The speed and uncertainty of environmental change in the Anthropocene challenge the capacity of coevolving social–ecological–technological systems (SETs) to adapt or transform to these changes. Formal government and legal structures further constrain the adaptive capacity of our SETs. However, new, self-organized forms of adaptive governance are emerging at multiple scales in natural resource-based SETs. Adaptive governance involves the private and public sectors as well as formal and informal institutions, self-organized to fill governance gaps in the traditional roles of states. While new governance forms are emerging, they are not yet doing so rapidly enough to match the pace of environmental change. Furthermore, they do not yet possess the legitimacy or capacity needed to address disparities between the winners and losers from change. These emergent forms of adaptive governance appear to be particularly effective in managing complexity. We explore governance and SETs as coevolving complex systems, focusing on legal systems to understand the potential pathways and obstacles to equitable adaptation. We explore how governments may facilitate the emergence of adaptive governance and promote legitimacy in both the process of governance despite the involvement of nonstate actors, and its adherence to democratic values of equity and justice. To manage the contextual nature of the results of change in complex systems, we propose the establishment of long-term study initiatives for the coproduction of knowledge, to accelerate learning and synergize interactions between science and governance and to foster public science and epistemic communities dedicated to navigating transitions to more just, sustainable, and resilient futures.
As communities face unrest and protest because of perceived racial bias and decreased trust and confidence in the criminal justice system, it is critical to explore mechanisms that foster institutional legitimacy. Voice is a central element in the procedural justice framework because it is anticipated to promote process control as well as a shared understanding between institutions and communities. As a concept, however, voice is undertheorized. Measures of voice used in legitimacy research may result in oversimplification of the concept, not fully capturing the struggles disadvantaged people face in trying to exercise influence in the court system. Through the use of rich data from qualitative interviews with youth and families involved in the juvenile justice system and in‐depth observations of juvenile court events, we explore what voice is, the mechanisms through which people try to assert voice, and how voice matters in the legal process. Respondents sought voice for many reasons, including to validate their experiences, to affirm their membership in a community, and to assert concerns about perceived police misconduct. Contrary to traditional conceptualizations of voice as a static event (e.g., having voice or not having voice), voice was a process of negotiating dialogue between court officials and court participants throughout the legal process.
more » « less- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10086243
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Criminology
- Volume:
- 57
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 0011-1384
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 343-368
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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law ,politics ,liberalism ,judicialization of politics ,justice ,human rights ,efficacy ,metapragmatics ,Europe ] -
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Abstract Objectives Traditional police procedural justice theory argues that citizen perceptions of fair treatment by police officers increase police legitimacy, which leads to an increased likelihood of legal compliance. Recently, Nagin and Telep (2017) criticized these causal assumptions, arguing that prior literature has not definitively ruled out reverse causality—that is, legitimacy influences perceptions of fairness and/or compliance influences perceptions of both fairness and legitimacy. The goal of the present paper was to explore this critique using experimental and correlational methodologies within a longitudinal framework. Methods Adolescents completed a vignette-based experiment that manipulated two aspects of officer behavior linked to perceptions of fairness: voice and impartiality. After reading the vignette, participants rated the fairness and legitimacy of the officer within the situation. At three time points prior to the experiment (1, 17, and 31 months), participants completed surveys measuring their global perceptions of police legitimacy and self-reported delinquency. Data were analyzed to assess the extent to which global legitimacy and delinquency predicted responses to the vignette net of experimental manipulations and controls. Results Both experimental manipulations led to higher perceptions of situational procedural justice and officer legitimacy. Prior perceptions of police legitimacy did not predict judgments of situational procedural justice; however, in some cases, prior engagement in delinquency was negatively related to situational procedural justice. Prior perceptions of legitimacy were positively associated with situational perceptions of legitimacy regardless of experimental manipulations. Conclusions This study showed mixed support for the case of reverse causality among police procedural justice, legitimacy, and compliancemore » « less
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