Struggles over legitimacy in the Eurozone crisis: Discursive legitimation strategies and their ideological underpinnings

Abstract

This article focuses on the discursive underpinnings of the legitimacy crisis that the Eurozone as a transnational institution is facing. By adopting a critical discourse analysis (CDA) perspective, the empirical analysis focuses on the media discussion in Finland. The analysis shows how discourses of financial capitalism, humanism, nationalism and Europeanism played a central role in legitimation, delegitimation and relegitimation. Furthermore, the analysis elaborates on the legitimation strategies that were often used in the media texts: position-based authorizations involving institutionalized authorities and ‘voices of the common man’, knowledge-based authorizations focusing on economic expertise, rationalizations concentrating on economic arguments, moral evaluations based on unfairness used especially for delegitimation, mythopoiesis involving alternative future scenarios and cosmology used to construct inevitability. By so doing, this study adds to our understanding of the discursive and ideological underpinnings of the social, political and financial crisis in Greece and other European countries and contributes to research on discursive legitimation more generally.

Keywords

Critical discourse analysis euro Eurozone ideology interdiscursivity intertextuality legitimacy legitimation

Introduction

Greece and other European countries are currently suffering from a prolonged financial, social and political crisis. In this article, I will focus on an issue that is arguably at the heart of this crisis: the future of the Eurozone as a transnational institution. If anything, the discussion around the future of the Eurozone can be seen as an institutional legitimacy crisis (De Rycker and Mohd Don, 2013; Lounsbury and Hirsch, 2010). To understand the social and societal dynamics of this crisis, it is useful to focus attention on the discursive aspects of these legitimation struggles and their implications. Although important in its own right, such analysis also provides an opportunity to integrate insights from discursive legitimation in critical discourse studies (Breeze, 2012; Oddo, 2011; Rojo and Van Dijk, 1997; Van Leeuwen and Wodak, 1999) with institutional legitimation in organization studies (Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005; Vaara and Tienari, 2008), and to further our understanding of institutional legitimation more generally.

Hence, it is the purpose of this article to elucidate the discursive legitimation struggles in the institutional Eurozone crisis. By drawing on previous discursive work on legitimation, I argue that it is fruitful to focus attention on two levels of analysis: first, the discursive and ideological underpinnings that legitimation is based on, and second, the variety of discursive legitimation strategies used for legitimation, delegitimation and relegitimation. For that purpose, I draw from critical discourse analysis (CDA) to understand the discursive-ideological basis of legitimation (Fairclough, 1989; Van Dijk, 1998; Wodak, 2004) and especially use the work of Van Leeuwen and his colleagues on the ‘grammar of legitimation’ (Rojo and Van Dijk, 1997; Van Leeuwen, 2007; Van Leeuwen and Wodak, 1999) to better comprehend the actual discursive legitimation strategies used.

The empirical analysis is based on the Eurozone crisis media discussion in Finland. This discussion has focused on the bailout decisions and rescue packages proposed for Greece and other countries in need of special support. Finland can be seen as a revealing setting for analysis of legitimation struggles and strategies because discussion here has involved a variety of perspectives, including both eager supporters and critics of the Eurozone. As in other European countries, the problems of Greece, and the other crisis countries in need of financial support, have been juxtaposed with domestic concerns, thereby highlighting the international dimension of the crisis. Furthermore, actors such as politicians have also used the crisis to leverage support for their broader political causes, which further facilitates analysis of the instrumentalization of the crisis.

This article is structured as follows. Building on research on institutional legitimacy and discursive legitimation, I outline a critical discursive perspective on institutional legitimacy crises. This is followed by an introduction to the empirical material and methods used. The following sections elaborate on the interdiscursive basis of legitimation and the variety of discursive strategies used for legitimation, delegitimation and relegitimation. The conclusion explains how this article adds to our understanding of the contemporary crisis and how it helps us to better comprehend the discursive dynamics of institutional legitimacy crises more generally.

A critical discursive perspective on institutional legitimacy crises

Institutions and legitimacy

The concept of legitimacy has a significant role in sociological analysis in general (Giddens, 1984; Weber, 1968) and institutional theory in particular (Deephouse and Suchman, 2008; Scott, 1995; Suchman, 1995). A central characteristic of institutions is that they are seen as legitimate by social actors (Scott, 1995), and this legitimation tends to involve specific ‘worlds’ or ‘orders’ (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006; Patriotta et al., 2011). From this perspective, unexpected events and controversial actions are most interesting because they can trigger ‘legitimacy crises’ where previous conceptions of taken-for-grantedness and normality are challenged. Such crises can take different forms, as in the case of the financial crisis (Lounsbury and Hirsch, 2010; Morales et al., in press).

Institutions are multifaceted structures (Scott, 1995), and thus legitimation also involves several levels of analysis (Vaara and Tienari, 2008). Apart from the key institution itself, legitimation deals with specific actions and events related to the institutions, and the authority positions of the central actors are evaluated in the context of any events or actions. Thus, the Eurozone crisis challenges the transnational institutional constellation of the Eurozone and decisions and actions such as specific bailout or rescue package decisions, as well as focusing attention on the key actors such as politicians and economic and financial decision-makers and actors.

