Legitimacy challenges - An analysis of mistrust in core institutions and the normative fundament of the welfare state.

In the project period from 1 October 2024 to 30 September 2025, the project has published several articles based on the survey material developed in the previous period, in addition to further publications (4 articles). There have been several academic dissemination activities (12). PhD fellow Loen has successfully defended her doctoral thesis, and postdoctoral researcher Helland has completed her period. Project members have presented research at the IPSA World Congress of Political Science 2025 in Seoul, South Korea; the ECPR General Conference 2025 in Thessaloniki, Greece; EUSARF 2025 in Zagreb, Croatia; the National Conference in Political Science 2025 in Bergen; the Child Welfare Conference 2024 in Bergen; the International Conference on Adoption Policy in the 20th Century in Magdeburg, Germany; and the Bergen Exchanges on Law & Social Transformation 2025 in Bergen.

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The Norwegian child protection system have been exposed to harsh criticism from citizen groups and religious- and ultra conservative groups. At the same time Norway is consistently ranked high on all types of measures on child rights and child well-being. The critics questions the legitimacy of the child protection system and children's rights, but are simultaneously expressing a huge mistrust in legal institutions and the normative foundations of the Nordic welfare state model. There are huge knowledge gaps on what is going on in these groups, how they operate, how they are organized and funded, and what their messages are. Further, we do not know how the critique is received by other citizens, and how governments operate and respond to the critique. There is a pressing need for knowledge about how the meaning formation in societies and the public debates are influenced by the mobilization, and what role this has for the legitimacy of welfare state policies. LEGITIMACY aims to reveal conditions and mechanisms for sustaining legitimacy in societies in which there is a backlash on social and political right developments. The project will be the most comprehensive cross-country study ever undertaken on this topic, and it is pioneering in its empirical and critical ambition to understand the rationale behind what seem to be a strong citizen driven mobilization against established welfare system in democratic states. The empirical themes are child protection interventions, children's rights and the debate about the Norwegian child protection system. By mapping the organisation of and strategies applied by opponents and proponents in the debate, mapping and critically analyse the rationality of the discourse's, and examine and compare the citizens opinions in six countries, LEGITIMACY promises to move the research front in our understanding of institutional legitimacy in contemporary welfare societies and our knowledge about social and political right developments.