East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore
This paper concerns the fate of institutions in social or political upheaval and their revival. We contend that the legitimacy of a delegitimized institution does not simply disappear. Instead, it hibernates, or goes “dormant”, at institutional carriers such as artifacts and constituent organizations at difficult times. However, the hibernated legitimacy does not automatically help revive the institution when the environment becomes friendly again. Whether the hibernated legitimacy facilitates the institutional revival depends on the nature of delegitmation and the type of the institutional carrier. We provide a typology of the forms of survival of the institutional carriers under different kinds of delegitimation attacks, specify propositions about their impact on legitimacy hibernation and the consequent institutional revival, and then discuss their implications for future research.
