Legitimacy Strategies and Crisis Communication

Legitimacy and crisis are closely related concepts. A crisis may even be viewed as a process of legitimation. Legitimacy is a collective perception about which actors and institutions that have the right to rule, regulate, and decide. Crises put legitimacy at stake and may, depending on the premises and management strategies, challenge, enhance, or impair legitimacy. Legitimacy and communication are entwined into each other. Legitimacy as a process is dependent on communication in its original sense: ritual communication as a sacred ceremony that unites people and creates a community. When legitimacy is put at stake, organizations and other actors use strategic communication to respond to, confront, and impact the outcome by the use of different crisis (or legitimacy) communication strategies and tactics. But while legitimacy is an old concept, the premises for handling legitimacy have changed. One way to view this shift, from a societal theoretical standpoint, is to focus the shift between modernity and late modernity as an interpretative framework. Increased diversity and mobility, globalization, reflexivity, and mediation are new premises for legitimacy work. The multivocal and multifaceted character of late modern society challenges organizational as well as societal legitimacy, especially in crisis situations. Political debates and critical reasoning questioning the role and actions of different social institutions are necessary from a democratic standpoint, but when core societal institutions are delegitimized, risks occur. This may be happening in several Western societies, with increased polarization and fundamental questioning of important institutions. Crises (e.g., the coronavirus pandemic) and how they are handled and managed by existing institutions may be radical turning points of legitimacy in governance. Crisis management and communication have developed as possible tools for organizations to handle legitimacy crises. Simplified, one may use three theories of legitimacy strategies in crisis as developed in the applied field of crisis communication. These three theories include image repair theory (rhetoric), situational crisis communication theory, and a broader array of alternative network and complexity theory.