In institutional theory, increasing attention has focused on the discursive aspects of legitimation (Phillips et al., 2004). Researchers have accordingly examined how issues are framed and how impression management is used in legitimation (Creed et al., 2002; Maguire and Hardy, 2009). Others have singled out specific elements in rhetorical justification. In particular, Suddaby and Greenwood (2005) identified the following kinds of rhetorical strategies for the legitimation of radical institutional change: ontological (rhetoric based on premises stating what can or cannot exist or co-exist), historical (appeals to history and tradition), teleological (divine purpose or final cause), cosmological (an emphasis on inevitability) and value-based theorizations (appeals to wider belief systems).

Some of this work has also drawn on CDA (Lefsrud and Meyer, 2012; Vaara and Tienari, 2008; Vaara et al., 2006; Zhu and McKenna, 2012). In particular, drawing on Van Leeuwen’s work (2008), Vaara et al. (2006) took a critical discursive perspective to identify five types of strategy used for the legitimation of merger: normalization (exemplification of ‘normal’ function or behaviour), authorization (authority construction), rationalization (rationale), moralization (moral basis) and narrativization (construction of a compelling plot). Others have followed this path. For instance, Lefsrud and Meyer (2012) have elaborated on authorizations in terms of authority positions and their linkage to the knowledge basis of expertise. In spite of these advances, work drawing on discursive legitimation has been rather scarce, and marginal in the broader context of institutional analysis. Thus, in addition to focusing on the specific aspects of the Eurozone, it is the purpose of this article to add to this stream of research by elucidating the discursive dynamics of institutional legitimacy crises.

Discursive legitimation

In discourse analysis in general and in CDA in particular, legitimation has arguably been a key theme for a long time (Fairclough, 2003; Van Dijk, 1998). Its roots may be traced back to Aristotelian rhetorical analysis – especially in terms of its focus on logos, ethos and pathos – and classical sociological research (Giddens, 1984; Weber, 1968) from which contemporary institutional theory has also drawn. In legitimacy crises, legitimation not only deals with specific issues, decisions or actions, but is also related to the power positions of actors and broader social structures – in other words, to institutions.

These political aspects of legitimation are particularly interesting, and they can be analysed from different kinds of perspectives (Chilton and Schäffner, 1997; Van Dijk, 1998; Van Leeuwen, 2007). CDA is a particularly fruitful perspective for analysis of these political aspects as it focuses on power and ideology (Fairclough, 1989). Furthermore, existing CDA-oriented work on legitimation has elucidated the crucial role of discursive practices and strategies in legitimation. In particular, Van Leeuwen and colleagues have worked on the ‘grammar of legitimation’ to elaborate on the discursive strategies used for legitimation (Rojo and Van Dijk, 1997; Van Leeuwen, 2007; Van Leeuwen and Wodak, 1999). In this view, legitimation means the creation of a sense of positive, beneficial, ethical, understandable, necessary or otherwise acceptable action in a specific setting (Van Dijk, 1998; Van Leeuwen and Wodak, 1999), and delegitimation means establishing a sense of negative, morally reprehensible or otherwise unacceptable action or overall state of affairs (Rojo and Van Dijk, 1997; Van Leeuwen and Wodak, 1999). In addition, one can think of relegitimation as the restoration of a sense of positive, beneficial, ethical, understandable, necessary or otherwise acceptable action in a specific setting.

Legitimation draws on and reproduces broader-level discourses and even ideologies (Oddo, 2011; Van Dijk, 1998). For example, pro-globalization discourses tend to reproduce neo-liberal (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 2001) or global capitalist (Fairclough, 2000) ideologies. From a discursive perspective, ‘nationalism’ in turn is a set of discourses based on nationalist ideology (Anderson, 1983; Wodak et al., 1999). It is closely linked with national identity building and is therefore an ever-present discourse, especially in cross-national settings (Billig, 1995; Wodak et al., 1999). However, it may actually be the interdiscursive combinations of these discourses and ideologies that are most interesting in terms of understanding the discursive and ideological underpinnings of legitimation in specific settings – such as the Eurozone crisis.

In any case, it is important to focus on the actual legitimation strategies – and how they may be used for legitimation, delegitimation or relegitimation. In Van Leeuwen’s (2007, 2008) framework, there are four types of legitimation strategy: authorization is legitimation by referring to authority, be that a person, tradition, custom or law; moral evaluation means legitimation by reference to value systems, and hence the other legitimation strategies also have a moral basis; rationalization is legitimation by reference to knowledge claims or arguments; and mythopoiesis is legitimation achieved by narratives, which are often small stories or fragments of narrative structures about the past or future. These main types involve a number of sub-types and are often connected. Thus, to understand the specific dynamics of legitimation in particular contexts, such as the Eurozone, it is important to focus on the typical patterns and characteristics of these discursive strategies in context.

This leads me to formulate the research questions of this study as follows: What are the discourses that the legitimation struggles around the future of the Eurozone draw on and reproduce? What are the discursive strategies used for legitimation, delegitimation or relegitimation? What do these kinds of discursive dynamics tell us about how Finland or other countries are coping with the crisis?

