And the final speaker in this panel at the ECREA 2026 conference in Brno is Moritz Bürger, whose focus is on the communication strategies of political actors as they legitimate their violence. This builds on a concept of legitimacy that emphasises conformity with existing rules, adherence to shared beliefs, and consent to power relationships.
Legitimisation statements can be analysed for speaker, object of legitimisation, evaluation, and argument; and hegemonial and subaltern positions can be distinguished here: hegemonial and subaltern decision-makers, insider challengers, and outsider challengers.
The focus here is on several contexts, where decision-makers include the US and Ukrainian president; insider challengers are Syrian and Irish parties; and outsider challengers are various revolutionary or terrorist groups. Their arguments can be examined for the positioning of in- and out-groups, as well as descriptions of their actions, and this study did so by examining the English or German statements attributed to these actors (including press releases, speeches, articles, pamphlets, etc.).
99% of all statements presented the actions of in-groups as legitimate, and the actions of out-groups as illegitimate; positive arguments here related to the purpose of violence (63%), and its legality (31%), and these varied somewhat between actor types; negative arguments related to illegality (64%), the purpose of violence (19%), and a dramatisation of violence (14%). Positive arguments constructed an in-group (77%), appealed to evidence of consent (12%), or one’s own benevolence (10%). Negative arguments also constructed an out-group (87%), dehumanised (8%), and alleged a lack of consent (5%).
This shows some very clear patterns, but also finer differences between actor types in the use of such strategies.
