rates and the reelection of incumbent presidents and comparing the two sets of information. If you found that in every instance that the national unemployment rate was greater than 7 percent at the time of a presidential election the incumbent lost, you would have significant support for our hypothesis.

However, research in political science seldom yields immediately conclusive results. In this case, for example, although in most recent presidential elections our hypothesis holds true, President Franklin Roosevelt was reelected in 1936 despite the fact that the national unemployment rate was 17%. To explain this important exception and to make certain that other factors besides high unemployment rates were not primarily responsible for the defeat of incumbent presidents in other election years, you would need to do further research. So you can see how political scientists use the scientific method to build ever more precise and persuasive theories and how you might begin to think about the topics that interest you as you write your paper.

Clear, consistent, objective writing

Since political scientists construct and assess theories in accordance with the principles of the scientific method, writing in the field conveys the rigor, objectivity, and logical consistency that characterize this method. Thus political scientists avoid the use of impressionistic or metaphorical language, or language which appeals primarily to our senses, emotions, or moral beliefs. In other words, rather than persuade you with the elegance of their prose or the moral virtue of their beliefs, political scientists persuade through their command of the facts and their ability to relate those facts to theories that can withstand the test of empirical investigation. In writing of this sort, clarity and concision are at a premium. To achieve such clarity and concision, political scientists precisely define any terms or concepts that are important to the arguments that they make. This precision often requires that they “operationalize” key terms or concepts. “Operationalizing” simply means that important—but possibly vague or abstract—concepts like “justice” are defined in ways that allow them to be measured or tested through scientific investigation.

Fortunately, you will generally not be expected to devise or operationalize key concepts entirely on your own. In most cases, your professor or the authors of assigned readings will already have defined and/or operationalized concepts that are important to your research. And in the event that someone hasn’t already come up with precisely the definition you need, other political scientists will in all likelihood have written enough on the topic that you’re investigating to give you some clear guidance on how to proceed. For this reason, it is always a good idea to explore what research has already been done on your topic before you begin to construct your own argument. See our handout on making an academic argument .

Example of an operationalized term

To give you an example of the kind of rigor and objectivity political scientists aim for in their writing, let’s examine how someone might operationalize a term. Reading through this example should clarify the level of analysis and precision that you will be expected to employ in your writing. Here’s how you might define key concepts in a way that allows us to measure them.

We are all familiar with the term “democracy.” If you were asked to define this term, you might make a statement like the following:

“Democracy is government by the people.”

You would, of course, be correct—democracy is government by the people. But, in order to evaluate whether or not a particular government is fully democratic or is more or less democratic when compared with other governments, we would need to have more precise criteria with which to measure or assess democracy. For example, here are some criteria that political scientists have suggested are indicators of democracy:

• Freedom to form and join organizations
• Freedom of expression
• Right to vote
• Eligibility for public office
• Right of political leaders to compete for support
• Right of political leaders to compete for votes
• Alternative sources of information
• Free and fair elections
• Institutions for making government policies depend on votes and other expressions of preference

If we adopt these nine criteria, we now have a definition that will allow us to measure democracy empirically. Thus, if you want to determine whether Brazil is more democratic than Sweden, you can evaluate each country in terms of the degree to which it fulfills the above criteria.

What counts as good writing in political science?

While rigor, clarity, and concision will be valued in any piece of writing in political science, knowing the kind of writing task you’ve been assigned will help you to write a good paper. Two of the most common kinds of writing assignments in political science are the research paper and the theory paper.

Writing political science research papers

Your instructors use research paper assignments as a means of assessing your ability to understand a complex problem in the field, to develop a perspective on this problem, and to make a persuasive argument in favor of your perspective. In order for you to successfully meet this challenge, your research paper should include the following components:

• An introduction
• A problem statement
• A discussion of methodology
• A literature review
• A description and evaluation of your research findings
• A summary of your findings

Here’s a brief description of each component.

In the introduction of your research paper, you need to give the reader some basic background information on your topic that suggests why the question you are investigating is interesting and important. You will also need to provide the reader with a statement of the research problem you are attempting to address and a basic outline of your paper as a whole. The problem statement presents not only the general research problem you will address but also the hypotheses that you will consider. In the methodology section, you will explain to the reader the research methods you used to investigate your research topic and to test the hypotheses that you have formulated. For example, did you conduct interviews, use statistical analysis, rely upon previous research studies, or some combination of all of these methodological approaches?

Before you can develop each of the above components of your research paper, you will need to conduct a literature review. A literature review involves reading and analyzing what other researchers have written on your topic before going on to do research of your own. There are some very pragmatic reasons for doing this work. First, as insightful as your ideas may be, someone else may have had similar ideas and have already done research to test them. By reading what they have written on your topic, you can ensure that you don’t repeat, but rather learn from, work that has already been done. Second, to demonstrate the soundness of your hypotheses and methodology, you will need to indicate how you have borrowed from and/or improved upon the ideas of others.

By referring to what other researchers have found on your topic, you will have established a frame of reference that enables the reader to understand the full significance of your research results. Thus, once you have conducted your literature review, you will be in a position to present your research findings. In presenting these findings, you will need to refer back to your original hypotheses and explain the manner and degree to which your results fit with what you anticipated you would find. If you see strong support for your argument or perhaps some unexpected results that your original hypotheses cannot account for, this section is the place to convey such important information to your reader. This is also the place to suggest further lines of research that will help refine, clarify inconsistencies with, or provide additional support for your hypotheses. Finally, in the summary section of your paper, reiterate the significance of your research and your research findings and speculate upon the path that future research efforts should take.

Writing in political theory

Political theory differs from other subfields in political science in that it deals primarily with historical and normative, rather than empirical, analysis. In other words, political theorists are less concerned with the scientific measurement of political phenomena than with understanding how important political ideas develop over time. And they are less concerned with evaluating how things are than in debating how they should be. A return to our democracy example will make these distinctions clearer and give you some clues about how to write well in political theory.

Earlier, we talked about how to define democracy empirically so that it can be measured and tested in accordance with scientific principles. Political theorists also define democracy, but they use a different standard of measurement. Their definitions of democracy reflect their interest in political ideals—for example, liberty, equality, and citizenship—rather than scientific measurement. So, when writing about democracy from the perspective of a political theorist, you may be asked to make an argument about the proper way to define citizenship in a democratic society. Should citizens of a democratic society be expected to engage in decision-making and administration of government, or should they be satisfied with casting votes every couple of years?

In order to substantiate your position on such questions, you will need to pay special attention to two interrelated components of your writing: (1) the logical consistency of your ideas and (2) the manner in which you use the arguments of other theorists to support your own. First, you need to make sure that your conclusion and all points leading up to it follow from your original premises or assumptions. If, for example, you argue that democracy is a system of government through which citizens develop their full capacities as human beings, then your notion of citizenship will somehow need to support this broad definition of democracy. A narrow view of citizenship based exclusively or primarily on voting probably will not do. Whatever you argue, however, you will need to be sure to demonstrate in your analysis that you have considered the arguments of other theorists who have written about these issues. In some cases, their arguments will provide support for your own; in others, they will raise criticisms and concerns that you will need to address if you are going to make a convincing case for your point of view.

Drafting your paper

If you have used material from outside sources in your paper, be sure to cite them appropriately in your paper. In political science, writers most often use the APA or Turabian (a version of the Chicago Manual of Style) style guides when formatting references. Check with your instructor if they have not specified a citation style in the assignment. For more information on constructing citations, see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial.

Although all assignments are different, the preceding outlines provide a clear and simple guide that should help you in writing papers in any sub-field of political science. If you find that you need more assistance than this short guide provides, refer to the list of additional resources below or make an appointment to see a tutor at the Writing Center.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Becker, Howard S. 2007. Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article , 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Cuba, Lee. 2002. A Short Guide to Writing About Social Science , 4th ed. New York: Longman.

Lasswell, Harold Dwight. 1936. Politics: Who Gets What, When, How . New York: McGraw-Hill.

Scott, Gregory M., and Stephen M. Garrison. 1998. The Political Science Student Writer’s Manual , 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Turabian, Kate. 2018. A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, Dissertations , 9th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Public Policy Research Paper

View sample Public Policy Research Paper. Browse other research paper examples and check the list of political science  research paper topics for more inspiration. If you need a research paper written according to all the academic standards, you can always turn to our experienced writers for help. This is how your paper can get an A! Also, chech our custom research proposal writing service for professional assistance. We offer high-quality assignments for reasonable rates.

I. Introduction

Academic writing, editing, proofreading, and problem solving services, get 10% off with 24start discount code, ii. public administration as a foundation for the study of public policy, iii. open-systems administration, iv. stages models of public policy, v. agenda setting, vi. policy formulation and adoption, vii. decision-making models and policy formulation and adoption, viii. implementation, ix. evaluation, x. alternative models in the study of public policy, xi. future directions.

Policy studies emerged as an important focus in political science in the 1970s. In 1969, David Easton (1969), president of the American Political Science Association, was frustrated with the trend in political science research to study narrow questions that lent themselves to the quantitative methods expected by the behavioral movement. Thus, he called for a postbehavioral revolution where political scientists would study the most important political problems of the day even when quantitative methodologies could not be employed. Easton’s call served as a catalyst for policy research that sought to explain and predict policy patterns as well as to evaluate the relative impact of various types of policy solutions.

This research paper discusses a variety of approaches to the study of public policy and shows how the public administration and public policy subfields are closely related and at times intertwined. At the time of Easton’s call for relevance, the public administration subfield had declined as a prominent subfield in the discipline. The behavioral movement had prevailed in expectations for quantitative research, and public administration had not moved toward a grand theory or wed itself to quantitative methods. However, it had gravitated toward more policy-relevant models and concepts that were important foundations for the emerging field of public policy.

One of the policy subfield’s great advantages for those interested in government and politics is its interdisciplinary and holistic focus. Research is broad ranging and borrows heavily from the work of neighboring subfields and other academic disciplines. This can be found in its use of ideas such as systems theory, plural and elite models, subsystems concepts, and decision-making research.

Over the last four decades, a number of strands of policy research have developed as the subfield has matured. This research paper uses the policy stages framework to organize most of the literature discussed. However, a few of the newer policy frameworks follow this discussion in the alternative models and future directions sections of this research paper.

Policy and administration studies have many areas of overlapping interest. Michael Nelson (1977) suggested that the popularity of policy studies was temporal and it was more a modified version of public administration than a new subfield. A close study shows that the two fields do have substantial overlap, and a review of public administration literature is important to one’s understanding of public policy.

American scholarly attention to public administration dates back to the late 1800s when Woodrow Wilson (1887) wrote his classic essay calling for the development of a career public service. An increase in the professionalism of government administration was necessary to meet the increasing quantity and complexity of government activities. He encouraged comparative study of administration and argued that since administration is distinct from politics, the United States could examine administrative practices of European monarchies without fear of undermining its democratic form of government.

Wilson’s work was written around the same time that the path-breaking German sociologist Max Weber conducted his seminal studies on bureaucracy. Weber (1946) and Wilson (1887) each posited principles of efficiency, centralized authority, hierarchical structures, educated workers, and application of expertise to administration. Weber saw the development of bureaucracy as a natural corollary to modern government and asserted that its rule-driven decisions supported the rule of law and egalitarian values of democracy. The classical model of administration was further developed by scholars who participated in the scientific management and principles schools of administration. Scholars such as Luther Gulick, Frederick Taylor, and Leonard White reinforced the view of bureaucracy as a rational, efficient, hierarchical machine. This paradigm contributed to the sense that administration and policy were conducted in separate spheres and that organizations were controlled by the administrator at the top of the organization’s hierarchy. A careful reading of the early scholars, especially Wilson and Weber, shows that they realized the line between policy and politics was not as distinct as later scholars’ attributions. Wilson (1887) discussed the need for public opinion to be a guide for administrators but also stated that administrators should have some discretionary authority. Weber (1946) cautioned that bureaucrats would use their wealth of information and knowledge to their advantage, observed that bureaucrats were likely to categorize specialized information as official secrets, and warned that an authoritative monarch would be powerless opposite an administrative expert.

By the mid-1900s, many administration scholars challenged the classical model and its primary attention to structure, formal rules, and hierarchy within a single organization. Instead, open-systems scholars discussed the influence of other systems on the political system and how changes in the environment required organizations to adapt. Philip Selznick (1949) in his study, TVA and the Grass Roots, revealed how significantly local grassroots organizations and interests can affect an agency implementing public policy. He showed how organizations have to consider threats from external organizations and interests. One strategy to lessen or neutralize the threat was co-optation. Organizations incorporated dissident parties either formally or informally into their decision-making structures. These representatives provided increased legitimacy by expanding the perspectives that made up the decision-making body. Ideally, the representative also communicated information favorably back to the external group. When necessary, agency officials changed policy requirements to reduce external hostility to their programs. Since these policy changes occurred without participation of elected officials, a more positive view of co-optation suggested that it increased the level of democratic participation at the local level. Selznick’s contributions to an understanding of the important role of external influences, implementation, and intergovernmental complexity have been significant contributions to the study of public policy.

In addition, the open-systems model encouraged thinking about organizations as organisms rather than human machines. Thus, to understand organizations, scholars need to study both formal and informal elements rather than rely on the overwhelming emphasis that the classical model places on formal structures. Chester Barnard (1938) posited that executives and scholars must seek to understand an organization’s people, customs, myths, and values as much as the organization’s structure and rules.

The open-systems model of administration continues to contribute to policy scholarship. It helps to show that policies are not self-implementing and that the administrative variable has an independent impact on the effectiveness of programs. Policy scholars are still coming to terms with the nexus of formal and informal elements of the policy process, and the institutional and constructivist scholars are currently building on the insights of Barnard and others.

As the public policy subfield was developing, it relied heavily on case studies that permitted holistic examination of a single policy. These case studies suggested important generalizations about the policy process that extended the focus of policy scholars to include the examination of the political and administrative processes that preceded and followed formal adoption of policy. Very early in the subfield, a stages heuristic became the dominant model. The stages model typically identified agenda setting, policy formulation, policy adoption, policy implementation, and policy evaluation as the sequential processes of the model (Anderson, 1975; Jones, 1970). Theoretical case studies of the stages contributed to increased understanding of the policy process, especially in the areas of agenda setting, implementation, and evaluation, which had previously received less attention from political scientists than policy formulation and adoption. As useful as the stages heuristic was in organizing the policy subfield, it fell prey to intense criticism for a variety of reasons: no causal theory, insufficient research guidance, too little multistage research, insufficient hypothesis generation, imprecise prediction, and too much linearity (Sabatier, 1991). However, it should be noted that even the scholars who were most closely associated with developing the model clearly indicated that the stages often were not distinct in actual practice and their order and characteristics could be quite varied (Anderson; Jones).

More than four decades later, the stages heuristic continues to anchor a substantial amount of policy research. The processes involved in getting the attention of the government, building coalitions of support, navigating the formal processes of policy adoption, crafting implementation, and modifying the policy over time continue to be essential elements of policy study even for those who are employing other, newer approaches.

Studies of agenda setting have tried to discern why some issues are given serious attention by government and others are not. Even among those that do receive serious attention, the question arises as to why some issues move quickly to reach agenda status and others take much longer. Thus, policy scholars sought to delineate the circumstances that make it more or less likely for a problem to be recognized and attended to by public officials.