Empirical material and methodology

This analysis focuses on how media texts in Finland dealt with the Eurozone crisis. Like Greece, Finland adopted the euro in 2002. Although the country’s economy was hit hard by the financial crisis, resulting, for example, in unprecedented budget deficits and relatively high unemployment, the key rating agencies have continued to give Finland an AAA rating. It is generally seen as one of the countries in the northern bloc that emphasizes national responsibility in the crisis, advocates austerity measures and usually sides with Germany in these discussions. Finland provides an illuminative example of the Eurozone crisis because the discussion there reflects a variety of voices and legitimation strategies. As in many other European countries, the discussion has involved both dedicated protagonists and committed antagonists. What is particularly interesting is that the Eurozone has been linked with national politics in the sense that the parties in the government, such as the Conservatives, have had to defend their decisions made during the crisis as well as in the Eurozone more generally, whereas the opposition – especially the True Finns, a relatively new populist party – has been able to leverage this crisis to attract new support. Characteristically, this discussion has juxtaposed the crisis in Greece and other southern European countries with domestic concerns.

The tradition in CDA is to engage in a close reading of specific texts (Fairclough, 2003; Wodak and Meyer, 2002). Although studying a large number of texts is relatively rare in CDA, there is an argument for moving from analysis of a large set of texts to close analysis of individual texts, with the aim of uncovering more general patterns and characteristic features in the media discussions (Vaara, 2010). For the purposes of this article, a broader set of texts provides a fuller picture of the legitimating struggles and offers an opportunity to draw conclusions about the relative importance of specific discourses and legitimation strategies as well as intertextuality across texts. For this purpose, I collected a corpus of 496 media texts dealing with the Eurozone crisis from 1 January 2008 to 1 September 2013. I focused on the leading national newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, the leading business daily Kauppalehti, the leading online business daily Taloussanomat and the leading tabloid Iltasanomat. The keywords used to collect this material were ‘euro’ and ‘crisis’ or ‘euro’ and ‘the future’. I then removed articles that did not deal with the actual crisis, such as discussions about the level of the exchange rate or articles focusing on the problems and challenges faced by specific industries or companies. The final set included 114 articles from Helsingin Sanomat, 122 from Kauppalehti, 190 from Taloussanomat and 66 from Iltasanomat.

In practice, the media texts focused on decisions and actions made during the crisis, such as specific rescue packages or bailout decisions concerning not only Greece, but also Ireland, Portugal and Cyprus (see also Kutter, 2014). Taken together, however, the media texts also provide a ‘meta-narrative’ of the crisis where the very ‘euro’ institution was challenged and debated. It should be noted that this corpus includes various types of articles ranging from editorials to interviews. It is characteristically intertextual in the sense that it includes a number of quotes from the speeches or interviews of protagonists and antagonists.

As is often the case in CDA, the analysis was ‘abductive’ in nature (Wodak, 2004). This means that the theoretical ideas were developed alongside an increasingly targeted empirical analysis. I first concentrated on discourses characterizing the legitimation struggle – that is, I searched for identified discourses that were frequently used by protagonists and antagonists and in the media texts more generally. This led me to focus on four types of discourse-ideological bases: financial capitalism, humanism, nationalism and Europeanism. I then focused on the legitimation strategies identified in previous research as a basis for analysis. In practice, I used Van Leeuwen’s (2008) framework of authorization, rationalization, moralization and mythopoiesis as the starting point. This then led to a rough coding of the empirical material to identify such strategies in the media texts. This coding was subsequently developed and refined, for example, by identifying two types of authorization and a category of cosmological inevitability claims. As a result, I focused on the following kinds of legitimation strategies that were frequently used and otherwise played a central role in e-discussion around the Eurozone crisis: position-based authorizations, knowledge-based authorizations, economic rationalizations, moral evaluations, mythopoietic future scenarios and cosmological inevitability claims. These were frequently used in a number of media texts and seemed to be important elements in the discursive legitimation within specific texts.

I then proceeded to examine specific examples of texts, in practice paragraphs, to elucidate the characteristic features of the discursive legitimation, delegitimation or relegitimation strategies; examples 1 and 2 relate primarily to position-based authorization, 3–5 to knowledge-based authorizations, 6–8 to economic rationalizations, 9–12 to moral evaluations, 13 and 14 to mythopoietic future scenarios, and 15 and 16 to cosmological inevitability claims. These specific examples were selected because they were representative as well as illustrative examples of legitimation strategies that played an important role in the media discussion.¹

The discourse-ideological basis of legitimation struggles

Discourses provide the basis for legitimation, and identification of the key discourses helps in understanding the order of discourses and their interdiscursive relations (Fairclough, 2003), as well as their ideological underpinnings (Van Dijk, 1998). As explained earlier, I identified the following frequently used discourses in the media texts: financial capitalism, humanism, nationalism and Europeanism. Broadly understood, the discourse of financial capitalism played a central role in the media texts in general and in the discursive legitimation strategies in particular. Characteristic of this discourse is that it focuses on global capitalism (Fairclough, 2006) in a way that promotes and naturalizes neoliberal ideology (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 2001; Chouliaraki and Fairclough, 1999) – that is, the dominance of the free-market economy and the central role of global financial markets. This was shown especially in the central role of economic expertise (see especially examples 3–5 below), the dominance economic arguments (6, 7), the nature of future projections (13, 14) and the sense of inevitability often associated with globalization (15, 16) – as will be elaborated on in the following sections on legitimacy strategies.

