Legitimacy and Drug Policy
(2011) SIMT07 20101Department 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)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/1758733
- 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
- 2011
- 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}}, }