Cobb and Elder (1975) observed the variation in the ability of groups to gain access to public officials and argued that this access influenced whether an issue was elevated to the formal agenda of a governmental entity. By the time public policy became a serious subfield, the importance of differential access to public officials had already been explored by the work of Schattschneider (1960). His work drew attention to the uneven participation in governmental decisions. His findings, that business interests and upper classes dominated public policy participation, flew in the face of the traditional pluralists’ claims of policy openness. It also elevated examination of how governmental leaders moved some issues onto the agenda and blocked others. Two years later, another pivotal study added to this point by developing the concept of “nondecisions” and arguing that the blocking of certain issues from advancing onto the agenda is an important type of policy power that needs to be studied even if it is difficult to observe (Bachrach & Baratz, 1962). Bachrach and Baratz assert that disadvantaged groups are less likely to demand change when existing policies benefit widely accepted and powerful interests.

How a problem is defined affects whether and how public officials address it. Schattschneider (1960) was a very early voice in discussing this dimension of the policy process in his delineation of public versus private problems. To gain legitimacy and thereby earn a spot on the agenda, issues needed to be defined as public problems. When issues were judged to be inappropriate for governmental attention, there was little chance that the issue would move beyond a private issue (Eyestone, 1978). Problem-definition research also placed perception and belief systems within the study of policy. Symbolic interactionists in sociology made the foundational contribution to this approach, arguing that human beings act on the basis of meanings they attach to things rather than on factual, objective definitions. This emphasis has found new energy in work by Stone (1988) and more recent scholars using the constructivist approach (Schneider & Sidney, 2009).

The multiple streams model articulated by Kingdon (1984) is sometimes given status as an independent approach to policy studies. It examines three separate streams of activity: problems, policies, and politics. These three dimensions of the policy process progress relatively independently of one another but occasionally couple, usually as a result of a policy entrepreneur who senses the opportunity to connect a problem with a policy proposal. When the political timing is right, the entrepreneur will push the coupled problem and solution through the policy window. Speed is important since the policy window of opportunity usually does not stay open long. Thus, agenda setting is intimately tied to an available solution and a political opportunity. This model is an excellent example of how public administration has contributed to the policy subfield since it is an adaptation of the so-called garbage can model advanced by three public administration scholars in their analysis of organizational processes and choice (Cohen, March, & Olsen, 1972).

Kingdon (1984) heightened the importance of politically capable individuals who he termed policy entrepreneurs. Policy entrepreneurs are opportunists who take advantage of crises or unanticipated events to push their policy proposals. Or they might take advantage of existing coalitions and work to soften up key policy communities. Another strategy is to modify the definition of the problem in order to take advantage of potential support to successfully push the proposal through the window. Ultimately, the entrepreneur is most successful when he or she is able to take advantage of political events or the national mood to promote a good idea that is technically feasible, consistent with core values, fiscally tolerable, and politically acceptable. However, there are many instances where issues fail to achieve or retain agenda status. Reasons for this include financial cost, lack of acceptance by the public or policy elites, opposition of powerful interests, and dominance of other issues (Kingdon).

Policy formulation focuses on the drafting and consideration of proposals by an attentive policy community while policy adoption refers to the passage of the proposal through the formal institutions that have the authority to adopt the policy. This part of the larger policy cycle received the most scholarly attention prior to the development of the policy subfield. It is closely associated with the institutions of government and is typically considered the key decision in the policy process.

In the multiple streams model, it is evident that the first three stages of the policy cycle—agenda setting, formulation, and adoption—take place more or less concurrently. Policy formulation itself focuses on the cognitive analysis and politics of designing a statute or other type of policy decision. The issue of rationality was a major focus of administration scholars in the middle of the 20th century. However, the debate between those arguing for rationality and against it continues. Today, rational choice theorists argue that a rational choice model is the best heuristic for studying, understanding, and predicting the outcomes of policy participants (Ostrom, 2007). The competing view is that scholars need to analyze language and political calculation to better understand the formulation and adoption processes (Allison, 1971; Halperin, 1974; Kingdon, 1984; Schneider & Sidney, 2009; Stone, 1988).

Many models incorporate both rational and political elements. Perhaps this is because the process itself incorporates both rational and political elements. Using a bounded rationality approach, policy analysts develop policy options, predict impacts, and oversee evaluation studies. But on the other side of the equation, political brokers approach the political landscape strategically, using data and analysis as well as other tactics to secure majorities at each stage in the adoption process.

One of the areas of greatest interest to policy scholars is the advocacy and policy design role of executive-legislative-interest group networks. Early scholars of political science advanced a number of models related to interest groups. One of the most noteworthy was David Truman (1951), who concluded that significant interests would organize to influence policies of concern to them. According to Truman and other pluralists, government’s role was often one of facilitating and legitimating group compromise. In addition, pluralists suggested that executive agencies often participated in the bargaining, protecting their interests similar to any other group.

Additional models of executive-legislative-interest group relations preceded the development of the policy subfield and more have been created since. All of these models include groups inside and outside of government and portray coalition formation organizing around a specific policy interest. Numerous terms have been assigned to these models, including iron triangles, subgovernments, policy subsystems, issue networks, policy monopolies, and advocacy coalitions. Each of these versions of policy communities assumes the importance of relationships among actors interested in the policy issue. These models are not exclusively used in the American political context. They have been broadly applied to research in multiple political systems by scholars in many disciplines. In the context of the United States, however, these policy communities thrive in part as a result of the decentralized and fragmented structure of its political institutions. Given the inability of the president and Congress as a whole to be informed and active participants on all issues, those issues that are not receiving widespread public attention and news coverage tend to be left to communities of people who have a deep interest in the specialized policy area.

In the 1960s, these communities were thought to be very stable relationships. In several case studies, the relationships were analyzed to be so stable that they were referred to as iron triangles (Cater, 1959). This conveys a pejorative view of the activity largely because the relationships among the governmental entities in the triangle and the interest groups were characterized as closed. New interests who wanted to communicate a competing set of demands and proposals were not acknowledged. Freeman (1955), in his studies of Indian affairs, showed how these policy subsystems brought stability to a policy area by bridging the executive and legislative branches with key interest groups. Each of these entities needed good relationships with the other two to enhance the likelihood of advancing its institutional and policy goals. This mutual dependence meant that once the subsystem emerged, its accommodations became the basis for determining which issues were placed on the agenda and which ones were not. These patterns of accommodation could be broken up by changes in committee leadership, widespread media attention to an issue in the policy area, or presidential interest. Once the visible interest in the policy topic waned, the subsystem political dynamic was likely to reemerge.

Hugh Heclo (1978) viewed the relationship between policy and administration as a vitally important one, especially as the role of government grew. He suggested that in the search for iron triangles, scholars sought to discover an exceptionally powerful and autonomous executive-legislative-interest group cluster of actors who dominated policy making by policy area. In the process, he believed that policy scholars ignored the more open and more commonly existing webs of people he referred to as issue networks. Issue networks are composed of those who are knowledgeable about the issue in terms of substantive knowledge as well as the history of its policy twists and turns. Policy knowledge is more heavily emphasized in this model, and it is the primary means through which additional participants can join this fluid web of relationships. In addition to being more fluid and episodic than subgovernments, issue networks, as shared-knowledge groups, have more points of view and conflicts than the iron triangle and subsystem frameworks. As aspects of the policy debate change, so do participants in the network. Thus, iron triangles and subsystems may still exist in some policy areas at some points in time, but the more typical pattern is one of a looser, increasingly complex kaleidoscope of policy (Heclo, 1978; Meier, 1985; Sabatier, 1991). For administrators and legislators, it provides a less stable and less predictable arrangement but one that permits greater maneuverability as well since these skilled politicians have the potential to split, expand, and recombine the many segments of the issue network. The irony of the issue network is that, when compared with iron triangles, it expands the number of participants involved, thereby making policymakers contend with more conflict among multiple points of view. It also accepts that involvement in the policy process is contingent on a greater understanding of the increased complexities of the policy area. Heclo (1978) suggests that this pattern of knowledge-based participation may actually increase the cynicism of the general public as the gap between activists and the public expands.

Heclo’s (1978) work was a pivotal change in the subfield’s orientation toward the nature and behavior of policy participants. Since Heclo, numerous scholars have articulated a variety of more diverse webs of policy participants, from Meier’s (1985) regulatory subsystem to Sabatier’s (1988) advocacy coalition framework. In the final analysis, though, whether one uses a looser, more episodic network or a more centralized and stable subsystem, the general public has virtually no role in any of the models. Given the level of specialized learning necessary to truly engage in the conversation among participants in the policy process, the general public’s role is minimal unless the issue somehow ignites widespread interest.

In the early literature on decision making, rationality was elevated to a normative standard. Operations research during World War II contributed to an expectation for clear, measureable objectives, extensive research, and, ideally, evaluation of choices based on evidence. The rational-comprehensive model that emerged ideally required the clarification and prioritizing of objectives, followed by identifying a comprehensive range of options for achieving the ranked objectives, analyzing the capacity of each option to maximize ranked objectives, and choosing the alternative that best achieves the objective at the least cost. This model has continued to retain its normative appeal, but scholars have repeatedly shown that actual decisions are not made this way. Lindblom (1959) argued that the model breaks down in its first step since people find it exceedingly difficult to agree on the relative priorities of values and goals. In the public realm, policymakers must wrestle with conflicting values among the various participants involved. Even the thinking of a single participant often includes conflicting and unresolved priorities among values. Thus, these values are not usually clarified and rank ordered prior to designing a policy. Therefore, policies often embody conflicting values. Lindblom suggested that most policy is made following a process of successive limited comparisons. Analysis is truncated to a few feasible alternatives that are incrementally different from existing practice, and choice is made based on which option receives consensual support. Pluralistic preferences and bargaining processes fit the incremental model well. Furthermore, this model can be expanded to a more intentional and strategic process for achieving substantial change since it is usually easier to achieve several successive incremental changes in policy over several years rather than attempting to secure support for major change in the first instance.

One of the most important contributors to the theories of decision making is Nobel prize winner Herbert Simon (1957). He argued that there are many reasons that rational-comprehensive models are not possible. First, information is lacking and people are not likely to be able to identify all possible alternatives. Second, the ability to accurately predict the outcomes of the many possible alternative choices is unlikely. And third, humans do not have the cognitive capacity to know and remember all that is required by the comprehensive model. Given these limitations, human beings accept what Simon terms satisficing. Under this approach to decision making, it is only necessary to find a solution that meets goals at an acceptable level rather than an optimal level.

Graham Allison’s (1971) classic work analyzing the Cuban missile crisis shows how three different models of decision making each lead to very different explanations of the crisis. His rational actor model can be compared to Simon’s bounded rationality model in that the goal is to choose the alternative that advances the national interest. The rational actor model assumes that nations function as centralized unitary actors where policy choices are made to maximize the national interest. Allison uses chess analogies to emphasize the strategic elements of the choice equation. Thus, the language of the model is of an optimizing effort, but the model recognizes the knowledge limitations and additional uncertainties that constrain choice. The advantages of this model are that it is simplified and stabilizes dramatically the information one needs to make choices. Morton Halperin (1974) emphasizes that given the number of bureaucratic departments and bureaucrats involved in decision making, it is difficult to confirm the unitary actor assumption of the model. The rational actor model assumes that all policymakers agree on the interpretation of the national interest. Halperin argued that this level of unity on what constitutes the national interest is rare in American history. One period followed World War II when the emergence of the cold war and the fear of communism solidified views of the national interest. This type of consensus also emerged for a short period after September 11, 2001.

Allison’s (1971) second model examines governmental decision making as a function of the output of organizations. The organizational process model, which borrows heavily from public administration literature, argues that organizations serve as the primary actors in governmental decision making. Given their hierarchy and centralization, each organization functions in a unified manner alongside other organizations. Under this model, analysts need to consider the outputs of multiple organizations. These outputs are the result of standard operating procedures, and organizational choices are in line with Lindblom’s model of incrementalism. The best predictor for what organizations will produce in the future is to examine the status quo. Importantly, organizational decisions and behaviors are influenced by existing routines and values of the organization.

The third model Allison (1971) advanced was the bureaucratic politics or governmental politics model. This model is probably the one most closely attributed to Allison since it was the most original of the three. Under the governmental politics model, there are numerous individual participants who influence governmental choices and behaviors. Government decisions are more resultants rather than choices since decisions are a combination of actions by numerous participants in the process. Many of the participants become part of the process as a result of an organizational affiliation that they have, and they often take actions based on the values and objectives of their organization using the action channels their organizations provide them. As each of the participants takes actions advancing their personal and organizational interests, they may be involved in overt bargaining with other participants. Equally often, though, participants are inclined to take the actions permitted by their position in the system. The governmental decision is really the interaction and summation of all of these independent decisions rather than coordinated intention. Obviously, this model of decision making is not based on a single set of organizational or national values. Pluralistic values and actions dominate the process.

Just as public administration scholarship was important to the understanding of agenda setting, it also plays a central role in formulation and adoption processes. Both the subsystem and network approaches and the decision-making approaches rely heavily on public administration literature and concepts. The level of bureaucratic participation in policy making becomes even more the focus of policy making in the implementation of public policy.

Implementation includes the administrative activities that convert a statute or other authoritative policy into a functioning program. Traditionally, implementation was characterized as a simple process of following the directives in the statute, administrative rule, executive order, or court ruling. Since early studies assumed that this took place without much delay or discrepancy from the policy’s intent, relatively little attention was paid to this process prior to the emergence of public policy as a subfield.

One study that stands out for being well ahead of the development of the policy subfield was sociologist Phillip Selznick’s (1949) study of the Tennessee Valley Authority. This case study is one of the few studies that provided guidance to the complexity of implementation and the degree to which the contours of a policy could be significantly altered based on the decisions of implementers. Since his study focused on organizations as organic systems that adapt to their external environment, his findings created an awareness of how external forces cause policies adopted in Washington to be altered in the field. Selznick showed how organizations were dependent on local support and how local opposition from powerful groups generated adaptations in policy.

Selznick’s (1949) study also challenged the traditional top-down view of implementation. Under the traditional top-down framework, bureaucrats function as instruments of the policymakers and respond to the command and control of those above them in a process similar to hierarchical lines of authority in a bureaucratic organization. However, scholars soon realized that implementation processes were much more complex and evolutionary than initially thought. Numerous studies showed that implementation was not faithful to the original plan for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, statutes and other formal policies often did not communicate with 100% clarity. There were gaps, overlaps, and contradictions. Thus, even if a bureaucrat was willing to function as a Weberian machine, it was typically the case that bureaucrats had to make significant decisions throughout the process of designing implementation. Even Woodrow Wilson (1887), whose work contributed to the policy–administration dichotomy framework, realized that all administrators operated with some discretion. Although the policy–administration dichotomy was successfully characterized by the public administration literature as unrealistic, policy scholars assumed the concept in their top-down implementation models until sufficient implementation case studies accumulated to convince most that the paradigm was inaccurate. Although there are still a variety of approaches to the study of implementation, most would agree that statutes are altered at least to some extent in the process of implementation. Policies are not self-implementing.

Another complexity in the implementation process that affects whether implemented programs align with statutes is that many national programs are carried out at the state and local levels, which dramatically increases the number of policy actors involved. This increase in the number of decision points creates huge difficulties for timely implementation and necessary communication and coordination. Pressman and Wildvasky (1973) masterfully show that as the number of participants and decision points increase, the likelihood of accurate implementation declines. Two-way interaction models were a reaction to the inadequacies of the top-down models. Bardach (1977) and Lipsky (1979) posit that statutes and other authoritative decisions made by policy-makers interact with decisions of implementers to create the actual policy. As implementers work through the issues of how to carry out the statute, they make choices that modify the policy. In addition, “street level” bureaucrats make use of discretionary authority as they engage in the day-to-day work of public policy. Accepting that implementation is an interactive process rather than a command and control hierarchy dictated by legislators focuses attention on the distance between a policy as originally designed or passed and the policy as implemented.