Interestingly, this discourse of financial capitalism was questioned at times, although not often (see especially example 12). Such critical comments can be linked with humanism focusing on the human, social and societal implications instead of the dominance of financial logic. At times, the texts could also reflect more radical humanism (Held et al., 1999) as an alternative ideological basis for making sense of the Eurozone crisis.

Nationalism (Anderson, 1983; Wodak et al., 1999) played a crucial role in the media texts and discursive legitimation strategies. This was especially salient in moralizations (see especially examples 9 and 11), but also reflected in the other discursive strategies. Interestingly, antagonists such as the True Finns often drew from banal nationalism (Billig, 1995) where colourful nationalistic language and associated discursive means, such as metaphors and national stereotypes, played a central role (9). However, nationalism was also a crucial part of rationalizations in the sense that the constructed national interests were often the basis for rationalistic argumentation (6) as well as future projections (14). Some of the most simplistic forms of banal nationalism were also criticized (11).

Related to the very future of the Eurozone, most of the media texts and discursive legitimation strategies can also be seen to deal with European identity, or what could be called Europeanism – that is, the belief that Europeans have common values and interests that transcend national identity (Majstorović, 2007). This ideology in the making seemed to be a central part of the legitimating authorizations (see especially examples 1 and 3), rationalizations (6), moralizations (10), future projections (13) and cosmology (15). However, perhaps because of the nationalistic challenges, the explicit articulations of pro-European views or European interests were relatively rare in the moralization and rationalization strategies, typical future projections and cosmological arguments.

Thus, the institutional legitimacy crisis involved several types of discourse and reproduced related ideological assumptions. Central to these struggles was not only the juxtaposition of alternative discourses and ideologies, but also the fact that the discursive legitimation strategies were most often interdiscursive in nature. In particular, rather than only reflecting specific discursive or ideological bases, the protagonists and antagonists often combined various discursive and ideological elements in their discursive strategizing. For example, moral positions, interests at play or future scenarios were often contextual interdiscursive articulations with specific ideological implications, as the more detailed analysis of the legitimation strategies below reveals.

Discursive strategies

More specifically, I identified the following types of legitimation strategies: position-based authorizations involving institutionalized authorities and ‘voices of the common man’; knowledge-based authorizations focusing on economic expertise; rationalizations concentrating on economic arguments; moral evaluations based on unfairness, used especially for delegitimation; mythopoiesis involving alternative future scenarios; and cosmology used to construct inevitability.

Position-based authorization: Institutional authorities and ‘voices of the common man’

At one level, the texts frequently referred to key decision-makers, such as politicians, who played a central role in the texts; they were often portrayed as the key protagonists and antagonists and their comments constituted a fundamental intertextual part of the media texts. These were specifically used for authorization purposes in the articles. Interestingly, support for the euro often involved references to those in positions of responsibility. Thus, for example, members of the European Commission, such as the Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs Olli Rehn; European politicians, such as Angela Merkel; representatives of the European Central Bank, such as Jean-Claude Trichet; and local politicians, such as the Finnish Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen, were often referred to for authorization purposes and emerged as key protagonists in the media texts. Thus, their institutionalized positions served as a primary reference point for discursive authorization (see Example 1 below).

Example 1

The EU Commissioner Olli Rehn paid a quick visit to Finland and told IS [Iltasanomat, a tabloid] that the situation is very grave. Surely the most serious crisis of the euro so far. But that is why we need to take committed action to ensure that the financial stability of the Eurozone can be maintained. Finland has promised to help Greece with a loan of 550 million euros at most. According to Rehn, this is no longer about Greece alone. That Finnish taxpayers, like all Eurozone taxpayers, would support Greece means in actual fact that we support financial stability in the entire Eurozone. It’s about the stability of the Eurozone, Rehn emphasized. (IS, 28 April 2010)

What is interesting in this example is that it highlights Olli Rehn’s institutionalized authority position as a European Union (EU) Commissioner who visits his home country to share his views with Finns. The authorization thus implies that he had unique knowledge of specific relevance for Finns. This paves the way for his actual comments that provide rationalizations for supporting the euro. Rationalizations are dealt with in more detail in the following sub-section of this article, but it is important to note how he combines financial, capitalist, nationalist and Europeanist discourses in explaining why Finns should support the Greek bailout package. It was noteworthy how this manifested in instrumental rationalization where ‘(financial) stability’ (mentioned three times) is presented as the overall goal and in the careful wording of how the responsibility of Finns is based on earlier commitment (‘promised’) and limited (‘a loan of 550 million euros at most’) and follows the norm of equality between the Eurozone nations (‘like all Eurozone taxpayers’). Such features also characterized many other texts, reproducing the comments of the protagonists.

