Jens Steffek

The Legitimation of International Governance: A Discourse Approach:

This article presents a discourse approach to the study of legitimacy of governance beyond the democratic state. It starts from the empirical question of how international organizations legitimate their own activities and how they create perceptions of legitimacy in the absence of democratic participation and control. In answering this question the article draws on elements from Max Webers theory of rational legal domination and on Jürgen Habermass idea of legitimation through justificatory discourse. This article claims that the legitimacy of international governance hinges upon popular assent to the justifications of its goals, principles and procedures. It thereby also challenges much of the existing literature on legitimacy above the state that regards a democracy deficit a priori as a core problem of international governance.

Emergent Patterns of Civil Society Participation in Global and European Governance

Since the 1990s, the disciplines of European Studies and International Relations have taken a remarkable normative turn. Questions of democratic legitimacy, which, for many years, were marginalized on the agenda, have moved into the focus of scholarly interest. More than a decade after it began, the debate about legitimacy and democracy beyond the nation-state is now becoming mature, increasingly fine-grained and sophisticated (Follesdal 2006; Patomaki and Teivainen 2004). Very few authors would deny that the European Union (EU) and global organizations suffer from a ‘democratic deficit’. Most definitely, they are far from being as democratic as liberal Western nation-states. And while there is widespread agreement on this diagnosis, there is still much controversy over the appropriate remedy. A wide range of options is currently being discussed. They may be provisionally divided into three major clusters: proposals for representative-parliamentary institutions; proposals for new accountability mechanisms; and proposals for enhanced political deliberation. These groups will be briefly discussed.

Accountability or “Good Decisions”? The Competing Goals of Civil Society Participation in International Governance

Civil society participation in international and European governance is often promoted as a remedy to its much-lamented democratic deficit. We argue in this paper that this claim needs refinement because civil society participation may serve two quite different purposes: it may either enhance the democratic accountability of intergovernmental organisations and regimes, or the epistemic quality of rules and decisions made within them. In comparing the European Union and World Trade Organization (WTO) in the field of biotechnology regulation we find that many participatory procedures officially are geared towards the epistemic quality of regulatory decisions. In practice, however, these procedures provide little space for epistemic deliberation. Nevertheless, they often lead to enhanced transparency and hence improve the accountability of governance. We also find evidence confirming findings from the literature that the different roles assigned to civil society organisations as “watchdogs” and “deliberators” are at times difficult to reconcile. Our conclusion is that we need to acknowledge potential trade-offs between the two democratising functions of civil society participation and should be careful not to exaggerate our demands on civil society organisations.

Legitimacy in an age of global politics

Introduction: Legitimacy in an Age of Global Politics A.Hurrelmann, S.Schneider & J.Steffek PART ONE: LEGITIMACY AND LEGITIMATION: THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES Democratic Legitimation: What is It, Who Wants It, and Why? R.Barker Criteria of Democratic Legitimacy H.Abromeit & M.Stoiber Legitimacy, Authority, and Political Obligation G.Klosko Legitimacy and the Practice of Political Judgement S.Mulligan PART TWO: LEGITIMACY AND LEGITIMATION: EMPIRICAL APPROACHES Political Beliefs and Attitudes: Legitimacy in Public Opinion Research B.Westle Exploring the Communicative Dimension of Legitimacy: Text Analytical Approaches S.Schneider, F.meier & A.Hurrelmann Challenging Legitimacy: Repertoires of Contention, Political Claims-Making, and Collective Action Frames S.Haunss PART THREE: INTERNATIONALIZATION AND THE LEGITIMACY OF GOVERNANCE ARRANGEMENTS BEYOND THE DEMOCRATIC NATION STATE Legitimacy in International Relations: From State Compliance to Citizen Consensus J.Steffek Legitimacy in International or World Society? I.Clark Legitimacy Deficits Beyond the State: Diagnoses and Cures A. Follesdal Conclusion A.Hurrelmann, S.Schneider & J.Steffek

Explaining cooperation between IGOs and NGOs – push factors, pull factors, and the policy cycle

The ever closer collaboration between intergovernmental organisations (IGOs) and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) is empirically well described but poorly theorised. In this article I develop a general theoretical framework for analysing emergent patterns of cooperation between IGOs and NGOs, which may be used to generate hypotheses or guide comparatives studies. The starting point is a conception of organisational actors as purposeful but resource-dependent. The article then combines a ‘resource exchange perspective’ from organisational sociology with the model of a policy cycle from comparative politics. The result is a theoretical framework that allows to identify incentives for, as well as obstacles to, IGO-NGO cooperation along all phases of the policy cycle. In a concluding section the limits of this model and the underlying assumptions are discussed.

