Organizational research has long recognized the importance of discursive legitimation in both maintaining and disrupting institutions. While prior scholarship has explored how legitimacy is constructed and sustained in organizations, comparatively less is known about how it is actively undermined to support institutional change. This study examines the discursive strategies that attempted to erode the legitimacy of the European Union (EU) in the UK Parliament leading up to the 2016 Brexit referendum. Focusing on the European Research Group (ERG), a faction within the Conservative Party sceptical of EU integration, we analyse how its members mobilized language, seeking to challenge perceptions of EU legitimacy by targeting organizations underpinning the EU as an institution. Through our case study analysis, we identify a process of recursive deficiency framing, in which institutional shortcomings are repeatedly emphasised and constructed as systemic failings. This framing is amplified through entity-specific targeting, where organizational bodies are portrayed as proxies for institutional flaws through the use of synthetic evocative epithets – emotionally charged labels and slogans that enhance resonance. Together, these strategies work to undermine normative legitimacy and destabilise cognitive legitimacy. The study contributes to research on discursive legitimation by illuminating how language can be strategically used by and against organizations to contest and erode institutional legitimacy, thereby supporting institutional transformation.
Lines et al. (Sun,) studied this question.