In contrast, others were referred to for delegitimation purposes and emerged as antagonists. This was especially the case with the political opposition, such as Timo Soini, leader of the True Finns, who became a frequently cited ‘voice of the common man’ or spokesperson of resistance to the euro. Thus, his authority position was based on juxtaposition of the ‘establishment’ against the interests of ordinary people. References to Soini’s interviews or blogs were often used for delegitimation purposes. The following is a typical example:

Example 2

Chairman Timo Soini (TF) [True Finns] is happy if and when the True Finns are The only party resisting Euro – The True Finns know. The euro is a system that does not function. Now we are focusing on the crisis of the euro. First we pay for guarantees and provide capital for banks and with what is left contaminate the rest of Europe, says Soini. If the euro is a success story, then please don’t make any more. Three Eurozone countries are already in receivership, and a couple of others are on their way there. (IS, 31 May 2012)

In this excerpt, Soini’s chairmanship of the True Finns is emphasized and the entire party is portrayed as the critical voice in the discussion (e.g. ‘the only party resisting Euro’). What is interesting in the first sentence of the excerpt and in the first sentence of the quotation is that Soini explicitly reinforces the role of the True Finns as the euro sceptics in Finland. The rest of the comment rationalizes delegitimation, which is a topic that I will focus on in the next sub-section. However, it is worth emphasizing that a powerful authorization of this kind provided the necessary basis for rather straightforward delegitimating arguments and blunt statements drawing on nationalistic discourse. In particular, delegitimating rationalizations seem to build on the juxtaposition of ‘us’ (Finns as represented by the True Finns and Soini) and ‘them’ (the elites making decisions that are harmful for Finns and for Europe), as reflected in the use of the pronoun ‘we’ in the third and fourth sentences of his comment. Interestingly, such comments from antagonists were frequently coloured with metaphors (e.g. ‘contaminate’ and ‘receivership’) and often sarcastic in tone, portraying elite decision making in a dubious light (especially in the last two sentences of Soini’s comment).

Knowledge-based authorization: Dominance of economic expertise

At another level, authorizations were based on expertise and knowledge. In particular, economists were given voice in these discussions. This included both experts who defended the Eurozone and those who opposed it. The following is a particularly salient example of the framing of an argument in support of the euro:

Example 3

The joint currency has strong support in Professor Juha-Pekka Kallunki, whose widespread international reputation comes from the analysis of stock and foreign exchange markets. ‘There are so-called doctors of doom around the euro for whom making the joint currency fail has almost become their life’s mission. But we should remember that the European Central Bank and the civil servants are working all the time to get the [European] economies past the crisis’, says Kallunki. (Kauppalehti (KL), 24 June 2013)

Here, Professor Kallunki’s expertise is explicitly constructed by reference to his ‘widespread international reputation’, which is furthermore presented as particularly relevant because it relates to ‘stock and foreign exchange markets’. What is interesting in his comment is that he explicitly attacks the experts on the other side, referring to them as ‘doctors of doom’. At the same time, he provides obvious support for those working to save the euro, including a reference to their work ethic (‘working all the time’). Thus, the whole paragraph builds on authorization, including de-authorization of the antagonists.

Economists and financial analysts, however, were also referred to as authorities in delegitimation. The following is an illustrative example:

Example 4

The Eurozone is plagued by an internal balance-of-payments crisis, which, according to the German Professor Hans-Werner Sinn and his colleagues, is similar to the problems of the Bretton Woods systems of fixed exchange rates before they collapsed. (KL, 8 December 2011)

In this excerpt, authorization is a central part of the argument; in fact, the delegitimating rationalization concerning ‘an internal balance-of-payments crisis’ is followed by an authorization that builds on scientific authority and historical comparison. These discussions thus constituted a struggle for economic authority, the intensity of which was at times reflected in colourful language (e.g. the metaphor ‘plagued’ in this example). However, it should be noted that statements of experts were also used rather instrumentally without taking into consideration their entire arguments.

Finally, there is yet another aspect of authorization that played a key role in the media texts. It seems that the ‘markets’ were constructed as central authorities evaluating the success or failure of efforts to rescue the Eurozone. The following is a typical example of reporting after a key decision made by the European Central Bank:

Example 5

The markets responded in an excited way after the European Union and the European Central Bank (ECB) had announced their support package to stabilize the Eurozone economy on Monday morning. Prices on European stock exchanges rose strongly and interest rates for government bonds of the crisis countries decreased. Banking shares especially strengthened throughout Europe as fears that the problems would evolve into a banking crisis were alleviated. (Helsingin Sanomat (HS), 11 May 2013)

In this excerpt, the fact-like description of reactions to the support package reproduces the authority role of stock and foreign exchange markets in legitimating the decision on the rescue package, which can be seen as a key characteristic of the discourse and ideology of financial capitalism. Linguistically, this kind of authorization could be accentuated by personification as in the ‘excited’ response in the first sentence of this excerpt. Although such explicit personification is lacking in the latter sentences, nevertheless ‘stock exchanges’, ‘interest rates’ and ‘banking shares’ are the subjects of these sentences. These observations suggest that market-based authorization of this kind may represent a combination of what Van Leeuwen calls ‘expert authority’ (2008: 107) and ‘impersonal authority’ (2008: 108).

