This paper examines how the Social License to Operate (SLO) manifests in contexts of institutional fragility, drawing on evidence from the Brazilian mining sector. While much of the SLO literature emphasizes procedural compliance and participatory mechanisms, less attention has been paid to how legitimacy is constructed when limited state capacity places firms and communities in direct and structurally unequal relationships. We argue that in such contexts the SLO assumes a distinct configuration: rather than a license to be obtained, it operates as legitimacy under moral asymmetry, an unstable and conditional moral contract shaped by structural dependency and ongoing relational performance. Drawing on 32 in-depth interviews with corporate executives, community leaders, and government officials across major Brazilian mining regions, complemented by documentary analysis, we develop a conceptual model showing how this form of legitimacy is produced and sustained through temporal continuity of moral attention and discursive governmentality. Our findings indicate that communities assess legitimacy based on the consistency of corporate presence and recognition over time, while companies manage moral exposure by translating political and relational conflicts into technical and managerial language. By specifying this governance configuration, the study refines the understanding of SLO in resource-dependent and institutionally fragile settings and contributes to debates in resource governance, political CSR, and impact assessment.
