Global Governance, Legitimacy and Legitimation

Magdalena Bexell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781317566625
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Rules set by global governance organizations affect communities across the world. Such organizations increasingly seek to obtain legitimacy in the eyes of groups beyond their member state elites. This book advances scholarly debate on the politics of legitimacy and legitimation in global governance. It brings together researchers from different subfields of International Relations in order to highlight trends and contradictions in the contemporary politics of legitimacy across areas of sustainable development, humanitarian relief, responsible investment, sustainable fisheries and labour standards. The chapters explore legitimation efforts by various forms of global governance bodies, such as intergovernmental organizations, public–private partnerships and fully private bodies. The book demonstrates that different governance forms beyond the nation state share deep legitimacy challenges and engage in continuous legitimation attempts. Questions on the audiences of such legitimation attempts are particularly pivotal in understanding the politics of legitimacy. Audiences are not predetermined but constituted through interaction between legitimation efforts and the reactions to those of targeted and other groups, mirroring broader global power relations.

This book was published as a special issue of Globalizations.

Global Governance, Legitimacy and (De)Legitimation

MAGDALENA BEXELL

Lund University, Sweden

Introduction

The realm of global governance continually grows more diverse in form, substance and influence, making questions about its legitimacy and legitimation increasingly intriguing. Debates on standards for assessing the legitimacy of global governance organizations and rules have proliferated in contemporary academic study and political practice. In addition, the study of legitimation is becoming a research field of its own, enquiring into legitimacy-seeking practices and delegitimation attempts. The purpose of this issue is to advance scholarly debate on the politics of legitimacy and legitimation in global governance processes. The issue brings together researchers from different subfields of international relations in order to highlight trends and contradictions in the contemporary politics of legitimacy across a range of issue areas and governance forms. Accordingly, the issue includes governance interventions in the areas of health, sustainable development, humanitarian relief, responsible investment, sustainable fisheries, and labour standards. Moreover, the articles explore interstate organizations, public–private partnerships, entirely private rule-setting bodies, and certification standards, demonstrating that different organizational forms share similar legitimacy challenges and engage in continuous legitimation attempts of many kinds.

In this article, I will first introduce the key concepts of global governance, legitimacy, and (de)legitimation in light of contemporary scholarly debates. Second, I briefly present the main themes and arguments of the individual articles. This is followed by a concluding section in which I argue that the questions about the ‘audiences’ of legitimation are salient in all contributions to this issue, yet in need of further theoretical and empirical study.

Global Governance

Scholarly study of governance beyond the nation state is filled with theoretical contention, usually along the lines of the competing perspectives employed in the field of international relations. We follow Jan Aart Scholte (2011a, p. 8) in defining global governance as ‘a complex of rules and regulatory institutions that apply to transplanetary jurisdictions and constituencies’. This definition’s emphasis on regulation and constituencies not confined to state boundaries fits well with the concerns of the present issue. Such governance involves not only states and interstate organizations but also transgovernmental networks, civil society actors, business associations, public–private partnerships, private foundations, and a number of others depending on the issue area at hand. Despite the absence of an overarching central authority in the global realm, collective and often hybrid regulatory arrangements involving these actors bring a degree of predictability and order to transboundary problem-solving (Weiss & Thakur, 2010, p. 6). Yet they are always disputed, as they privilege certain norms and actors at the expense of others.

The global governance lens implies an analytical starting point where the focus is on the norms and rules that structure, condition, and constrain social activity outside of the nation state rather than on a predefined set of actors of international relations (Dingwerth & Pattberg, 2006, p. 199). In contrast to traditional realist approaches to the study of international relations, global governance does not establish a hierarchy between actors. The word ‘global’ does not however imply that ‘global governance’ reaches everywhere or affects all people across the world equally; neither is global governance in itself an intrinsically good or bad thing, and our use of the term does not imply assumptions regarding whether it is legitimate or not (Scholte, 2011a, p. 14; Weiss & Thakur, 2010, p. 6). Global governance regulatory arrangements complement rather than replace regulation at regional, national, and local levels. Importantly, the term ‘global governance’ represents a view of world politics as a multilevel system where local, national, regional, and global political processes are inseparably interlinked, directing our attention to how different levels interact in shaping governance of various issue areas (Dingwerth & Pattberg, 2006, p. 192).