Rationalization: Focus on economic arguments

Rationalizations were a key part of the discursive legitimation struggles. They were used in the media texts in a number of ways for and against specific rescue packages or the euro in general. Economic arguments were used most frequently, and – as discussed above – they were often backed up by authorizations building on economic knowledge. For the protagonists, it was often a case of arguing for the benefits of the Eurozone or referring to the costs of letting the Eurozone fail. The following is a typical example focusing on unemployment:

Example 6

Olli Rehn calculates that letting Greece go bankrupt in the spring would have made more than 86,000 people unemployed here. Now the survival of the euro is also in the Finnish interest. (Taloussanomat (TS), 20 May 2012)

This excerpt exemplifies the use of instrumental economic arguments and numbers in the rationalizations, which was frequent in the media texts even if the arguments themselves could be debated or contested. The use of numbers is a classical means of legitimation (Potter et al., 1991); nevertheless, the calculations behind these number arguments or the bases for them were rarely clearly explained. In this case, credibility comes from the authorization that starts the first sentence (‘Olli Rehn calculates’). Importantly, this legitimating argument – like many others – is based on the national interest of Finns, which is explicitly stated in the second sentence. Thus, the example shows how economic rationalizations often drew explicitly on nationalistic discourse as well.

Similarly, economic arguments were also used for delegitimation. As previously mentioned, some of these arguments focused on the inherent systemic problems of the euro:

Example 7

Overall, common rules do not help because the economies of the Eurozone countries are too different. A group of completely different kinds of countries belongs to the euro because of the prevailing global belief that bigger is always better. This megalomaniac thinking has led to the collapse of many empires in the course of history. (TS, 7 December 2011)

In this excerpt, the rationalization delegitimation is based on two arguments: that the Eurozone countries are not similar enough and that there is a false assumption among the protagonists that scale brings advantages. Thus, the delegitimating rationalization can be seen as a counter-argument in the inter-textual media discussion. In the last sentence, the protagonists’ project is heavily criticized with a hyperbole (‘megalomaniac thinking’) and an historical juxtaposition (‘the collapse of many empires’) examples of the discursive vehicles often used by the antagonists in their rationalizations of delegitimation. At least equally prominent were the explicitly nationalistic arguments concentrating on the costs for Finns of rescue packages and bailouts. They often involved moral evaluation and will be discussed in the following section.

Often, however, even those critical texts that focused on major problems with the Eurozone as an institution concluded that it is still worth preserving because of a lack of alternatives. They can be seen as relegitimating counter-arguments in the wider inter-textual discussion, as the following example shows:

Example 8

The euro in its current structure and current composition is an unworthy currency that should never have been established, says Donovan categorically. Yet according to him the euro is here to stay. It is easier and better to fix the deficiencies of the euro and the monetary union than to let the euro fail – Chief Economist Paul Donovan of the Swiss bank UBS. (TS, 4 September 2011)

This example builds on authorization (based on an appeal to ‘Chief Economist Paul Donovan’) and involves consequentialist argumentation. The logic of the relegitimating argument is to accept the critical arguments of the antagonists, but to conclude that saving the euro is still worthwhile when compared with the consequences of allowing it to fail.

Moral evaluation: Moral delegitimation and legitimation by (un)fairness

Moral evaluation was an inherent part of the media texts. This was especially the case with delegitimation, which tended to focus on the unfairness of the rescue packages and the euro as a whole. Thus, rationalistic arguments were frequently combined with moral evaluations, as in the following example (comment from Timo Soini):

Example 9

If we think about the mechanism according to which those who play unfairly are rewarded, I wonder whether a bank manager would call a Finnish entrepreneur [and say] that we’re going to lower your interest rate and extend the period for your loan. That’s not going to happen to an ordinary citizen. (IS, 22 July 2011)

As this example shows, moralizations regarding delegitimation frequently drew on nationalistic discourse and used means such as national stereotypes (Wodak et al., 1999) and ‘us-versus-them’ comparisons (Oddo, 2011). In this excerpt, Soini insinuates that Greeks and others needing rescue packages ‘play unfairly’, which is a typical stereotype alongside others such as ‘opportunistic’, ‘bending the rules’ or ‘untrustworthy’ in similar texts based on comments by Soini or other members of the ‘True Finns’. Greeks are contrasted with Finns, who are implicitly depicted as ‘obeying the rules’; in other articles, they were more explicitly described as ‘hard-working’ and ‘trustworthy’. These stereotypes are central parts of the moral evaluation where Greeks receiving support (i.e. the rescue package in question) are constructed as engaging in morally questionable opportunism, while Finns (exemplified by the metonymy of the ‘Finnish entrepreneur’ and the ‘ordinary citizen’) are seen as suffering from the situation.

Interestingly, explicit moral evaluations used for legitimating purposes were less frequent. That is, unlike the antagonists focusing on unfairness, the moral evaluations of the protagonists were often less apparent and were closely linked with rationalizations. This typically involved the following kinds of statements:

Example 10

I know that this is a difficult issue for the member states. At the same time the member states are committed to seeing the Greek economy reconstructed and their [that of the Greeks] ability to deal with debt strengthened, Rehn says with reference to a statement made by the Eurogroup in November 2012. (KL, 17 September 2013)

In this example, moral legitimation builds on a commitment that can be seen as coming from Eurozone membership (Europeanism) in general (first sentence) and fulfilling earlier promises in particular (second sentence). Rehn’s comment also recognizes the complexity of the issues (‘this is a difficult issue for the member states’) and emphasizes the efforts that Greeks themselves are making (their ability to deal with the debt); one can speculate that such elements serve as useful rhetorical means vis-a-vis the arguments of antagonists criticizing the moral basis of the rescue packages.

