ABSTRACT
Chapter 9 offers a new perspective on wage distribution fairness by looking at wage distribution fairness on the societal level. The structure of the chapter differs from previous chapters as it takes an bottom-up approach and attempts to formulate theoretical assumptions based on empirical evidence The chapter expands the concept of wage distribution fairness and makes a case that wage distribution fairness could be a proxy for economic legitimacy. It briefly discusses the epistemology of the concept legitimacy and what are the main features of economic legitimacy. Most importantly the chapter defines economic legitimacy as the country-level wage distribution fairness (where the majority of individual determine the economic legitimacy of the country) and describes how three post-socialist societies differ in regards to economic legitimacy. Last, the chapter proposes a theoretical scheme to explain economic legitimacy. The scheme suggests that economic legitimacy depends on the economic development of a country and the level of political legitimacy. The scheme remains speculative and future research should eventually pursue its further development.