There are several ways to distinguish between different approaches to the study of global governance. A common distinction is that between a liberal institutionalist position, which views global governance as the collective management of global problems in the pursuit of public goods, and a range of critical perspectives which see global governance as a project reinforcing a neoliberal world order (cf. Hoffmann & Ba, 2005). The latter group of thinkers contains feminists, post-structuralists, and historical materialists who, in different ways, have uncovered relations and micro-technologies of power often overshadowed by rhetorics of cooperation and the public good in dominant discourses on global governance (Rai, 2004; Soederberg, 2006; Walters, 2004). The articles comprising this issue do not adhere to one single theoretical perspective; rather, they reflect the plurality of ontological and epistemological points of view through which global governance is and ought to be studied. Our ambition is to immerse ourselves in the concepts and practices of legitimacy and legitimation rather than to adjudicate upon the relative merits of broader international relations approaches. The articles show that the global governance of health, labour, sustainable development, and humanitarian aid has acquired a place in the study of international relations in its own right, even if the term ‘global governance’ remains contested with regard to the question of what agents, structures and processes are to be prioritized in scholarly study.

We understand the term ‘transnational governance’ in a narrower sense than ‘global governance’, as the former wants to turns our gaze to border-crossing regulatory innovations especially when actors other than national governments or interstate organizations are involved (Hale & Held, 2011, p. 15). Earlier scholarly concerns with transnationalism have recently emerged in new guises (Jönsson, 2010). Building on the path-breaking work on ‘private authority’ (Cutler, Haufler, & Porter, 1999; Hall & Biersteker, 2002), the literature now also speaks of ‘transnational public-private governance’ (Schäferhoff, Campe, & Kaan, 2009) and ‘private transnational governance’ (Dingwerth, 2008; Graz & Nölke, 2008). In a narrow sense, transnational governance denotes a new mode of governance, which systematically includes non-state actors in decision-making bodies and is based on non-hierarchical mechanisms of steering (Risse, 2006). Its analysis calls for inquiry into the spatial and functional implications of the deterritorialization of the state, of the porous boundaries between public and private spheres of society and modes of regulation (cf. Graz & Nölke, 2008).

The present issue’s first set of articles focuses on legitimacy issues arising in conflicts regarding substantive policy priorities in the global governance of health (Jönsson) and labour standards (Moore). The second set of articles examines the legitimation of public–private partnerships in the realms of sustainable development (Bäckstrand & Kylsäter), humanitarian relief (Andonova & Carbonnier), and responsible investments (Mörth). The third set deals with legitimacy in the case of entirely private transnational regulatory instruments for fisheries governance (Kalfagianni & Pattberg) and for eco-certification (Marx). The articles demonstrate that legitimacy challenges related to participation, substance, and impact cut across issue areas and governance forms and, returning to our above definition, that questions on the constituencies of global governance are particularly prominent.

Legitimacy

Debates on how and why legitimacy beyond the state matters, and on the standards against which to assess such legitimacy, have proliferated with regard to the global governance realm. If legitimacy is understood as a property attributed to an organization, policy or actor, legitimation refers to the activity of either seeking or granting legitimacy. In contemporary international relations scholarship, normative approaches to legitimacy assess the right to rule against theoretical principles (e.g. Buchanan & Keohane, 2006). Those are often contrasted with sociological approaches, which empirically examine the grounds for and degree of support of particular organizations or policies (cf. Brassett & Tsingou, 2011; Hurrelmann, Schneider, & Steffek, 2007). In a much-cited article, Ian Hurd (1999, p. 381) defines legitimacy as ‘the normative belief by an actor that a rule or institution ought to be obeyed’, emphasizing that it is an intersubjective quality defined by social perceptions. In the sociological sense, legitimacy is studied primarily through the beliefs of the participants in a system of rules (Clark, 2003), what I call ‘audiences’ of legitimacy. Legitimacy contributes to compliance with rules and decisions by providing internal reasons for actors to follow them (Hurd, 1999, p. 387).

There are several proposals regarding what constitute the principal sources of legitimacy in present-day global governance. Some authors use the overarching distinction between output and input legitimacy (Bäckstrand, 2006; Kalfagianni & Pattberg, 2014), whereas others list a broader range of such sources. For instance, Scholte (2011b) suggests efficiency, legality, democracy, morality, and charismatic leadership and Andrew Hurrell proposes procedural, substantive, efficiency-based, specialist-based, and reason-giving legitimacy (Hurrell, 2005; cf. Bull & McNeill, 2007, pp. 32–35). To specify, procedural (input-based, democratic) legitimacy claims propose that a policy or institution is legitimate to the extent that it has come into being in accordance with generally accepted principles of right process. Expert-based (specialist) sources of legitimacy imply that institutions and the rules they embody are legitimated with reference to the relevant expertise of those creating the rules. Substantive legitimacy is premised on the need for policies or rules to be justifiable on the basis of shared broader norms and values. Substantive legitimacy thus stems from the congruence between the content of a rule or policy and the broader values that are privileged in a community at a given moment. Finally, output (efficiency-based) legitimacy is obtained by providing effective solutions to collective problems (Hurrell, 2005).

