This article analyses the relationships between legitimacy, leadership and stability of hybrid orders in spaces of contested state authority. Complementing studies on public authority, the analysis builds on the observation that hybrid orders are often violent and unstable. The article goes beyond the one‐sided views of legitimacy that focus on the legitimating registers of non‐state governing authorities and which ignore for the most part the perceptions and evaluations of such strategies by the governed. It does so by conceptualizing legitimacy as a relational property, which emerges between governing authorities and the governed. Drawing on a case study from Darjeeling in West Bengal, India (where hybrid order appears in the domains of development and security), this article finds that non‐state leaders tend to withdraw from hybrid agreements in order to regain legitimacy and trust when confronted with threats to their regional dominance. The stability of hybrid orders is not only dependent on the abilities of competing authorities to adapt to changing and conflicting normative and factual demands of their constituents, but is also an outcome of the struggle over the normative and moral bases of such evaluations.

中文翻译：

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混合治理的轨迹：印度的合法性，秩序和领导力

本文分析了有争议的国家权力空间中混合秩序的合法性，领导力和稳定性之间的关系。作为对公共权力研究的补充，该分析建立在以下观察的基础上：混合秩序通常是暴力和不稳定的。该文章超越了合法性的单方面观点，该观点侧重于非国家管理当局的合法登记册，并且在很大程度上忽略了被统治者对此类策略的看法和评估。它是通过将合法性概念化为关系财产来实现的，这种关系财产出现在治理机构与被治理者之间。借鉴印度西孟加拉邦大吉岭的一个案例研究（混合秩序出现在发展与安全领域），本文发现，非国家领导人在面对对其地区主导地位的威胁时，往往会退出混合协议，以重新获得合法性和信任。混合秩序的稳定性不仅取决于竞争当局适应其组成成员不断变化和相互冲突的规范和事实要求的能力，而且还是在此类评估的规范和道德基础上进行斗争的结果。