Majone and Wildavsky (1984) take the interactive model one step further in their work “Implementation as Evolution.” It posits that having the implementing agency modify the original policy design may actually produce beneficial results relative to the original goals of the statute. For example, if the original statute makes assumptions about cause and effect that are inaccurate, then having implementing bureaucrats modify the policy through implementation strategies would be a positive step as long as the changes they are making are in line with a commitment to the objectives and impacts the policy was supposed to produce. Both the implementation as evolution and the other two-way interaction approaches make it obvious how important it is to have agencies that are committed to the policy objectives.

Building on the work of all of these scholars, Mazmanian and Sabatier (1983) develop a synthetic conceptual framework to guide implementation studies as part of the larger policy process. They assert that it is necessary to examine the statute or other formal policy statement to assess its clarity of objectives, accuracy of causal assumptions, and effectiveness of decision rules provided to the implementing agencies. In addition, the researcher must appraise the sufficiency of financial resources, the specificity of the authority relationships, and formal access by outsiders. Variables beyond the statute and outside the implementing agency are also emphasized, including socioeconomic conditions, media attention, public and constituency group support, enthusiasm of higher level public authorities, and the commitment and skill of agency leaders. In addition to internal and external variables, there is also a recognition that implementation success is affected by the difficulty of the problem and the degree of change being sought.

Given the potential for significant adjustments to policy to occur as a result of implementation decisions, a diachronic approach of studying policies over a decade or more is recommended. Without a long-term view, the ability to understand the evolution of policy as it occurs in implementation will be incomplete.

Most stage models of public policy end with evaluation, the systematic assessment of the policy’s impact. Importantly, policies need to be examined for both intended and unintended consequences. Evaluations are completed by the implementers themselves and by external policy analysts. Internal evaluations conducted by the implementing agency have the benefit of getting those who work with the policy on a day-to-day basis to recognize problems and propose solutions. Evaluations by outside analysts tend to bring external perspectives to the process and may possess increased legitimacy from the perspective of elected officials. One trend in the last several decades is for more ideologically affiliated think tanks to publish external policy analyses. These are usually provided with a particular point of view and thus do not necessarily offer the benefits of other external evaluations.

Distinctions should also be made between the evaluation of policy outputs and policy outcomes. Analysis of outputs draws attention to whether the administrative processes are in place through such measures as number and types of clients served. Outcomes refer to whether the policy is achieving desired results on policy goals as well as other unintended impacts.

For policy scholars, impact and outcome studies have received more interest than output studies. Scholars have also sought to understand how policy analysis leads to revisions, transformation, or termination of policies by elected officials. As could be seen in the previous discussion of implementation, revision of policy is often ongoing from the beginning of implementation decisions. However, most stage models have viewed evaluation as isolated from implementation and as more associated with the judgments of policy-impact recommendations for policy revisions. There is a tendency for this stage to look something like the feedback loop of the political systems model.

Systematic policy analysis grew as an important part of the policy process during the 1960s as government attempted to apply economic theory to policy making. Cost–benefit analysis, operations research, and various program performance measures incorporated in budgeting processes were primary tools of the effort. Thus, this part of the policy process is most closely associated with rational models of decision making. It was not unusual for program evaluation and periodic reporting to be statutorily required to assist in legislative oversight and budgeting processes. As the national government expanded the number of large domestic programs, along with detailed prescriptions and administration, collected evidence mounted that the programs were not achieving their lofty goals. Accountability continues as a common refrain today, but the capacity to systematically evaluate programs and to redesign them with effective performance measures has not been as easy or as successful as hoped. Once again, it is possible to see the tension between expectations for rational decision making as the vehicle for better policies and the reality that suggests there are significant human and organizational limitations to rationality. Even when systematic analysis is required, the uncertainty surrounding appropriate measures and the interpretation of results make evaluation as much politics as science.

Deborah Stone (1988), one of the leading critics of rational models of public policy, advanced a concept she termed policy paradox. She argued that politicians typically have dual goals: policy objectives and political objectives. Furthermore, she observed that analysis itself is political since it is rife with framing, definitions, and interpretations. Political participants frequently articulate an argument that on its face appears linear and rational but on closer examination appears constructed to achieve a political purpose. She offered the concept of political reasoning, rather than rational decision making, to understand the struggles of policy communities competing over which ideas, policy definitions, and corresponding solutions will prevail.

A closely related facet of the evaluation literature is the attention given to the use of knowledge generated through policy analysis. Generally, scholars have concluded that knowledge is not the most important dimension of policy decisions. Politics and the limitations of human and organizational capacity intervene (Simon, 1957). Even when decision makers seek information to help make policy, it is frequently questioned, interpreted in different ways, expensive, and incomplete. Although many write very pessimistically about the lack of use of policy knowledge, Carol Weiss (1977) argued that policy knowledge has been successfully used to identify problems, reconsider policy strategies, and provide an enlightenment function. Through the enlightenment process, information accumulates and causes policymakers to redefine the problem, retroactively make sense of why programs did not succeed, or readjust policy objectives to more realistic levels. Finally, policy knowledge is more likely to be used when it is timely and when participants see strategic benefit in doing so.

In 1991, Paul Sabatier criticized the stages heuristic and challenged the field to develop better models. Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith (1993) put forward an alternative heuristic referred to as the advocacy coalition framework. They suggested that the stages model is too simplistic given the number of participants, institutions, and influences in the policy process. In their more complex model, they incorporate governmental and nongovernmental institutions, external conditions and events, and the multiples webs of these entities that align or compete with each other to influence policy. Furthermore, whereas the stages heuristic signals that policy follows a linear process, the advocacy coalition framework sees policies as nonlinear and rarely terminating. Multiple policies affecting the policy domain overlap and affect one another, as do policy implementations at multiple levels of government. Researchers who study a policy arena for several decades will observe policy adaptations and eventually significant change. This occurs because of learning on the part of the participant coalitions that may compete over preferences based on different resources and belief systems. However, the advocacy coalition framework posits that the most substantial changes in policy are more likely to come from external events and conditions than from policy learning. To be able to witness this, scholars must be prepared to follow a policy area for several decades since advocacy coalitions tend to be relatively stable. Some scholars (Lester & Stewart, 2000) see the advocacy coalition framework as a development within evaluation research that could be incorporated within the stages model, but Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith (1993) claim that the model provides an important and enhanced alternative model.

Another model of note is the punctuated-equilibrium framework (Baumgartner & Jones, 1993). This model is similar to the advocacy coalition model in terms of the need to look at policy over long periods of time since most policy follows incremental change and relatively stable patterns over many years before incurring major change. Major punctuations occur in the context of changed beliefs among the policy community and often a new venue for implementation. Once implemented, equilibrium is reestablished, and the policy arena goes back to a lengthy period of stability. The punctuated-equilibrium model also draws attention to the importance of institutions since they tend to help ingrain the results of the dominant coalition and to resist pressures for change.

Elinor Ostrom (2007) and many others articulate a preference for a model of institutional rational choice. This model builds on the discipline’s traditional emphasis on institutional structures and rules. Ostrom argued that institutions should be defined as rules, norms, and strategies that characterize entities with repeated processes. Rules dictate who has advantages in the pursuit of policy preferences and frequently determine who the major players are in the policy. This model also examines the hierarchical ordering of rules. Thus, constitutional rules influence options for players at other levels of policy choice all the way down to the operational, day-to-day decisions of policy actors. Rules can take the form of formal, written provisions or can be norms based on shared understandings by participants or guides that individuals develop to direct their own behaviors. These working rules help to provide stability in the midst of uncertainty. Once the study of levels and types of rules is achieved, the researcher can make probabilistic predictions using rational choice analysis. This model brings attention back to the formal versus informal distinction that was made by administration scholars many decades earlier.

One must ask whether any of the models will rise to a position of dominance in the near future. Given that scholars agree that the policy process is complex and patterns of human behavior are varied, the search for a dominant, robust, parsimonious model is unlikely to be successful. This effort is also exacerbated by the number of contributing disciplines to the subfield. Frustration over this situation is also likely to continue. Perhaps Kenneth Meier (2009) captures it best when he complains that there are so many models, their ability to guide research is analogous to the interstate highway system’s ability to guide a vacation. A more positive point of view may come from the realization that there is a lot of overlap among the various models. For example, the advocacy coalition framework, stages framework, punctuated equilibria model, and the institutional rational choice model all describe the importance of institutional structures, political brokers, external influences, and shared meanings.

Looking at policy processes more holistically and studying policies over the long term to incorporate evolution and change are recent trends in policy research that are likely to continue in the future. The role of beliefs and the processes leading to shared meanings also appear to be increasing in importance (Schneider & Ingram, 1997). It remains to be seen whether future studies integrate policy and public administration models. The literature of the two subfields has numerous parallels. Very few policies can be implemented without the significant involvement of an administrative system. The fact that the same policy can produce such different results across different implementing subunits (e.g., states, counties, or schools) suggests that agencies and individuals make a huge difference. Leadership styles and administrative cultures may offer vital insight to explaining the variation (Hicklin & Godwin, 2009; Robichau & Lynn, 2009).

Given the large number of models and participating disciplines, the methodologies employed in the subfield will continue to range from qualitative to quantitative. The quantitative methods employed in large-N comparative studies and some evaluation studies are likely to continue, as are the more qualitative methods of case studies and language analysis approaches. This is not necessarily a negative. As Easton (1969) argued in his call for a postbehavioral revolution, the important objective is to be relevant even if it means sacrificing the quantitative methods called for in the behavioral movement. Thus, a mixture of quantitative and qualitative measures is likely to continue to characterize the policy subfield.

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100 Best Political Science Research Topics

June 3, 2024

Political science is an incredibly broad and variated discipline, containing numerous subfields that attract immense amounts of research. Researchers in the field can utilize diverse empirical or theoretical methodologies, sometimes in combination. There are specialized fields based on geographic areas, time periods, political forms and institutions, and bodies of thought. Researchers might aim to impact policy, inspire advocacy, or produce knowledge about the nature of political ideas, systems, and processes. There are even sub-disciplines that focus separately on either relations or comparisons between nation-states (international relations and comparative politics, respectively). Given this expansiveness, it can be challenging to quickly pick out compelling political science research topics.

This article provides a broad sample of political science topics. Most of the topics are already the subject of intensive research, which is ultimately something to look for when identifying a topic. Understanding the themes and subfields that already structure study in the field can ultimately help toward locating a unique research interest. From there, it’s a matter of refining interests into specific topics and, eventually, questions that drive research.

Picking Political Science Research Topics

Finding political science topics usually involves doing two things, sometimes simultaneously. The first requires understanding what prominent topics already exist in the field(s). After all, this discipline has been around for many decades, with incredible amounts of published research each year. It’s best to not try to wholly reinvent the wheel in this case, or risk selecting a topic for which there is no available research. The second entails reflecting on what feels important to research. A topic could be significant because it is remarkably timely or because there is some pragmatic outcome in mind. The researcher might even have a personal connection with the topic on top of these other kinds of factors. Pursuing research that feels important is an evergreen recommendation – otherwise, research can be produced without any clear purpose or benefit in mind.

So, when picking political science research topics, consider these processes and resources:

1) Start with what interests you. Take inventory of your personal and intellectual experiences and how they might intersect with what you know about political research. How would you map your experiences geographically or historically? What themes in the political sphere grab your attention? In what ways have you and others around you interacted with formal politics? Understanding what you are motivated to learn about makes the process of selecting among political science topics more organic.

Picking Political Science Research Topics (Cont.)

2) Consider what feels urgent. Political science has a good deal of overlap with the discipline of history. But perhaps even more than historians, political scientists are committed to understanding and improving politics in the present. A great deal of tremendous scholarship is sparked from this presentist impulse. What news items are persistently interesting or seem to revolve around intractably complex problems? A topic connected to widely recognized issues in the present will almost immediately justify the resulting research.

3) Survey field categories and literature. Usually, topics that are timely will already be drawing attention from other researchers. It’s also possible to spark curiosity through understanding how others have framed topics and questions. However, the most important reason for this step is to ensure that a research topic will have enough published writing around it to warrant attention. There are many ways to complete a survey within or across political science fields. To start, fields like comparative politics have field-specific journals and anthologies with useful descriptions and citations. There is the Journal of Comparative Politics , a journal called Comparative Political Studies , and a big anthology called Comparative Politics: A Practical Guide . Another extremely helpful resource is the research database known as Oxford Bibliographies . There, political science scholars compile bibliographic entries that define subfields and provide key citations.

Again, these are not strictly sequential steps. Often, it’s necessary to engage existing topics and research questions and use them to inspire reflection on what feels significant. Or it’s likely that specific interests will help delimit subfields, making it easier to comb through topics.

It’s important to narrow topics so that a researcher could reasonably become an expert on. In Oxford Bibliographies, many times they break very broad topics into multiple subtopics, each with its own body of literature. But it can also be useful to think about the research question that might stem from the broad topic. What specifically is it that needs to be known about this topic? What causes and effects are involved in phenomena we can see and describe but have not yet analyzed? Or what can be critiqued, evaluated, improved or replaced? Finding how a broad topic can lead to descriptive, analytical, or evaluative research questions is the most effective way to identify compelling and specific topics.

The List – Political Science Research Topics (1-30)

African politics.

1) African Ethnic, Linguistic, and Religious Minority Political Representation

2) Authoritarianism in the Politics of Sub-Saharan Africa

3) Comparative Political Structures of African Urban Governments

4) Democratization Policies and Political Movements in Africa

5) Ethnic and Religious Plurality in the Politics of Nigeria

6) National and Transnational LGBTQ Political Movements in Africa

7) Political Organization Around Climate Crises in Africa

8) Public Opinion on International NGOs in Africa

9) South Africa’s Governmental Policies for COVID Vaccination

10) Women in African Politics

Asian Politics

11) Competing Claims to Sovereignty in the South China Sea

12) Economic and Cultural Effects of China’s One-Child Policy

13) Labor Politics in China

14) Media Politics and Expression in Asian Countries

15) Nationalism and Religious Minorities in India

16) Philippine Politics and the Illicit Drug Economy

17) Social Movements in East Asia

18) South Korean Policies Addressing Demographic Decline

19) Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong

20) Youth Protest Movements in Taiwan

Comparative Politics

21) Authoritarian Populism in Brazil, Hungary, and India

22) Countries that Host Foreign-Owned Nuclear Weapons

23) Diasporas and National Politics in South and East Asian Countries

24) Differences in Environmental Politics Between the Global North and Global South

25) Elections in Sierra Leone and Their Differences from Other Countries

26) Governmental Responses to Gang Violence in Different Latin American Countries

27) Income Inequality in Advanced Democracies

28) Indigenous Rights and Politics in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand

29) Laws Surrounding Abortion in the U.S. and the U.K.

30) State Legitimacy and Authority in Botswana and Somalia

Political Science Topics (31-60)

European politics.