Output legitimacy, and to some extent expert-based legitimacy, are the traditional sources in terms of which global governance organizations have discursively legitimated their policies; problems that cannot be solved solely by states need international cooperation to be addressed more effectively. More recently, this legitimation strategy has underpinned the creation of public–private partnerships between the United Nations and business actors (Bexell, 2013; Bäckstrand & Kylsäter, 2014). In the present issue, Andonova and Carbonnier (2014) emphasize that the lack of proof of effectiveness is the weakest link in the multifaceted legitimation strategies of partnerships between humanitarian relief organizations and business actors. The normative literature on global governance has primarily been preoccupied with democratic legitimacy and its possible application beyond the individual state (Bexell, Tallberg, & Uhlin, 2010). This literature tends to emphasize democratic procedural values rather than questions on substantive legitimacy, for instance socio-economic and sustainability norms. Despite broadened participation in certain global governance bodies, substantive norms are from being universally accepted and are continuously politicised. The consultations conducted since 2012 by the UN on a post-Millennium Development Goals framework for global development, to be adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2015, provide a salient example in this regard. Despite UN ambitions of wide stakeholder inclusion in order to gain procedural legitimacy, substantive conflicts over new goal priorities remain strong. The relative importance of sources of legitimacy in global governance, and the relationship between sources, is an empirical matter. For instance, as participatory grounds of legitimacy have obtained a more prominent role for international organizations, the legitimacy provided by expert rule has become less pronounced (Nanz & Steffek, 2005).

Legitimation and Delegitimation

The analysis of legitimation brings strategic attempts to justify or challenge existing power and authority relations to the fore, in our case particularly those embodied in global governance organizations (cf. Brassett & Tsingou, 2011). Those attempts can be conceptualized as legitimation strategies, defined as ‘the use of public and recognized reasons to justify a claim to an issue’, embedded in multiple social and cultural institutions that set the broader frames of a legitimation process (Goddard, 2006, p. 40). Such legitimation strategies can go in many directions, as outlined by Dominik Zaum (2013). The main strategies of legitimation occur ‘from above’, ‘from below’ and ‘horizontally’. Legitimation can be practised ‘from above’ by the actors claiming legitimacy (for example the UN), for instance through self-legitimation toward the members of an institution (for example UN member states) or toward external audiences (for example civil society, business, experts). It can be exercised ‘from below’ by those who are subject to an institution’s authority through bottom-up legitimation. In the case of international organizations, legitimation from below can take place through consent and acceptance of the rules of the organization on the part of states in their everyday practices. Legitimation can also be practised by those outside a hierarchical governing relationship, through ‘horizontally based’ legitimation, by actors not directly targeted by a legitimacy claim—for instance, influential NGOs, in the case of international organizations (Zaum, 2013).

Contemporary research examines how global governance arrangements justify their governing bodies, policies and outcomes to a broader variety of actors than just member state elites of international organizations (Brassett & Tsingou, 2011; Graz & Nölke, 2008). Questions about the audiences of legitimation strategies have primarily concerned civil society actors, though some authors have looked at experts as legitimacy-granting audiences (e.g. Cutler, 2010; Quack, 2010; Symons, 2011). The different groups that international organizations now consider relevant audiences of legitimation efforts emphasize different criteria of legitimacy. As Bernstein points out (2011, p. 24), ‘what mode of legitimation becomes institutionalised depends on the historically contingent values, goals, and practices of the relevant society’. Legitimacy requirements vary across forms of governance and issue areas owing to the interplay of the governance arrangement in focus with, on the one hand, international social structures and, on the other, the affected or regulated communities of actors.

Legitimacy claims, as Christian Reus-Smith (2007, p. 44) puts it, ‘are the lifeblood of the politics of legitimation’ and may or may not contribute to an institution’s legitimacy in the eyes of relevant communities. Legitimacy claims can be observed in the messages circulated by global governance organizations through their websites, annual reports, formal decisions and public statements (cf. Steffek, 2009; Hurrelmann et al., 2007). These claims either explicitly or implicit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• 1. Introduction: Global Governance, Legitimacy and (De)Legitimation
• 2. Legitimation Challenges in Global Health Governance: The Case of Non-Communicable Diseases
• 3. Legitimacy, Tribridity, and Decent Work Deficits
• 4. Old Wine in New Bottles? The Legitimation and Delegitimation of UN Public–Private Partnerships for Sustainable Development from the Johannesburg Summit to the Rio+20 Summit
• 5. Business–Humanitarian Partnerships: Processes of Normative Legitimation
• 6. Organizational Legitimation in the Age of Governing by Numbers: The Case of Regulatory Partnerships on ESG Issues and Financial Decisions
• 7. Exploring the Output Legitimacy of Transnational Fisheries Governance
• 8. Legitimacy, Institutional Design, and Dispute Settlement: The Case of Eco-Certification Systems
• Index