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Legitimacy and Drug Policy

Borden, Joshua Ryan LU (2011) SIMT07 20101
Department of Political Science
Master of Science in Global Studies
Graduate School
Abstract
This paper represents an endeavor to describe the ways in which the United States Government currently is responding to growing changes in public opinion – running counter to existing policies – with regards to drugs, most specifically to marijuana, and to therein establish the context of the debate over drug policy. The paper is not, however, a critique of any particular policy, or an attempt to advocate the legalization of any drug or drugs. The aforementioned task has been accomplished through a content analysis and critical discourse analysis of two documents put out by the US Drug Enforcement Administration, in order to discern what kind of legitimacy and legitimacy achievement strategies are being used to justify their continued... (More)
This paper represents an endeavor to describe the ways in which the United States Government currently is responding to growing changes in public opinion – running counter to existing policies – with regards to drugs, most specifically to marijuana, and to therein establish the context of the debate over drug policy. The paper is not, however, a critique of any particular policy, or an attempt to advocate the legalization of any drug or drugs. The aforementioned task has been accomplished through a content analysis and critical discourse analysis of two documents put out by the US Drug Enforcement Administration, in order to discern what kind of legitimacy and legitimacy achievement strategies are being used to justify their continued unaltered mandate to enforce drug policies. If the government can be determined to be seeking to justify its restrictive policies to the public and internally within its own hierarchy by using a manipulative approach to establishing legitimacy; can this phenomenon be seen as a potential critique for the continued legitimacy of authority to regulate such areas with prohibition and incarceration methods in the first place? Concepts of legitimacy have been used as the theoretical foundation for the application of the aforementioned methods on the critically analyzed texts. On account of the results from the analysis made by this study, it is argued that the hypothesized assumption that a manipulative legitimacy repair strategy is being employed by the DEA is in fact the case. (Less)
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author
Borden, Joshua Ryan LU
supervisor
organization
alternative title
A critical look into the United States Government’s approach to justifying its policy positions on drugs
course
SIMT07 20101
year
type
H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
subject
keywords
United States of America (USA), legitimacy, Drug policy, Drugs, US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
language
English
id
1758733
date added to LUP
2011-07-06 08:11:31
date last changed
2014-06-16 14:28:52
@misc{1758733,
  abstract     = {{This paper represents an endeavor to describe the ways in which the United States Government currently is responding to growing changes in public opinion – running counter to existing policies – with regards to drugs, most specifically to marijuana, and to therein establish the context of the debate over drug policy. The paper is not, however, a critique of any particular policy, or an attempt to advocate the legalization of any drug or drugs. The aforementioned task has been accomplished through a content analysis and critical discourse analysis of two documents put out by the US Drug Enforcement Administration, in order to discern what kind of legitimacy and legitimacy achievement strategies are being used to justify their continued unaltered mandate to enforce drug policies. If the government can be determined to be seeking to justify its restrictive policies to the public and internally within its own hierarchy by using a manipulative approach to establishing legitimacy; can this phenomenon be seen as a potential critique for the continued legitimacy of authority to regulate such areas with prohibition and incarceration methods in the first place? Concepts of legitimacy have been used as the theoretical foundation for the application of the aforementioned methods on the critically analyzed texts. On account of the results from the analysis made by this study, it is argued that the hypothesized assumption that a manipulative legitimacy repair strategy is being employed by the DEA is in fact the case.}},
  author       = {{Borden, Joshua Ryan}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Legitimacy and Drug Policy}},
  year         = {{2011}},
}