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Hannah O’Rourke

A lot of political and organisational problems are not really persuasion problems, they're legitimacy problems. People often know what needs to happen but disagree on who gets to decide, whether the process was fair, or whether they trust the people leading it. I'm interested in how legitimacy gets constructed in practice: through participation, transparency, shared ownership, evidence and creating processes people recognise as fair. Following Martin Conway, I treat legitimacy as historically contingent, socially constructed and contested — the interesting question is never "is this legitimate?" but "how did it become legitimate, and why then?"

For example, the covid memorial was not legitimate but it was made so. This was done by making sure the first volunteers wore flouresent jackets, had a sign put up and by the afternoon multiple front bench politicians had visited it. Then the council accepted it and paid for its upkeep as a historic memorial. Its legitimacy was constructed. Technically everyone could have been arrested for criminal damage.

Another example in the #Honourtheoffer campaign which was crearting legitimacy through organising information. When Oxford alumni felt colleges weren't honouring their access commitments, the concern was fragmented across dozens of colleges with decentralised decision-making, which meant if one fell, they all would. A hashtag gave people shared language and over 8,000 signed the petition, but the pivotal move was mundane: a public spreadsheet listing every college against its commitments, updated openly and pitting them against each other. The spreadsheet didn't just record reality, it organised it and whoever structures the information becomes trusted to interpret it. League tables, polling and Wikipedia all work this way.

Across my work I’ve repeatedly operated in environments where authority is fragmented such as campaigns, parties, community groups, MPs’ offices, networks and coalitions. I can help fellows think about questions like: How do you make decisions people will actually follow? How do you create buy-in without formal power? How do you design participation that is meaningful rather than performative? How do you create legitimacy for new technologies or organisational change?