The nationalistic discourse of the antagonists could also be criticized. The following is a typical example:

Example 11

Timo Soini, the Chairman of the True Finns, would throw the southern European countries out of the euro. The monetary union would consist only of the Protestant north. According to an interview in Kaleva [a Finnish newspaper], only Germany, Holland, the Baltic countries, and the Nordic countries would be good enough for Soini. Somehow Soini’s proposal smells like a club of ‘Germanic’ partners. Even France would have to leave. (KL, 21 August 2012)

In this excerpt, the focus is on the nationalistic (and occasionally even racist) discourse of the True Finns that is criticized explicitly. Interestingly, by using irony, the protagonists were able at times to undermine the basis of the moralizations that played a central role in the discourse of the antagonists.

Finally, there was yet another type of moralization that warrants attention. In some moralizations, the blame was shifted from the European establishment or the politicians in power to the financial markets:

Example 12

Chairman of the Grand Committee Erkki Tuomioja (Social Democrats) said on Ykkösaamu [a TV programme] that the crisis in Greece is about moral destruction. We live in a world where profits are private, but losses are socialized and everyone takes some responsibility, says Tuomioja. (IS, 8 May 2010)

In this example, Erkki Tuomioja – a well-known critical thinker and thus an authority – draws from humanistic discourse to criticize the logic of financial capitalism. In particular, moralization focuses on the responsibilities of the financial sector in relation to nation-states, and moral judgement is expressed in a compelling juxtaposition of ‘profits are private, but losses are socialized’.

Mythopoiesis: Alternative future projections

The media texts included mythopoietic legitimation and delegitimation strategies. In particular, future projections constituted an important facet of institutional legitimation struggles. In these projections, which resemble ‘imaginaries’ (Fairclough and Thomas, 2004), the contrast between future and present in the narrative structure was often explicit, while the narrative elements were often more implicit. These future projects included ‘nightmare scenarios’. For example, Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen commented on the rescue of Ireland as follows:

Example 13

According to Katainen, no one can answer the question of whether the support will stop with Ireland. Our intention is to avoid a total catastrophe, a European-wide recession and to contain the problem, because according to the best economic experts not providing loans to Ireland would lead – with great probability – to a chain reaction and to a European recession. (IS, 21 January 2010)

In addition to authorization (reference to ‘economic experts’) and consequentialist rationalization (especially the arguments related to ‘avoid’, ‘contain’ and ‘lead’), this excerpt involves a narrative structure typical of such future projections. Also, legitimating discourse of this kind often included hyperbolic dramatization, as in the choice of the words ‘total catastrophe’.

Future projections also served delegitimation. More specifically, delegitimating projections often involved ‘nightmare scenarios’ comprising increased bailout payments and loss of employment, as well as the ultimate collapse of the euro:

Example 14

Soini sees at the end of the European Stability Mechanism an obligation of one hundred billion for Finland: Apparently we will have to sink with this Titanic … Soini compares the rescue operation with the boiling of a frog. (24 September 2012)

Vivid imagery of this kind was typical of statements made by the antagonists. Here, the future of the euro is likened to the sinking of the Titanic with associated images of erroneous decisions and the well-known boiling frog story, according to which a frog placed in cold water will not perceive the danger if the temperature is increased gradually. Thus, this example shows how metaphors and hyperboles were frequently used by the antagonists to construct delegitimating future scenarios.

Cosmology: Legitimation and delegitimation based on inevitability

Future projections were often linked with a strategy of cosmological argumentation (Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005) that implies inevitability. Such inevitability arguments were frequently used in the media texts. In the case of legitimation, these cosmological strategies often led to the conclusion that specific measures to save the euro were the ‘only choice’:

Example 15

A solution to the Eurozone crisis must be found immediately. The current measures are inadequate, they come too late, and they increase the global economic turmoil. (HS, 12 October 2011 – an excerpt from a statement made by leading European politicians)

As this excerpt shows, the cosmological legitimation strategies were usually based on authorization and involved rationalization that paved the way for construction of inevitability. These cosmological legitimation strategies were characterized by deontic modality (‘must’) in terms of a clear obligation assigned to key decision-makers.

Cosmology was at times also used for delegitimating purposes. In such cases, the focus was usually on the inevitable collapse of the euro:

Example 16

For example the British economist Roger Bootle has stated that at least a partial dissolution of the Eurozone is inevitable because of the need for devaluation in the crisis countries. Without it, restoring economic growth will be a painful road [lasting] as long as ten years. Unemployment will explode and there will be massive cutbacks. Scarily enough, Bootle predicted the dotcom bubble and the mortgage crisis. (KL, 5 November 2012)

This example shows how, in addition to authorizations (especially in the first and last sentences referring to Bootle’s qualifications and success in previous predictions), rationalizations (in the first three sentences, including rational argument structures) and future projections (in the first three sentences), delegitimation builds on cosmological inevitability. In this excerpt, inevitability is constructed by the use of that very word (‘inevitable’) in the first sentence, as well as by the future tense of ‘will’ in the second and third sentences, which can be seen as an indication of the modality of necessity. As this example shows, such claims of cosmological inevitability were usually based on the use of linguistic means such as modality, which added a sense of inevitability to other legitimation strategies.

