Studying political legitimacy:Findings, implications, and an uneasy question

This final chapter concludes with a reflection on the findings presented in the book, the implications of these findings for politics and political science, and suggestions for a new research agenda on legitimacy. The chapter concludes that the analyses in this volume do not provide evidence of legitimacy crisis. This leaves us with a puzzle, as the belief in such a legitimacy crisis is persistent, and it has proven to be quite resistant to evidence provided by political scientists on the basis of data such as analyzed in this book. This discrepancy between current data and public discourse must also prompt us to reflect on political science research: what have we done so far in selecting our concepts, data, research strategies, and empirical domain, and what can and should be improved? The chapter concludes with suggestions for new research on legitimacy