Publications
Manufactured Legitimacy
Beyers, M. (2026). Manufactured Legitimacy: A Structural Diagnosis of the Accountability Gap in Defense Artificial Intelligence Governance [Preprint]. SSRN.
Identifies the structural conditions under which the NIST AI Risk Management Framework cannot produce what the DoD's mandatory ethical principles require. The article specifies three structural conditions and one operative mechanism — the legitimization function — through which compliance records confer institutional legitimacy rather than substantive accountability. It proposes a precondition model of legitimacy to displace the prevailing output model.
Foundational Research
Beyers, M. (2011). Human rights and dealing with historic cases: A review of the Office of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland. Committee on the Administration of Justice.
Committee on the Administration of Justice. Examined the structural conditions affecting the independence of the Office of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland in investigations of historic cases.
Beyers, M., & Holder, D. (2012). The policing you don't see: Counter-insurgency and the policing accountability gap — Five years on from the transfer of national security powers to MI5. Committee on the Administration of Justice.
Committee on the Administration of Justice. Examined the accountability gap arising from the transfer of national security policing functions from the Police Service of Northern Ireland to MI5 under the St Andrews Agreement.