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Capturing legitimacy in captured states: an interview-based exploration of the validity of existing legitimacy measures in Serbia’s hybrid regime
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DOI：10.1080/13510347.2026.2686343.png)
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Abstract
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Legitimacy is a foundational concept in political science typically measured through surveys assessing citizen perceptions of political institutions. However, the validity of existing measures is often assumed rather than tested, especially in hybrid regimes where institutional capture blurs distinctions between office and office-holder. Drawing on original semi-structured interviews with Serbian citizens, we find that conflation - the inability to separate office and office-holder - was high for questions on input side institutions such as trust in the president, the prime minister and the parliament, lower for output side institutions, such as the police, court and the tax authority, and most varied between respondents for general system questions. Our analysis suggests two main reasons for this pattern: first, citizens’ evaluations of elected institutions rely more heavily on mediated information sources (e.g. TV, internet, print media), whereas views of bureaucratic institutions are often grounded in direct personal experience; second, respondents showed a weaker understanding of democratic principles than of expectations around public service delivery. These findings highlight potential item bias both between respondents within a hybrid regime and in cross-regime comparisons, calling into question the comparability and validity of standard legitimacy measures in European hybrid regimes.
Keywords:
Legitimacy
measurement validity
item bias
Serbia
hybrid regimes
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