31) Authoritarianism and Media Politics in Turkey

32) Austerity, White Identity Politics, and Brexit

33) Ethnic and Religious Minority Representation in the European Union

34) European Public Opinion on Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

35) Far-Right Political Mobilization in Europe

36) France’s Political Opposition to Multicultural Pluralism

37) Immigration, Islamophobia, and European Union Political Campaigns

38) Political Challenges and Opportunities for European Integration

39) Regime Transitions in Post-Communist Eastern Europe

40) Welfare State Development in Western Europe

International Relations

41) Border Security Politics, Immigration, and International Relations

42) Efficacy of International Criminal Justice Bodies

43) Energy Politics of International Relations

44) Global Economy of Illicit Drugs

45) Global Politics of Intellectual Property

46) International Conflict Management

47) International NGOs and Their Effects on National Politics

48) Political Responses to Transboundary Pollution

49) Preferential Trade Agreements and Tariff Wars

50) Regulation of International Private Corporations

Latin American Politics

51) Authoritarianism and Democratization in Brazil’s Political History

52) Christian Transnational Political Mobilization in Latin America

53) Electoral Volatility and Suppression in Venezuela

54) Government Responses to Organized Crime in Mexico and Central America

55) Guerilla Insurgencies in Latin America

56) Neoliberalism and Democracy in Latin America

57) Military Government in Latin America, 1959-1990

58) Populism’s Role in Shaping Latin American Politics

59) Poverty, Inequality, and Development in Latin America

60) Regional Economic, Political, and Cultural Integration in Latin America

Political Science Research Topics (61-90)

Methodology.

61) Accuracy and Reliability of Models Predicting Election Outcomes

62) Applying Game Theory to Understand Political Strategies

63) Development of Survey Methods and Research

64) Ethical Problems Surrounding the Use of Experiments in Political Research

65) Experimental Methods for Promoting Voter Turnout

66) Impact of Survey Design and Sampling Techniques on Validity in Public Opinion Polls

67) Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Political Research

68) Machine Learning Techniques and Political Science

69) Researching Politics Through Big Data

70) Using Ethnography to Study Political Behavior and Institutions

Middle Eastern Politics

71) Comparative Politics of the Middle East and North Africa

72) Democracy, Statehood, and the Israel-Palestine Peace Process

73) Immigrant Labor Politics in Oil-Rich Middle East Countries

74) Mobilization and Oppression Through Media Control in the Arab Spring

75) Oil Wealth, Political Stability, and Economic Development in the Middle East

76) Political Islam, National, and International Politics in the Middle East

77) Postcolonialism and the Political Development of Iran

78) S. Foreign Policy and Its Effects on Stability and Governance in the Middle East

79) Women’s Political Participation in the Middle East and North Africa

80) Water Politics and Their Impact on Middle Easter International Relations and Security

Political Theory

81) Critical Political Theory and the Frankfurt School

82) Development of Political Thought in Ancient China

83) Effects of New Media (i.e., TVs, CDs, social messaging platforms) in Politics

84) Feminist Interventions in Political Thought

85) Hegelian and Counter-Hegelian Political Thought

86) Intersectionality in Political Theory

87) Nationalist and Cosmopolitan Political Thought

88) Religion in Classical and Contemporary Political Thought

89) Political Representation and Policy Responsiveness to Public Opinion

90) Postcolonial and Decolonial Political Theory

Political Science Topics (91-100)

U.s. politics.

91) Age and Generational Differences in U.S. Politics

92) Asian American Politics and Political Movements

93) Campaign Advertising in U.S. Elections

94) Celebrity Influence on Political Campaigns in the U.S.

95) Interest Groups and Modern U.S. Conservativism

96) Litigation Strategies in Political Contests Over Abortion

97) Politics of Electoral Redistricting in the U.S.

98) Politics of U.S. Healthcare System and Reform

99) S. Politics and Policies of Mass Incarceration

100) Voter Opinion on Women Political Candidates

Final Thoughts on Political Science Research Topics

Political science topics are rarely one-size-fits-all. Like many humanistic and other modes of research, topics typically suit the specific interests and motivations of the researcher. Do you want to improve a method or practical process? Are you interested in the politics of a specific region, or motivated to learn about something especially urgent? Where is the conversation within or across fields, and where might you have the most to contribute? Combining careful self-assessment and knowledge of research fields is the best way to effectively carve out your own chunk of the gigantic discipline that is political science.

Political Science Research Topics – Additional Resources

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Tyler holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Missouri and two Master of Arts degrees in English, one from the University of Maryland and another from Northwestern University. Currently, he is a PhD candidate in English at Northwestern University, where he also works as a graduate writing fellow.

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Political Science

Undergraduate sample research topics.

Students in the Department of Political Science at Western Michigan University will want to review these sample research topics when selecting their own research topic.

• A Cost-Benefit Analysis of the Office of Independent Counsel
• A Study on Equitable Water Provision in Latin America
• Affirmative Action: National Origin Minorities
• Aid to the Health-Related Sector: The United States, Japan, and Germany
• An Assessment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965
• An Evaluation of International Law as Applied to Genocide from Nuremberg to the Balkans
• Celebrity Influence on Political Campaigns
• Children Soldiers in Africa
• Development of a Constitutional Right of Privacy
• Educational Outcomes in Michigan: A Lack of Focus and Context
• Effectiveness of Rape Shield Laws
• Globalization and the Anti-Globalization Movement
• Legislative Redistricting in Illinois for 2002
• Mexico, Corporate Globalization and the Media
• Mexico's Changing Political Party System
• Nature Within the City: The Greenway Movement and the Transformation of Urban Form
• Pretextual Automobile Stops and the Fourth Amendment
• Public Education and Religious Establishment
• Racial Profiling in post 9/11 United States Content Regulation in Broadcasting
• Religious Exercise in Public Schools: Continuing Debate
• Rights and Their Progression from State to Federal Policy: The Case of the Disability Rights Movement
• Sexual Harassment: Comparative Legal Analysis
• Squatter Settlements in Post-Apartheid South Africa
• Stereotypes Between American and Arab-Americans in the United States
• Telecommunications Policy in China
• The "Political Question" Doctrine and Reapportionment
• The Austrian Freedom Party in 2000
• The Debt Crisis in Heavily Indebted Poor Countries
• The Effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement
• The Equal Rights Amendment: Why Controversy Ensured its Defeat
• The Evolution (and Devolution) of Affirmative Action Initiatives
• The 14th Amendment and Privacy
• The Influence of the Antislavery Movement, Republican Ideology, and Federalism on the 14th Amendment
• The Lemon Test and the Religious Establishment Clause
• The Patriot Act: Security/Rights Issues in Historical Perspective
• The Political Economy of the Micro-Island Nations of the Caribbean: The Impact of Tourism on Caribbean Culture, Environment and Society
• The Supreme Court and Reproductive Rights
• The Supreme Court and Sexual Preference
• Title IX and Collegiate Athletic Opportunities
• Truth Commissions and Civil Society
• U.S.-Japanese Trade Policy: A Defense of Limited Unilateralism
• Weapons of the Weak and the Chinese Occupation of Tibet
• Women and Equal Pay: An Assessment of Differences in Universities
• Women, Identity and Political Activism During the Allende Regime in Chile

• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-67763-7
• Corpus ID: 271301599

The N400 effect captures nuances in implicit political preferences.

• Emmanuel Mahieux , Lee de-Wit , +2 authors N. Wicha
• Published in Scientific Reports 20 July 2024
• Political Science, Psychology

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

The relationship between political legitimacy and economic legitimacy: empirical explorations of a novel research approach on legitimacy.

• Department for Social Sciences, Institute for Sociology, Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

The paper outlines key points of a novel research approach to empirically investigate the question of legitimacy in modern societies. This new research approach utilizes a functionalist perspective to expand the concept of legitimacy. Accordingly, the conceptual framework discusses how legitimacy can be employed in different domains of society. In particular, it proposes to conceptualize both the legitimacy of the political system (political legitimacy) as well as the legitimacy of the economic system (economic legitimacy). The main objectives of the study are to (1) develop conceptualizations that are empirically plausible for the two types of legitimacies; (2) to empirically verify the operationalization; and (3) to assess empirically the relationship between these two types of legitimacies and identify interdependencies between them. The paper employs a macro-level research design to understand the relationship between political and economic legitimacy, where the main units of analysis are countries. The study compiles a new country-level dataset of indicators for political and economic legitimacy based on a large selection of secondary cross-national data sources. It employs then structural equation modeling to established empirical measurement models for political and economic legitimacy. Moreover, the relationship of political and economic legitimacy is explored with a cross-lagged panel model. The paper establishes that political and economic legitimacy are two distinct concepts empirically. Furthermore, the empirical results indicate that political legitimacy has a negative influence on economic legitimacy, whereas economic legitimacy does not effect political legitimacy. Overall, the paper shows the viability of this new research approach and potential pitfalls for future research. The empirical evidence should be interpreted with caution due to low data quality, nonetheless the paper contributes to taking a step closer toward understanding how governments can ensure stable societies.

1 Introduction

In recent decades, the volumes of research studies have focused on the concept of legitimacy from different angles. The question of political legitimacy has been scrutinized in research investigations from either a theoretical or an empirical perspective. As such, scholarly enquiry comprises the disciplines of political philosophy and empirical comparative (political) research. Scholars have discussed the definition of legitimacy (cf. Wiesner and Harfst, 2019 ; cf. Rasmussen, 2022 ), considered the sources of legitimacy for institutions (cf. Wiesner and Harfst, 2022 ), contemplated whether legitimacy should be a priori defined by a normative agenda, reflecting on whether the source of legitimacy stems from citizenry ( Schaar, 1981 ; Scharpf, 1999 ; Hurrelmann et al., 2007b ), and devised methods to empirically measure the concept ( Lamb, 2005 ; Gilley, 2006 ; Hindermann, 2018b ; Schoon, 2022 ).

One of the fields most extensively focused on the question of legitimacy is political culture theory. One of the primary research aims of this field is to understand processes connected to regime stability and social transformation ( Pickel and Pickel, 2002 , 2023 ). This stimulates scholarly inquiry on legitimacy, as scholars consider legitimacy to be relevant for democracy and regime stability ( Easton, 1965b ; Hurwitz, 1973 ; Lipset, 1981 ). The current study connects to these scholarly discussions on legitimacy and offers new insights building on them, as it is fundamentally interested in understanding what conditions are relevant for the stability of societies, making the study strongly connected to traditions of political culture theory.

Previous studies on the concept of legitimacy have primarily, if not exclusively, attributed it to political systems. 1 Hence, the terms political legitimacy and legitimacy are often used as synonyms. While the authors have discussed how legitimacy is influenced by processes (primarily economic) beyond the political system ( Lipset, 1981 ; Diamond, 1999 ), little attention has been paid to the possibility that the concept of legitimacy is expanded beyond the political system (for an exceptions see: Linz, 1988 ; Barker, 1990 ). Furthermore, paradoxically, studies on political legitimacy often aim to latch on to a more fundamental debate on system stability ( Rasmussen, 2022 , 1), but their narrow focus on the political system limits their potential to thoroughly explain societal shifts and changes stretching beyond the political system. In contrast, this study argues that the concept of legitimacy can be expanded to other domains of society, such as the economic system. From this proposition follows that political legitimacy could be considered only one of many types of legitimacies, and that other domains of society can also be hallmarked by the term “legitimacy.” Consequentially, a second argument of the study is that the existence of different types of legitimacies puts forth the demand to explore the relationships between these different types. Hence, this study does not only discuss the notion of legitimacy as it relates to the domain of the economic system (i.e., economic legitimacy) but also hypothesizes possible connections between the legitimacy of the political system (i.e., political legitimacy) and that of the economic system (i.e., economic legitimacy).

A further caveat of discussions on the concept of legitimacy is that scholarly endeavors are often unbalanced regarding how much focus is devoted to the theoretical or empirical examination of legitimacy. Theoretical considerations dominate discussions, which often break off before scholars deal with empirical issues related to legitimacy. In contrast, empirical research rarely utilizes a conscious and deliberate operationalization of political legitimacy (for exceptions, see Gilley, 2006 ; Hindermann, 2018b ; Schoon, 2022 ). In contrast, this study does not wish to stop at the conceptual level and considers the empirical pursuit of the conceptual and theoretical frameworks equally important, especially because it proposes novel conceptual and theoretical frameworks. Accordingly, the study will not only conceptualize the two types of legitimacies (political and economic) and discuss their theoretical relationship but it will also pursue an empirical adaptation of the conceptual and theoretical frameworks. Thus, this study also contributes to strengthening the bridge between theoretical discussions and empirical endeavors on legitimacy. Finally, the study provides traction for political cultural approaches by expanding the term “legitimacy.” Political cultural theory aims to understand the requisites for system stability that stretches beyond the political system, and legitimacy is one of its core interests ( Pickel and Pickel, 2002 ; Rasmussen, 2022 , 1). Paradoxically, the majority of political cultural approaches maintain a narrow focus on the political system. This limits political cultural theory’s potential to help assess the system stability of a given society. In short, the political cultural approach may benefit from expanding the meaning of legitimacy to other domains of society.

Overall, the study pursues several research goals. At the theoretical level, it aims to discuss the two concepts and the connection between political legitimacy and economic legitimacy but then also empirically examines the relationship between the two concepts. Beyond this, the study aims to provide practical insights for the empirical analysis by identifying empirical obstacles and methodological pitfalls to aid scholars planning similar endeavors in the future. Accordingly, the study is presented with several tasks to achieve these goals. First, the study needs to synthesize existing conceptualizations of (political) legitimacy to identify key analytical qualities of the theoretical concept that supports transferring the meaning of legitimacy to another domain and provides insights for its operationalization. Second, the study needs to provide a plausible analytical framework that functions as a tool to simultaneously accommodate the ideas of legitimacy for the political system and the economic system. Third, the study needs to match the analytical qualities identified for (political) legitimacy in the domain of the economic system. Fourth, it needs to consider the different theoretical arguments that are plausible to explain the connection between political legitimacy and economic legitimacy. Fifth, the above-described theoretical considerations need to be followed through empirically.

Overall, the study is motivated to complete the arch from theoretical discussion to empirical exploration of the relationship between the established concept of political legitimacy and the newly introduced concept of economic legitimacy. As a consequence, the study readily makes compromises in some aspects (both theoretically and empirically). Nonetheless, the study provides food for thought about the concept and operationalization of economic legitimacy, the theoretical connection between political and economic legitimacy, and the empirical investigation of the relationship between these two concepts. As such, the current study should be considered merely as one of the first attempts to explore the relationship between political and economic legitimacy (for an exception about the theoretical connection see Linz, 1988 ; for an exception about the empirical connection at the micro level see Weatherford, 1989 ; for an exception about the empirical connection at the macro level see Ignácz, 2018b ). Overall, the study scrapes only the surface of the topic and is confronted with several challenges, not all of which can be resolved in a single study. Much is yet to be studied about the relationship between political and economic legitimacy. With this in mind, the study will conclude with a comprehensive list of suggestions for future scientific undertakings while addressing many of the shortcomings of the current study.

Accordingly, in the following, the study will construct the conceptual framework in which such a definition of political legitimacy is introduced that allows for easy operationalization and adoption to different domains of society. A definition of economic legitimacy is introduced. The methodological framework follows the conceptual framework, as the plausibility of measuring the concepts needs to be considered. The theoretical chapter discusses the relationship between political and economic legitimacy. The second part of the study focuses on empirically investigating the relationship between political and economic legitimacy based on the methodological framework evaluated. The data and methods section presents the dataset used to measure political and economic legitimacy and describes the methodology used in the empirical analysis. Finally, the results of the empirical analysis are presented.

2 Conceptual framework

2.1 political legitimacy: a widely used term and an ambiguous concept with important, distinct qualities.

A review of the literature on (political) legitimacy 2 in itself is a humbling task, which has been undertaken previously by many scholars (for most recent reviews see: Rasmussen, 2022 ; Wiesner and Harfst, 2022 ). In particular, in the current special issue, Wiesner and Harfst (2022) provide a detailed overview on the genealogy of the concept political legitimacy. While “legitimacy” or “political legitimacy” is common, widely used terms, the definitions and conceptualizations are however many. The conceptualizations vary greatly, and the specific qualities and characteristics of legitimacy are largely guided by the specific research agenda, where a particular definition is employed. Hence, the review in this study for the concept of (political) legitimacy will not (and cannot) be exhaustive and is limited in its extensiveness. Key for the synthesis of conceptualizations is the broadest goal of the study as follows: to follow through with an empirical analysis of the connection between political and economic legitimacy.

