Legitimacy Lens: A guide for building and maintaining legitimacy of new institutions

The Legitimacy Lens toolkit contains a set of reflection questions for institutional entrepreneurs — those who are creating space for, designing, leading, and supporting the creation of new or updated institutions — seeking to build and maintain legitimacy for new or substantially updated institutions. 

It is not a checklist for generating legitimacy. Rather, it is a structured way for institutional entrepreneurs to: 

i) identify relevant aspects of the issue that they are engaging with, the context and their current position in building legitimacy; 

ii) understand options for building legitimacy; and 

iii) begin to consider the implications of strategies for building legitimacy for other aspects of institutional design. 

It is a ‘lens’ through which strategies for creating and maintaining legitimacy can be refined. Effective institutional design is not a one-time effort but a continuous process, often starting with vague sketches and moving to more specifics. Both designers and leaders must embrace constant iteration and potential revision. This approach ensures that the transition from advocacy to institution remains adaptable, robust, and aligned with institutional entrepreneurs’ core mission and values.

Who is this toolkit for?

It is aimed at those early in the process of creating a new institution — perhaps even still in the transition between advocacy and implementation. The reflection questions are also relevant for those still involved in advocacy campaigns or political action; they may help those leaders build the bases for legitimacy over time. 

Reflecting on these frameworks and questions will not produce a full blueprint for setting up a new institution. Instead, it will focus attention on one of the most important, yet complex issues, involved in creating or updating an institution and invites deeper reflection on it.

Building legitimacy is a deeply contextual endeavor. Institutional entrepreneurs should constantly reflect and revise the conditions for building legitimacy. This toolkit gives guidance on some of the fundamental choices one can make. These choices should be considered, not definite, but in constant movement depending on both internal and external dynamics. 

Our hope is that the Legitimacy Lens also invites further explorations on practical ways to build legitimacy in various contexts.


For further background on the value of legitimacy, broad sources of legitimacy, dynamics and sufficiency of legitimacy, please read the companion paper. This paper, “Legitimacy: Insights for Accumulation,” brings together lessons from social science and accumulated practitioner insight.

A collaboration between TIAL and Berggruen Institute. To accompany this toolkit, we also wrote a publication that delves into the theory of legitimacy and delves deeper into the toolkit’s modules.

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