Public services as carriers of ideas that (de-) legitimise the state: The illustrative case of free education in Sri Lanka

Vital public services have long been considered a source of performance legitimacy for states, based on the material outputs they provide for citizens. However, cumulative evidence shows that the relationship between service delivery and citizens’ perceptions of the state’s right to rule is not an instrumental equation. This article argues part of the explanation for this lies in the underexplored ideational properties of public services. Theoretically, for public services to become significant for legitimacy, they must register in the repertoire of normative ideas against which the state’s moral appropriateness is ultimately judged. This article shows how this happens, empirically, using the illustrative case of free education in Sri Lanka. Based on media, archival and interview data collected across critical junctures from independence through to the contemporary era, the historical analysis shows how free education became entwined with wider ideas about social justice during the formative period of post-colonial state transformation, how elites later capitalised on and narrated these ideas in their legitimation strategies, and how this ideational heritage has been revived to challenge the states moral authority when it is perceived to deviate from it. This case reveals the explanatory potential in tracing the entwinement of public services and normative ideas to critical junctures of state (de-)legitimation, observing how elites discursively ‘perform’ performance legitimacy, and analysing services that carry ideas as ripe discursive arenas wherein the legitimacy of the state is claimed and contested. The implication is that the category of performance legitimacy may usefully be extended beyond the instrumental, to incorporate the ideational. ‘Performance’ legitimacy is not an exclusively instrumental source of legitimacy if, through the political process of legitimation, public services become carriers of ideas that (de-) legitimise the state.