The politics of legitimate global governance

ABSTRACT

Legitimacy is an important question to ask of the theory and practice of global governance. In this introduction, we make two propositions that are used to push thinking about these issues forward. Firstly, in analytical terms we outline a spectrum between legitimacy and legitimization which is aimed to capture the diverse set of approaches to this subject and to develop an engaged and reformist attitude that refuses the either-or distinction in favour of a methodologically pluralist logic of ‘both and’. Secondly, in political terms, we argue that discussions of legitimate global governance in both policy and academic circles can carry a ‘Trojan horse’ quality whereby the ambiguity of the term might allow a point of intervention for more ambitious ethical objectives.

KEY WORDS:

• Global governance
• legitimacy
• global finance
• cosmopolitanism
• pragmatism

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We wish to thank participants at the conference ‘Pathways to Legitimacy? The Future of Global and Regional Governance’ (Warwick, September 2007), where the plan for this special issue first took shape. In particular, we wish to acknowledge the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation for intellectual and financial support and the European Commission-funded GARNET project for assistance in the organization of the conference.

Notes

1 This includes the extent to which the practices and principles of global governance might be gendered; and the consequences thereof (see Scherrer and Young, 2010).

2 To this, we must add debates along the more traditional distinctions of input and output legitimacy, as illustrated in the contribution by Mügge, who identifies legitimacy deficits in the institutional arrangements and proceeds to asses the legitimacy of the content of resulting policies in some (practical and political) detail. Such considerations are also relevant in debates on the inclusiveness of governance arrangements where the legitimacy of the process may be privileged over that of policy outcomes (see in particular Rai, 2004, for a feminist critique).

3 Similar assumptions infuse the arguments of Bernstein and Scholte in this issue.

4 See also, on this topic, Brassett and Smith, 2010 and more broadly, Mattli and Woods, 2009, who advocate stakeholder ‘common interest regulation’ for global governance arrangements.

5 Although it should be noted that Keohane resists the potential for conceptual inflation in legitimacy on the question of justice, arguing in his contribution “To mistake legitimacy for justice is to make the best the enemy of the good.”