Paper short abstract:

This paper will report on an in-depth qualitative study of the two-way relationship between university education and state legitimacy over time in Sri Lanka.

Paper long abstract:

Public services are considered a significant source of state legitimacy, yet few studies have examined this relationship in-depth, or over time. Likewise, the reverse proposition, that how public services are distributed or delivered can de-legitimise a state, remains relatively neglected. Based on process tracing and archival analysis, this paper examines the two-way relationship between university education and state legitimacy over time in Sri Lanka. It asks why policies governing access to university education aggravated the emergence of the dual challenge to the Sri Lankan state - insurrection in the South and armed separatism in the North - during the critical juncture of 1970-1973. This double de-legitimation has its origins in the state's own political legitimation strategies that escalated from 1956 and set in motion a series of unintended feedback effects. They were part of a long-term process of setting expectations, getting feedback, and performing (or not) to those expectations. Research on sources of state legitimacy might usefully broaden its time horizons beyond snapshots, and capture attitudinal and behavioural markers of legitimacy beyond surveys.