The legitimation and delegitimation of power and prestige orders

Building on the work of Ridgeway and Berger (1986), we construct a set of assumptions that describe how the legitimation and delegitimation of informal power and prestige orders can be created in task oriented situations. Our conception is a multilevel one. Cultural beliefs begin the process by shaping the likelihood that one actor treats another with honorific deference. But to result in legitimacy, this process must be carried through by the contingent reactions of others who can provide consensual validation. In this way, actors can collectively construct a local reality that makes the power and prestige order normatively prescriptive. Using the graph-theoretical formulations of status characteristic theory and of the theory of reward expectations, and in conjunction with legitimation and delegitimation assumptions, we derive a set of general propositions. These propositions describe how different status and evaluation conditions affect the likelihood that a power and prestige order will be legitimated or delegitimated. Our formulation provides a theoretical account for observations on the stability of legitimated orders in task settings, for research on the impact of evaluations on delegitimation, and for findings on she effect of status consistency on legitimation.