Accordingly, the synthesis of existing conceptualizations ultimately needs to weigh on qualities relevant to measure political legitimacy empirically. In particular, approaches need to be identified which present an empirical approach, clarify whether legitimacy is a characteristic at the micro, meso, or macro level, identify from where the proclamation of legitimacy stems, and discuss the modes associated with legitimacy. Beyond this, a secondary but just as important aspect is to consider which conceptualizations allow for an easy transferability of the meaning of political legitimacy to other domains of society.

2.1.1 Brief definition of political legitimacy

Before considering the different aspects described above, it is useful to provide a minimalist definition of political legitimacy. Legitimacy is an attribute that political institutions and political actors in the political system can possess or achieve under certain conditions. If a political institution has legitimacy (or is legitimate), it means that the rules and norms of the political institution are maintained and upheld. Consequentially, actors affiliated with the institution adhere to these rules and norms and contribute to maintaining the legitimacy of the political institution in question. Scholars often connect the notion of power with legitimacy; they make a clear declaration that political power needs to be legitimated in order to be able to function as an authority. Connected to the role of power, another common feature in conceptualizations of legitimacy is that the rules and norms are maintained through compliance with a clear lack of coercion. As such, lack of coercion is observed as a requisite of legitimacy. Finally, in general, legitimacy is observed as a positive quality ( Rasmussen, 2022 , 3–4). One of the least disputed aspects of legitimacy, correspondingly, is that lack of legitimacy will mean a certain level of threat and instability within a given society. Political legitimacy is also often observed as a requisite to maintaining social order and norms in society (i.e., beyond political institutions) and, hence, a requisite for social stability ( Lipset, 1959 ; Hurwitz, 1973 ; Pickel et al., 2003 ; Hurrelmann et al., 2007a ; Rasmussen, 2022 ).

2.1.2 Can we measure (political) legitimacy empirically?

One of the most crucial questions for the study is to clear up whether legitimacy can be measured at all. In general, a distinct divide can be identified in the scholarship. The demarcation line is between the discipline of political philosophy and empirical political science. Scholars of political philosophy contend that political legitimacy needs to be defined based on normative principles that also correspond with democratic principles, and this discipline thus employs a normative-theoretical conceptualization of political legitimacy ( Habermas, 1973 , 1976 ; Weber, 1984 ; Barker, 1990 ; Beetham, 1991 ; Weber, 2002 [1922] ). This conceptualization often does not provide tangible definitions and takes it upon itself to determine the criteria of legitimacy but seldom applies it to a contemporary social setting ( Hurrelmann et al., 2007b ). In contrast, empirical political scientists argue that the acceptance, evaluation, and justification of political institutions by citizenry (i.e., the actors) suffice to deem the institutions legitimate. These scholars provide an empirical–analytical conceptualization in which the beliefs of real-world actors are pivotal to assessing legitimacy ( Hurrelmann et al., 2007b ).

Scholars empirically exploring the question of legitimacy still show a large variety of foci. Some are occupied by assessing the legitimacy of a certain set of institutions (e.g., that of political institutions ( Kriesi, 2013 ; van Ham et al., 2017 ; Fuchs and Roller, 2019 ) or legal institutions ( Tankebe and Liebling, 2014 ; Tyler and Jackson, 2014 )), while other scholars have a less specific focus and refer to regime legitimacy ( Seligson, 2002 ) or state legitimacy ( Gilley, 2006 ). Numerous scholars identified legitimacy as one of the single most important characteristics of political institutions that help maintain social order ( Lipset, 1959 ; Easton, 1965b ; Hurwitz, 1973 ; Easton, 1975 ; Lipset, 1981 ; Fuchs, 1989 ). A common foundation in these approaches is that scholars attempt to tap the relationship and dispositions members of society have toward the political system (and its components).

The duality of the normative and empirical approach has stimulated the interest of several scholars and has resulted in the blending of the two traditions. For example, Patberg (2013) advises researchers to avoid employing a solely analytical–empirical approach, where the evaluations of the general public are solely considered, as it can lead to jumping to incorrect conclusions. Instead, he suggests that scholars take the role of the appraiser to assess whether the normative expectations of individuals match that of the (reconstructed) political order. Patberg argues that the (claimed) legitimacy crisis/legitimacy deficit would be assessed drastically differently if this more elaborated approach was employed. Furthermore, regarding this particular issue, Wiesner and Harfst (2022) also suggest incorporating and uniting the two approaches. The coauthors outline a new framework that harmonizes the two traditions of conceptualizing political legitimacy in a two-dimensional typology. The novel framework suggests that the two traditions can be viewed merely as two different sources to assess legitimacy. Hence, they can be observed as two independent dimensions of legitimacy. The first dimension refers to the so-called internal axis of political legitimacy, where the source of legitimacy is an expressed, subjective assessment by the general public of a given country. The authors have coined this dimension subjective legitimacy . The second dimension of legitimacy is referred to as the “external axis,” where the assessment of political institutions is executed by an externally defined set of criteria, which are anchored in normative-theoretical foundations. This two-dimensional typology tackles the critique of Schaar (1981) , who is put off by analytical–empirical conceptualizations. 3

In sum, based on these discussions, political legitimacy is a concept which is meaningful to assess empirically. While the study acknowledges that the approaches combining the normative and empirical traditions are important, it does not have the capacity to consider them consistently throughout the paper. Hence, when referring to political legitimacy, subjective political legitimacy is meant hereafter.

2.1.3 Political legitimacy: a question associated with the collective

Now, it has been established that political legitimacy is meaningful to measure; the search continues for conceptualizations providing clues about qualities relevant to measurability. First, beyond the minimal definition highlighted above, authors agree on little about political legitimacy. Scholars overwhelmingly share the notion that legitimacy transcends the individual level. This single common ground already underlines an important quality of political legitimacy important for our purposes. Political legitimacy refers to a (positive) quality of the political system in a given society. This quality is also reflected in the empirical operationalization of the concept. Weatherford (1992) , for example, suggests that legitimacy at both levels makes sense conceptually. Gilley (2006) employs a macro-level measurement for political legitimacy. In sum, legitimacy is a macro-level concept.

2.1.4 Targets of legitimacy: object-oriented

One of the most prominent theories dealing with political legitimacy is Easton’s approach to system support. Easton’s analytical approach stipulates that legitimacy should always be understood in relation to an object. This clear analytical differentiation and the object-oriented approach are also maintained by scholars employing Easton’s framework ( Fuchs, 1989 ; Westle, 1989 ; Diamond, 1999 ; Dalton, 2004 ). Other approaches, less closely similar to Eastonian traditions, also emphasize how legitimacy is object-oriented ( Patberg, 2013 ; Hindermann, 2018a , b ; Schoon, 2022 ). Patberg’s depiction is concerned with how the relation of the general public is best assessed for political order ( Herrschaftsordnung ) as an object. Elsewhere, Hindermann (2018b , 7) in his theoretical framework formally breaks down the concept of legitimacy into different elements akin to Easton’s approach. Based on the study by Lamb (2005) , Hindermann (2018b , 8) argues that legitimacy is usually targeted at something, and as such legitimacy has an object. Schoon’s (2022) recent publication also operates with the object-oriented nature of legitimacy, as he analytically distinguishes between the object of legitimacy, the audience assessing legitimacy, and the relationship that ties these two together. In sum, empirical–analytical studies on political legitimacy predominantly devise legitimacy as individuals’ disposition toward the political system, and it is considered the target of personal beliefs and is therefore object-oriented.

Beyond this, it is important to consider to what extent scholars acknowledge the political system’s multi-faceted topography. The theoretical approach of Lipset (1959 , 1981) simplifies the political system to a large degree, discussing its legitimacy (and stability) as a whole, and does not acknowledge more detailed differentiation. The framework of Scharpf (1999 , 2010) also only accommodates a rough depiction of the political system. In contrast, the analytical model from Easton offers a more fine-grained approach to the political system. In particular, Easton identifies three objects of (political) support, namely, the political community, the regime, and the authorities (i.e., occupants of formal political roles, where the incumbent may change over a period of time) and discusses how the legitimacy is a “sentiment that may be directed to any one of the three political objects” ( Easton, 1975 , 451). Scholars adopting and building on the framework of Easton have maintained this differentiation of the political system ( Fuchs, 1989 ; Westle, 1989 ). Others break down these categories into even finer categories. For example, Dalton (2004 , 58) breaks down the regime into principles, performance, and institutions. Elsewhere, Norris (2011 , 24) presents a depiction of the political system in which the different objects presented by Easton can be considered somewhat nested within each other. While the approaches of Dalton and Norris are less explicit about the role of legitimacy, they nonetheless clearly demonstrate the multi-dimensionality of the political system, different dimensions of which have been previously considered in connection with legitimacy.

2.1.5 Expressing legitimacy: the relationship between audience and object

So far, the exact nature of the relation between individuals and the object of legitimacy has not been addressed in this study. Again, the Eastonian definition provides a good point of departure due to its clarity. Easton (1965b , 278) defines political legitimacy as “the conviction on the part of the member that it is right and proper for him to accept and obey authorities and to abide to the requirements of the regime” and suggests that legitimacy fosters the support of the political system. The importance of governing authority also resonates in Scharpf’s definition, which proclaims that legitimacy justifies governing. In contrast, Lipset’s (1981) definition is less focused on authority. Instead, it echoes the sentiment of acceptance of the regime: “Legitimacy involves the capacity of the system to engender and maintain the belief that the existing political institutions are the most appropriate one for the society” ( Lipset, 1981 , 64).

While these definitions are intuitively clear, little guidance is given regarding how individuals actually express their legitimacy beliefs (and what can be captured empirically). Hence, scholars’ interpretations exhibit a large variety in terms of how to operationalize individuals’ acceptance of authority. Beyond this, large ambiguity reigns among scholarly approaches. For example, even though scholarly endeavors most commonly employ Easton’s framework as the foundation for their empirical work, they do not follow the hierarchy in the terminology verbatim. In particular, Easton clearly distinguishes between diffuse and specific support (i.e., output-focused evaluations) and between the two sources of diffuse support, trust and legitimacy. Furthermore, his framework clearly orders trust and legitimacy as underlying diffuse support.

In contrast, scholarly approaches do not necessarily follow this interdependency of the concepts. For example, Dalton (2004) considers diffuse support to be a proxy for legitimacy (notice the opposite hierarchy of concepts compared with Easton) and then uses a multitude of indicators to measure legitimacy (trust, evaluation of members of parliament, and party identification). Elsewhere, Norris (2011) identifies five different levels for system support, which are nested into one another: approval of incumbent office, confidence in regime institutions, evaluation of overall performance of regime, agreement with core norms, and belonging to nation-state. In a similar vein, Pickel (2019) synthesizes numerous scholarly frameworks to present five different levels of democratic regime: performance of administration, institutional trust, legitimacy of current (governing) regime, legitimacy of political system, and identification with nation (due to space limitations, an in-depth and systematic review of the different approaches is not possible here. For the most recent reviews, see: Mazepus, 2016 ; Blanco-González et al., 2017 ; Hindermann, 2018a ; Anstötz et al., 2019 ).

Nonetheless, what seems to be a consistent and persistent feature of the expression of legitimacy is the evaluative component ( Westle, 2007 ). Individuals possess preferences (or demands) about the regime (or its components) and match them with reality ( van Ham et al., 2017 ). Hence, political legitimacy captures the evaluation of the political system as a whole.

2.1.6 Legitimacy beyond the political system: on transferability and terminology

A final issue that needs to be addressed is whether it is plausible for the concept of political legitimacy to be transferred to a different domain of society. The object-oriented nature of legitimacy makes the concept a good candidate for this. In fact, a recent conceptualization of legitimacy by Schoon (2022) also attempts to free legitimacy from the confinement of the political system. In his study, Schoon disentangles the object of legitimacy from the political system, opening avenues to expanding the object of legitimacy to other systems and social institutions. Hence, we arrive to the possibility of speaking of different types of legitimacies and transferring the concept to other domains of society.

If we accept the proposal that the object of legitimacy can be transferred to other domains, there is a need to adjust the terminology that has been employed until now. It should be consistently stipulated to which domain legitimacy is referring. As such, the term political legitimacy should be employed for the legitimacy of the political system. Consequently, the different types of legitimacies can subsumed under the umbrella term of “legitimacy.” The current study adopts this terminology.

Accordingly, previous sections established a working definition for the concept of political legitimacy. Political legitimacy refers to a macro -level phenomenon that can be empirically measured and that captures individual evaluations toward the political system. Legitimacy employed for a different domain of society should carry the same qualities as political legitimacy, with the fundamental difference that the evaluations target the particular domain in question.

2.2 Systems theory as a tool for identifying objects of concern for legitimacy beyond the political system

To motivate the development of expanding the universe of concepts under the umbrella term of legitimacy, a suitable conceptual modeling of society needs to be considered. We do not need to search far, as scholars have considered the political system, i.e., the object of legitimacy, as a distinct component of society ( Easton, 1965a , 38). In particular, Easton’s functionalist framework discusses that support can be directed at different objects that all constitute parts of the political system. Easton (1960 [1953] , 1965a , b) develops the foundations of his political theory in three volumes. He argues that the analytical identification of different subsystems of society other than the political system is necessary. While all subsystems (including political subsystem) are interlinked, they should be dealt with in isolation, as this serves the development of a more empirically oriented political theory. Easton contends that this abstraction is necessary and serves analytical purposes while acknowledging that “all social life is interdependent” ( Easton, 1960 [1953] , 97). Hence, these sentiments all reflect Easton’s functionalist understanding of society.

A functionalist understanding identifies the political system as a distinct component of society as the political subsystem. The notion that the political system is only one part of society is embedded in the theoretical traditions of Parsonian structural functionalism. This approach provided a foundation for Easton’ theoretical work and Luhmann’s functional structuralism (Luhmann’s systems theory). While these theories have been disregarded in mainstream social science in recent decades, 4 their intellectual contributions still prime scholars’ understanding of society ( Loyal and Malešević, 2021 , 31). In particular, Parsons developed the AGIL model, which identifies that political institutions fulfill the function of goal attainment (G). Luhmann also singles out the political system as one of the main systems of society in his systems theory. Another commonality of the theories is that both prominent scholars identify the economic system as a further component (or subsystem) of society. Parsons associates the economic system with the function of adaptation (A) of society to the environment. In contrast, Luhmann claims that the differentiation of interaction systems (embedded in rational structures of action and communication with money as the medium) result in complex societal system of the economy. In both theories, the political system and economic system play a prominent role. Moreover, Luhmann discusses how these two subsystems compete for functional primacy in society.

Various scholarly studies echo the sentiment that the political and economic subsystems are key fundaments of society. For example, the distinct division of economic and political institutions is employed by Kornai (2008) when he discusses the post-socialist transition. In particular, Kornai discusses how post-socialist transitions 5 rest on various dynamics in the economic and political subsystems.

Hence, a functionalist depiction of societies further underlines the previously proposed expansion of the concept of political legitimacy. According to this train of thought, the legitimacy of the political system is to be considered, but the legitimacy of other subsystems could also be evaluated. We need legitimacy for a certain subsystem so that individuals comply with the prescribed structure. Thus, against such a theoretical backdrop, the current study will examine the concept of legitimacy in different subsystems of society. In particular, it will pay special attention to the political subsystem and its legitimacy and the economic subsystem and its legitimacy.