Explaining Patterns of Transnational Participation: The Role of Policy Fields

Within the range of concrete proposals for democratizing international governance, enhanced civil society participation has attracted a remarkable amount of scholarly interest.1 The literature that deals with this democratizing potential has grown exponentially over the last ten years (for recent overviews, see Greenwood, 2007; Kohler-Koch and Finke, 2007; Omelicheva, 2009; Scholte, 2004). Much of it is concerned with governance in the European Union (EU), but also global organizations such as the United Nations (UN), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are studied extensively. Some scholars have sought to put the numerous pieces of the puzzle together and to provide an overview of participatory trends in a more comparative fashion (Steffek et al., 2008). The set of volumes in which this text appears is certainly the most ambitious attempt so far to take stock of these developments.

Civil Society in World Politics: How Accountable are Transnational CSOs?

Transnational civil society organizations (CSOs) are often said to lack accountability. Taking issue with this claim, we report the results of a study on the accountability regimes of 60 transnational CSOs engaging in political advocacy. We scrutinize their transparency, opportunities for internal participation, evaluations and self-regulation, complaint procedures, and their independence from the state and intergovernmental organizations. We find that most transnational CSOs are reasonably transparent and offer participatory opportunities at least for members. They are organizationally independent from states and intergovernmental organizations, but dependencies on public funding are striking in some cases. Independent evaluations of their activities are scarce and codes of conduct, often suggested as an avenue towards better self-regulation of CSOs, do not seem to play a major role in practice. We conclude that the debate over transnational CSO accountability should focus on the most critical issues. In the case of general interest organizations, this seems to be the danger of co-optation through public financing. Special interest organizations, by contrast, are highly independent but have deficits in external transparency, especially regarding their budget.

Introduction: Legitimacy in an Age of Global Politics

It is now widely assumed that the processes of economic globalization and political internationalization have led to the demise of the so-called ‘national constellation’ that characterized the political reality of western democracies in the aftermath of the Second World War (Zurn 1998a; Albrow 2003;Leibfried and Zurn 2005;Hurrelmann et al. 2007). Although the contours of the evolving ‘post-national constellation’ (Habermas 1998) remain vague, it is clear that democratic nation states have lost much of their erstwhile autonomy vis-a-vis international regimes and organizations, the European Union, and non-state actors. Due to the internationalization and privatization of decision-making competencies, and to the increasing pressure from financial and business interests, nation states now find themselves tied into a web of multiple and interconnected centres and layers of political authority. Their citizens, whether or not they are fully aware of it, have come to live in an age of global politics in which many decisions that affect their lives are taken in political arenas beyond nation-state control.

Legitimacy in International Relations: From State Compliance to Citizen Consensus

The term ‘legitimacy’ is ubiquitous in the discourse of international politics. Politicians use it, journalists use it, non-governmental organization (NGO) campaigners use it. A Google Internet search combining the terms ‘Kofi Annan’ and ‘legitimacy’ yields an impressive 558,000 hits.1 Yet, even if the world speaks both of, and about, legitimacy, it is not exactly a central topic of international relations (IR) theory. The body of academic literature that systematically discusses legitimacy in IR appears rather slim when compared to the numerous treatises on state power and national interest. What is more, as in other subfields of the social sciences, legitimacy remains a contested concept. International relations scholars do not agree on what precisely the term should mean with reference to international politics, so that there is still great need for conceptual clarification and debate (Schmitter 2001; Bernstein 2004; Kratochwil 2006). One conceptual problem has hardly been discussed at all — traditionally, the disciplines of IR and international law have conceived legitimacy as being an issue among states. This traditional framing stands in stark contrast with much of the more recent literature — in particular, of the normative variant. Since the 1990s, a good deal of the legitimacy debate has focused primarily on the relationship between citizens and international or supranational organizations.

Conclusion: Legitimacy — Making Sense of an Essentially Contested Concept

Scholarly interest in the legitimacy of political orders appears to follow a decidedly cyclical pattern, with a pronounced renewal of interest occurring in phases of intense political conflict or massive change. The present volume suggests that economic globalization and political internationalization have opened the latest frontier in the field of legitimacy research. Most observers agree that these developments represent a serious challenge for the democratic nation state and its core institutions, eroding their legitimacy or, at the very least, transforming the foundations of legitimate political authority. But such crisis diagnoses, as widespread as they may be, also have more optimistic counterparts, and similar debates rage in the burgeoning literature on the legitimacy of governance arrangements at the international level. What, then, is the current state and future of legitimacy, understood both as a normative concept and as an empirical phenomenon? Does the post-national constellation of global politics imply a decline of legitimacy, or a shift towards post-democratic forms of legitimation?