Authors: Louis Lines, Niall Mackenzie and Dominic Chalmer
As trust in institutions continues to erode across much of the Western world, understanding how strongly established legitimacy can be actively undermined has become an increasingly urgent concern for organizational scholars. In this forthcoming study, Lines, MacKenzie and Chalmers examine the discursive processes that contributed to the erosion of European Union legitimacy in the United Kingdom prior to the 2016 Brexit referendum. Drawing on a longitudinal analysis of parliamentary speeches by Eurosceptic MPs in favour of UK withdrawal from the EU, the article develops a process model explaining how actors can undermine established legitimacy.
The study introduces the concept of recursive deficiency framing, a diagnostic communication strategy through which institutional shortcomings are repeatedly amplified and reframed as evidence of systemic failure. The analysis further identifies two complementary mechanism, entity-specific targeting and synthetic evocative epithets, that increase frame resonance and contribute to the erosion of both normative and cognitive legitimacy. Together, these mechanisms demonstrate how actors can strategically destabilise taken-for-granted institutional arrangements and create openings for radical institutional change.
Beyond Brexit, the article offers a timely framework for understanding contemporary challenges to institutional legitimacy, providing new insights into the discursive dynamics underpinning populism, institutional disruption, and the broader legitimacy crises facing established institutions.