2.3 Development of the concept of “economic legitimacy”

Based on the conceptual expansion of the term “legitimacy” and the analytical frame of functionalist theory, the current study introduces the legitimacy of economic institutions (i.e., the economic subsystem), economic legitimacy, as a relevant concept.

Beyond a few mentions, there seems to be little scholarly discussion on economic legitimacy explicitly. In fact, the term is scarcely used and carries very different meanings among scholars employing the term. Some authors use the term as shorthand for summarizing complex individual notions in relation to fairness and distributive justice ( Kluegel et al., 1999 ; Gijsberts, 2002 ; Castillo, 2011 ). In contrast, Linz (1988) introduces the legitimacy of social and economic systems as a sister term for political legitimacy, by which he means a kaleidoscope of preferences and satisfaction toward various economic actors, economic regulations, and general economic order. Most recently, Ignácz (2018b) has employed the term to refer to the evaluation of wage distribution aggregated at the country level.

The lack of scholarly study on economic legitimacy potentially has to do with the fact that political science has monopolized the term “legitimacy.” This sentiment resonates for Linz (1988 , 66): “some readers may object to applying the term legitimacy of the social and economic system, arguing that it is an unwarranted extension of the term.”

This limited scholarship also allows for a unique opportunity. The concept of economic legitimacy can be developed in alignment with key qualities of political legitimacy. Hence, the working definition of political legitimacy guides the development of the concept of economic legitimacy. Analogous with the working definition of political legitimacy, economic legitimacy is a macro- level phenomenon that can be empirically measured and captures individual evaluations regarding the economic system. This working definition will allow us to identify research fields with concepts that match these qualities.

2.3.1 Can we measure economic legitimacy?

The above-mentioned working definition guides us to research fields investigating the architecture of the economic system. In particular, the field of (empirical) distributive justice research emerges as promising. Originally, justice was the subject of political philosophy: scholars such as Rawls (1972) and Nozick (1973) argued about what can be considered just and how a just society is organized (also in regard to the distribution of goods). Empirical political scientists at one point claimed the concept of political legitimacy from political philosophers, and a similar dynamic also emerged for justice research. A separate strain of (interdisciplinary) research has emerged that steps away from normative debates and are engaged in empirically understanding the fairness notions of individuals (for a review see: Miller, 1999 ; Sabbagh and Schmitt, 2016 ). While the normative strain of scholarship focuses on discussing what would be the fairest way to distribute resources (often with moral underpinnings), scholars with an empirical orientation investigate the conditions under which individuals accept a distributive situation or distributive system ( Homans, 1961 ; Adams, 1965 ; Greenberg and Cohen, 1982 ). They also compare the levels of acceptance for income inequalities among countries ( Hadler, 2005 ; Andersen and Yaish, 2012 ) and attempt to explain cross-country variation in attitudes toward income inequalities ( Kelley and Evans, 1993 ; Gijsberts, 2002 ).

The agenda of the empirical strain of scholarship provides guidance about the measurability of economic legitimacy. This scholarship deals with attitudes toward different components of the economic system, a clear indication that economic legitimacy can be measured.

2.3.2 Is economic legitimacy a macro-level phenomenon?

A more difficult quality to assess for economic legitimacy is whether it can be considered a macro-level phenomenon. On the one hand, a large proportion of scholarly study on the topic of empirical justice research is embedded in social psychology and concentrates on understanding individual processes and individual assessment of distributive processes (referred to as “microjustice” by Brickman et al. (1981) ). However, studies with a more sociological orientation tend to explore attitudes toward income inequalities. These studies report levels of acceptance of income inequality as a characteristic of a certain country or society. For example, Kluegel et al. (1999) reflect on how attitudes toward income inequality contribute to the legitimation of capitalism as a system. Elsewhere, we find some more explicit clues on whether it is permissible (and if so, how) to transfer individual level attitudes to the macro level. In particular, Hegtvedt and Johnson (2000) draw a distinction between individual and societal level framing. The coauthors emphasize that when individual attitudes are dealt with as a collective, mechanisms associated with legitimation can be detected. This sentiment resonates in the approach employed by Ignácz (2018b) . At the micro level, the attitudes of individuals on justice are the subject of investigation, whereas the aggregation of these attitudes is interpreted as a characteristic of a given country and used as an indication for legitimacy. Hence, it is plausible to consider economic legitimacy as a macro-level phenomenon.

2.3.3 Is economic legitimacy object-oriented?

Some scholars of justice research are interested in more diffuse concepts related to justice ( Lerner, 1980 ) or focus on assessing when individuals deem a certain exchange to be equitable ( Adams, 1965 ). These approaches lack a sense of object orientation. However, a part of justice research scholarship focuses on understanding attitudes toward income inequality and income rules in which the individual is detached from the situation and attitudes target a specific part of the economic system. In particular, the analytical framework of Jasso (1978) suggests that justice attitudes can articulate an individual’s opinion regarding the fairness of any given phenomenon. Hence, these approaches indicate that economic legitimacy can be object-oriented.

Reviewing the scholarship on empirical justice research, we further gain insight into the degree and level of detail to which the economic system is modeled. While in the case of political legitimacy, a somewhat top-down view where often the political system as a whole is meant or multidimensionality is carefully considered, this is less common in the field related to economic legitimacy. Scholars primarily focus on wage distribution and income inequalities. This is most prominently demonstrated when we look at the research strains of the so-called second generation of empirical justice scholars ( Berger et al., 1972 ; Jasso, 1978 ; Verwiebe and Wegener, 2000 ; Wegener, 2000 ). Scholars can be divided into two subfields: order-related justice and outcome-related justice ( Hülle et al., 2018 ). While order-related justice focuses on the preferences of the respondents toward justice principles ( Greenberg and Cohen, 1982 ; d'Anjou et al., 1995 ; Róbert, 2009 ), outcome-related justice deals with the justice reactions concerning rewards and outcomes ( Castillo, 2011 ; Ignácz, 2018a ).

2.3.4 Expressing economic legitimacy

The dominant modes through which individuals reflect on economic institutions correspond with three interrelated concepts: (justice) evaluations, preferences, and perceptions (cf. Jasso and Wegener, 1997 ; Janmaat, 2013 ; Ignácz, 2018b ). Among these three concepts, perceptions will be the least relevant for economic legitimacy, as perceptions are the subjective observations of individuals of the factual world around them. Perceptions create the world to which individuals refer, and this perceived world becomes reality for individuals ( Thomas, 1966 ). While there is no evaluative component of perceptions, they do constitute an important aspect of the evaluation of the social environment, as perceptions reflect how well individuals have adapted to a given socioeconomic status ( Wegener, 1987 ; Evans et al., 1992 ). In contrast, preferences emphasize the circumstances individuals wish for or prefer to have and, therefore, provide more insight into the value structures behind individual dispositions ( Kelley and Evans, 1993 ). The final concept is justice evaluations, which constitute the discrepancy between preferences and perceptions (for details, see Jasso and Wegener, 1997 ). Jasso and Wegener (1997) emphasize that an evaluation is often only expressed indirectly (for example, in the form of acceptance). Ignácz (2018b) uses evaluations at the aggregate level to measure the legitimacy of wage distribution. Evaluations (coined “justice” evaluations by Jasso, 1978 ) are considered an outstanding measure for the legitimacy of economic inequality ( Kluegel et al., 1999 ; Verwiebe and Wegener, 2000 ; Castillo, 2011 ). Hence, these approaches indicate that economic legitimacy can be related to evaluative assessment of components of the economic system.

3 Methodological framework

There is a sense of urgency to justify the measurability of political and economic legitimacy; hence, the study now outlines the methodological framework describing the operationalization of political legitimacy and economic legitimacy. While the methodological framework is usually presented after the theoretical framework is elaborated, the placement of this section diverges from this established format. The methodological framework follows the key qualities outlined in the conceptual framework: we seek to operationalize macro -level phenomena that can be empirically measured and capture individual evaluations toward the political and economic systems.

First, the methodological framework already carries in itself the quality of empirical measurability. Second, just as the conceptual framework has focused in large part on the subjective dimension of legitimacy, this approach also continues in the methodological framework. Furthermore, based on the conceptual framework of the study, legitimacy is a property of subsystem(s) and describes the quality of the subsystem. Hence, it is not an attribute of individuals in the subsystem but an attribute of the subsystem itself. From this follows that countries possess this characteristic. Subsequently, legitimacy, in general, is a macro-level phenomenon similar to social cohesion ( Dragolov et al., 2016 ) or ethnic diversity ( Alesina et al., 2003 ). Finally, the evaluative natures of political legitimacy and economic legitimacy indicate that they are expressed by individuals. This quality, however, seems at first glance to be at odds with the fact that legitimacy is a macro-level concept. Hence, there is mismatch in that the source of information for legitimacy comes from individual processes, while legitimacy itself has been established as a macro-level phenomenon. The current study proposes bridging this problem with isomorphism and transforming information from the individual level to the country level. According to isomorphism, individual evaluations of political and economic institutions can be summarized to reflect the overall quality of these institutions at the macro level ( Pickel, 2003 ; Landman, 2008 ). While summarizing individual-level responses to represent country-level tendencies has been the target of criticism in the past, scholars have demonstrated that for certain research questions, such an approach is permissive ( Welzel, 2003 ). Recently, this solution has been supported conceptually by Akaliyski et al. (2021) , who discuss how countries can be dealt with as meaningful units of analysis. They refer to the notion of the “miracle of aggregation,” where individuals’ cultural values are aggregated to the country level, and the values of post-aggregation reflect the general cultural climate of a given country. This consideration will also guide the data collection (see Section 5.1). All indicators for both political legitimacy and economic legitimacy should be grounded in indicators capturing the evaluations of individuals but aggregated to the country level.

Measurement strategies for political legitimacy look back on an extensive history with similarly diverse solutions as conceptualizations of political legitimacy (see Section 2.1). Hindermann (2018b) gives a detailed and systematic detail of the different approaches. The study identifies both unidimensional and multidimensional approaches, where the selected indicators of political legitimacy are either incorporated into single-item measures ( Seligson, 2002 ; Doyle, 2011 ; Norris, 2011 ) or are as a composite of several indicators ( Gilley, 2006 ; Norris, 2011 ; Blanco-González et al., 2017 ). Two approaches exhibit more complex measurement schemes for political legitimacy. On one hand, the study by Gilley (2006) on measuring system legitimacy suggests that both confidence in the police and confidence in civil service (measured using items from the World Value Survey) reflect the dimensions of political legitimacy. However, a serious issue with Gilley’s framework is that neither the identified dimensions nor their operationalization is consistent. In the original study ( Gilley, 2006 ), trust in civil service falls under the legality dimension, while in the revised and updated study ( Gilley, 2012 ), the measure is associated with the justification dimension. On the other hand, the research program of Pippa Norris, which now spans over two decades ( Norris, 2011 ), identifies confidence in political institutions as one of the dimensions of system support. She also distinguishes institutional trust from trust in specific actors associated with political institutions (e.g., approval of civil servants is more specific than the approval of institutions). Finally, the operationalization distinctly distances itself from equating political legitimacy with satisfaction with political institutions [similar to Wiesner and Harfst (2022) ]. Satisfaction with political institutions is generally more focused on the performance of those institutions, while trust is evaluative ( Grönlund and Setälä, 2007 ; Norris, 2011 ). Despite the variability in the breadth of indicators associated with political legitimacy, a common denominator among the measures is indicators for political trust (often referred to as “confidence”). In a similar vein, studies in the current special issue also operationalize political legitimacy as trust in political institutions ( Bienstman, 2023 ). Another argument for using political trust as a proxy for political legitimacy is that research shows that individual scores carried over to country level retain their meaning and are isomorphic ( Ruelens et al., 2018 ). Thus, trust in political institutions will be used as proxy for political legitimacy.

The operationalization and measurement of subjective economic legitimacy cannot fall back on such rich research traditions. In general, economic legitimacy should encompass evaluations of economic institutions. However, this might prove to be more difficult to measure, as economic institutions tend to be diffuse. Moreover, for individuals to have evaluations about economic institutions, their focus needs to be anchored and proxies for economic institutions should be used. Ignácz (2018b , 2) suggests that the income distributive system is a good candidate to use as a proxy, as wages and income are key components of the economic system with which the general population regularly comes in contact. Evaluations of the income distributive system are essentially the difference between so-called preferences and perceptions of the distributive system ( Janmaat, 2013 ; Ignácz, 2018a ), and the measure has been researched extensively in the framework of empirical distributive justice research ( Jasso, 1978 ; Jasso and Wegener, 1997 ). Thus, it is considered an established measure, and evaluation of the income distributive system will also serve as the basis for the measurement of economic legitimacy. Finally, again mirroring the strategy for political legitimacy, satisfaction with income inequalities will be excluded from the analysis, as this measure is much stronger in personal situations and is strongly motivated by self-interest.

4 Theoretical framework: the relationship between political legitimacy and economic legitimacy

The previous sections have served to ground the (working) definitions for political and economic legitimacy. Whereas we can discuss political and economic legitimacy separately in a meaningful manner, discussing the connection between the concepts points toward a more overarching discussion about legitimacy and system stability. Thus, by establishing these two concepts, the further questions emerge: How are political and economic legitimacy connected? Are they connected at all? Is one an integral part of the other? To what extent do they influence each other?

However, so far, there is no straightforward answer available. The concept of economic legitimacy is relatively uncharted, and the relationship can be expected to be complex. Hence, this current study is also tasked with considering plausible connections between political and economic legitimacy before commencing with the empirical analysis of the relationship. In the following, numerous competing propositions are presented.

First, it should be mentioned that a requisite to discussing the connection between the concepts is the affirmation that political and economic legitimacy are distinct concepts. Conceptually, the objects of legitimacy (i.e., the political system and the economic system) for political and economic legitimacy are distinct and different from each other. Furthermore, if we consider how each subsystem fulfills a different function based on the functionalist approach, each function needs to be legitimized to a certain extent on its own. Thus, these considerations ground the assumption that the two concepts are indeed distinct. However, this postulation does not automatically rule out that political legitimacy and economic legitimacy can be potentially considered to fall under the umbrella concept of system legitimacy or that they potentially constitute two interrelated dimensions of the latter. While an assessment of system legitimacy is beyond the scope of this study, the pursuit of such an issue is especially encouraged if no causal connection (described below) can be empirically identified. Based on these considerations, the study formulates the following hypothesis:

H1: Political legitimacy and economic legitimacy are conceptually different concepts.

If the corresponding null hypothesis can be rejected, an investigation of the relationship should be pursued. It is meaningful to hypothesize both causal directions of the relation, considering that the two subsystems (i.e., the political and economic) are not superior to one another. This also echoes Luhmann’s (1982) discussion on the competition of the subsystem for functional primacy. Furthermore, it is meaningful to assume only a positive association between political and economic legitimacy given that both are understood as contributing to the stability of societies and social order and are both observed as a positive phenomenon. Based on this, three distinct, causal connections can be expected.

First, in a study by Kluegel and Mason (2004) , the authors propose that acceptance of the economic system fosters acceptance of political regimes. Elsewhere, Seligson (2002) argues that economic instabilities of the system, such as corruption, also destabilize the political legitimacy of a regime. From these considerations, it follows that:

H2a: Higher economic legitimacy fosters higher political legitimacy.

Second, Ignácz (2018b) suggests that economic legitimacy is fostered by the interplay of economic conditions and higher levels of political legitimacy. This would suggest the following causal relationship:

H2b: Higher political legitimacy fosters higher economic legitimacy.

