Bridging the “consent gap”: mechanisms of legitimization in a cross-border megaproject

In the recent debate on megaprojects (MPs), greater attention is devoted to the functioning of the interorganizational and multiactor networks that are one of the most innovative features in recent years. The complexity of these structures brings out governability issues for an MP’s management. Mutual recognition and consent become elements capable of inaugurating more collaborative processes and practices to reduce organizational and management criticalities in MPs. This paper focuses on a neglected relational dimension, namely legitimacy. We argue that legitimacy is instead the central dimension that attributes effectiveness and capacity for action to the organizations involved. Legitimacy regulates the relationship between various organizations—and especially—between organizations and the public sphere. Institutionalist theory assigns a central role to legitimacy in the construction of social processes, defining it as a generalized form of social acceptance toward an actor, an idea, or a project. In this paper, we hypothesize that the legitimacy attributed and “held” by the stakeholders is a crucial element in countering three critical aspects of MPs, namely the uncertainty, complexity, and conflict acting on the construction of public consensus and the quality of relationships between the participating stakeholders. We verify our hypothesis by analyzing a cross-border MP, the Fehmarnbelt Fixed Link between Germany and Denmark. The paper concentrates on the mechanisms with which stakeholders can acquire legitimacy using the Eriksen discursive legitimation scheme. These mechanisms are different (evidence-based, public participation, and legislators’ command) and produce different outcomes in terms of increasing or containing these three criticalities.