Dissertation Defense: Amina Abdu

The School of Information is pleased to announce the oral defense of Amina Abdu.

Title: Legitimacy Practices Under Algorithmic Governance

Date: Friday, June 19, 2026

Time: 10:00am-12:30pm

Location: Founders Room (LCSIB 3470) and Online via Zoom

https://umich.zoom.us/j/98340022731

Abigail Jacobs, serving as committee chair, will preside over the oral defense. 

All are welcome to attend!

Abstract:

This dissertation examines how algorithmic technologies are transforming the everyday institutional practice and performance of legitimacy in U.S. public administration. Bridging theories of legitimacy from organizational sociology, science and technology studies (STS), and administrative law, I introduce legitimacy practices as a crucial site where the scope of legitimate policy interventions is negotiated, focusing in particular on algorithmic governance – both in the sense of policy implemented by algorithm and regulation of algorithms. Prevailing approaches treat legitimacy as a static construct, which is either undermined or furthered when agency officials turn to algorithms. However, this dissertation proposes that the algorithmic turn within government agencies has changed how administrative legitimacy is understood and performed, with value-laden consequences. I examine this algorithmic turn across three empirical contexts. First, I chart the Government Accountability Office's role in managing administrative legitimacy through its everyday oversight of agency activities. I discuss how algorithms have reconfigured these practices, elevating efficiency and accuracy, while sidelining accountability. Second, I explore the rhetorical strength of technologies that attempt to formalize ethical problems – including formal privacy and game theory – to understand how different forms of algorithmic public administration make and are made legitimate by scoping the space of policy contestation. Finally, I examine how data infrastructures institutionalize agency accountability through an examination of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) error rates, which govern relationships between federal and local governments, administrative agencies and the executive branch, and the state and the public. Through these distinct contexts, I show how the push toward algorithms reflects a turn toward efficiency and accuracy as the core legitimating principles of the administrative state --- and a concurrent side-lining of reason-giving and democratic accountability. Together, these three studies help situate the algorithmic turn within the longer history of quantification in public administration, revealing changes to who (or what) is given the authority to implement policy and on what grounds.