A third option would be to have political and economic legitimacy strengthen each other. A mechanism could be similar to what Easton (1975) describes for diffuse support for the regime and authorities, where support for different institutions has the potential to spill over and influence the support rates for other institutions. Easton also discusses how impulses from non-political subsystems can transition to the political subsystem in form of demands ( Easton, 1965b , 53–55).

H2c: Political legitimacy and economic legitimacy simultaneously promote one another

The above-formulated set of hypotheses for the connection between political legitimacy and economic legitimacy are presented in Figure 1 .

Figure 1 . Graphical depiction of possible causal relationships between political legitimacy and economic legitimacy.

Finally, whereas the current study primarily aims to identify meaningful causal relationships between political and economic legitimacy, it is plausible that no such relationship exists. This is underscored by Luhmann’s systems theory, where he suggests that the different subsystems have a logic of their own, are autonomous, and are beyond the boundaries of the subsystems, independent of each other ( Luhmann, 1982 , 87). In this case, future research should focus on assessing whether a certain typology (defined as the simultaneous levels of political and economic legitimacy in a society) could be used to explain a certain dynamic within societies, for example social reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, even without a direct link to one another, political and economic legitimacy can both contribute to the stability of the social system overall. This is contingent on accepting three premises: first, the social system is not only made up of one single system; second, we can consider the legitimacy of a (sub)system to be an indicator of (sub)system stability; and third, the more subsystems are deemed legitimate, the more stable the overall system is. System stability is akin to the game of Jenga 6 ; the more holes the tower structure has, the less stable it will be. If the building blocks represent the legitimacy of subsystems, then the more subsystems are illegitimate, the more building blocks are missing from the tower structure. Hence, the overall system will be less stable. However, some missing blocks need not mean that the whole tower will collapse immediately. Analogously, if only some subsystems are illegitimate, the overall system need not collapse. If this last scenario is reflected the most in the empirical evidence, then it is recommended to develop a complex typology for system legitimacy.

5 Data and methods

If we accept the theoretical premises and guidelines for the operationalization of the concepts of political and economic legitimacy proposed in the previous sections, the next logical step is to commence empirically exploring the relationship between political and economic legitimacy. To do so, a dataset is required that incorporates indicators of political and economic legitimacy so that their relationship can be investigated in detail. The following sections describe in detail the dataset, the indicators, and the employed methods to empirically test the proposed hypotheses.

5.1 Description of the dataset

Currently, there are no datasets available that summarize (indicators of) political and economic legitimacy and report them together. Hence, a dataset first needs to be compiled for the specific purpose of this study. The aim is to compile a dataset in which indicators for political and economic legitimacy are available at the country level. The dataset should have a panel structure where each country is a case, with two or more measurement points for indicators of political and economic legitimacy.

To achieve this, the following steps were employed:

1. Procurement of primary data sources from public opinion surveys

Description: To ensure high data quality and comparability, the primary data sources stem from large international general population survey projects with transparent documentation about the item wording, sampling, and fielding of the survey. The following primary data sources were used: European Social Survey, World Value Survey, European Value Survey, International Social Survey Program, and Eurobarometer survey. These data sources are those most widely used in a cross-national research ( Pickel et al., 2003 ) due to their aforementioned high quality. For a complete list of data sources, refer to Supplementary Table A1 . The primary data sources correspond to surveys fielded between 2009 and 2019 (with 2019 included). 2009 marks the beginning of the aftermath of the Great Recession ( Rinz, 2022 ), while 2019 marks the last year before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Both of these global events have deeply affected individuals’ relationships to political and economic institutions and, therefore, provided a theoretical well-defined timeframe.

2. Separate data preparation of indicators at the individual level for each public opinion survey

Description: Each indicator associated with political and economic legitimacy in each of the primary data sources is treated for missing and is rescaled, if needed. Since the goal is to compile one single dataset, it is important that the values are comparable, even if the original scaling is different. The general rule of thumb was to rescale each variable to have a range from 0 to 1, where 1 indicates more positive views (evaluations). As all indicators in question have an ordinal level of measurement, the transformation retains information and variance. 7

3. Aggregation of individual-level data to country-level data for each public opinion survey separately

Description: All indicators of individual responses were aggregated 8 to the country level. Simple sample mean values are taken for each indicator. If a country has a higher score on a particular value than another, it means that, on average, respondents had more positive views. Furthermore, each indicator, even if included within the same survey, is aggregated independently from the others. Thus, missing data are handled item-wise (i.e., case-wise deletion is employed). With this approach, the loss of data at the individual level due to missing values and the bias in missing cases is minimized.

4. Merging of country-level data from different public opinion surveys

Description: The aggregated information from the different primary data sources is merged into a single country-level dataset. The information is stored per country per year when the fielding of the questionnaire has started. Thus, the compiled country-level dataset has the required panel structure.

5. Definition of temporal time frames (from year to wave aggregation)

Description: The compiled dataset consisted of measurement points recorded by year at the time of fielding the survey in a particular country. However, over the period of 10 years (2009–2019) the country-year coverage of the items is sparse because even if a certain set of countries was surveyed for one module of a certain survey, all countries might not have been measured in the same year. Thus, to overcome the caveat in the data structure, the survey years were assigned to waves. The waves summarize information for given periods. Wave 1 covers years from 2009 to 2014, while Wave 2 covers years from 2015 to 2019. The definition of the waves stems from theoretical and pragmatic considerations. Theoretically, 2014 is the year the Great Recession was considered to be easing. Pragmatically, 2014 as a cutoff point also coincides with the completion of the 6th wave of the WVS and EVS. If data for a particular indicator were available for a country multiple times within one wave from the same international survey program as the primary source, then the mean value of the indicator (i.e., the average of the average) was used for that country-wave combination (see Dragolov et al. (2013) for a similar solution for treating multiple data points in case of occurrence more than once in a wave). The overall data coverage benefits greatly from such an approach.

The compiled country-level dataset hence provides information by country for two different waves. This dataset provides the empirical basis for measuring political legitimacy, economic legitimacy, and the association between them. In general, global country coverage is uneven. While all the European Union member states could be included, countries from Africa, Asia, and America are represented to a much more limited degree. Information from 94 countries could initially be accessed for at least one of the waves for one of the concepts, but ultimately, in total, 35 countries had at least one indicator for both concepts and waves. The country sample is strongly biased, and the overwhelming majority of countries are European (for detailed information about coverage per wave and per wave per data source, refer to Supplementary Figures A1–A6 ).

5.2 The measurement of political legitimacy and economic legitimacy

Both types of legitimacy are conceived of as latent concepts, i.e., concepts that cannot be measured directly. Hence, for both concepts, measurement models incorporating the selected indicators need to be estimated. Moreover, in the current study, political legitimacy and economic legitimacy are both conceptualized as reflective measurement models. Reflective measurement models work with the underlying assumption that indicators for a certain construct have only proxies for the construct in question. Thus, the manifest indicators imperfectly measure reality, and hence, a certain degree of measurement error is modeled. Such an approach is suggested by Lamb (2014 , 33) and is also used by Hindermann (2018b) for political legitimacy. However, an important distinction differentiates the approach of this study from previous studies: reflective measures for political and economic legitimacy are only constructed at the country level. Hence, no latent constructs are estimated before aggregation. Estimating reflective measures only at the country level also reflects the general principle put forth by Akaliyski et al. (2021) . Furthermore, employing reflective measures for a macro-level phenomenon that relied on data sources anchored in individual response showed promising results for the phenomenon of social cohesion, where nine dimensions of social cohesion were each conceptualized as reflective measures ( Dragolov et al., 2013 , 7–10).

Accordingly, all indicators in the compiled country-level dataset will be considered manifest indicators of the latent factors of political and economic legitimacy. Such an understanding means that irrespective of the primary data source of the indicator, the value will reflect the level of legitimacy. Based on measurement theory, these manifest indicators are however considered imperfect, and measurement error is accounted for in the modeling process. Such an approach is a powerful tool for neutralizing deviances in wording or scaling among indicators stemming from different primary data sources because these deviances can simply be considered measurement errors and accounted for in the modeling without undermining the meaning of the latent factor.

5.2.1 Indicators of political legitimacy and economic legitimacy

The indicators measuring the two key concepts stem from several different surveys. To harmonize the information, the same coding rationale was employed. The coding of the indicators reflects the fact that political legitimacy and economic legitimacy are both positive phenomena. In particular, higher values on any given indicator mean more positive evaluations that will then also contribute to a higher level of (political or economic) legitimacy.

In more detail, this means that at the individual level, before the aggregation, the rescaling already takes this into consideration. All indicators included are attitudinal items with ordinal levels of measurement rescaled so that 1 indicates high acceptance or a positive evaluation of a subsystem, while 0 reflects disproval or a negative evaluation. In the compiled country-level dataset, due to aggregation, these values can be considered quasi-metric. The meaning of the indicators at the aggregate level is largely retained. For example, given the upper- and lower-boundedness of the source variables, if the country aggregate has the value of 1, it means that everyone in the country agrees to accept a particular feature or condition in society. Issues related to deviations in item-wording and difference in the original scaling are accounted for during the estimation of the measurement model.

Indicators measuring political legitimacy are anchored in items dealing with trust in political institutions. In total, three indicators capturing the general population’s trust in certain political institutions are used to measure political legitimacy: specifically trust in (national) government, trust in (national) parliament, and trust in political parties will constitute the basis for the measure for political legitimacy. The item selection is more restrictive than that applied by Norris, as trust in the justice system and trust in police are excluded. Moreover, the item selection excluded items measuring more specific forms of trust (such as trust in politicians, specific incumbents, or civil servants). However, such a restrictive item selection is justified, as these items have been proven to be understood in a similar way across multiple regime types ( Schneider, 2017 ). Moreover, these three items are a subset of items for the established political trust scale and target the so-called representational institutions of the political system ( Marien, 2017 ).

Indicators measuring economic legitimacy are anchored in evaluations of economic institutions and phenomena of the economic sector. As already discussed in previous sections, (justice) evaluations of the income structure have been used previously to measure economic legitimacy. However, in general, such indicators are considerably more difficult to find, especially those repeatedly measured with established items. Based on a careful review of numerous potential primary data sources, the main impression is that there is a more intense focus on attitudes toward large redistributive measures and the role of the governments, but the selection of indicators for distributive attitudes is much more restricted. In fact, from the widely available and established measures related to income structure, a single item was identified as a plausible indicator for economic legitimacy. Specifically, the evaluation of whether the degree of income inequality in country is acceptable or not. See Supplementary Table A2 for a detailed overview of indicators and their wording.

5.3 Analytical strategy

Political and economic legitimacy as latent concepts position the analytical strategy of the study in a structural equation modeling (SEM) framework. An SEM framework is able to model latent constructs as measurement models and account for measurement errors of the indicators. Moreover, it is also equipped to estimate associations between two or more constructs (structural part) simultaneously. Another benefit of the SEM framework is the full-information maximum likelihood (FIML) method used to estimate parameters. This way, list-wise deletion can be side-stepped and more sparse data coverage can be balanced out. Using the FIML method and the heterogeneity of data sources ensures a large country coverage for the analysis. 9 The SEM framework also provides us with a set of goodness-of-fit measures, which stem from the log-likelihood value of the maximum likelihood estimation and the nonparametric chi-square value ( Brown, 2015 ; Brown and Moore, 2015 ). The global fit indices such as CFI, RMSEA, and SRMR further assist in assessing the estimated models with established cutoff points (following the guidelines by Hu and Bentler, 1999 ).

To test H1, which states that political and economic legitimacy are two distinct concepts, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted. CFA helps assess whether indicators for political legitimacy and economic legitimacy load on the same dimension or constitute two distinct factors. In this case, fit indices for two concurrent measurement models were compared: Model 1A looked at whether all indicators load on a single factor, Model 1B, when indicators load onto two separate factors: a factor for political legitimacy and a factor for economic legitimacy (see simplified versions in Figure 2 ), for each wave, respectively. If Model 1A can be rejected, measurement models for the two concepts in both waves can be estimated, and the second set of hypotheses can be tested.

Figure 2 . (Theoretical) measurement models for indicators for (political and economic) legitimacy.

To test the second set of hypotheses, which hypothesize different types of relationships between political legitimacy and economic legitimacy, the analysis utilizes the fact that information from two waves is available by employing a cross-lagged panel model. In recent years, research has expanded on the basic cross-lagged panel model, and new model specifications for more precise estimation have been introduced ( Xu et al., 2020 ; Mackinnon et al., 2022 ). An important merit of all cross-lagged panel models is their capacity to estimate causal relationships, as the temporal aspect of the causal relationship is incorporated into the models. Specifically, cross-lagged models make use of the panel structure and assess the strength of association between two variables. The “crossing” refers to how the direction of the association is estimated simultaneously: the effect of Z (T1) on W (T2) and the effect of W (T1) on Z (T2). In short, the effect of political legitimacy on economic legitimacy is regressed simultaneously as the effect of economic legitimacy is regressed on political legitimacy. Figure 3 depicts the cross-lagged panel model, where economic legitimacy and political legitimacy are modeled as latent constructs.

Figure 3 . (Theoretical) cross-lagged panel model with latent constructs (simplified depiction, manifest variables omitted). The correlations depicted in Wave 2 are in fact residual correlations (but due to the simplified depiction in this graph, residuals are not depicted).

The initial preparation of the primary data sources was conducted in Stata 16, while the data compilation and analysis were conducted in R ( R Core Team, 2023 ) and Mplus 8.3 ( Muthén and Muthén, 1998–2019 ). The R package MplusAutomation ( Hallquist and Wiley, 2018 ) was used for the CFA; the semPlot package was used for depicting the SEM models ( Epskamp, 2019 ). For all analyses, ML estimator was employed.

6 Analysis and results

6.1 (system) legitimacy, political legitimacy, and economic legitimacy.

To assess whether political legitimacy and economic legitimacy should be considered, the manifest indicators of the respective concepts need to be investigated. In particular, it needs to be assessed whether the indicators load on a single factor or two different factors. Hence, a unidimensional and a bidimensional factor model need to be compared based on their fit indices. The two competing models for the two waves were estimated separately.

Beyond the theoretical models shown in Figure 2 , further models were estimated in which only a selection of the available items was incorporated into the models. The first reason for this was that the shared data coverage for some indicators (typically from different primary data sources) was extremely low. Second, patchy data structure was also systematic; indicators from the same data source had higher shared data coverage. This structure also affects the model estimation, as indicated by modification indices. The initial model modification indices suggested error term correlations for indicators from the same primary data source. Hence, to minimize effects of the coverage structure, the corresponding models were estimated, in which the primary data sources of the indicators were different. With that, the influence of the data structure could be minimalized, to test the robustness check of the original models.

Overall, despite the difficulties the data structure poses, the estimated models show a clear tendency that indicators of political legitimacy and economic legitimacy load on two distinct factors ( Supplementary Tables A3 , A4 ). In both waves, the goodness-of-fit values and the AIC values indicate that the bidimensional model exhibits better goodness-of-fit values, or it does not produce worse results than the unidimensional solution. The primacy of the bidimensional model, however, is corroborated by the standardized factor loading of the unidimensional model. Here, the indicators of economic legitimacy demonstrate lower standardized factor loadings than the indicators of political legitimacy. Finally, the estimated correlation coefficients estimated in the bidimensional factor solution also suggest that there is a high correlation between the concepts (0.75), but the two concepts are not identical.