Conclusion

The purpose of this article has been to elucidate the discursive dynamics in the legitimacy crisis that the Eurozone as a transnational institution is facing. By so doing, it helps to better understand the current crisis in Greece and other European countries and also makes a theoretical contribution to research on discursive legitimation.

The analysis contributes to our understanding of the current financial, social and political crisis in Greece and other European countries and the ways in which the crisis is linked with the future of the Eurozone. Whilst we already know about the institutional aspects and implications of the financial crisis (Lounsbury and Hirsch, 2010; Morales et al., in press) and there is research on the linguistic aspects of societal crises (De Rycker and Mohd Don, 2013), the legitimacy struggles characterizing the Eurozone crisis have been largely ignored, which is unfortunate given the significance of the crisis and the various social and societal implications.

This analysis reveals specific characteristics of the crisis that in particular facilitate our understanding of how Europeans, in this case Finns, make sense of it. First, the study focuses attention on the inherent tension between the protagonists and the antagonists. The Finnish discussion was characterized by a juxtaposition of elites justifying the need to support Greece and other countries and the ‘common people’ resisting and questioning the legitimacy of these decisions and actions. Although such questioning plays an important role in voicing alternative views, our analysis shows that resistance may also be used for instrumental purposes, such as in the mustering of support for populist parties such as the True Finns. Second, while this analysis underscores the interdiscursive basis of legitimation, nationalism deserves special attention in its own right. The analysis shows that nationalism continues to play a crucial role in making sense of the future of the euro. It can be seen in constructions such as ‘national interest’, which helped to concretize the implications for Finns. However, such nationalism could also take the form of ‘banal nationalism’ (Billig, 1995; Wodak et al., 1999), building on and spreading simplistic and even dangerous stereotypes. Third, the analysis reveals the challenges inherent in the construction of European identity. As our analysis indicates, financial markets are often seen as the ultimate authorities in determining the future of the euro, and nationalistic interests easily override European concerns such as solidarity with Greece or with others in trouble. Nevertheless, the Eurozone seems to persist, and it may well be that an eventual financial and societal recovery in Greece and other European countries will provide a stronger platform for the voicing of pro-European views – including solidarity across Europe.

In addition to the crisis of the Eurozone per se, the analysis makes a more general theoretical contribution in that it elucidates the discursive dynamics of institutional legitimacy crises. Prior research in discourse analysis has already focused attention on discursive legitimation strategies (Breeze, 2012; Oddo, 2011; Reyes, 2011; Rojo and Van Dijk, 1997; Van Leeuwen and Wodak, 1999; Zhu and McKenna, 2012) and this work has been mobilized in studies in institutional analysis (Lefsrud and Meyer, 2012; Vaara and Tienari, 2008). This paper adds to this stream of research by elucidating the interdiscursive and ideological underpinnings of legitimation on the one hand and the specific legitimation, delegitimation and relegitimation strategies on the other. Thus, the article provides an example of how institutional legitimacy crises can be analysed more generally – moving from an interdiscursive mapping of the discursive resources to a detailed analysis of legitimation strategies. It also points to interesting aspects of legitimation that have received relatively inadequate attention in previous research, such as the multifaceted nature of authorization, the various forms of moralizations and their interrelationships, the central role of nightmare-type future projections and the importance of constructions of cosmological inevitability. All in all, the analysis shows that it is crucial to focus attention on the multiple facets of legitimation in order to understand the overall dynamics of legitimation, delegitimation and relegitimation. Thus, this work can help to advance ongoing research on legitimation in discourse analysis, offer a framework for a better understanding of the role of discourse in legitimacy crises in institutional theory and help to promote trans-disciplinary research on institutional legitimacy.

The study has its limitations. The analysis focused on the Finnish discussion, and the discursive patterns and strategies could be different in other countries depending on national heritage and political and economic circumstances. It would therefore be interesting to compare the Finnish discussion with that in other countries and the various media internationally. This study has focused on patterns typical of the discursive level. Future research could go further in concentrating on the textual level and linguistic vehicles and processes; for example, different forms of argumentation, the use of pronouns, the role of tropes such as metaphor, metonomy and irony, and the varying forms of modality are topics that warrant specific attention in future research. Rather than patterns across texts, it would also be interesting to examine particular texts in detail, to compare different genres and to examine intertextual and interdiscursive linkages. It would further be interesting to examine the genre and discourse chains in texts and across texts to gain more insights into interdiscursivity. In addition to texts, future studies could focus attention on multimodality, in particular the role of visual and audio phenomena in the media (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2006), as well as how social media may differ from the more traditional news media.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful for Jo Angouri and Ruth Wodak for their insightful comments and sympathetic approach in this process. I also wish to thank Pekka Pälli and Jérémy Morales for their insightful comments, Charlotta Björk for invaluable help in the empirical analysis and David Miller for the language revision.

Notes

Author biography

Eero Vaara is a Professor of Management and Organization at Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki, Finland. He is a permanent Visiting Professor at EMLYON Business School, France, a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Lancaster University, UK and an Adjunct Professor at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. His research interests focus on organizational and institutional change, strategic practices and processes, multinational corporations and globalization, management education and methodological issues in organization and management research. He has worked especially on discursive and narrative approaches. His work has been published in leading journals and several books, and he has received many awards for his contributions.

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