Introduction

Summary

The book opens with the provocation that empirical legitimacy not only remains poorly evinced, it is in its current formulations irredeemably so. As long as legitimacy studies remain locked in the politics of crisis, of repairing deficits to a Western ‘preconcept’, the everyday crafting of authority will remain overlooked. The chapter looks to the expanding non-state, specifically non-governmental organizations (NGOs), to paint a picture of productivity, cautious expansion and cumulative change rather than that of deficit, crisis or threat. It asks how NGOs craft their everyday authority to act in coastal Tanzania, far from the air-conditioned rooms that normally denote the international sphere. In doing so, it abandons the residual state-centrism and positivism that still characterize legitimacy studies. World politics must gravitate away from an insular, at times recursive, focus on Western normative templates towards understanding global phenomena as locally articulated. The introductory chapter also provides a synopsis of the Tanzanian case, of the legitimation practices themselves and an overview of the book.