6.2 Association between political and economic legitimacy

From the previous section, it follows that political legitimacy and economic legitimacy can be considered two different concepts. Hence, the association between the two concepts is meaningful to investigate empirically within a SEM framework as a cross-lagged panel model. As the first step (i.e., as an intermediate step to test the association), measurement models need to be fitted for the two latent factors (for political legitimacy and economic legitimacy, respectively) as single one-factor models. Then, as a second step, the relationship between the two concepts is assessed as a structural model with cross-lagged features. Figure 4 shows the complete theoretical SEM cross-lagged panel model, where considerations for data sources are not yet incorporated. In the following, the analysis for the measurement model and the structural model are reported separately.

Figure 4 . Complete theoretical model (with measurement model and structural model incorporated).

6.2.1 Step 1: The measurement model

Ideally, the two latent factors are estimated as single first-order unidimensional models, where each of the indicators of a given latent construct (independent from their primary source) is determined directly by the latent construct. Several hurdles emerge when estimating the depicted model, as shown in Figure 4 . As already mentioned in Section 6.1, the systematic bias in the data coverage means that indicators stemming from the same survey cluster together. Hence, the fact that several indicators stem from the same primary data sources and that this affects the data structure need to be acknowledged in the measurement models. This is done by the introduction of second-order factor models (for comparison, description, and depiction see: Rindskopf and Rose, 1988 ). 10 , 11 , 12

The number of indicators for political legitimacy allows the estimation of a second-order factor model. The first-order factors estimate the level of political legitimacy measured by each primary data source, while the second-order factor is the linear combination of the first-order factors. The second-order factor was first estimated for the two waves separately. In general, the second-order factor models showed better model fit than single-factor models in both waves. Then, since the measurement model will be incorporated into a cross-lagged panel model, measurement invariance needed to be tested. Based on the guidelines by Rudnev et al. (2018) , metric invariance for first- and second-order factors was tested. For model identification, the variance of the latent factors is constrained to 1, as we can expect that the variance does not change across the two waves and that it allows for an unconstrained assessment of the factor loadings. The configural model in which first-order factors loadings were fitted produced acceptable TLI and CFI values, whereas SRMR and RMSEA values were beyond the acceptable threshold. Metric invariance for the first-order factors could not, however, be entirely achieved for political legitimacy (see Supplementary Table A5 for details about the models).

In the case of economic legitimacy, there is only one single indicator available from two different primary data sources. Thus, a single factor model is estimated, where the factor variance is constrained to 1. Due to the limited number of indicators, the model is only identified. This does not make the model reliable ( Eisinga et al., 2013 ). Unfortunately, the Spearman–Brown correlation between the two indicators also reflects mixed connections. In the first wave, 16 countries had values from both surveys, and Spearman–Brown’s Rho coefficient had a value of 0.3 ( p  = 0.25) (and 0.43 ( p  = 0.11); if Cyprus, an outlier was removed from the set of countries). In contrast, in the second wave, the correlation between the two indicators was considerably higher with a value of 0.80 ( p  = 0.008), which is encouraging. Overall, no metric invariance could be achieved across the two waves.

6.2.2 Step 2: The structural model

As the final step of the analysis, the estimated second-order measurement models for political legitimacy and economic legitimacy were incorporated into a cross-lagged model (CLM) to assess whether political legitimacy influences economic legitimacy, or economic legitimacy has an effect on political legitimacy. While theoretically and methodologically it is possible to incorporate the measurement models and the cross-lagged model into a SEM model (see the adjusted theoretical model in Figure 5 , where error term correlations are omitted from depiction), the sample size of the compiled country-level data and the general data coverage does not allow for the model to be estimated, as shown in Figure 5 .

Figure 5 . Adjusted theoretical model with second-order factors for political legitimacy (measurement model and structural model incorporated).

Instead, the so-called factor score regression is employed ( Rosseel, 2020 ). For this approach, the measurement models and the structural part of the cross-lagged model are estimated separately. Moreover, the measurement models previously estimated serve as the basis for the factor scores for both concepts. The cross-lagged model (CLM), where the factor scores for political legitimacy and economic legitimacy were used for model estimation, was then specified, as already manifested. This is shown in Figure 6 . In the structural model, an important restriction in the sample size is introduced. Namely, only those countries with at least one indicator with valid values for each wave and for each concept are included in the analysis. Furthermore, given the inadequate model fit of the economic legitimacy measurement model, CLM models were also estimated, one each for the two primary data sources (see Supplementary Figures A7 , A8 13 ).

Figure 6 . Estimated cross-lagged panel model as factor score regression with standardized estimates (factor scores as variables). + p  < 0.1, * p  < 0.05, ** p  < 0.01. *** p  < 0.001. Source: Own calculations, N  = 35.

Figure 6 demonstrates that, on the one hand, both political legitimacy and economic legitimacy exhibit positive association between the two waves. In the case of economic legitimacy, the standardized regression coefficient suggests a very high stability between the two waves, as the beta coefficient is higher than 0.9. This is particularly noteworthy if we consider that the raw Pearson’s correlation coefficient between the two waves of economic legitimacy has a value of 0.84. While the value is high, it still does not match the degree to which the two waves are correlated once the effect of political legitimacy is controlled. This indicates that political legitimacy plays a relevant role for economic legitimacy. Such an interpretation is also confirmed by the fact that the effect of political legitimacy of the first wave is marginally significant in both models. The models also show that the effect of political legitimacy on economic legitimacy seems to be negative (β = −0.194, p  = 0.102). The negative coefficient suggests that the higher the trust in political institutions, the lower the economic legitimacy in the country. However, the lower the trust in political institutions, the higher the economic legitimacy in the country.

In the case of political legitimacy, we can also observe a certain level of stability between the two waves. The regression coefficient of political legitimacy in wave 1 has a positive effect on political legitimacy in wave 2. However, the association is considerably less strong than for economic legitimacy (β = 0.763, p  < 0.001). In the case of political legitimacy, economic legitimacy does not play a significant role (β = 0.116, p  = 0.388).

7 Discussion: how to move forward?

The current study aimed to expand the concept of legitimacy and use a novel research design to investigate the relationship between political and economic legitimacy on a newly compiled country-level dataset. After mapping out the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological framework, the study set out first to investigate empirically whether political and economic legitimacy should be considered as two distinct concepts. The confirmatory factor analysis found indications that this is the case. Hence, the null hypothesis corresponding to the first hypothesis (H1) can be rejected. This empirical analysis also paved the way for further analysis to investigate the directed relationship between political and economic legitimacy. The results based on the cross-lagged model analysis suggest that there seems to be a directed association between political and economic legitimacy. In particular, political legitimacy affects economic legitimacy, while economic legitimacy does not have a significant effect on political legitimacy. Surprisingly, the relationship is negative: higher levels of political legitimacy undermine economic legitimacy. The results lead to the rejection of the three hypotheses, as they all hypothesized a positive effect between political legitimacy and economic legitimacy.

Despite the rejection of the formulated hypotheses of the study, several new insights could be gained from it. First, the results indicate that political institutions may have primacy above economic institutions. This is not only indicated by the fact that only the effect of political legitimacy on economic legitimacy was significant (and not vice versa) but also by the fact that the moment the effect of political legitimacy was controlled for in the cross-lagged model; the level of economic legitimacy reflected a high degree of stability. Second, political legitimacy and economic legitimacy also differed in their temporal stability. Economic legitimacy exhibited a high stability, whereas more fluctuation could be identified for political legitimacy. A potential explanation could be that political legitimacy is more strongly connected to incumbents of institutions than expected, and while the fluctuation of actors in the economic subsystem is less transparent, the actors are more visible in case of political institutions (and are also more likely to change over time). Third, the negative effect between political legitimacy on economic legitimacy is intriguing, but it can also be considered insightful. The negative effect might be connected to the content and focus of political campaigns. Political rhetoric and election campaigns often focus on discussing reduction of rising income inequalities. One trusts the political institution to tackle unacceptable levels of income inequality. To delve into this topic, however, it should be considered how the structure of the government in the countries investigated affects economic legitimacy and how it interacts with the effect of political legitimacy. The negative effect also points to potential explanations as to why populist parties can maintain high support rates and why involvement in corruption and decrease in political legitimacy do not automatically destabilize countries. Finally, while there is indication of a causal relationship, it would still be worthwhile to explore congruency and discrepancy between political legitimacy and economic legitimacy in the same wave.

These results should be cautiously interpreted, as the data quality of the compiled dataset is low, and they need to be further validated. While the study has provided some working definitions for the concepts of political legitimacy and economic legitimacy, it is clear that both the concepts need to be dealt with in more detail and that more clarity is needed. Methodologically, the study has several caveats and there is room for improvement in future studies. First, the country coverage is biased, as primarily European countries were included in the analysis due to data availability. Hence, the results should not be generalized on a global scale. The scope of primary sources could be expanded to tackle this issue. Second, the cross-lagged model was very basic; neither confounder nor moderators were considered, as this reaches beyond the scope of the study. Theoretically and methodologically, we can expect external structural and cultural factors to mitigate the level and effect of political legitimacy and economic legitimacy. Third, directly connected to this, the study did not address the question of whether the same mechanisms are to be expected in democratic and authoritarian regimes. Future studies could potentially elaborate on this in more detail. Fourth, the definition of the two waves could have potentially also compromised the results: different temporal cutoff points for the different waves could have been considered to test the robustness of the results. Fifth, in the current solution, a very simplistic aggregation method is employed to access country-level values. Different aggregation techniques could also be employed, to test the robustness of the results. Sixth, the indicator selection for economic legitimacy should be reviewed and potentially expanded. Seventh, and closely linked to the previous point, the employed operationalization and the indicators selected to measure political and economic legitimacy correspond to a narrow slice of their respective subsystems. Another future direction is to identify for which subsystems should legitimacy should be measured (to give a more complete picture of system legitimacy).

Beyond the limitations of the empirical analysis, the current study was quick to narrow its focus on the empirical connection between subjective political legitimacy and subjective economic legitimacy. It avoided (partially due to space limitations) discussing the question of what happens to the connection of political and economic legitimacy if the distinction of normative and subjective legitimacy is conceptually established. This caveat is another gap that could be potentially explored in future research. In short, more clarity is needed regarding how to bring normative and subjective concepts of legitimacy under one roof—both theoretically and empirically—and what implications it has for the connection between political and economic legitimacy. Approaches carrying the issue of duality further should consider the concepts of political legitimacy and economic legitimacy as a whole when the normative and subjective aspects are considered at the same time for each subsystem. Hence, the connection of political and economic legitimacy transcends the question of duality. Approaches honoring less the duality of the legitimacy concepts might yield to solutions when the connection between normative political legitimacy and normative economic legitimacy is dealt with separately from the connection between subjective political legitimacy and subjective economic legitimacy.

Overall, the current study merely scratches the surface of potential directions for future research and is only a very first attempt to analyze the relationship between political legitimacy and economic legitimacy. While the empirical results should be cautiously interpreted, the study opens new research avenues for future scholarly endeavors.

Data availability statement

The country-level dataset was compiled from data sources publicly available. Information about the data sources, and the code to compile the country-level dataset is available in the Supplementary material . Further inquiries can be directed to the author.

Ethics statement

Ethical approval was not required for the study involving humans in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. Written informed consent to participate in this study was not required from the participants or the participants’ legal guardians/next of kin in accordance with the national legislation and the institutional requirements.

Author contributions

ZI conceptualized the design of the study, organized the database, performed the statistical analysis, wrote the first draft of the manuscript, and then read, revised, and approved the submitted version.

Acknowledgments

I would like to extend my gratitude to Viktoria Oellers, who assisted in researching the relevant indicators, identifying the most relevant cross-national databases for primary data sources, and conducting the initial data aggregation. I am grateful to Clara Reiß for assisting me in a thorough review of the selected indicators. I would also like to thank Simon Bienstman for providing helpful insights into earlier versions of the manuscript. Furthermore, the methodological framework and empirical approach of this paper have benefited greatly from the methodological framework of the Cohesion Radar due to my previous involvement in developing the methodological framework of that project. Without the academic exchanges and research experience gained in the Cohesion Radar project, the methodological solutions presented in this paper would not have been reached as efficiently. I would like to thank the three reviewers, who have constructively challenged the paper and spurred me to improve its argumentation. Lastly, I would also like to thank the editorial team for its ongoing support of the paper during the publication process.

Conflict of interest

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Supplementary material

The Supplementary material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpos.2024.1198295/full#supplementary-material

1. ^ Including domains closely related to the political system: legal institutions, police ( Tankebe and Liebling, 2014 ; Tyler and Jackson, 2014 ).

2. ^ In the literature, the terms legitimacy and political legitimacy are used overwhelmingly interchangeably; however, since in the current study, a different type of legitimacy is also introduced; legitimacy linked to the political system will be referred to as political legitimacy.

3. ^ “If a people hold the belief that existing institutions are “appropriate” or “morally proper,” those institutions are legitimate. By a surgical procedure, the older concept has been trimmed of its cumbersome “normative” and “philosophical” parts, leaving the term leaner, no doubt, but now fit for scientific duty” ( Schaar, 1981 , 20–21).

4. ^ In general, in recent decades, social science has departed from discussing grand social theories and focuses more on middle-range theories that can be empirically easier tested. As a consequence, the expertise of social scientists has become divided along the subsystem of interest, and the study of different subsystems is more limited. Political scientists focus on the political subsystem, sociologists explore rules and norms of the social subsystem, and economists study the regularities of the economic subsystem.

5. ^ Kornai (2008) refers to the period when countries of Central East Europe transitioned from socialist regimes to democratic regimes in the 1990s.

6. ^ Jenga is a widespread children’s game, where the incentive is to build the highest tower possible by stacking building blocks in a 3-by-3 pattern on top of each other. Players take turns removing single blocks from lower levels of the tower and then place the building block on the top of the tower to build it further. The goal of the game is to prolong the collapse of the tower. The higher the tower, the more building blocks were used from lower levels (and there is a missing block structure), and hence the more instable the tower will become.

7. ^ This approach is distinctly different for creating a binary variable from an ordinal level variable by pooling certain categories together. This solution side-steps the issue of having arbitrarily determine cutoff points but still allows for comparability of the values stemming from different primary data sources.

8. ^ The compiled dataset currently contains data aggregated without employing any population weights.

9. ^ FIML’s treatment of missing values is also a disadvantage when the sample size is small. Hence, FIML was cautiously employed in model estimation.

10. ^ Second-order factors only need to be employed for political legitimacy. In case of economic legitimacy, no second-order factor needs to be estimated because only single indicators are used per primary data source.

11. ^ This affects the measurement of political legitimacy. Second-order factors were estimated in two different configurations. In one case, all indicators referring to the same political institution were collected in first-order factors, and the second-order factor measures political legitimacy. The second configuration is when the same indicators from the same primary data source are collected in first-order factors and then summarized in a second-order factor.

12. ^ Another approach employed by Dragolov et al. (2016) is to choose for each set of corresponding indicators the indicator with the best data coverage and include only one indicator per item step in a one-factor model for the measurement model.

13. ^ As the model, where ISSP was the data source for economic legitimacy, had a very low number of cases ( N  = 14), the model is not considered reliable.

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Keywords: political legitimacy, economic legitimacy, system legitimacy, macro-level analysis, cross-lagged panel model, structural equation modeling

Citation: Ignácz ZS (2024) The relationship between political legitimacy and economic legitimacy: empirical explorations of a novel research approach on legitimacy. Front. Polit. Sci . 6:1198295. doi: 10.3389/fpos.2024.1198295

Received: 01 April 2023; Accepted: 27 June 2024; Published: 22 July 2024.

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*Correspondence: Zsófia S. Ignácz, [email protected]

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